Opening
Central Pavilion (Bródno Park)
Kondratowicza/Chodecka
The tenth installment of the Bródno Sculpture Park takes the form of a biennale: over the course of ten days, from June 23 to July 1, 2018, the entire neighborhood of Bródno will become one large art exhibition. Rather than being presented with a finished, tangible work of art, however, viewers are given a conceptual “model kit” to assemble themselves, a display in which the map is the territory.
The collaborative artist duo Paweł Althamer and Goshka Macuga proposed that Warsaw’s Bródno neighborhood be nominated as an exhibition, citing the biennale format famously used in cities such as São Paulo, Berlin, and Istanbul. Althamer and Macuga focus on on the neighborhood’s defining features: the situations, sites, local initiatives, inventions, collections, buildings, and the infrastructure that can be encountered here. They call it a “Venice” biennale, alluding to the world’s oldest (established in 1895) and most famous art event held on a biennial basis. This descriptor also emphasizes the splendor and solemnity inherent in the very act of considering the neighborhood in terms of an art exhibition. The exhibition is a tool for shaping public awareness, and can therefore be a means for social change.