Organisers: Studenci Wydziału Fotografii Uniwersytetu Artystycznego w Poznaniu.
Sketchbook: https://www.instagram.com/noroomcollection/
No Room Collection is the result of collaboration of eleven artists who met at the Kuzyszyn & Sadowski’s Studio at University of Arts in Poznan, Poland. In early March 2020 the group of students would have gone on a supposedly standard plein-air. The theme of the getaway was ‘the end of the world’: In the face of the changes happening on Earth the group of artists creates a collection definition that what is humane. A few days prior to the getaway the open-air is cancelled due to first appearance of Coronavirus in Poland. The group decided to continue their work despite increasing restriction against the spread of the virus.
The disoriented plein-air participants are starting the collection with an installation in the Debinsk Park in Poznan, Poland. The construction is to be a metaphorical machine taking us into a safe place, which due to the pandemic restrictions never reaches its destiny. The work on ‘No Room Collection’ gets fully moved into the online sphere – the only safe ‘place’.
The contemporary French philosopher in ‘If You Only Had One Hour to Live’ [2014] writes: ‘the world will end for me, infinite tenderness, children’s laughter, tea ceremony, alchemy of wines, hatred of hatred”. We can see here that the world is not an objective collection of material entities and their relations and the right world is always my world – the history and the evolution of my imagination, that which I’ve done with definitions, symbols, meanings and depictions inherited from history to create myself. ‘In the face of the end – reject what is unnecessary and immediately aim at what is most important’. Pol-Droit states that the only way to make oneself mortal and possible to be endured by others is to through creation. In this case by creation of literary opus, which will bring aid, comfort and enlightenment to others – Those that will come after us.
The anticipation of the end of the world take us thusly into the face of our interior. The interior the richer, the safer and the more comfortable, the fuller it is of the best of what was prepared for us my masters of creation throughout the centuries. That what is the highest allows to arrive the closest to what is Effable, Impossible and Mysterious. We however can survive (somehow) through the deposit of our world in the works of art. The works of art which someday – even if feebly and flimsily – will fill the inner selves of those those that will come after us. No more and no less.
-Fragment of Samuel Maruszewski’s lecture ‘What is the end of the world for a philosopher?’which took place on the 3rd of March 2020.
No Room collection consists of over a dozen of multimedia works created on a basis of online conversations about what defines us as people in extreme survival conditions. The formal side of the collection shows the need create a haven, into which the artists are welcoming the visitors. The individual pieces of collection could be found on www.noroomcollection.com, Instagram @noroomcollection and in print on the window of the UAP E building on Wolnica 9 in Poznan, Poland as part of Poznan Art Week 2020 (www.poznanartweek.com/wydarzenia-wystawy/projekt-no-room-collection).
Artists:
Aga Gabara, Paweł Franciszek Jaskuła, Paweł Masin, Magda Pacek, Jakub Rudzik, Mateusz Sadowski, Jadwiga Subczyńska, Andrzej Szwabe, Kinga Świętek, Klara Woźniak, Magdalena Żołędź.
Coordinator: Magdalena Zoledz
Visual concept of the gallery, 3D renders & animations: Andrzej Szwabe
www: Aga Gabara
@noroomcollection: Klara Woźniak
curatorial text: Paweł Franciszek Jaskuła & Magdalena Żołędź
