Non-festival

Related events:
FILM WORKSHOPS with Mikołaj Jurkowsk: June 2019, CCA LAZNIA
OPENING: 20.07.2019, 5.00pm, ul. Kamienna Grobla (next to Fabryka Batycki)
FILM SCREENING: Berlin Kidz 2 // directed by Urban Spree, 22 July 2019, CCA LAZNIA (Parakino)

Wherever a container appears in urban space, we can expect change. Most often it is the first signal of an upcoming investment and the first element of appropriation and supervision of a given area. The person closed in a space of a few square meters has only two tasks. The first is to observe what is happening around the container, often with the help of cameras. The second is to maintain concentration and refrain from monotonous work. The process of viewing and recording lasts 24 hours a day.

The images displayed in the container come from different places in Dolne Miasto. They are selected and recorded by workshop participants. Well-lit corners become more mysterious, and hidden places and their problems become more visible. This is the look of a dozen or so young people who are intimately familiar with their neighbourhood. This kind of voyeurism aims at creating a map of interesting and curious places, but also ones that are perhaps difficult and in need of improvement. In this seemingly random registration we may sometimes notice objects that we do not see every day when passing by a given place.

The work refers to the private space of one’s own backyard, neighbourhood, and the mutual relations between people, and to the potential improvement of safety in a given community, or a purely aesthetic experience. Perhaps in order to do this one has to renounce one’s own privacy and freedom in the name of the whole community. Peeping at others is an extreme example, and not necessarily a positive one. The container resembles a security guard’s station. A security guard leaning over a newspaper from time to time peeks at the screens without much interest. As it is, nothing much happens on them, and you can easily overlook small things. The guard does not see that he or she is being watched and controlled by a viewer trying to observe what is on the screens in order to perhaps discover that they are looking at themselves, their neighbourhood. Something they hadn’t noticed before, simply being there.