Oxygenator
public project

2006-2007, Grzybowski Square, Warsaw
Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle

In this project, location is the fundamental issue. It's a project which is not so much written into a specific place, but attempts to create a certain epicenter to the surroundings, a point with the biggest 'vibrations' and thus transforms the place.

Location
Grzybowski Square in Warsaw, a triangle-shaped lawn, a place belonging to nobody: between the dilapidated tenement blocks of Próżna street, a church with the "Patriotic" bookshop specializing in anti-Semitic material, the Deutsche Bank building and the Jewish theater, close to Twarda street, where the synagogue is. Nearby, rows of shops specializing in do-it-yourself building and electrical materials. Architectural chaos. The visitors to Grzybowski square are an odd array of bums, office workers from nearby office buildings, plumbers buying faucets and sinks, suspicious old ladies from apartment blocks walking their poodles and package tourists from Israel frequently with bodyguards, staying out of touch with the surroundings. In a word - no man's land, apathetic, desolate; simultaneously saturated with identity and devoid of it.
A small pond which I imagined on this lawn, would not be in a direct relationship to any of the characteristics described above. Rather it would make a place, which is foreign, cut out, removed, separate. It would simultaneously be a temporary (because for thirty days) center of this chaotic landscape, allowing you to both forget about what's around you and also experience being in a very specific place.

Description
The main element of this project is a pond of about 150m2 surface area, 1,0m deep, written into the existing lawn. On the surface some water lilies, but not too many, some plants placed at the bottom of the pond and constantly being freed from the bottom, air bubbles enriched with oxygen. This oxygen cloud comes from oxygen concentrators, which slightly raise the amount of oxygen in the supplied and later returned air. Tubes at the pond's bottom transport this oxygen-rich air, which is freed and appears on the water surface in the form of bubbles. Above the pond a fog is maintained (using fog diffusers) which traps the enriched air. Surrounding the pond are specially-designed, futuristic benches, where one can sit and do some breathing.