Public projects

Greetings From Jerusalem Avenue

public project
2002>>, the artificial palm tree placed at the junction of Aleje Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue) and Nowy Swiat (New World), Warsaw, Poland

Comstar, Red Lion, Kino Dziga

public projects for Białystok [unrealized]
2011, Białystok

Two Days From Europe

public procject [unrealized]
2011, Curitiba, Brazil

Benjamin in Konya

book, public project, semi-documentary, photography, wallpaper/drawing
2010, Konya, Turkey [public project], Yusuf Ağa Library in

Chariot

public project, film, drawings
2010, The Showroom, London, near Church Street / Edgware Road

Ravine

vision of an impossible public project, print, 121,5cm x 200cm, 3 editions
2009, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw;

The Minaret

public project [not realised], www.minaret.art.pl
2009, the disused smokestack transformed into the minaret, at the crossing of Estkowskiego and Garbary Street in Poznań, Poland

Rotor

public project
2009, the Vistula in Warsaw (as part of the project Disappear by the Vistula)

Aquarius

public project, river Wilga mouth into the Vistula, Cracow
2009, as part of Art Boom Festival

The Bat

public project [not realised], archival pigment print, 135 cm x 90 cm, 3 editions
2009, PROGR Gallery, Bern, Switzerland

Airways

public project, 2-channel projection, 23'
2008, Trafó gallery, Budapest, Hungary

Spittoon

public project, object
2008, Plac Konstytucji, Warsaw, Poland

The Uhyst Refugee Asylum

public project, photographs
2008, Uhyst, Germany; Kronika Gallery, Bytom, Poland

Oxygenator

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

Umeå Volcano

public project [not realised]
2006, Verkligheten Gallery, Umeå, Sweden

Exit. Waiting for 624 Museum Staff

public project
2005, National Museum in Cracow, the Cracow common

Cruising Around War Island

public project
2004, Belgrade, Serbia

Only Love

public project, video, 11min
2004, Wolski Hospital, Warsaw

Twenty-Two Tasks

public project, slide-show, 47min
2003-2005,

Berlin Shrub

event, photographs
2003, Potsdamer Platz, Berlin

Diary of Dreams

public project
2001, XX1 Gallery, Warsaw

No Sign of Dying Soon

event
1995, New York, USA

Let Me Wash Your Hands

event, 2-channel projection, 4'41''
1994, Sauce Place, New York, USA

Art of Public Possibility. Joanna Rajkowska in Conversation with Artur Żmijewski
Milliodimensional Reality, Joanna Rajkowska talks to Magda Pustoła
Rajkowska. A Krytyka Polityczna Guide

The artist enters into a context and, using that context's own codes, momentarily manifests spaces of physical and social relations. Seen in new light, the given space allows different people and narratives to coexist. Rajkowska's projects are about displacing old meanings, noticing new cracks, sensing new vibrations.. The artist starts by entering a territory that is seemingly familiar and well defined. Without imposing any external interpretative categories, she triggers off a process of deterritorialisation, activating lines that make possible a reconfiguration. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari would say, she "dissolve[s] the identity of the place", so that, "no one will recognise us any more when we come back".

This is made possible by a unique modality of Rajkowska's actions. It can be understood by referring to Derrida's notion of the "event." An event, or something that was impossible to invent and yet it happened. Something that acts in the mode of "potentiality" and not of "maybe." The artist initiates a process of the co-formulation of the space of the event by people within her reach.

At this point, it is worth quoting Bojana Pejic who, referring to public art, stresses the fundamental difference between "telling people what to think and enabling them - allowing them - to think." This highlights another element of Rajkowska's practice. Her improvisational formula implies no control on her part over the processes. This, in turn, exposes her projects to the risk of failure. Like in the case of the volcano which is unlikely to be built due to the lack of agreement. Or like in the case of one of Rajkowska's most important works, Maja Gordon Goes to Chorzów (2006) film . Its protagonist and co-author returns to her home town in search for places, people and events she had known, but also for herself. Memory is to be a pretext here for consciously building one's present identity. But, despite her frequently repeated willingness to subject herself to a process of vivisection, Maja Gordon reproduces only the usual masks and façades. She thus confirms that sometimes nothing happens even if one very much wants for something to happen.

Magda Pustoła