event
Thursday 1 January 1970

Shadow Architecture. Art, economy and informal spaces in Warsaw

The dream of Warsaw

Two seminars investigating the contemporary artistic scene in Poland and reflecting on the city of Warsaw and its transformations

The seminars have been organized within the ambit of the exhibition The Dream of Warsaw, curated by Gabi Scardi and running from 29 May to 31 July 2014 at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, which features works by 10 Polish artists that explore the visible or concealed reality of Warsaw: a city that is today complex, fragmentary, diversified and contradictory, but charged with an extraordinary potential for transformation.

Shadow Architecture. Arte, economics and informal spaces in Warsaw
Tueday 10 June, 18.30
MAXXI B.A.S.E., Graziella Lonardi Buontempo Hall – admittance free subject to availability

The seminar features Alexsandra Wasilkowska whose work shifts between architecture, urban planning, art and science.
The architect tackles the issue of the political and urban transformations that have characterised Poland, a country in which still today the cities keep on eye to the East and one to the West, not knowing in which direction to turn.
In particular, she considers the emblematic Palace of Culture and Science, completed in 1995 and over 200 metres tall.
This building, nicknamed by residents as “Stalin’s Vendetta”, is surrounded by an urban space that has still to be properly integrated and is occupied only by casual, self-regulating street commerce: a site that stands as a paradigm of all the situations in which an absence of an urban system is transformed into a space of experimentation, becoming the setting for phenomena that evade planning and authority.

introduced by
Hou Hanru Artistc director

speakers
Gabi Scardi Curator and art critic
Aleksandra WasilkowskaArchitect, designer and artist

Next seminar
Tuesday 17 June | A Tour of the Monuments in Warsaw