They call themselves “the art laborers.” Everything started at the Gdańsk Shipyard, a place heavy with immense hulls and history. But later the ship production steadily dropped off, and history moved out elsewhere. The shipyard got emptier with each passing year. And then art took root in the concrete halls.
Gałuszka, Jurkowski
In 2001, a young artist named Mikołaj Robert Jurkowski created the Artists’ Colony, a space for independent art. Young people found not only a new home in the shipyard, they found a place they could showcase their work in. Sylwester Gałuszka was one of them. “When I met Mikołaj for the first time, he told me: »Never forget where you’re from«,” Gałuszka says. The Colony got one of the dilapidated shipyard buildings, 175A. It once housed the shipyard telephone switchboards. They patched it up and adapted the rooms for workshops. The artists paid the electric and water bills and in the winter they sprang for heating – a thing almost unheard of back in these days. But most importantly, they put much work into putting shipyard workers at ease with the presence of artists.
To this day they identify themselves with the place and the people.
“Instead of creating, laborers work,” says the PGR_ART manifesto. “They need not conjure up their own agenda, the party line is provided by the management.” This “planned agendalessness” reveals a certain multi-tendency: towards multiplicity, heteronomy and opposition against objectification of art. PGR_ART is not the judge, it’s a conduit. It’s a place that is supposed to be accessible, an void waiting to be filled with a message, a different one each time. The art laborers discard the modernist model of art and its claims of being the only true one.
Housed in the Colony building, the Mm Gallery hosted the Youths of a Young City project. The goal was to showcase one talented art school student each month. The most recognizable artists of the modern Polish art world, like Anna Reinert, Anna Witkowska and Sebastian Woźniak, all had their debut in the Mm Gallery.
Every exhibition was a big event, often with a political dimension. When in 2003 Poland sent troops to Iraq, the artists staged a massive protest on the shipyard grounds.
Later they organized the Free Tibet Initiative, combining political protest with presentations on Tibetan culture, yoga workshops and live Tibetan music concerts staged on the Colony’s roof . “Dramttaka” was another seemingly normal and yet big event, combining live music with spectacular visualizations. But, every event was supposed to reference the Shipyard’s history or Poland’s political transformations, including their cost, human or otherwise.
The Colony also organized workshops for kids of shipyard workers and ones coming from broken homes. There, they youngsters learned about the mysterious monster called “modern art” and constructed their own installations out of trash strewn across the shipyard grounds.
PGR_ART’s Free Studio was also established around that time. It wasn’t a specific project with a program and artistic preferences, it was a simple space of around 100 square meters, open to whatever the artist’s intentions were. Extreme Art was one of the projects organized in the Free Studio. The invited artists started by showcasing their current works and in the space of four weeks, influenced by the place and people, they created something new.
In 2008, the new owner of the shipyard evicted the artists from Lot 175A. Some of them were offered a new place to coalesce but without a right to organize events.
“When I entered the shipyard, I was 22. I left when I was 30. That’s a big chunk of life,” says Gałuszka. Even though he loved the inspiring energy of the shipyard, he does not regret the forced exodus. Gałuszka admits that the severance became something of a push towards the rebirth of PGR_ART. “Leaving the shipyard was painful, but now I see it was also necessary. Even though we left the place, the art laborer spirit never left us, and now it is reborn in a new reality,” says Gałuszka.
Sylwester Gałuszka and Mikołaj Robert Jurkowski started wandering around the city. It was something of a rediscovery for both of them. Today, the “Rediscovering Art” workshops are among the most important events organized by PGR_ART.
“We call it ARTour. Once a month, we meet with four groups which we take to see exhibitions and all other must-see stops of the Tricity artistic world. We’re trying to level the playing field for everyone and we use new media to achieve that.”
Sylwester and Mikołaj don’t believe in problematic youth and tough neighborhoods, but they both know how the place you live in can cast a long shadow over life, and they are aware of the reputation of some of Tricity’s less glamorous districts. But both artists claim that their task is to inspire the youths, to sow seeds where no one else wants to.
They take the youngsters to galleries, convincing them look at and interpret art in new ways. They workwith psychologists and educators. The youngest of their proteges was 6 years old.
“Our charges, armed with still and video cameras, create their own subjective image of what they see in modern art galleries,” says Sylwester, adding that “in the first phase of the workshop, we just wander around the city, looking for good shots, topics, means of expression, we engage in various discussions. Later, our kids work with the collected material, making it their own through forms and means of expression. Movies and photographs are the final product of their efforts.”
Backed by the Orange Foundation, Mikołaj and Sylwester are preparing a new round of workshops. They claim that the events will “be something completely new, for us as well. We’re going to make 3D documentaries with the help of cutting-edge technology and the ideas of 40 volunteers. The effect of our combined efforts might be really amazing.”
PGR_ART is not only focused on education, the group also organizes festivals combining music, multimedia and performance art. Another one of the group’s better known projects is something called DWAtv.
“We’re still not satisfied with Tricity’s artistic offer. There is still much we can and should do,” comments Gałuszka.
The characters from Katarzyna Lis’s reportage “The art laborers” provide us with the answers to the questions prepared by the students of the Polish School of Journalism.
Name, age:
Sylwester Gałuszka, 33.
Mikołaj Robert Jurkowski, 45.
Place of birth:
SG: Przemyśl
MJ: Lublin
My place today:
SG: We’re building a new space, a brand new place.
MJ: I don’t think I have one.
I am…
SG: An art laborer.
MJ: An art laborer.
I make…
SG: Hmm…
MJ: What I can’t see. If something is not there, I try to create it. It’s always been like this with me. I still experience situations that push and inspire me to create.
I was…
SG: An art laborer, always giving 100 percent to the cause.
MJ: I was, I am and I will be punk.
I will be…
SG: A human being.
MJ: An art laborer.
Culture is…
SG: Culture.
MJ: Situations. Actions, not people.
Poland is…
SG: Home.
MJ: A beautiful country and still one big “if.” I think we’re losing our chance to reconstruct it. I expected something different from the freedom we fought so hard for. Right now I have no other choice but to engage in political discourse.
Europe is…
SG: A window on the world. We’re a reflection of things happening out there, which in turn influence in so many ways.
MJ: A dream for a world gone by. Radio Free Europe was once the only source of true news. Today, Europe means mostly possibilities, especially for the youngsters. But it also has a darker side, the lost chances, the decline of education systems, inhuman rules and regulations, the situation of ethnic minorities. I guess there’s still a gaping abyss between us and Western Europe.
My environment starts…
SG: Where my skin ends.
MJ: With me. Everything begins with me. Today I live in an apartment block, in a working class neighborhood. That’s my environment.
My environment ends…
SG: It has no end. Maybe in space.
MJ: It has no end. I’m always interested in what lies beyond the threshold.
What I do is important, because…
SG: Because I know it’s not selfish, people let me know that my work is important to them. Doing something solely for yourself is the worst.
MJ: I think the important work is still ahead of me.
A movie that has recently impacted me very profoundly was…
SG: “Enter the Void.” After watching it, I haven’t said a single thing for four days. Haven’t switched on the TV for a month. I felt that the cinema is over, has reached its peak, and that there is no sense in making and watching movies.
MJ: Yesterday I tried to watch Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice,” to relive the experience of seeing this flick. As I said, I tried. Lucky for me, technical difficulties prevented me from doing so.
A book that has recently impacted me profoundly was…
SG: In January I started Pessoa’s “The Book of Disquiet.” A really powerful book.
MJ: Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine.” There is also another book, an coffee table book, really – “Modern Design.” I leafed trough it and it completely blew me away. Our aesthetics have undergone immense changes in recent years and frankly, I’m unnerved and irritated by that fact. I started collecting new magazines on interior design and comparing them to those issued in the 1990s. The changes are unbelievable.
My biggest influence was…
SG: Popart and then op-art. And the fact that all of it can still be modified.
MJ: Punk-rock. The 80s were really a big dose of undiluted life.
This year I’d like to…
SG: Do projects that will put me in touch with new, interesting people.
MJ: Trump last year’s achievements, and that will be hard. Last year we organized over 300 workshops with over 10,000 participants.
In five years, I’d like to…
SG: Meet the people we’d organized our workshops for and see where they’re at.
MJ: I’m thinking about South America. The things I do here, I could just as well do there. That’s one of my alternatives.
This questionnaire is a supplement to the Katarzyna Lis’ article, “The art laborers”, which was written as part of the series of the reportages concerning informal cultural and social initiatives in different Polish cities. The series was prepared especially for ECC by the students of the Polish School of Reportage, that is affiliated to the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw.
