Anna Luczak

Key words: tautology,onomatopoeia,nothing,something,somewhere,nowhere,silence,repetition, ephemeral. Two opposites: things that are changing constantly (many) and things that always stay the same (few)

along those lines.

In the end of this September during excursion to Eckelsdorf, tiny bavarian village, I was confronted with new form of expression, namely, stone carving. I have chosen to work with marble, as it was the only stone which moved my thoughts to early, sublime memories, connected to visiting grave of queen Jadwiga. She, in her loving kindness, established first University of Poland, The Jagiellon University in Cracow. To reward this, and memorize her well, the folk founded this wonderful tombstone. I can still remember her white, cold face, and the softness of the stone fabric she is covered in. For my own stone carving experience, I have decided to use a piece of marble and polish it as much as I can. Marble is quite a fine material, and, I thought it operates even on linguistic level. Brings us back to classics. Just hearing about marble dust, I suppose, the stream of thoughts runes in different direction, than by any other kind of dust. The work ended up being the constellation of polished marble, raw marble, marble dust, and two pictures, Lodovica, a sculpture by Bernini, and a close up of marble hands. Usually I am trying to work with found materials and “activate” them, so the display of the work consisted of found glass pieces, which served as presentation platforms, placed around wooden shelter on the bushy hill, where glass plates were originally found.

This work was conceived for this specific gallery, and is now a permanent element of it. The gallery is run by a polish friend, and its called upominki, which means gifts. In polish language we have 7 grammatical cases. Each word has 7 versions, depending on the grammatical construction of the sentence. I have made a sound recording of the 7 versions of the pronunciation of the word upominki (the name of the gallery) showing my boredom and expressing the pointless of that, knowing, as a polish native, that its impossible for the foreigner to access that. This piece is now installed as a door bell ring at the gallery door. I have decided not to write any explanation of the work, the non native speaker probably wont know what it is, unless they ask. If the visitor asks, explanation will be delivered by the person who works in the gallery, my polish friend. Her understanding of the piece, as a polish native is how it will be delivered for a non polish visitor.

All the songs ever written, rearranged

I have asked an opera singer to sing all the letters of the alphabet. I was fascinated how 32 characters of alphabet can transmit so much by the different arrangement, as they are present in everything ever written. These characters represent, how we gave sound a written form (alphabet) The bible starts with the sentence: in the beginning there was a word. Greek mythology claims Chaos to be in the beginning of everything. That work is a compromise between those two ideas. An organized Chaos. Next to sound installation, there was list of onomatopoeic words, collected in categories, found in the dictionary.

Opening I was invited to propose an event in the frame of larger series of events, called “opening”, and it was supposed to happen in rotterdam public sphere and last as long as the opening itself. Thinking about what is specific for Rotterdam public sphere I was fascinated about the amount of different churches from different religions, and to work with that somehow. I think I was fascinated mainly in the opportunity to conquer it a bit. I have chosen the russian orthodox church, which has this absolutely wonderful form and looks like a sculpture or a big monument, but each time I would pass by, it looked closed, and so, I thought it would be a good opportunity to “use” this event of an opening, to open this sculpture, and go inside, as if we could forget for a while what it is and what it does in the world.To call this church a sculpture is like an appropriation of it and of the whole russian culture and all the Russians, and I was interested in that because of my polish background and a difficult polish-russian history. On this neutral dutch ground I wanted to conquer russians, yes. Fantastic. And than, it is also amazing to see this service they have in this church, it is absolutely beautiful and magical space, with its rituals and its atmosphere and the singing, and the specific routines of lighting the candles and singing and moving around and burning incense. It has all the ingredients of an amazing spectacle, so, as I thought, it would be a perfect opening. The work itself, ended up being just an invitation for this event, and one photograph of the church with a short description of the action. Looking for a square is a short video, made in Lodz, Poland, I am walking around my house in the city, the square is found in the walking. It is not there, but its there at the same time, and we could find any other figure if we wanted to. We could find any figure or any other thing anywhere. I was thinking of mathematics, which is both discovered and invented, and how we are ruling it and how it is ruling us. It is there in every thing, and we define its being. I decide to walk in this square, the square is there if I want to.

Three dimensional map showing clearly how to get somewhere? Three dimensional map showing clearly how to get somewhere else? Work consist of two wooden sticks. We always get somewhere, and in this way, this image is always true. At the same time it makes no sense. For sure, it might work, and mark a place, how to get somewhere, which is some sort of logic construction that functions in colloquial language. Parents say to their children: go to school, you should be someone and get somewhere. Where is this somewhere? Cant it be just anywhere? This map is just a bit of three dimensional, but, for sure, it shows, how to get somewhere.