Biennale Warszawa shows care for the environment in the communication for the exhibition “Race and Forest”

Only a single copy of the poster and a single leaflet advertising the exhibition Race and Forest will be made available to the public by Biennale Warszawa. The institution was the first one in Poland to decide, for the benefit of the natural environment, to limit the event’s promotion to direct person-to-person, word-of-mouth message. This means, among others, deliberately foregoing sending out invitation in the mail, manufacturing gadgets related to the exhibition and outdoor advertising.

The poster which Biennale Warszawa makes available to the public is exhibited temporarily and moved from one location to the next. Until 6 March it will be displayed in the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw, and in the following weeks, up until the exhibition’s closing night planned for 19 April, it will be exhibited in Wrzenie Świata, University Library and Powszechny Theatre. “This is the only copy of the poster for the Race and Forest exhibition. Please treat it well and talk about it to another person who might be interested in the topic,” Biennale Warszawa encourages both on the unique poster and on its social media channels. Biennale asks to pass the only leaflet around to someone willing to attend the exhibition opening. The files with the leaflet and the poster can be downloaded from Biennale’s website, but the institution bets on natural, direct means of communication: “When designing the communication for Race and Forest we wanted to reduce the environmental impact of our actions to a minimum. Taking up the topic of crimes related to the environment requires a comprehensive view – not only new formulas of thinking, but also acting.”

The designer invited to collaborate on the project was Jakub De Barbaro who in his approach to work expands the fields of communication and builds visual identification based not only on images, but also gestures, behaviours and/or actions. “Everyday our eyes slide over a veritable sea of tiny prints which land on the ground, and in the best case scenario – straight in the trash. Hence the idea to pass around a single leaflet 500 times from one person to another, instead of throwing away 500 printed leaflets,” he explains.

The opening of the exhibition Race and Forest will be held on Friday, 6 March, at 20.00 at Biennale Warszawa, 34/50 Marszałkowska Street.

About the exhibition:

The exhibition Race and Forest was prepared by an interdisciplinary research team INTERPRT which collects facts related to the crimes against the natural environment.  The exhibition is another voice in the discussion concerning the climate disaster which more and more frequently mentions the necessity to acknowledge ecocide as a crime in the light of international law. One of the first ever examples of charges where the environment became the main subject of court proceedings was a case presented by Polish prosecutors, concerning the destruction of Polish forests by Nazi Germany. Race and Forest, the exhibition shown at Biennale Warszawa reconstructs the circumstances of this precedential indictment. Re-entwining images, documents, testimonies and data from various sources, it creates a framework for new reflection. The exhibition is curated by Bartosz Frąckowiak.

 

Communications Director