Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley

The second edition of Biennale Warszawa entitled Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley will be held at Wars Sawa Junior Department Stores in Warsaw, 104/122 Marszałkowska St. It will last from 3 June to 17 July, 2022.

The space opposite the Palace of Culture and the new Museum of Modern Art building under construction is the very center of the city, a place at the crossroads of communication routes connected with the new economy, trade and politics. This location of the exhibition provides an appropriate context for a conversation about the major challenges associated with the entanglement of technology, nature, politics, authoritarianism, and the new economy. It is to these themes that we dedicate Biennale Warszawa 2022.

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2022.biennalewarszawa.pl

Digital infrastructure and material objects of the Web, invisible and often overlooked in the conversation about technology; algorithms and artificial intelligence, considered by many to be neutral and objective, but in fact affecting all spheres of our lives; reactionary ideology and conservative politics hidden in the modern garb of technological development – these are, among others, the themes around which the works of nearly thirty artists from around the world, which will be shown at the main exhibition, are centered. It is accompanied by a public program that will include performative lectures, debates, workshops, presentations and seminars.

In the wake of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, works and speeches in which artists analyze authoritarian political practices made possible by new technologies assume special significance. These practices are based on mass surveillance of citizens. They use artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics for political, military and economic violence purposes and for cyberterrorism. The situation in Ukraine has led us to work with the artists, researchers, and scholars participating in the Biennale Warszawa 2022 to create new exhibition and public program elements that will allow us to adequately address these themes.

We believe that technology is the lens through which all relevant geopolitical, political, social, economic, ecological, and cultural processes are seen, resulting in an increase in authoritarian tendencies in the world. By proposing a discussion on the role of technology, we actually open a debate on contemporary forms of authoritarianism and alternatives to them, declare Anna Galas-Kosil, Bartosz Frąckowiak and Paweł Wodziński, curators of Biennale Warszawa 2022.

In the previous practice of Biennale Warszawa, critical reflection has always been complemented by actions aimed at designing or creating alternative solutions, ideas, or prototypes. The same is the case here. The exhibition will also feature works focused on designing more democratic, equal and just technologies. Their goal is to powerfully shape the future as we really want it. Today, more than ever, we need that freedom of imagination, lest we succumb to dystopian, fearful and paralyzing visions of catastrophe. Some of these works have been created by artists and activists fighting various forms of political and technological oppression in different parts of the world.

Information for visitors

The exhibition Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley

2022.biennalewarszawa.pl

Where: Wars Sawa Junior Department Stores in Warsaw, 104/122 Marszałkowska St.
Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday from 12:00-20:00

Tickets:

Tickets are available:

• on our website: www.biennalewarszawa.pl
• via the GoOut platform: GoOut Biennale Warszawa 2022
• on site, in the Info Point

Ticket prices:

• PLN 20 – multiple entries ticket (entitles to unlimited entries throughout the duration of the exhibition)
• PLN 10 – single entry regular ticket
• PLN 5 – single entry concession ticket 

Concession tickets (after presenting a relevant document in the Information Point) are available for:

• employees of state-run art galleries; theatres, cultural institutions
• journalists
• holders of Big Family Card (KDR)
• persons with disabilities and their carers
• school groups and other organised groups of minors and their guardians
• senior citizens
• students.

Press accreditation is personalised and entitles to multiple entries to the exhibition. It is free of charge for people who apply to Przemek.rydzewski@biennalewarszawa.pl. Applications are accepted until 20 May 2022. 

Admission to accompanying events is free, although certain events require prior registration.
Guided tour of the exhibition is included in the price of the ticket.

Biennale Warszawa 2022 Info Point:
Domy Towarowe Wars i Sawa Junior, ul. Marszałkowska 104/122, 00-017 Warszawa
Opening hours: Tuesday–Sunday, from 12:00 to 20:00
komunikacja@biennalewarszawa.pl
tel.: +48 789 859 220

Artists and theoreticians

Lista artystów, artystek, teoretyków i teoretyczek biorących udział w II edycji Biennale Warszawa:

Public Program

Admission to public program events is free.

2022.biennalewarszawa.pl

4.06.2022

11.00–14.00
Imagining possible futures, building Networks of Trust
Workshop by Kyriaki Goni
[EN, registration] 

17.00–18.30
Metric Mysticism
Performance lecture: Zach Blas
[EN, admission free] 

19.00–20.00
Seeing Stones and the New Planetary Order
Performance lecture: Anna Galas-Kosil, Bartek Frąckowiak, Paweł Wodziński
[EN, admission free] 

5.06.2022

11.00–14.00
Imagining possible futures, building Networks of Trust
Workshop by Kyriaki Goni
[EN, by invitation only] 

17.00–18.30
Citizen White Hat Troll: Live Desktop Cinema Femme Confessional
Performance lecture: Clara Balaguer
[EN, registration] 

19.00– 20.30
Understanding SNET [The human infrastructures behind Cuba’s alternative computer networks]
Talk: Steffen Köhn and Nestor Siré
[EN, admission free] 

9.06.2022

New Alphabet School 
#Feralizing

18.00–18.30
Agonal Respirations, performance by Ania Nowak
[EN, free entry]

18.30–20.30
Lectures: Jack Halberstam, Nikita Kadan, Joanna Rajkowska
[EN/PL, admission free]

12.06.2022 

17.00–19.00
AI on Tractors?
Debate with Andrea Beste, Karolina Jarmołowska, Paweł Kobielus, Kuba Kulesza, Jan Skoczylas
Moderator: Weronika Koralewska 

24.06.2022

17:00–18:00
Who Owns the Internet?
Talk: Joanna Murzyn
[EN, admission free] 

18.15–19.15
Islands in the Cloud: An Incomplete Guide to the Physical Internet in Poland
Talk: Vanessa Graf
[EN, admission free] 

19:30–20.30
What if we could store data in plants?
Talk: Grow Your Own Cloud (Cyrus Clarke & Monika Seyfried)
[EN, admission free] 

25.06.2022

11.00–12.30
Blockchain, Decentralization and a New Network

Introduction and moderation after the talks: Bartosz Frąckowiak

An introduction to autonomous ecological agents
Talk: terra0

Grow Your Own DAO
Talk: Cyrus Clarke
Moderation: Bartek Frąckowiak
[EN, admission free] 

13.00–14.00
New Extractivism
Lecture: Vladan Joler
[EN, admission free] 

16.00– 17.00
Labour & the High-Tech Industry – when health becomes confidential business
Talk: Felix Lenz, Angela Neubauer, Ester Zwickl
[EN, admission free] 

17.15– 18.15
Data Colonialism and Digital Border Walls
Lecture: Ulises Ali Mejias
[EN, admission free] 

18:30–19.30
Climate Peace
Talk: John Palmesino (Territorial Agency)
[EN, admission free] 

19.45–21.00
Borderless Digital Utopias: Embracing the Interconnections between People, Beings, Past, Present, and our Dreams
Lecture: Ramesh Srinivasan
[EN, admission free] 

26.06.2022

11.00– 14.00
Rethinking Computer Science and Political Economy with Bernard Stiegler
Workshop by Anne Alombert, Michał Krzykawski and Daniel Ross
[EN, registration]

16.00– 18.00
How to Reorganise Silicon Technologies in the Age of Digital Disruption?
Panel discussion with Anne Alombert, Gaël Giraud, Michał Krzykawski and Daniel Ross

18.00– 20.00
War and Machine
Lecture: Yuk Hui
[EN, admission free]

20.00– 23.00
The Ister
directed by David Barison and Daniel Ross
film screening
[EN/PL, admission free]

16–17.07.2022 

Room to Bloom
Warsaw edition of the program carried out jointly by Studio Rizoma and European Alternatives
[EN, admission free] 

Armed Democracy
Project carried out in cooperation with Kyiv Biennial and partners from East European Biennial Alliance
[EN, online]

17.07.2022

20.00
Closing of the Biennale Warszawa 2022

Special online public program

ARMED DEMOCRACY
July 1 – 9, 2022, 18:00 CEST, Online

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which put its people under mass physical and political extermination, has forced the European continent to question the very foundations of the institutional order it had been based on since the end of World War II. In the situation, when not just the future but the very present of Europe at large has appeared under direct existential threat from the Russian fascism, all the basic categories that the post-Nazi world relied on, such as democracy and authoritarianism, historicism and neocolonialism, pacifism and demonstration of protest, require a profound revision and change. The system of ideological coordinates as well as the outlines of the political spectrum we have been used to operate in are to be rearranged to tackle a new catastrophic reality. 

The fundamental difference that we face in Europe at the moment between the Western approach characterized by the pursuit of peace and the Eastern one focused on liberation and independence poses a dramatic challenge – in order to survive and progress, democracy as a political regime has to be capable of defending itself also in a military way. What changes does it bring to the idea of the nation-state and the principles of internationalism? How will the notions and practices of citizenship, rule of law and human rights and freedoms be altered? In what way does it affect an economic apparatus and constitute the modus vivendi of our societies anew? How could a new political paradigm be safeguarded against imperialist and fascist misuse to prevent political and military violence by the strong against the weak?

Conceived by the Kyiv Biennial and Biennale Warszawa from the East Europe Biennial Alliance, this special public program Armed Democracy, curated by Vasyl Cherepanyn within the 2nd edition of Biennale Warszawa, revolves around the concepts of imperialism, liberation, fascism, autocracy, revolution, and militarization in pursuit of the world to come on Europe’s burnt out land. The program is a first part of the series organized by the East Europe Biennial Alliance discussing Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine and taking place in Warsaw, Prague, Kassel, and Riga over the summer and fall of 2022.

PROGRAM

01.07.2022

18:00 CEST
The Reckoning Project: Documenting Russian War Crimes in Ukraine
Nataliya Gumenyuk i Angelina Kariakina
[online]

04.07.2022

18:00 CEST
Intelligentsia Unarmed. The Western Discourse Bubble and the Realities of War in Europe
Karl Schlögel
[online]

05.07.2022

 18:00 CEST
On Militant Democracy
Jan-Werner Müller

06.07.2022

18:00 CEST
Ukrainian Culture at War
Tamara Hundorova i Serhy Yekelchyk
[online]

07.07.2022

 18:00 CEST
Apathy Towards Authoritarianism and Aggression
Renata Salecl
[online]

08.07.2022

18:00 CEST
Nuclear Blackmail and Fossil Fascism
Svitlana Matviyenko i Oleksiy Radynski
[online]

09.07.2022

18:00 CEST
Lessons of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Alexander J. Motyl
[online]

General Information

Organiser: Biennale Warszawa, Cultural Institution of the Capitali City of Warsaw
Curatorial team: Bartosz Frąckowiak, Anna Galas-Kosil, Paweł Wodziński
Architectural design: CENTRALA (Simone De Iacobis, Małgorzata Kuciewicz)
Project of visual identification and website: Jakub de Barbaro; cooperation: Mikołaj Hałabuda, Marta Kowalska, Alina Lysachkova
Production team: Ewa Kozik, Marta Michalak, Ela Petruk
Public programme coordinator: Joanna Saran
Communication & PR team: Klara Duniec, Justyna Gill-Maćkiewicz, Magdalena Jankowska, Aleksandra Kardaczyńska, Przemek Rydzewski, Agnieszka Tiutiunik
Content-related cooperation: Ewa Kozik
Engineering: Marek Jeżewski
Exhibition execution: Artmontage
Audio-visual execution: Eidotech Polska
Video recording: Filip Drożdż, Stefan Łazarski, Michał Mądracki
Website: Michał Szota
Editing, proofreading and translation: Paulina Bieniek, Justyna Chmielewska,Tim Churcher, Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz, Aleksandra Czyż, Klementyna Dec, Anna Dzierzgowska, Bartosz Frąckowiak, Dominika Gajewska, Sylwia Hajduga, Lucyna Khvorost, Ewa Kozik, Monika Krawul, Sławomir Królak, Jerzy Listwan, Mateusz Myszka, Agata Rudowska, Katarzyna Slabý, Aleksandra Szkudłapska, Malwina Szymczak, Dariusz Żukowski
Office and financial department: Robert Jaworski, Angelika Malon, Bożena Marczykowska, Michał Markowicz, Ewa Orlińska-Pięta, Bartosz Ziemba
Legal services: Paweł Siemianowski
Public procurement: Mateusz Saczywko

2022.biennalewarszawa.pl