The Postartistic Assembly is a public programme comprising lectures, screenings, performances, workshops and sound installations, unfolding over the course of three days. It will feature contemporary postartistic practices from Poland, presented in dialogue with invited Korean artists, and works by the Ukrainian collective Freefilmers.
Postartistic Assembly draws upon an artistic tradition related to Polish art critic and theorist Jerzy Ludwiński (1930-2000). Ludwiński introduced the term postart in the 1970s, the phrase capturing a broad range of unprecedented processes that art had been undergoing. He was also the one who pointed to the need to open up to entirely new artistic expression evolving in assorted “ecosystems” frequently thriving away from artistic institutions, examples including activism, agriculture, and science.
Postartistic Assembly is addressing challenges artists face today as well, as objects are replaced with process and direct action and disciplines overlap and merge, collective engagement and distributed authorship frequently chosen as the preferred work methodology (related phenomena observed eg. during the documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany, or the 17th Istanbul Biennale).
Postartistic Assembly introduces practices transgressing conventional perception of art. The Assembly explores areas where arts “crosspollinate” other forms of knowledge production, such as ecology or experimental education. In local context, the Assembly references artworks by Heo Baekryeon (1891–1977), a Korean painter, poet, and calligrapher known as Uijae. He founded the Yeonjinhoe group, a discussion club and collective with a focus on poetry and painting.
Using his fascination with landscape, agriculture and collective work as the foundation, Heo Baek-ryeon formed the agriculture-based school Samaehakwon in the 1940s to educate local leaders, artists and farmers. Fifty years ago, Jerzy Ludwiński wrote, “we probably missed the moment when what we were doing was no longer art”. Rather than separating art from non-art, Postartistic Assembly – faced with uncertainties regarding our planet’s future – focus on finding out what can be done with art today.
Polish post-artistic practices will be presented in juxtaposition with Korean artist collective ikkibawiKrrr, Rice Brewing Sisters Club activities, and films by Cha Jae-min. The collaboration with Korean artists was established following a study visit to Korea in 2022 by curator Sebastian Cichocki, which was organized by the Korea Arts Management Service.
Participating artists and collectives:
Centrala (Małgorzata Kuciewicz and Simone De Iacobis), CentrumCentrum (Małgorzata Mazur and Łukasz Jastrubczak),
Jeamin Cha, Alicja Czyczel, ikkibawiKrrr (Jungwon Kim, Jieun Cho & Gyeol Ko), Paweł Kulczyński, Olga Micińska, Antonina Nowacka, Rice Brewing Sisters Club (Hyemin Son and Soyoon Ryu), Alicja Rogalska, Pola Sutryk, Jaśmina Wójcik, and Freefilmers collective.
https://culture.pl/en/article/polish-pavilion-at-gwangju-biennale-postartistic-assembly