Roman Dziadkiewicz

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ROMAN DZIADKIEWICZ AND HIS PROJECT

Dziadkiewicz has chosen to work with Robinson Crusoe partly because of the problematic relationship of fiction and reality in his perceptions of America. His island and stage for the project in Cleveland alternates between the city, the gallery space (and its infrastructure), and Whiskey Island, the oldest part of Cleveland where, according to legend, the first colonizers landed. Dziadkiewicz becomes Robinson, and Clevelanders become Robinson’s great-grandchildren. Clevelanders (and Americans) also play the role of natives (contemporary cannibals of the consumer culture). Dziadkiewicz wants to summon local Native Americans to help express the historical truth of a nation colonized by “Robinson Crusoes.”

The final project is structured as eleven episodes. These are realized through video, performances/interventions, installations, and objects. Quotes from the novel and details from Cleveland’s history and current reality form the origins of each episode. The objects will include a hand-written copy of Robinson Crusoe – ca. 460 letter-size pages hand-written in ink by Dziadkiewicz as a link to Robinson’s diary – and his everyday arduous work of subjugating the reality – as well as mud from Whiskey Island. The artist invited Professor Noam Chomsky to symbolically participate in one of the episodes in the role of ship’s captain. Chomsky’s political texts and actions serving as a major voice in the contemporary ‘craft’ of freedom, or rather activism, and have been very important for Dziadkiewicz and his peers in Poland. This is not a project on Robinson Crusoe only; this is also about the “real” Noam Chomsky, an absurd ritual of reclaiming Chomsky for reality. Dziadkiewicz wishes to explore how we can try to penetrate reality beyond mere clichés, or his imaginings of America, or Noam Chomsky, the myth.

Roman Dziadkiewicz
Roman Dziadkiewicz & fundacja 36,6, the e.said program, as a part of Dialog Loci, Kostrzyn, 2004

Roman Dziadkiewicz, artist, activist, co-founder and head of Fundacja 36,6, and occasionally artist-curator, was born in 1972 in Opole, and graduated from Pedagogical University in Opole and the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. He lives and works in Krakow, and has exhibited all over Poland, and in Germany, Sweden, and India.

Dziadkiewicz is interested in investigating the relationships between art activities and their socio-political and cultural context. He programs theme-based projects, projects in progress, actions, workshop strategies, graphic design and text projects, as well as collective activities in the borderland between art, social activism, and education. His interests are particularly focused on the idea of challenging and disintegrating the artwork; on the conflicts and correlations between daily life and politics; and on the ambivalent role that art plays in challenging – and yet permanently depending upon – the structures of power or the fictions of the market economy. Questioning various notions and roles of art in a socio-cultural landscape, and the dichotomy between reality and fiction in creative art processes, Dziadkiewicz works specifically within the public sphere on a local level.

fundacja36,6 is non-profit organization / collective “laboratory” established in May 2003 by Roman Dziadkiewicz and musician Wojciech Kosma that serves as a platform for exchanges of experience among artists, cultural theorists, sociologists, and activists in Poland. f36,6 is an extension of the Health Centre Art Association (1999-2002), but it moves that group’s interest from problems of art more into the study of cultural reality and the diagnosis of social, political, and economic problems as contexts for cultural activity – on both a local and global scale. They analyze their current local reality (in Poland and Eastern Europe) in terms of the role of the mainstream media and educational channels in forming socio-political images of culture. Art is understood here as “the most bare nerve of society”.

Selected projects, activities or solo exhibitions:

2005 – SFX – audience / SFX – publicznosc – art research project, Poland / Germany

2004 – Locality or Switzerland in the Middle East, workshop project in conjunction with symposium Geography of Changes, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland

– SFX: Prolog Proszkow, curating a f36,6 project on social contexts of art activity, Poland

– The Non-Doing Manifesto, World Social Forum, Mumbai, India; Gdansk, Poland; Dresden, Germany

– The Workshop of Thinking, World Social Forum (with f36,6), Mumbai, India, 2004; Malinowe, Beskidy Mountains, Poland 2003;

– The Camel Workshop – Road Performance. Go away... from dreams to reality (with f36,6), India, 2002-2004

2003 – establishing of Fundacja36,6 (f36,6), Opole-Krakow, Poland

– Eating Holiday, social space, 2001, 2002, 2003

2002 – Money – no funny / Pieniadze szczescia nie daja, workshop and exhibition, Manhattan Gallery, Lodz, Poland

– Dom / Home, co-creating a collective space for live, art, work and play, Krakow

– establishing SAOZ (Health Centre Art Association, Poland, 1999-2002)

Selected group exhibitions:

2004 – The Non-Doing Manifesto, in: Easter Lights, Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany

– Kidnapping the Curator, in: Palimpsest Museum - Exhibition of Polish Art, I Lodz Biennale, Poland

– Non-doing workshop / 6 days week, in: BHP / Health and Safety (with f36,6), Institute of Art “Wyspa”, Gdansk, Poland

– Nova Huta, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Muenster, Germany

– FIKCiA. Hamlet or (rather) Much Ado About Nothing, in: SHAKE – Re:location, CCA Laznia, Gdansk, Poland

– The Edward Said Program, in: Dialog Loci – international art project in the former fortress city on the Polish-German border (with f36,6), public and social space, Kostrzyn, Poland

2003 – Simon Sais ”Aloha to Polish Art”, and The Camel Workshop, Stockholm Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden

– A Way of Life / Sposob na zycie, Centre of Contemporary Art “Laznia”, Gdansk, Poland

2002 – Novart.pl – Polish Young Art Festival, Krakow, Poland

– The Camel Workshop, Manhattan Gallery, Lodz, Poland

– The Camel Workshop, in: Germinations13 – Get out!, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland

2001 – The Camel Workshop, in: Pop Elite – New Class of Polish Art, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakow, Poland

– The Camel Workshop, Kont Gallery, Lublin, Poland

Grants: KulturStiftung des Bundes, Germany (2005), Ministry of Culture of Poland (2005, 2003, 2001), Pro Helvetia, Switzerland (2004), Fundacja Kultury (2003)

Selected publications:

Chusteczki higieniczne (Tissues), poems, 1995

catalogues:

Anxiety of Influence, 2004

Hamlet/Re:location Shake, CCA Laznia, Gdansk, 2004

Dialog Loci, Kostrzyn, 2004

The Workshop of Thinking/ World Social Forum, Malinowe-Mumbai, 2004

Germinations13/Get out!, Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, 2002

Pop Elita, 2001

Projekt wzgorza / A Project of a Hill, 1999, 2000, 2001

Online critics’ texts:

www.bunkier.com.pl