Aleksandra Wasilkowska "Un-Room", photo: Maciej Landsberg
From July 16 2011 to January 15 2012 – Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
Aleksandra Wasilkowska’s installation Un-Room within the project realized until 15 January 2012 titled Laboratory of the Future. REGRESS-PROGRESS is a kind of mental space occupied by unknown Residents, who lost control over the objects that surround them. If you try to get closer the furniture moves away, fleeing as if out of fear of being useless, and taking on the anxiety of people closest to it. A space of non-human residents is thus created, whose emotions furnish it in an uncontrolled way.
Un-Room in a tricky way materializes the dream of progressive architecture that reacts to people, blending affirmation of progress with flight away from it. As in Buster Keaton’s silent film Electric House, in which the main character falls victim to his own technical inventions, the machinery follows its own program. The algorithm is no longer responsible only for the pre-programmed goals and needs but begins to release the tension coming from peoples’ mental states. The space around us starts to adopt peculiar codes of behaviour and emotions, becoming the replacement of our emotions.
During séances, which for a brief moment brought together the world of science and occultism in late 19th century, pieces of furniture were virtually prostheses of the bodies of mediums. During the famous Eusapia Palladion’s séances, she was able to move glasses, plates and even tables. The séances were attended by renowned scientists, such as Maria Curie-Skłodowska and Pierre Curie, who were fascinated with the transmission of the secret energy which appeared to resemble the just discovered radioactivity.
The context for the installation is also constituted by feature films, such as Repulsion and The Tenant by Roman Polański or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry, where rooms and everyday appliances interact with characters, react to their psyche and become reflections of their mental states.
Kaya Kołodziejczyk, a choreographer and dancer, took on the role of the Un-Room’s resident. The Un-Room installation will be subsequently occupied by other Residents.
Aleksandra Wasilkowska is an architect working on the verge of art., science, architecture and urbanism, theory and practice. She creates installations in public space like Time Machine at the Warsaw Central Station, Black Island within the theatre performance piece The Sex Life of the Wild (directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski, dramaturgy: Marcin Cecko), and Emergency Exit (together with Agnieszka Kurant) in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennial of Architecture in 2010.
Her projects focus on the issues of complexity, movement and performativity in architecture.
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