Performing Archives with Bik Van der Pol and Karol Radziszewski

Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw introduces the fall program.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, we are pleased to introduce two projects: a site-specific exhibition and performance titled Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box by Bik Van der Pol, and a solo exhibition on queer archives by Karol Radziszewski titled The Power of Secrets.

Both projects explore the idea of performing archives and collections that can be read as collectivities rather than collections of objects. Queer archives and contemporary art collections reveal marginalized stories that do not function in official circles and can bring a new understanding of commonly known history.

The projects investigate collective memory in the context of identity politics in Central and Eastern Europe and through the artistic practices of Bik Van der Pol and Karol Radziszewski.

Word-of-mouth accounts, rumors, and speculations have provided the starting point for the performative exhibition Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box by Bik Van der Pol, curated by Joanna Zielińska. The title takes inspiration from Lawrence Weiner’s work Far Too Many Things to Fit into so Small a Box, placed on the façade of the building, which has become the institution’s unofficial motto. A display of artifacts has been combined with a performance based on the collection and archives. On the indicated days, the performers, who will be employing artworks as props, will deliver the story choreographed by Ania Nowak. The plotline of the project is based on personal accounts and subjective experiences and allusions that are part of the whispered history of the place, which is yet to be written. Sometimes the memory of the eyewitnesses fails, so viewers will have the opportunity to modify the script of the play to reflect what they themselves can remember. The exhibition talks about things that are ephemeral, taking up the challenge of the complex mechanisms of memory and forgetting. The project has taken on board the institution that was set up in the early 1990s by a handful of enthusiasts, artists, and the art historian and director of the Academy of Movement, Wojciech Krukowski. The concept of the program, largely based on the methodology of the avant-garde Academy of Movement, opened the center to multidisciplinary activity at the intersection of theater, art, cinema, and education, while deliberately embracing a critical depiction of contemporary times.

Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition The Power of Secrets, with special guest appearance of General Idea, Libuše Jarcovjáková, Natalia LL, Ryszard Kisiel, and Wolfgang Tillmans, is curated by Michał Grzegorzek. The exhibition poses a question: What is queer memory and can it be created through a common effort? The Power of Secrets is an experimental solo exhibition and the first such broad presentation of Karol Radziszewski’s art. Artist, curator, collector, amateur historian, Radziszewski skillfully maneuvers between visual and performance arts. The exhibition shows the wealth of his creative practices and artistic methods. The exposition of these things revolves around the theme of the performative nature of queer archives, which bring back the memory of the past once denied and which democratize history. The tools Karol Radziszewski uses in editing the materials are unique: he combines facts with fantasies, composes documents with shreds of memory; he misleads so as to show alternative trails of remembering. He not only reveals individual experiences but also documents the histories of communities. And he does not limit himself to Poland alone.

The Power of Secrets is created by artists—male and female—whose works expose a variety of tropes in broad historical and artistic contexts. They fall into a joint narrative about the fate of queer communities. Intimacy intertwines here with politics, and private histories blend in and out with public ones. The exhibition also presents the activities of the Queer Archives Institute, a para-institution founded by the artist focusing on researching the queer identity of Central and Eastern Europe.