Lewandowska & Cummings

Enthusiasts is the first extensive exhibition in Poland of Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings, two exceptional British artists who have been working together since 1995. In their previous projects Lewandowska and Cummings have focused on the various complications and dependencies that arise between art institutions and the social, economic and political spheres. The artists customarily precede each of their projects with an extended period of detailed research and preparations, during which they employ tools and ?languages? developed by non-artistic fields of study like sociology, ethnography and history. Enthusiasts summarizes almost two years of the artists? research into films produced under, and documents related to, Poland?s amateur film movement of the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Lewandowska and Cummings will present a selection of amateur films in a gallery context entirely new to them, a context that will demonstrate them to be documents of a certain reality and representative of individuals? desires, dreams and ambitions. The artists will provide a contemporary reading of a phenomenon that interests them, arranging the materials in a way that will render them a critical commentary on the contemporary culture of visual consumption. They will seek to highlight values that are at the base of any amateur movement, including enthusiasm, self-presentation and self-organization, values that consumer culture displaces. The activities of amateurs, enthusiasts or hobbyists become invisible in times dominated by a professional mass media. Amateur projects created outside of the officially recognized cultural sphere differ in terms of subject matter and are marked by tactics of hidden protest and a counter-cultural tone. Under Socialist Realism and its system of rational production, amateur endeavor became an asylum for the marginalized and unmentioned, for dreams of happiness, love and freedom. The films created in Amateur Film Clubs (known in Poland as AKFs), especially those that operated within state enterprises and trade unions, seem vastly ambitious and vary greatly in the themes they explore. Most of Poland?s amateur films clubs were formally disbanded after 1989. Enthusiasts will consist of a number of elements, including a ?reconstructed? fictional club interior, a selection of official Polish newsreels of the period and presentations of amateur films arranged by genre (love stories, social dramas, political humor, abstract experiments, advertising). The display will include posters, photographs, awards and a history of the amateur film club movement. Visitors will also be afforded access to a DVD archive of the films collected by the artists under this project. These will be available for viewing on a number of monitors. Pressetext

Enthusiasts - Marysia Lewandowska & Neil Cummings / installation, film projections, archive
Kurator: Lukasz Ronduda

Stationen:
25.06.04 - 29.08.04 Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Schloss Ujazdowski, Warschau
01.04.05 - 22.05.05 Whitechapel Art Gallery, London