Alernativa opening
So we have been back in Poland for 4 days now and so much has happened. After a long journey from Birmingham we arrived at Wyspa laden down with baggage. We managed to take a quick snooze before the opening of Alernativa, an art festival organised by Wyspa taking places around the shipyard. It was an immense opening; over 50 internatioanl artists are showing at Alternativa which will run until the 30th September. It was a great opportunity to meet new artists and to catch up with our own Post Industrial artists.
On Sunday Roma and I accompanied Aliceson to Kuznica a small town on the Hel peninsula. A couple of weeks earlier Aliceson found a fishing buoy washed up on the beach close to her accommodation on Wyspa Sobieszewska. It’s a beautifully made object and Aliceson decided to embark on a 3-hour train journey to return it to the fishing boat it belonged too. She researched a code written on the side of the buoy and found out where it originated. So on Sunday morning we set off with her to re-unite the buoy with its owner. When we arrived at Kuzica train station we were greeted by a sea of mosquitoes, much like our trip to Puck during our last visit. It was quite terrifying!
After walking along the coast for a few minutes we found the gate to the dock, and by chance met a man who recognised the buoy as belonging to his friend. Unfortunately the owner could not collect it so we left the buoy with the dock security guard happy in the knowledge it would be safely returned. For Aliceson, the discovery of this buoy instigated the development of a side project to her main exhibition pieces, more will be revealed about this later.
Monday was a particularly busy day, were Aliceson embarked on a boat trip around the shipyard Island, the make shift boat (adapting an existing rowing boat) became a floating monument to the shipyard. Roma and I were lucky enough to hitch a ride on the speedboat which towed Aliceson’s boat. It was amazing seeing the shipyard from sea level. It’s wonderful having the opportunity to realise this performance, footage taken from this trip will form a video pieces which will be shown during the exhibition. We want to say a big thank you to Nick for towing the boat along and making this all possible.
Our other Post industrial artists are working hard developing and installing their works. Louie and Jesse are slaving away on their installation in a kiosk outside of Wyspa, and Matt is continuing to conduct interviews and develop his installation in Modelarnia. Today has been a day of cleaning and preparing Modelernia, it’s a big job and we’ve had to be very resourceful when clearing the space as we have limited storage. It all starts again tomorrow!
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