Lately I haven't been on my way to Dubai, InterRegio doesn't haul, PKS has died, so there's nothing to see live the miracle of the pavilion from WXCA, with which we show this and that to unbelievers. At the Expo - that great marketing jubilee - in the past decade, modern cepeliads of high quality were carted in from Poland. There were apple crates (2pm studio) and folk cut-outs (WWAA).
Now we went into birds and the tale that migrating birds have a habitat and port of call in Poland. The result was striking kinetic pavilion installations resembling bird flocks. Basically, a good gimmick. Better to show the world the beaked and feathered creatures than the so-called Polish public. Anyway, the pavilion class, at any rate in the photos and projections; there is nothing to complain about, except maybe the fact that it is not in Dubai, but in every Polish county there should be at least one facility of this quality. The Dubaiis have so much of everything that why would they need to import more.
A pavilion like a pavilion, good and innocent in itself. What is different is its description. Buckle up! Here's the reference to the fowl is "an opportunity to develop a multi-faceted story about the beauty of native nature, international exchange, mobility, the export of ideas and technological thought." Very nice, so let's move on! "Wandering through the successive spaces of the pavilion will lead visitors to the point where they can (...) understand how necessary it is to draw sensibly from nature to (sic!) wisely create the modern world, and how important a role Poles play in this."
Fact, an important role. Ripping up the forests and the Vistula Spit is not a pudding with juice. Instead, there's an icing on this icing cake: "Poland will be portrayed as an open and welcoming home of creativity." Sure. That's the only reason the Poles didn't claim all the "Hospitable and creative among the nations of the world" medals, because, to spite Poland, no such award was invented.
So: the people on the Vistula are open and creative, they love nature. Yes, there is something grating there, when in the Dubai pavilion birds tempt openness, and in the country we bravely defend this openness with barbed wire entanglements at the border. But the marketing jubel has its rights: there is the truth of the time and the truth of the pavilion, although, as the piar magicians teach, it would be appropriate for these collections to have at least some part in common. To bring both truths closer together, let's therefore boast a rather safe and airy pavilion made of barbed wire at the next Expo (a temporary monument made of this graceful material has already stood in Warsaw). Inside the high-tech - the world's first hologram made of smog: a visualization of a two-and-a-half-meter cottage with a mezzanine, which they are currently selling to people in Koszalin. And to complete the set, a sculpture of the Bartek oak tree - all made of coal. A metaphor for the miracle of the country, which is seemingly tied, precisely, with wire, but somehow holds together. No longer the bulwark, but the bulwark of European civilization.
However, the truths of time and the pavilion met, as needed, in the Polish tabernacle in Venice. I arrived at the Biennale, traditionally, in November, when social distance is no longer measured in nanometers. When I got tired of the sun and Italian seagulls were crowing a bit too loudly, I was relieved by the Polish exhibition. I was mesmerized by the grayish image of the Polish highlands and lows hanging on the sheets, and lulled by the native nirvana of the rural landscape, which the members of the PROLOG +1 collective decided to take care of (for which they are to be commended). Nobody tried to bewitch here. On the contrary. Zero Dubai.
And it would have been perfect, if it weren't for the as-is optimism of forward-looking mock-ups showing how this village could be better arranged here. Optimism a bit with a barrel to the temple, because, after all, the main question of the Biennale had to be answered: "How will we live together?". A question that none of the exhibitions seems to have been able to cope with - overstuffed, fleshed out, sometimes as similarly joyless as if their creators had pulled off the wrong answers in class. Not their fault. The problem was the thesis itself. First, how can one be sure that there will be any "together," given both this barbed wire and the increasingly strong segregation into social and economic bubbles. Secondly, it is now possible to forecast the weather at most, and even that not very much. In the face of a pandemic, the very "will live" has too much arrogant certainty in it.
Of course, there is a chance that among the hailstorm of ideas from the Biennale, there are some that will prove groundbreaking and salutary. That, however, will come out in the wash, depending on what reality wants to shell us with. Then, too, perhaps we'll get to the end of what these brilliant concepts were all about, because - in full agreement with Kacper Kepinski, who reported in an extensive report from Venice: "Hundreds of pages of descriptions on the walls, data, video footage create an oversaturation already characteristic of recent editions of the Biennale, of which the viewer is able to assimilate only a small part." At the same time, Kepinski praises the Biennale's synthetic expositions, which are meant to be a counterbalance to the inflation of letters. Only that they too are often closer to the enigma of artistic installations than to a factual story about space and architecture. Seemingly impressive and concise, but - to comprehend them - one also has to delve into lengthy descriptions, draining a lot of water in the process.
So what to make of the Expo and Biennale? On the one hand, marketing to the rim, on the other - helplessness and excess. Do these events still make sense? What practically comes out of them? Maybe they are just a toy for curators and architects putting up pavilions anymore? Or is it enough to let off steam? Don't flex your foam muscles and don't look for solutions by force? Maybe the future is a helplessness fair? One where everyone brings a problem they can't deal with, a contribution to a later international competition or workshop? A fair of problems would be better than a fair of apparent achievements. Especially since there's no fooling ourselves. The future is unlikely to be decided by architects, but by guys like Bezos in a cockamamie racket or someone named Munger, a billionaire who funds windowless dormitories for students in the US. And a host of other minor machers. Recently, one advertising agency reported that it was creating "scenarios of the future." Crackle, prask and the script is ready. And since they're ad men, they'll sell us even the worst vision. I can already hear the radio: "Bloating, gas, existential pains? No need to worry. Armageddon Forte is coming soon!".
That's how we will die together. Happy New Darkness!
