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“Making Spaciouss”


Realized in private flat at Zamkowa 3/8a, Poznań, Poland. It was built on a tunnel principle, were one could enter the following rooms in a row.
It was a synthesis of 2 years of life in Poznan and was directly connected with the happenings that had taken place in it during that time.

The first room as one entered the flat was the place that had served me as a darkroom. I had spent many hours there while a student, working with developing photographs. All that time was spent also in becoming one with the life of the building, which was an old one (built before the second world war). The ancient stairway made a sound each time any of the tennants used it. The doors, the windows, the old pipes inside the walls, all this with time had taken on a character of its own, creating together with the people inhabiting the building a strange and special organic space. On my diploma I transformed the rooms according to what made each one of them most organic, meaning the thing that had occurred in it that had the most influence on the shaping of its own special character. So the whole darkroom was made into a gigantic pinhole camera that could be entered. The only difference between the room and a box with a little hole that describes the observed reality on a piece of light sensitive material was the lack of the said material. The room served as a giant camera which projected the image on its own walls. This transmission was made with the help of photons. The interior of the camera – room was quite dark; about a quarter of an hour was needed for the eyes to get used to the dark and to be able to receive the upside down , live image of the world on the other side of the window. The camera was like a living eye, registering things that disappeared the next moment, changing into another instant that braught with in a new visual situation. The time it needed for the eye to accommodate was accompanied by sound from speakers hung on the walls. This was a slightly modified recording of the buildings life (of conversations heard through the walls, the sounds of the stairway, the shutters etc.)

From the darkroom one went through to the sitting room – the heart of the flat. It was there that most of the meetings with friends took place. My ingeration into this space was to create an impression of it being organic. I used little engines which I put in the window-frames and in the hinges in the wardrobe doors; these opened and closed the doors and the windows with a movement a little like that of a human chest falling and rising with breath. The repetition of this movement was like the rhythm of human heart beating. The lamps in the room turned on and off by themselves in a direct methaphor connecting light with life. A square mirror hung on one of the walls; this moved like the minute hand of the clock. The mirrors movement was not noticable at first glance, one either had to become conciouss of its presence or notice that it’s position had changed as one entered the room again.

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The next place as one crossed the flat was the toilet. This place , though special in itself, was connected with one exeptional situation. The bathroom was the one room I had to share with the neighbours. One day during the christmas holidays I entered it only to find 3 big carps swimming in the bathtub. They stayed there for about a week. (In Poland we have the custom of eating carp for christmast eve;to ensure its freshness you are supposed to kill it yourself just before preparing the meal). To make a connection with that situation I found 3 objects wich visually resembled the organic form of fish, with some elements sticking out that could be fins etc. Two of those objects I found inside the flat itself, which was an old one and much used. The one in the centre I made from two ceramic jugs, an alusion to the many dishes that had been broken in the bathtub while being washed (the kitchen sink was broken).

The next room was the kitchen. To bring back the state of mind its space put me in I painted everything inside white. One winter day when I was boiling a huge pot of water for my bath I entered the kitchen to find it so full of steam that I could hardly see. Through this the daylight seeped through; it all gave a feeling of stuffiness and uncertainty, with a large dose of mysteriousness. To create a similar situation I put conduit lamps behind the window shutters painted white. They shone with a semblance of bright sunlight. To balance the space I also placed some lamps behind some of the objects in the kitchen.

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At the very end of the flat there was the pantry, the smallest, dirtiest and least friendly room, perfectly suited for spiders and other insects.This space I associated with my personal feelings about the media such as the radio and the TV. I put radios and TV sets on the walls of the pantry in such a way thet they started to resemble the insects which occupied the same space. The TV sets were working, and though something interesting could no doubt be found in each of the programmes they showed, together they were the picture of pointless nise and mixed-up words from the midst of wich particular meenings could sometimes be picked. Staying longer in their presence was tiring to the extreme.

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