František Kowolowski
INHABITAT / Platforms of a heterogeneous nature
SYMPOSIUM, Educational project, artistic intervention
Creative activity 2024
ART LAB Wyspa, Wyspa Progress Foundation Gdańsk, Sobieszewo Island, PL
Heterotopia is a term that refers to other places called non-places, which was formulated by Faucault. from Greek heteros (different, different) + τόπος (topos, place). It is the opposite of utopia, which is not rooted in reality.According to Michel Foucault (1986: 22), the present is an "epoch of space". According to the author, our current interest in space has replaced the fascination with time and history, which he considers typical of the 19th century. The understanding of space is based on the tradition of structuralism. He considers this category within a three-dimensional model: space - power - knowledge.
The project points to the formed limits of the arrangement of non-places, meanings (messages) and institutions, which are generally associated with time breaks. The first type are heterotopia characterized by the continuous collection of temporal artifacts. These are, for example, museums or archives (ibid .: 26), which serve as a gathering place, the intersection of all times in a single space, but they themselves stand outside them. In the light of this reasoning, reflection, the mirror, is the greatest form of heterotopia in place - out of place, in reality - outside reality. These models and objects were used in the performance on the axis object - subject (subconscious forms, archetypes, reality of alienation, reality of perception, politics and art, critique of image, language, texts, symbols).
1) Space / No - places
Space model - creation of an autonomous zone. Platform - Arrangement link and visibility of fragments of site architecture. The form of construction refers to the typology of the place. Also model and body space, corporeality.
2) PowerExercised power - powerless. Formed institutional, political or cultural dominance (exteriority - interiority, death of the author, autonomous form).
3) Knowledge
Cognition as a tool of power. Dominance of knowledge of the world through scientific models.
4) The world is our image
Responsibility for the image of the world, not for mimetic imitation.
Signs and symbols are not in opposition to the materially tangible elements of urban space, but are in relation to each other. They are no less real than architecture or objects (Hubbard 2006: 123). No-places are established through texts, language, and symbols.
Foucault, Michel. 1986. „Of other spaces.“ Diacritics 16 (1): 22-27.
Hubbard, Phil. 2006. City. London: Routledge.
František Kowolowski (* 1967) studied in the Painting Studio of Jan Tarasin and Ryszard Winiarski at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. He specializes in painting, performance, installation, video and photography. In his work, he also uses the experience behind the scenes of artistic operation. It deals with transience, artistic recycling, connecting a thing with a certain place and manipulating its meaning in a given context. It is profiled mainly within the Ostrava scene, which is characterized by a specific form of artistic subversion and irony. It explores the possibilities of the artist's own physical commitment. In addition to the work itself, he is also intensively involved in curatorial activities. He worked in the Moravian Gallery in Brno, in the Gallery of the Young at the Good Shepherd or in the G99 Gallery. He teaches as the head of the Painting II studio at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava and as an external teacher at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. He is also the author of many international curatorial projects, for example at the MNAC in Bucharest or at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok.
