Joanna Zabielska, Bilal Alame,
Maria Kuczyńska, Jacek Walawender
Maria Kuczyńska, Jacek Walawender
is a continuation of Joanna Zabielska's project realised in Tibilisi during the first edition of the Georgian Architecture Biennale, which took place in 2018. The main theme of the Biennale at that time was informality in architecture, and the C'mon room installation recreated the standard private flat of the Gldani estate in the common space, thus exploring the interpenetration of these spheres and the reaction of the audience to them. The main theme of the second edition was "What do we have in Common? Due to the pandemic, this year's Biennale takes place in many places around the world, partly remotely and partly virtually.
This time not in Tibilisi, but in Warsaw, Służewiec district, we are recreating a flat. The flat as our common pandemic reality. A reality that has recently undergone a strong redefinition, becoming, among other things, a place of work, school, virtual meetings and, at the same time, a synonym for cutting off, imprisonment, security or isolation. A space that we walk through every day, that we use every day, that we close ourselves in, that our thoughts, fears, reflections take shape. Separately, but in a sense together we all experience it intensely.By deconstructing a dwelling, we want to put it back in a public space. We want to juxtapose the habits, everyday practices, the way we use this most intimate space with a non-private space, a common space and nobody's. As part of building a personal relationship, we move the rooms we usually care for and which are ours into public space. At the same time, making the common space a little more private and personal changes its perception. Looking at how the intimate space taken from the structure of the building to the outside also allows us to look at our most private residential areas differently.By mixing the internal and external, material and imagined layers of space, we want to symbolically recreate in the courtyard of a standard Służewiec flat from the Prototypes Estate: bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen. Think about the issues of the quality of life of the neighbours in this space and their relations with it through the specificity of everyday practices in these parts of the flat: to look upwards from a vertical position like in a bedroom, to look up close - like a reflection in the bathroom, to ask about representativeness and care - like in a large room, about relations like at a kitchen table. The installation is to be a communicator, create a safe area of conversation in times of Covid. Even if we do not manage to provoke the inhabitants to answer directly, the most important thing for us is to ask questions and encourage them to reflect. Private messages written in a hurry on a wall or a door of a toilet, dreams from a bedroom, rumours from a kitchen or political conversations from a living room - all this gives a content which can be filled in a public space (symbolically and literally - in the form of slogans in various c'mmon rooms).
