When you take the first step towards the unknown, you are engulfed by the darkness of uncertainty. Co-existence is possible only in the face of the unrecognised. The unknown language is a tangled mass through which you penetrate with despair. It is a structure of sense and nonsense, an architecture of traps and a source of endless uncertainty. The story you tell contains a record of fear and hope.

Aneta Szylak and Hiwa K., fragment taken from "The Darkness Wounded" published at www.przemo-wojciechowski.com

Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.
Theodor Adorno

But we are meaning in the sense that we are the element in which significations can be produced and circulate.
Jean-Luc Nancy


The concept of Estrangement developed through a series of discussions and collaborative projects between Iraqi artist Hiwa K. and Polish curator Aneta Szylak as an attempt to create a form for mutual translation and collaborative work that is not restricted to one cultural format.

Friday, February 27, 2009

New Year, New Partners, New Locations!

Estrangement will continue in 2009/2010 through a collaboration with three leading partner organisations: Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, The Showroom, London, and A Prior Magazine, Ghent. It will involve a group of specialists, which will include: Janna Graham, Curator of Education at Serpentine Gallery, Emily Pethick, Director of the Showroom, Els Roelandt, Editor-in-Chief of A Prior, Francesca Recchia, lecturer and researcher at Kurdistan University (based in London and Irbil), and numerous artists. It will create a broad international collaborative discursive platform that will focus on process, encounter and debate as an open form of research into concept of Estrangement. The project will consist of a series of artist residencies, exhibitions, performances and interventions in public space in London and Gdansk, and will culminate in the publication of a special issue of the art magazine A Prior.

The concept of Estrangement developed through a series of discussions and collaborative projects between Iraqi artist Hiwa K. and Polish curator Aneta Szylak as an attempt to create a form for mutual translation and collaborative work that is not restricted to one cultural format. The first stage of the project was initiated during a workshop for Iraqi artists in the Kurdish univerisity city Sulaimany in 2008. The project will be also relaunched in Sulaimany in mid-June 2009.