Estrangement

Call for ceasing fire against protesting Kurds and countrywide peaceful negotiation

2011-03-03T18:58:00.000+01:00

Open letter

Addressing the public of Kurdistan, first of all we would like to express our greatest respect, support and gratitude for the audacity and determination of the people in Slemani at this very moment of protest. We believe that it is a transformatory event that will give the basis for a stronger self-organisation and sense of citizenship in Kurdistan in the nearest future. When the people say “no” and expose themselves to risk in the protest in the public space, when they fill the streets with their presence and disagreement, we should not take it for granted but start working from this. Kurdistan, as we know it, is not only the “the other Iraq” – a safe and economically developing Northern region. It is a country of people, who by their own courage went a long way to escape from internal conflicts, genocide and the tyranny of Saddam. There is peace and growth but there is no satisfaction and feeling of justice among the citizens. And the people are determined to say “no” again and now this “no” is happening in the framework of a democratic independent region. They say “no” because they do not have a feeling of inclusion in the governance of their own country and disagree with the social and political unbalance.

We are writing propelled by the urgency of violent events that recently took place in Slemani, when armed regional forces began to shoot their own compatriots on the streets. And we do remember and observe the sudden violent deaths of protesters and journalists. We are concerned that major Kurdish intellectuals, journalists and activists are being persecuted or detained for the critique expressed within the democratic framework. These events are not fitting certainly either to the image of “the other Iraq” or to the history of struggle for independence. It is the moment when the question that is set in the end of any revolution must be put: are we ready to accept that freedom is not only for “us” but also for everybody?

Economic processes in Kurdistan were rapid and had a strong impact on traditional social bonds, forms of living and values. As in any other country undergoing a transformatory phase, certain steps with regard to governance and economy are being introduced without looking at the social costs of those changes. And on top of all this, they lack transparency. Without including citizens themselves in the very process of change it cannot be achieved in a satisfactory manner. The chance that was given to the Kurds must be shared with everyone and not remain in the possession of political elites.
We believe that the basics in a properly functioning public sphere are:

Freedom of speech, protest, creativity and media.
Freedom from discrimination according to political affiliation, gender, age or sexual orientation.
Freedom to participate in transparent decision-making processes.
Freedom and equality in access to public funds, which includes funds for strengthening non-governmental organisations, innovation, culture, women and youth without servility to politicians.

More than a year ago we brought to Kurdistan a book by the Polish-American writer Elżbieta Matynia, “Performative democracy”, with the intention of translating it into Kurdish, which we hope will happen soon. This special book that takes on direct democracy in Poland and South Africa through the round-table discussion of representatives of all groups of society is a very good example of how democracy can be performed by its actors – the citizens, bloodlessly, in peace and with the shared understanding that we are destined to talk to each other with respect and a clear understanding of the common good.

In fear that the violence against one’s own society will grow and that civil liberties will shrink even more, we are calling for the round table of Kurdistan that, besides those in power, includes the opposition and people working for non-governmental organisations. We are calling for a transparent discussion that is public and transmitted on TV. We are calling for a peaceful way of solving the problem through which people can live in the country with a feeling of dignity and shared responsibility for the common good. It is not about being ruled but self-governance. Democracy cannot only be declared, it must be performed.

We are writing this letter because we do believe in the Kurdish people and the country we both love, work for and want to support with all possible means. But now it is a time of not just being a nation but also a society, where everyone has equal rights and access and to become a leader of such a position in the region. The overall atmosphere of the demand for social change that is spreading around in the Middle East is a sign that the momentum is now.

We all see clearly that Kurdish society needs this moment of directness, of argument, of diversity that is not a threat but a potential.

Hiwa K, Kurdish artist, Berlin, Germany
Aneta Szylak, curator, Director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland
Estrangement Project
February 25, 2011

Join us for opening on April 20 @ The Showroom :)

2010-03-02T23:17:00.011+01:00

ESTRANGEMENT
21 April – 5 June 2010
Preview: 20 April 2010, 6 - 8pm,
Hiwa K’s performance at 8pm
Opening hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
63 Penfold Street, London
www.theshowroom.org

The Showroom presents Estrangement, part of an ongoing project initiated by Polish
curator and artistic director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Aneta Szylak, and Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hiwa K. The project seeks to capture tensions between European cultures and the various past and present constructions of the ‘Orient’.

Involving artists from both regions through international residencies, research and projects, Estrangement seeks ways to rethink cultures of representation and postcolonial relationships as well as create a space for intimate and individual encounters. In London, Estrangement presents works and contextual material gathered from its earlier incarnations, alongside two new commissions by Hiwa K and Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska following their residencies in the Church Street neighbourhood and Edgware Road areas, together with an exhibition and events programme.

Hiwa K is collaborating with Jim White, a former American soldier and now a caretaker at a German art academy, on a live performance of Ennio Morricone’s score for the final duel scene from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western Once Upon A Time In The West. The work is an enquiry into the redistribution of dominant cultural representations and competences. Hiwa K and Jim White – who was taught to play country guitar music by the artist - will perform the work with a live brass band accompaniment at the Cockpit Theatre on 20 April 2010. The performance takes place against the screening of the actual film scene and will take 10 minutes. Rajkowska’s project refers to the history of Edgware Road as an ancient thoroughfare. Her proposal is an object – a chariot, partly made in collaboration with the Edgware Road community. Chariots originate from Central Asia but were in use longest in Britain. The piece explores the Middle Eastern origins of this vehicle whilst considering ideas of destination, arrival and circulation of cultural forms.

Estrangement does not intend to represent cultures or make them visible. Instead, the focus is on the potential of the works of art produced and the possibilities it may present in terms of discussion and making. In keeping with this idea, the resource room at The Showroom will include materials from projects in Kurdistan, dialogues with artists residing in Europe, documentation of workshops, texts and notes as well as videos and photographs by artists Rozhgar Mahmud Mustafa, Sherko Abbas, Shirwan Fatih, Shirwan Can, Diary Muhammad Osman, Poshya Kakil, Horen Gharib, Hemin Hamid, Gaylan Amin, Bitwen Ali, Mattias Olofsson, Knutte Wester, Anton Katz, Maryam Jafri, Azer Othman Mahmud, Zeria Adnan, Nehro Shawki, Soran Rafat and Hardi Kurda. A single issue publication with contributions by all the artists, the curators and Irit Rogoff, Francesca Recchia, Cihat Arinc and Janna Graham will further develop the themes.

For further information please contact Natasha Tebbs on 020 7724 4300 or natasha@theshowroom.org.

Estrangement on Edgware Road starts April 20

2010-01-30T02:46:00.002+01:00

More information about Estrangement Project at The Showroom and on Edgware Road coming soon....

Estrangement team arrived at Kurdistan

2009-09-06T01:15:00.001+02:00

next Estrangement workshop in Iraqi Kurdistan starts in September 2009

2009-07-16T02:00:00.001+02:00

Estrangement Team goes to CASCO

2009-04-03T18:51:00.003+02:00

photo: Estrangement

Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht

Discussion on Estrangement with curator Aneta Szylak (director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk) and artist Hiwa K. on their collaborative initiative 'Estrangement'.
Thursday 9 April at 20.00 at Casco, Utrecht
In the framework of Antagonistic Link curated by Binna Choi

The Antagonistic Link is an experimental setting for drawing transnational links in the form of an agonistic process that assumes the opposing parties to be in a state of conflicting coexistence. The Antagonistic Link uses 'Bye Bye Kipling', a historical satellite event conceived by Nam June Paik in 1986, as a point of departure. The exhibition combines this piece with three other projects initiated by artists and designers from South Korea, as well as other related activities. All these works explore the constructive possibilities of overcoming the sense of distance and antagonism that is the paradoxical product of advancing globalization.

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet", the first line of The Ballad of East and West, a poem by Rudyard Kipling, opens up Paik's live satellite link-up of Japan, Korea and the United States – a broadcast featuring different sorts of cultural events and performances. Paik designed and coordinated the event with the intention of countering this poetic declaration (which, to be fair, is also undermined in the rest of Kipling's poem as he suggests that individuals are capable of this after all). The video is a shorter edit of the original broadcast and reveals various ironic and fractious moments in such a linkage. This may be a starting point for questioning the complexities and contradictions inherent in today's communication channels and global links — an inquiry that neither denies nor blithely celebrates the possibilities of transnational connection.
[source: CASCO press materials]

Emily Pethick is the new Estrangement partner

2009-03-08T23:49:00.003+01:00

Emily Pethick is the director of The Showroom, London. From 2005-2008 she was the director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, The Netherlands. From 2003-2004 she was curator at Cubitt, London. She has contributed to numerous catalogues and magazines, including Frieze, dot dot dot, GAS, texte zur kunst, Artforum and Untitled, edited books, such as Casco Issues X: The Great Method, with Peio Aguirre, and Casco Issues XI with Marina Vishmidt and Tanja Widmann.

New Year, New Partners, New Locations!

2009-02-27T22:14:00.005+01:00

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.

Fundraisng break

2008-09-01T20:36:00.002+02:00

Sorry, we are a bit busy with fundraising for the continuation of the project but new content is to be uploded soon.

Sulaimany by night seen from Goyzhe mountain

2008-06-28T00:32:00.002+02:00

Hiwa was researching for Estrangement project in Iran

2008-06-28T00:24:00.004+02:00

And he was in touch with us on skype

Saholeke Street in Sulaimany

2008-06-24T22:18:00.003+02:00

Estrangement enjoyed Saholeke [Ice] Street, though the temperature was far from that of ice.
Busy, full of shops, teahouses and restaurants is one of the major merchant areas of the city. Also our favourite teahouse "Public" is here. Over mango smoothie we discussed how to translate the situation of the street and numerous encounters on our way to the nature of our workshop.

Shaáb Teahouse in Suli

2008-06-22T19:52:00.006+02:00

Shaáb Teahouse is one of the Sulaimany most legendary places. Established in 1950s by Wasta Shareef under the name meaning "Public", remains until now the leading but casual and friendly meeting place for intellectuals and artists from the city, filled with books and images. Recently the site is being run by the founder's sons Omar and Baker, who can be seen in the second picture from the top. It was grat to meet him. Estrangement will come back there!

Saman Kareem and Sazgar Abu Baker worked with kids

2008-06-22T19:41:00.005+02:00

Artists Saman and Sazgar worked with the kids in public space of Sulaimany. Here is a permanent result of their workshop on kindergarten outside walls.
The couple is to soon exhibit in Graz, Austria.

When walking in Sulaimany

2008-06-22T19:35:00.001+02:00

on hidden, denied, sacrifice and courage

2008-06-20T14:02:00.007+02:00

Back to Aram Gallery we were debating ethics on the backdrop of historic event, having as a point of departure two movies. First is Andrzej Wajda's "Man of Iron" [1981], tle legendary motion picture that build international image of Polish "Solidarnosc" [Solidarity] movement. Wajda depicts idealist social movement born country wide and helped to end communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. Nearly exactly at the moment of its birth Wajda and the script author Aleksander Scibor-Rylski draw psychological sketches of those who were to undertake their decissions to support dissidents and the movement and those who regardless of all doubts submitted to the regime. In the center of movie's attention are two TV journalists who under the pressure of political events decided differently about ethics of their work and about the prices paid for that.
The other movie referred to was "Hidden" by Michael Haneke. Portraying closely parisian middle-class family of George, an influential TV moderator. Haneke puts important historic event that decades later ended integrity in the family, far away from our eye. It is a set of small personal decissions, envy and childish selfishness that ends chances of orphaned Algerian boy chances to live better life when George was himself a child. Majid lost his parents along with the deaths of 200 Algerians drowned in the River Seine during the clashes with the police on 17 October 1961. The dramatic and shameful moment in French history almost never spoken about in the country and failed to be properly covered by the media. In Haneke's movie it is been revealed as a a secret of the family life. It is not George's job that is in the center of attention, but his inability to admit and carry on the guilt for Majid being rejected from adoption and for his current sudden suicidal death.
So the trajectories of the movies are opposite. One of them panoramic, epic, incrusted with psychologic miniatures. The latter screen-wide analysis of the disruption of the faced of happy family life by lies and mistrust with never admitted piece if history in the background. In both movies though it is personal choice and responsibility that actually does make history.
Discussing the movies we have spoken about ethics, duties of public intellectual including the artist.

Debating memory matters

2008-06-20T11:33:00.001+02:00

Amna Suraka

2008-06-20T11:05:00.004+02:00

Estrangement Project participants and team met on the premise of Amna Suraka in Sulaimany, Red Security Building from the time of Saddam. Today it remains a site of memory and several culture and art organizations, such as war crimes museum, cabinet of curiosities and contemporary art exhibition space.

Here we discussed the evaporation of political issues from Kurdish contemporary art, urgencies of embracing memory and history issues and relation between esthetics and politics.

Discussing art and politics at Amna Suraka

2008-06-20T10:30:00.006+02:00

*******

2008-06-19T20:27:00.009+02:00

Joyful time

2008-06-19T18:00:00.010+02:00

More photos from Art Institute

2008-06-19T17:55:00.003+02:00

We attended the opening of the semester exhibition at Art Institute in Halabja

2008-06-19T16:22:00.002+02:00

Estrangement went to Halabja

2008-06-15T23:47:00.005+02:00

Estrangement Team and artists from Sulaimany went to visit Halabja, the site of the genocide of Kurds. March 15-17, 1988 brought horrible events aimed by Saddam regime to estinguish Kurdish population in the region. We spoke in Art Institute in Halabja with the eye witness and Anfal survivor Mr. Rafiq Layak, today the Institute's Director.

On the way from Hawler to Sulaimany on June 2nd

2008-06-14T10:12:00.003+02:00

Walk in Sulaimany

2008-06-11T19:52:00.003+02:00

June 4, 2008 First day of workshop at Aram Gallery Sulaimany

2008-06-10T21:16:00.006+02:00

FIRST ESTRANGEMENT WORKSHOP IN SULAIMANY STARTS SOON

2008-05-29T20:50:00.003+02:00

Between June 2 and 17 Estrangement co-curator Aneta Szylak will be visiting Sulaimany, a city in Northern Iraq, to research and collaborate with Kurdish artist in the framework of Estrangement workshop.

Additional remarks by Aneta Szylak and Hiwa K.

2008-03-18T23:23:00.002+01:00

Local scene in Kurdistan has a long tradition in working in self-didactic artistic groups, fostering various forms of relations within art scene and with the public. Some individuals involved in the project emerged from these forms of organization of artistic life. So the decision of having a workshop and open, quasi-exhibition format, with temporary forms of display and short-term interventions is based on local expertise. Workshops and reading groups are more familiar ton the local practice, more recognizable and thus more appropriate. “Estrangement“ is seeking contextual relevance for this particular surrounding. Although, the exhibition as a format is known to the scene, the tradition of the white cube is unfamiliar to the existing relations between the artist and the public. Art scene is not yet “professionalized”, there is no art market and the widespread commercial and intellectual circulation of artistic discourse is absent. The relation within the scene is still horizontal and apparently the form of event is more relevant that staged situation of exhibition. There is also no „public“ in traditional sense and „visibility“ as an outcome of marketized startegy unnecessarily would be succesful. The Estrangement Project is not aimed to change this situation, but rather embrace it. That is why, in contrast to original intentions, we are trying to avoid any kind of "show" which could only affect the intention of approaching local issues with contextual relevance.
We find important to collaborate with the scene in the region, where local political situation is very much inflicted by the interest of dominant political players. Kurdistan is recently getting a slight economic balance and relative safety in comparison to other parts of Iraq. At the same time probably the biggest nation without state representation holding strong commitment to its own culture and languages. It is carrying a lot of need of dealing with memory and history matters, as a former subject of genocide during times of Saddam (Anfal).
The country and the region is dealing intensely with political changes including the raise of nationalism (in reaction to Turkish, Persian nad Arab nationalisms in the region) along with economic growth and the most urgent and emergent issue of Turkish invasion. There is a lot of current issues having to do with what previous Iraqi government has left, such as Arabization of Kurdish cities for 30 years and legal and economic implication of that.
Kurdistan and its city Suleimania give a local context to Estrangement, but are not limited to this experience. Estrangement dos not want to follow identitarian strategies. It embraces locality abut also opens up towards what can be produced basides it. It involves the work of artist from other, European and non-European descent and to filter the issues that emerged locally through other regional and international experience, without giving a priority to any of them. Suleimania, Kurdish city with strong cultural scene will be our field of work, separating us from the matter of "traditional exhibition making in Iraq"

Similarly “cultural exchange” is not enough and is bringing particular rhetoric of reciprocal merchandising of cultural goods. Certainly for purpose the words such as exchange are not being used here, because they lead to particular and formerly know patterns of cultural geographies and strategies of administration of thoughts. We rather seek free-float influence that unnecessary carry the weight of exchange. Estrangement wants to happen in spaces in between, in the cracks and in embrace. If we go there with our preoccupations, there will not be enough space for new experiences.
The project is trying to do not carry the vision of ready-to-go solutions. It is a performative, open-ended situation, where productivity of this particular encounter will be given a space. Similarly, quasi-exhibition (preliminary term) is a processual activity in which willing participants of the workshop will be encouraged to make their own intervention in relation to situation as well as in reaction to video works and readings brought by the guests to initiate the discussion and to cause interventions, that can be wall painting, performance, action, new video or any other unpredictable reaction. The entire process will be documented. The excerpts will be put on the project blog. Anyone can watch it through the web, so the dissemination will happen both within group of the participants and throughout international telecommunication network. The materials will we a resource for the further publication.

The Estrangement team believes that it will also have a strong impact on future quasi-exhibits in Gdansk and Wolfsburg, where modality, mutation and process will be a part of the event, similarly to situation in Suleimania. So it will be more ephemeral regardless of the materiality of particular works.
Part of the project though must remain indescribable, because if forced already into the expected format of „visibility“ will lose the character of open-ended situation, which we find the biggest advantage of the project. We do not want to predict and decide today, because this would mean to stubbornly insist on what we grew up from and impose our expectations over situation of the country we have never visited and artist we do not know. We seek the experience without formatting, because we would end with the same whilst looking for prospectus new event.

Today, we cannot predict into, as this affect by its managerial grandiosity the delicacy of the idea of relying on the productivity of the event among group of individuals rather than the dispersion of objects in the gallery space. Estrangement wants the outcome to be produced by the particular encounter and to do not plan the predictable format and content. And even the end might turn to be against our intentions; we do not want to imply it and to agree on them now.
Putting the intentions to the context given by Judith Butler, we are aiming “..to reinvigorate the intellectual projects of critique, of questioning, of coming to understand difficulties and demands of cultural translation and dissent..”

Soooo many files to see!!!

2007-09-30T16:59:00.001+02:00

Estrangement team conducted the research in the endless archive at Platform Garanti: catalgues, books, DVDs, VHS, artists' files....

Estrangement went to Istanbul for research and the Biennale

2007-09-29T16:51:00.000+02:00

Here are some photos from the city

Cognitive Estrangement

2007-08-17T21:56:00.001+02:00

Learning from Other Worlds provides both a portrait of the development of science fiction criticism as an intellectual field and a definitive look at the state of science fiction studies today. Its title refers to the essence of "cognitive estrangement" in relation to science fiction and utopian fiction — the assertion that by imagining strange worlds we learn to see our own world in a new perspective. Acknowledging an indebtedness to the groundbreaking work of Darko Suvin and his belief that the double movement of estrangement and cognition reflects deep structures of human storytelling, the contributors assert that learning-from-otherness is as natural and inevitable a process as the instinct for imitation and representation that Aristotle described in his Poetics.

From the synopsis for: Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia (Post-Contemporary Interventions)

by Patrick Parrinder
www.powells.com

Defamiliarization

2007-08-17T21:35:00.000+02:00

Defamiliarization or ostranenie (остранение) is the artistic technique of forcing the audience to see common things in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar. A basic satirical tactic, it is a central concept of 20th century art, ranging over movements including Dada, postmodernism, epic theatre, and science fiction. A fine example is the cartoon character Pepe le Pew's phrase "My sweet peanut of brittle".

Defamiliarization." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 17 Aug. 2007. http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Defamiliarization

Cooking with Mama by Hiwa K. between Poland and Iraq

2007-08-17T21:10:00.000+02:00

In this video I connected my Mother's home, Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdansk and Art Academy in Mainz

Cooking with Mama by Hiwa K. part 2

2007-08-17T16:08:00.000+02:00

Cooking with Mama by Hiwa K.

2007-08-17T15:25:00.000+02:00

About cooking with Mama

In summer 2006 there were already four years without seeing my mom after I left Iraq when I organized this event in the kitchen at the Art Academy in Mainz, Germany, for the first time. This cooking event was the first encounter with how I feel when seeing her after so many years apart.

For me, to involve somebody who is so related to me for so many years into my work via internet is a mixture of many things not that easy to embrace them by using words.

There was such a distance to her, and in spite of my longing to see her it made me quite uncertain how to continue with this digital Mama. Is it her or not? That is what I was asking myself the whole time.

Sure it was Mama, demanding as she used to be, when we were cooking together at home. I was to be polite, listening to her, following the instructions and translating properly her commands to my cooking team (we cook every Friday for the whole academy). Our times in kitchen at home are replaced today with cooking with my friends. Today, the only way I could get back the emotions connected to cooking with her is to contact her through Internet messenger. I felt very intimate with the cooking team, who are good friends of mine. So being in the position of translating a certain food structure which is hundreds years old and is coming from definitely another reality and different way of understanding digitalization, I experienced the extended intimacy of my Moms environment. I was translating from my language to another European language, helping the team to cook what I have been eating for so many years. Sharing this taste with all students of the academy was creating another space which goes beyond the art school as an institution. Its was closeness, about sharing, about understanding the others.

Viktor Shklovsky's "ostranenie" [estrangement]

2007-08-16T22:52:00.000+02:00

Shklovsky developed the concept of ostranenie or defamiliarization in literature. He explained this idea as follows:

The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important." (Shklovsky, "Art as Technique", 12)

In other words, art presents things in a new, unfamiliar light by way of formal manipulation. This is what is artful about art.

www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Viktor_Shklovsky

some present it visually

2007-08-16T22:21:00.000+02:00

source www.visualthesaurus.com

about the distance

2007-08-16T18:50:00.000+02:00

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

Hiwa K.

2007-08-16T11:09:00.002+02:00

Hiwa K. - Visual artist and musician born in Iraq, living in Germany. His major interest circles around the notion of event, performativity, as well as the figure of the artist as an amateur. Since 2005, he has been developing a series of projects involving paradoxes of cultural competence, participation, dissemination of knowledge and distribution of the event.

Aneta Szylak

2007-08-16T10:57:00.001+02:00

Aneta Szylak - Curator and art theorist, co-founder and currently director of Wyspa Institute of Art - the intellectual environment for contemporary visual culture - in the former Gdansk Shipyard premises in Poland and Vice-President of the Wyspa Progress Foundation. Early in her career, she became interested in participatory practices, which resulted in her commitment today to performativity, contextuality and open, dynamic forms in exhibition- and institution-making. Her long-term involvement in the groundbreaking, alternative and politically involved Gdansk art scene bore fruit in her interest in collective forms of work.

Availabe definition #1

2007-08-14T01:31:00.001+02:00

es·trange (-strnj)

tr.v. es·tranged, es·trang·ing, es·trang·es

1. To make hostile, unsympathetic, or indifferent; alienate.

2. To remove from an accustomed place or set of associations.

[Middle English estraungen, from Old French estrangier, from Latin extrnere, to treat as a stranger, disown, from extrneus, foreign; see strange.]

es·trangement n.

es·tranger n.

Synonyms: estrange, alienate, disaffect
These verbs refer to disruption of a bond of love, friendship, or loyalty. Estrange and alienate are often used with reference to two persons whose harmonious relationship has been replaced by hostility or indifference: Political disagreements led to quarrels that finally estranged the two friends. His persistent antagonism alienated his wife.
Disaffect usually implies discontent, ill will, and disloyalty within the membership of a group: Colonists were disaffected by the royal governor's actions.

More:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/estrangement

To begin with

2007-08-12T23:17:00.000+02:00

The project is planned to capture the tension between Western cultures and what was once constructed as the Orient. Triggered by unfulfilled desire, loss and estrangement, today’s fears, obsessions and denials produced by the discourse of politics and its economic background are both based on those cultural constructions and aimed to destroy them.

Targeting beyond strategies of representation, the project will investigate how those cultures mirror, mimic and reflect one another; how they produce fictions, fragmented comprehensions, readings and hybridist understandings and maybe even more misunderstandings. Europe and the Western world is not homogenous in cultural terms, but it insists its coherence when confronting its invented face of the mysterious thus undefined enemy. Nowadays, when the West seems to deny having anything culturally in common with this reinvented Other, Estrangement looks at it not as a stranger from whom we are drifted-apart by unfamiliarity, but as alter-ego divided from ourselves by the looking glass.

The project goes beyond political representations and focuses on emotions it produces. It is a state of mind not a state of things. Adaptations, merges, strategies of mimicry and the lost definitions, will appear in the project as a basis. It will look at the language of denial, false constructions, conspiracy theories, recuperations and definitions of appropriate and inappropriate “otherness”.

Instead of representing and resting on cultural presuppositions, the project is exploring the desired Other, without whom we do not exist. It is investigating curiosities, incompetences and poorly executed communications. It brings imperial conflicts to the level of human emotions and embodiments, it deals with being in each others shoes, learning and constructing the reader of the other though the prosthetic process of translation. It is also challenging the viewer and his or her opinions on “authenticity”, “origin”, “identity”, “representation”.