Natalia Kalicki / Milena Soporowska
We are applying for the programme because the residency encourages reflection. This is an important stage in the artistic process that often lacks time and support because the focus is mainly on the final product.
For us, resilience means establishing sustainable practices of work and rest within shared spaces and shared time. Resilience here means developing modes of engagement, with each other and with nature, which will last in the long run, and which occur collaboratively, responding to our own and our neighbours’ needs. Resilience is rooted in what is simple, repetitive and seemingly unspectacular.
We also understand resilience as a way of adapting and searching for one’s own inner rhythm. This involves finding and adapting to a pace that is ‘drowned out’ by the hustle and bustle of city life and the demands of contemporary, technology-driven culture, with which the human body can no longer keep up.
Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, we are therefore looking for a new narrative: a vision of the future based on the model of the unhurried ‘collector’. This is a process-based approach, where various experiences are gathered and a sense of community is built on a practice of everyday gestures. The ‘gatherer’ establishes new relationships and nurtures existing ones, allowing time for reflection.
We think true, long-term resilience cannot be achieved in haste or chaos. This is why we focus on a joint journey, spread out over time and divided into stages.
During the residency, we would like to create a space where we can learn, through rest, at our own unhurried pace. We have access to a plot of land near Warsaw, that has been vacant for years and requires maintenance. As an alternative to expensive urban premises, we are considering using the cottage-hut as our temporary open art studio, and as a place for knowledge exchange. We have tentatively called our project The Allotment Academy. We are interested in alternative forms of education that are based on mutual exchange and are process-oriented. During the residency programme, we would like to interact with our neighbours, the other allotment holders, by inviting them to meetings and encouraging them to share their specialist knowledge of gardening, land maintenance, and the surrounding nature. At the same time, we plan to invite specialists, to lead workshops, walks and open discussions, which will be open to the public. By making our space available to others, we would like to explore how our quasi-institution could function as an ‘academy of respite.’
The budget would be allocated to organising meetings with the aforementioned guests, and to purchasing material for workshops.
In return, we would expect you – those of WOK, to provide substantive support in building relationships with the community, an opportunity to consult on organising meetings and the possibility of networking with other residents. Above all, we would expect you to trust us and our process.
