Catastrophes and design in Wrocław

Two weeks ago I went to Wrocław to give a lecture about "Design and catastrophes". Yes, As I love to give lectures, I don't really care on which subject. The BWA Design Gallery asked me to speak about something, related to design I guess, so I answered quickly without thinking (as I was painting my catastrophic paintings): "sure, I hold a lecture about... catastrophes! And design!". As I have sent the title... I had like few weeks to come up with something about design and catastrophes. And so I did - I analysed, thought through and came up with ideas and conclusions. The lecture started with a movie of an asteroid distroying the earth... and the rest went smooth. But I don't want to write about the lecture here, but about Wrocław.

I love that city (although I come from Poznań) because the people there are really different - they are very open, nice and a bit wild (in a positive sense). My adventures in Wrocław and my relationship with this city started in 2000. Back then we did a project in Wrocław (we even won a prize in the Euro Art Meeting Festival for it). It was a mirror ball (2m diameter) in Zelaznicze Passage.

Our installation with the screen during a performance (Gućwiński on the photo - he was the director of the famous Wrocław ZOO) in 2000.
It was one of the best times of my life - not only we successfully did an instalation, but I had so many friends with me, my parents came, even my long lost cousin came - I have met her for the first time in my life! We found each other by accident... that is a different story. However one of my dreams came true then - I was always dreaming of driving one of those silver shining garbage containers which I saw in Poznań once. These containers were on the streets only for one day - for the day of the (polish) Pope's visit in Poznań. The day after the visit - containers were removed... such a shame - they were so new, so clean and so silver! On the evening before I was out in the city with my friend, we saw one container and I wanted to sit on it and drive away... however as soon as I climbed in on it... out of nowehere.. out of the bushes came a guard and ousted us away. That was in Poznań. Long time ago.

One of those silver bolides... a real dream.
So when I saw one silver container in Wrocław, all new and shiny, and we have already drank some tequila... my friends put me on the top of it and we drove off... to the next bar. As my dreams are quite simple - it is easy to fullfil them. Practical! And it was one of those dreams... No wonder I love Wrocław. Later of course I remember wonderful time during my exhibition in BWA Awangarda... And now - again - I have spent 3 great days, wandering from one BWA gallery to the other (there are 3 all together), having coffee and food with all my Wrocław friends. I tell you - Wrocław is not only a bautiful (in its way), it is also very walkable and as for the food - oh! There are so many inexpensive bars with healthy food... a real paradise. I miss that in Berlin. I miss good food (biiig portions) for reasonable price.


Isn't that satisfactory? Isn't that portion big? Oh, I love it... big.
What I also like are all those strange shops (although that is typical for the whole Poland)... like that second-hand shop (all in the BWA neighborhood)...

What I find totally interesting is... the chandelier... Wrocław is famous for porcelian and glass...
And about the BWA itself - another funny discovery! In the yard behind BWA Awangarda there is a cage... a cage in the trees... yes. Strange. It appears that the cage is for a marten (polish: kuna) - appartently there are martens living in Wrocław. So the scientists from the Polish Science Academy installed a cage with a bait (eggs) and a sensor - so when the marten is in the cage there is an alarm in the lab and scientists run quickly to the BWA's garden, catch the marten and stamp it with a number. All scientific! We didn't see any marten, but... we saw the cage.

The cage waiting for...