9th edition of the WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION festival
PLAC DEFILAD: A STEP FORWARD
The main exhibition of this year’s edition of the festival WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION presents various faces of Plac Defilad shaped by history and transformation processes. The identity of the site has been determined by occasional large-scale events. The most significant of them included the World Festival of Youth and Students (1995), Władysław Gomułka’s address during the political “thaw” (1956), holy mass celebrated by the Pope (1987) and the modern-day annual concerts organised to celebrate New Year’s Eve and the Grand Finale of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. The exhibition looks at this centrally located public space through the lens of activists, urban planners and architects; it offers an account of several decades of planning and heated debates. The show also reports on the moments when – instead of the subsequent unimplemented concepts – the reins in the square were taken over by spontaneous urban life, free trade, triumphant cars and failing incompetent spatial management. The energy of taking matters in one’s own hands without regard for the good of the community as well as a blind eye turned to wild reprivatisation of properties came well ahead of the establishment of an urban square with a democratic space. The development of the site according to the needs of the inhabitants was postponed indefinitely several times. In June 2017, the Office of Architecture and Spatial Planning announced a competition for the design of the square. Owing to a unique formula that embraces consultations of selected submissions, the competition sits conveniently within the postulates of the festival WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION. A special feature of the festival will be the presentation of research devoted to thirty squares in Warsaw and abroad as well as the possible forms of co-management of space by coalitions of local hosts. The artists invited to participate in the exhibition will present their point of view by asking questions about the square and social processes that shape it.
More info: https://artmuseum.pl/en/wystawy/plac-defilad-krok-do-przodu
More info about 9th edition of the WARSAW UNDER CONSTRUCTION festival: https://wwb9.artmuseum.pl/pl
Tickets for the exhibition can be purchased at the Studio Theatre ticket office. Tickets: 5 zl
