Wyspa 4.0 A PLACE OF IDEAS / AN IDEA OF PLACE Adaptive practices.

40th anniversary / exhibition / collection / documentation / activities /

Granary Island / Wyspa Gallery / Barracks / Former Bathhouse/ Pattern Shop / Wyspa Institute of Art/ Alternativa / ARTLab Wyspa

8 - 23 November 2025 Grid Arthub

15 November discussion

“A Place of Ideas, an Idea of Place” – this concept has been guiding us across the four decades of the Wyspa Progress Foundation in Gdańsk. In order to put into effect our ideas and projects in circumstances that were often difficult and unfavourable, we have determinedly and consistently followed unique “adaptive practices.” We offer an ongoing sketchy overview of what we do, hoping to provide a sufficiently clear statement in the form of exhibitions, performative events, documentation and archives. It is our intention to introduce the public to the aura and nature of the activities undertaken by artists associated with Wyspa. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed dynamic formation of an independent artistic community in Gdańsk that was to encompass a wide range of places and activities, from art in public spaces to art exhibitions and events. The political context in the wake of martial law and the 1989 transformation prompted the crystallisation of attitudes engaged with social issues and became a driving force behind rebellious and critical attitudes. The aim of “adaptive practices” was to construct a new area of art resistant to ideological pressure and the chaos of transformation; at least, that was what we set out to do. It was without doubt a time that brought new challenges and new perspectives – opportunities arising in a society building a democracy, yet it also brought the unrecognised threat of capitalist innovation which caught us unawares. These activities have created a tangle of relationships and a network of connections that spread across the city. Starting with ephemeral actions at the Napoleonic Forts, to Granary Island, to the Municipal Baths – Open Atelier in the Lower Town, and the area of the former Gdańsk Shipyard. Resulting from anxiety and discontent with the surrounding reality, the search for and discovery of new places was assuredly stimulated by the emergence of a unique community, a cooperative of artists capable of creating a free and independent culture. A shared space becomes a site of dispute and struggle for position and presence, for the equality of judgments and attitudes. This is an arduous process that takes years, accompanied by the formation of an architecture of ‘new institutionalism’ – new structures of culture and art distribution linked to the financial pressures of liberal ideology. These emerging mechanisms, as we have seen, came with no guarantee as regards democratic equality; their configuration hid the true costs of artistic production, shifting them onto artists and the entire sector of independent organisations.

The force and dramatic nature of these struggles have left their imprint on Polish discourse on the freedom of speech and artistic expression. The closure of the Wyspa Gallery (2002) and radical right-wing Catholic groups suing Dorota Nieznalska for “offence against religious feelings” have become staples of art in Poland. Winning cases is not synonymous with winning an ideological war, the Polish-Polish war that continues unabated. Trials, censorship and dismissed curators lay at the root of the development of critical attitudes. In Poland, the complex of galleries and art displays has turned into a corporate system with all its symptoms and pathologies. Activities carried out horizontally and locally at the Mould Shop in the former Gdańsk Shipyard served as an antidote to the emerging “cultural industries” and a catalyst for the next generation of artists. Turbo-capitalist mechanisms keep expanding and affecting ever broader aspects of social and cultural life. The Wyspa Art Institute strived to come up with a language for the analysis and resistance to these mechanisms. The Wyspa Institute was also active in revitalisation, initiating discussions regarding the future of the old Shipyard and making sure that it was recognised as a site of cultural, architectural and social value. These themes continued to be relevant after the Institute closed; we kept exploring them at the Laboratory in the Imperial Shipyard and as part of our activities scattered across various locations (Plenum). At ARTLab on Sobieszewo Island, we are currently considering how these activities force the recipients of our projects/ideas, as well as ourselves, to continually redefine the concepts of the viewer as an interactor/participant, the artist as the creator of artworks, and the gallery/collective as a place of the production of ideas/events. By setting a stream of works, collections, documentation, video recordings, and activities in motion, the Wyspa 4.0 project poses questions about the effectiveness and relevance of the strategies developed in recent years, their implications and consequences in the expanded field of art in an age of cognitive capitalism.

Grzegorz Klaman