Living Pictures. Audioguide

Performance, audioguide

The Polish landscape? If it wasn’t a middle-sized billboard-covered town, it would be fields that are unevenly divided by balks lined with willows. Willow is a “Polish” tree, after all. She is the horizon of our “national” landscapes. She is a part of scenography in Polish films. She even serves as Chopin’s piano in Warsaw’s Łazienki Park. But the truth is, willow has not only been used as a symbol. We used her as firewood or wattling material. The familiar shape of the thick trunk with thin branches is the result of this usage: the excessive exploitation, regular cutting of young branches that never had a chance grow thick.

The white willow and its position in the Polish culture inspired us to create an audioguide taking the guests of the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko for a performative walk, where the trees become the artworks. This time, the trees, instead of sculptures, installations and video works, are supposed to make us think and admire their beautiful form. They are the true living pictures that breathe, feel the pain and bend with the wind. We want to symbolically give them back their voice and take them out of the background position the plants play in humans’ lives. We want to root them anew and give them back the subjectivity by equalling them with the artists taking part in the 9th Young Triennale.