Cracow Artboom Festival

Artists will take control of streets and squares in Krakow for the third
time. For two June weeks (from the 10th – 24th of June) they will surprise
passers-by in different parts of the city. The themes of this year’s edition of the ArtBoom Visual Arts Festival are New Technologies in Art, Utopias, andGame. The ArtBoom Festival is the intervention of art in public space, art which provokes, makes us think, interacts with audiences. This year the event’s form will be different: artists depart from one-time interference in the city tissue and start working on processes instead.

The Workshop for Urban Re-appriopriation (Zakład Odzyskiwania Miasta) – a group of curators declaring:“We are counting on urban and artistic process, long-term experiments with
different forms of creation of audiences and of social organizing,” was
established in order to develop new festival guidelines. The CRF will remind us
of usually unavailable Krakow gardens, will allow us to see the city with the
eyes of its elites (look for roller boards with views from VIPs’ offices
windows made by Konrad Pustoła) and will give us the RUMB construction
(authors: Natalia Rimik and Ewa Rudnicka), driven by the strength of a dozen
people. During an “anti-tourist” Krakow – Krakow excursion with Pau Faus, we
will have a chance to cross the city “gates” at the main railway station and
the Balice airport in a unique way – on foot – and experience Krakow from a
perspective forgotten in our daily haste.

Everyone’s space, nobody’s space – is the title of an action and
intervention by Łukasz Surowiec, who will break our customs connected with
habits in the city space. During the festival, street art artists from
different regions of the world will square up to the ghost and matter of
Krakow. City buildings in the whole world are the carriers and objects of BLU’s
art, who is already creating a mural on ul. Józefińska in Podgórze.

The most impatiently awaited artist of the Festival is Jenny Holzer, who
displays words by poets and writers in the space of world metropolises – lately
in the form of huge illuminated inscriptions on buildings. In Krakow, on the
walls of the Wawel castle, Holzer will present a fragment of Czesław Miłosz’s
poem.

Outdoor film screenings will be taking place in many places in Krakow: we will
see interactive video installations by Elodie Pong and a “garage video” by a
post-punk artist from Armenia, Tigaran Tachtryan. BNNT, a project by Konrad
Smoleński combining performance with music, will shatter the street rut – both
during the day and night artists attacking with sounds will surprisingly appear
among passers-by. The Grunwaldzki bridge, on the other hand, will speak
tenderly, it will be turned, by means of Lara Favaretto’s installation, in a
kind of an instrument generating sounds of a stoneworker’s shop.

Florian Dombois is producing a concept of “art as scientific research” – in
Kraków he will present his project Talking Towers, alluding to the legends
about the uneven towers of the Basilica of St Mary and the Tower of Babel, and
“study” the unfinished Communist-era skyscrapers: the dilapidated “Szkieletor”,
and “Błękitek”, adapted after many years into an office block. In turn Cracovia
Hotel, a classic example of modernist architecture from the 1960s
underestimated due to its Communist connotations, will be the subject of
artistic reflection by Pavel Büchler.

David Černý, Marcin Maciejowski and Sławek ZBK Czajkowski have created a set of
works (R)evolution inspired by the Orange Alternative; it is a complement to
the exhibition at the International Cultural Centre devoted to the history of
the movement which poked fun at absurdities of Polish Communism in the 1980s.
The Massmix Group will treat Kraków as a giant board game – participants,
milling among the crowds, will play the game according to rules known only to
themselves, blurring the boundaries between illusion and reality. Cecylia
Malik, the winner of the Kulturystka Roku 2010 award, will teach us how to
discover our inner artist: she’ll be inviting children to a treasure hunt in
Salwator – a charming yet somewhat forgotten Kraków’s district. Everyone who
wishes to present their own concept for art interventions and visions of Kraków
will get their chance during the Cityprojector debates.

Street art – originally independent, anti-elitist, politically engaged and
frequently anonymous – is undergoing a transformation to increasingly become
more mainstream. March this year saw Poland’s first auction of works from this
artistic trend. The subject of “museumisation” of street art and the
consequences of this phenomenon will be discussed by its originators Newer,
Miesto and ZBioK, and Marcin Rutkiewicz, expert on Polish outdoor and street
art. An opportunity for a critical look at the current status of engaged art
will be provided at a meeting with Martha Rosler, alluding to her famous
project from 20 years ago If You Lived Here… Compiled by over 50 artists,
architects, students and the homeless, it initiated a major discussion on the
issues concerning New York life.

This year’s ArtBoom also saw the second competition for young artists and
architects – Fresh Zone. This year the participants’ task was to create an
intervention in Kraków’s urban space, using the broadly-understood concept of
gaming. The jury rewarded five projects which will come to life during the main
festival.

The artists will take to the streets to search for a city within the city,
provoke, point out problems and maybe even suggest solutions. Be on guard,
and… let them surprise you!