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genius loci

The workshop „Genius Loci” was planned as a task common to all participants. This formula is harder than a call for individual solutions of a given subject. The workshop was threefold:

sizing the area by taking photos of the chosen place,

getting into the area through day by day work on full size human figures made of locally available materials: cardboard and rubbish.

Signing the space with the individuality of personal “mandalas” created with dust collected in the area. Then spreading them around.

The workshop was open to public, announced in newspapers, fixed for the first week of the summer holidays on the bank of the Vistula river. All this brought the risk of very few participants. The reality was different. There were some, who arrived every morning punctually, and others, who waved good bye immediately after they learned that it was about collecting trash. There were moments when only three of us were working, and after a while the whole family turned up and joined our group. To be frank the weather was damned hot. When we escaped to the shade under the bridge it was the wind that kept disturbing us. The passers- by asked lots of inquisitive questions. Only the Vistula did not intrrupt.

The anglers and these, who stare at the running water know the matters that go down with the current. They know that you cannot get twice into the same river, that panta rei, and that Herman Hesse led Siddharta to the river so that he could learn.

One gets patience from the river. We needed a lot of it to deal with elaborate gluing of hands, legs, heads and other parts of the bodies of “the Rubbish One” and “the Cardboard One”. The effort was praised. “The Rubbish One” received a pair of glasses which had been run over by a car and a pair of old ski gloves. “The Cardboard One” took a shield on his chest – the text which explained the idea of our workshop. The sand and soil turned into mandalas, and changed again into dust. Metaphysics worked. The spirit of the place appeared for the time of the workshop, gazed with some interest at our work and faded in the breeze, running water, and the sounds of the city.