Cultural Scholarship Program

Exercising Modernity also includes a cultural scholarship program. These scholarships are offered to young artists and members of the academic community who have participated in the Exercising Modernity Academy. The products of the scholarship program include a variety of artistic projects and scholarly articles. All projects have an interdisciplinary character and a connection with numerous branches of art, ranging from architecture to film.

Scholarship Program 2018

The first edition of the Academy Exercising Modernity in 2018 focused on the concept of modernity, both in a historical and a contemporary perspective. Three cultural-social phenomena of the interwar period, symbolizing universal interdisciplinary modernization programs, were in focus in 2018: in Germany, the Bauhaus, which sought to bring art and architecture closer to the concrete needs of man; in Poland, the discussion about progress and the building of foundations for a free, democratic state, as exemplifies the city of Gdynia; in Israel, the “White City” of Tel Aviv, with its architecture inspired by the principles and forms of the International Style.
The aim of the project was to confront three independent narratives about modernity – Polish, German and Israeli – and at the same time to clarify their mutual references.

These topics were addressed in different ways, each highly inventive, in the scholarship projects.

The implementation of the projects was supervised by Aleksandra Janus (curator of the Exercising Modernity program) and Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk (Pilecki-Institut Berlin, curator of the Exercising Modernity program) in consultation with the program team of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Liebling Haus – The White City Center.

Organizer: Pilecki-Institut Berlin

Partners: Adam Mickiewicz Institute & The Liebling Haus – The White City Center

Scholarship Holders 2018/2019

The competition produced five successful candidates, who had six months to work on their original projects, focused on the subject of modernity in reference to the Polish history, art and culture in the 20th century, as well as in Germany and Israel. The project resulted in diversified and interdisciplinary artistic works and research studies, drawing from many different branches of art, such as architecture or movie.

The Exercising Modernity Cultural Scholarship was granted to:

Laure Catugier
Katri Miettinen
Michalina Ludmiła Musielak
Waldemar Rapior
Hadas Tapouchi

We congratulate the winners!

LAURE CATUGIER

Vis-à-vis

In her work, Laure Catugier explores the interrelationship between space, image and movement. Departing from architecture, the artist focuses her attention on the bonds between human beings and their environment – the built, material, physically defined one, but also the immaterial one, based on everyday human activity in space and perception.

As part of the Vis-à-vis project, Laure Catugier made a series of photographic collages and a video work consisting of images of architectural details from interwar and postwar modernist architecture photographed by the artist in Warsaw, Lublin and Poznań. Catugier uses the logic of imagination to deconstruct temporal and spatial limitations and the uniformity of the captured motifs. She connects selected images into a new whole in which the buildings of Warsaw’s Żoliborz district meet the architecture of the H. and S. Syrkus Warsaw Housing Cooperative and the O. and Z. Hansen “Przyczółek Grochowski” housing estate, while the housing blocks from the Słowacki estate in Lublin are set against sculptural forms from the local playgrounds and the buildings from the estate on L. Waryńskiego Square in Poznań. In this way, the artist establishes a relationship between topographically remote structures and creates an image of architecture as a means of interconnection.

The Vis-à-vis project has been presented during the 10th edition of the Weekend of Architecture in Gdynia (27.-30.08.2020).

Biographical note:

Laure Catugier (1982, Toulouse, France) lives and works in Berlin. She graduated from the École d’Architecture de Toulouse (2005) and the École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse (2007). Through diverse media such as photography, video or performance, she questions the perception and representation of spatiality. Her work interrogates the influence of architecture and design on the people and the social realm within local contexts. In addition to receiving residency grants in Düsseldorf (DE), Linz (AT), Takasaki (JP), Tehran (IR), Pardubice (CZ) and St Petersburg (RU), her work was also honoured by the international Celeste Prize in 2016. Over the course of 2017 she took part in the Berlin-based Goldrausch Künstlerinnenprojekt. In 2019 she received a cultural scholarship from the Pilecki Institute and the Stiftung Kunstfonds (Bonn) working grant. In the near future, she will take part in residencies at the Geumcheon Art Space in Seoul (KR), at Kiosko in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (BO) and at the Villa Champollion in Cairo (EG). Since 2013, Catugier’s work has been shown in several institutions and galleries in Europe: Japanese-German Center, Galerie Weisser Elefant, Korean Cultural Center (Berlin); Institut Français, Onomato Kunstverein (Düsseldorf); Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Le Voltaire Mécénat Emerige (Paris); In-Sonora festival (Madrid); Artum Foundation (Warsaw); Festival Oodaaq in Rennes (France); as part of the Celeste Prize at OXO Tower (London); Festival des Artes Binnar (Porto); and Arte Fiera Bologna (Milan). In 2017, she also took part in a group show at the Centraltrack Gallery in Dallas, Texas, and very recently in the Total Museum in Seoul.

KATRI MIETTINEN

Parallel memories – Early modernism in Wrocław and Bielsko-Biała as common heritage

In her research project, Katri Miettinen explores the potentially shared heritage of Poland, Germany, and Israel in a modernist residential neighborhood in Bielsko-Biała, which was built in 1934 and has been undergoing change ever since. The neighborhood has often been compared to Tel Aviv because of its appearance. Culture and socio-politics played together in its development. Miettinen explores the neighborhood from different perspectives, trying to gain an understanding of a common heritage. Her research was based on archives and memories of former residents of the neighborhood.

Biographical note:

Katri Anita Miettinen is a Finnish artist. She studied Extended Media Art and Film History at Saimaa University of Applied Sciences and Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki. During her studies, she conducted research for the National Archives as part of a project on Finnish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. Miettinen has participated in various exhibitions and film screenings in Finland and abroad. One of her video works was shown at the Performance Art Festival in Venice.

MICHALINA MUSIELAK

Postcards from the Muranów and Wilanów housing estates

In her project, Michalina Musielak examines two housing estates in Warsaw. One was built after World War II on the ruins of the Jewish ghetto in Muranów erected by the German occupiers; the other after the decline of the real socialist People’s Republic of Poland on a vacant lot in the outskirts of Wilanów. What both building projects have in common is that they emerged as innovative, comprehensive architectural concepts.

During her research, Musielak came across a postcard from 1969 showing images of the then new socialist settlement in Muranów next to pictures of the rubble landscape shortly before the end of the war. This was intended to demonstrate the progressiveness of the urban planning project and, at the same time, that of the political regime that was responsible for the project.

Musielak designs a set of postcards analogous to this one, which includes the settlement of Wilanów: where there was a wasteland before, there is now a modern settlement. The post-war architecture of Muranów is paralleled with the contemporary architecture of system change in Wilanów.

In considering and analyzing both cases, Musielak intends to address different aspects: in the case of Muranów, the question of housing shortage, socialist realism, as well as standardization and prefabrication within the framework of the national planned economy; in the case of Wilanów, the process of democratization, but also privatization in the context of globally operating companies in the capitalist economic order. Thus, not only political and economic issues are considered, but also questions of national identity.

Musielak invites various authors to discuss these questions in the form of essays. These will be uploaded alongside the set of postcards on a website specially designed for the project.

Biographical note:

Michalina Musielak is a visual anthropologist, artist and director of documentary films. She studied documentary film the University of Warsaw and humanities at the University of Tel Aviv. She received a master’s degree in new media from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw and a second master’s degree in visual and media anthropology from the Free University of Berlin. She has been involved in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Her film “Miss Holocaust” premiered at the Berlinale Shorts competition. Musielak currently lives in Warsaw.

WALDEMAR RAPIOR

Lokomocja. Nowoczesność w ruchu. (Locomotion. Modernity in motion.)

The idea of the project carried out as part of the Exercising Modernity program came from Tony Judt’s plan to write a study on the history of railroad tracks and the emergence of modern life. The study is titled “Locomotion.” The historian’s untimely death did not allow him to complete the study. “Railroads,” Judt wrote, “embody many of the best and most trusted aspects of modernity.” The goal of the project is to trace the rise, fall, and rebirth of railroads as an essential part of the history of modernity. Railroads are thus related to the emergence of modern public life and the modern imagination to transcend time and space.

In a dialogue with Judt, Rapior seeks to understand the invention of the railroad and the 20th century in order to identify “the best aspects of modernity.” How do people behave in public space today, how are trains and stations used, what remains of the “best aspects of modernity”?

Biographical note:

Waldemar Rapior studied sociology and cultural studies and received his PhD in the field of sociology from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. He received scholarships from various institutions, including the Institute of Sociology at Adam Mickiewicz University, the Malta Foundation, and the National Science Center in Kraków. He conducted research on numerous projects, e.g. as the main contractor of ‘DIVO: Digital Voices & Streetwise Billboards’, a collaboration of Blast Theory (UK), Patching Zone (Netherlands) and Translocal (Finland) which was carried out in the framework of the European Union Culture Program, and on the project ‘Invisible City. Goals and consequences of non-institutional forms of spatial modification of large Polish cities and methodological problems of their research using visual data.’ Currently, he is writing a book entitled ‘Lustro współczesności. Kolej i nasze czasy’ (Contemporary mirror. The railroads and our time).

HADAS TAPOUCHI

Letters from home

Hadas Tapouchi carried out her project in two modernist neighborhoods: the streets of Hacarmel Hadar in Haifa, Israel, and the center of the Polish city of Gdynia.

She lived in each of the two cities for a month and observed the people who lived there. She asked them what a “home” was for them. The result of her project is a film with scenes from both cities – Gdynia and Haifa. The protagonists of the film are culturally diverse communities who live together in one house and tell the story of the modernist neighborhoods. They speak about the life after the “modernist dream.” The artist works out essential similarities as well as differences between the inhabitants of the two cities. In her film she also shows that a home does not have to be a uniform physical place. The concept of a home is changeable. Just as the power of the modernist dream, the facades of the houses decay in the film. The film also reveals the biographical history of the artist’s family which was expelled from Europe after World War II.

Biographical note:

Hadas Tapouchi was born in Beit Nehemia, Israel. She studied social sciences, humanities and photography in Tel Aviv and art at Beit Berl College School of Art. She currently lives in Berlin. For the past ten years, her projects have been combining history with art. She has been represented in exhibitions in Poland, Germany, Sweden, Israel, Hong Kong and Bulgaria.

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Scholarship Program 2020

The second edition of the Exercising Modernity Academy was devoted to the issue of the common good, and accompanied by an analysis of the concept of “community”, of forms of communality, and the commons. While directing the attention of participants to that which is collective and/or shared, we encouraged them to reflect on social relations in the 20th century, both referencing the common identity (historical, religious, national and class-related) and common interests or needs. We also engaged participants in a stimulating discussion concerning that which is common. Our approach inspired a dialogue and questions about the meaning and the vital role of communities in the development of modern states, cities and societies. Various forms of collective life – the city, the village, the kibbutz, forms of co-housing – were of interest, inasmuch as the way they engage with nature and the natural environment. The concept of the garden city and the modernist ideals which highly prize access to light, greenery and fresh air constitute an interesting point of reference for present-day discussions on the topic of human relations with nature. The issues of the common space and human relations with nature, and also the way in which they were conceptualized by different modernisms, delineate the thematic area of the 2020 scholarship competition for artistic projects.

The implementation of the project was supervised by Aleksandra Janus (curator of the Exercising Modernity program) and Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk (Pilecki Institute Berlin, curator of the Exercising Modernity program), acting in consultation with the program team of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute & Liebling Haus – White City Center.

Organizer: Pilecki Institute Berlin

Partners: Adam Mickiewicz Institute & Liebling Haus – White City Center

Scholarship Holders 2019/2020

The Exercising Modernity Cultural Scholarship was granted to:

Jakub Danilewicz

The project explores the trajectories and personal statements of selected figures connected with the post-war vision of modernity in the form of script writing – through the lens of collectivity, gender and self-determined political tasks. The main selection of voices includes Helena Syrkus (1900–1982), a Polish architect, urban planner and educator; Stanisław Tołwiński (1895–1969), a Polish engineer, social and cooperative activist; Selman Selmanagić (1905–1986), a Bosnian-born German architect; Arieh Sharon (1900–1984), an Israeli architect and the leader of the first master plan of the state; Hannes Meyer (1889–1954), a Swiss architect and second director of the Bauhaus Dessau; and Lena Bergner (1906–1981), a German textile designer and artist. Historical voices are partly based on archival material (unpublished and published letters between the protagonists, notes, telegrams and recorded interviews) as well as counterfeits – letters of response that were never written or found.

Drawing inspiration from such novels as “Woman on the Edge of Time” by Marge Piercy, the plot of the possible conversation is set in the year 2119, during a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Bauhaus and almost a century after proclaiming an idea for the new Bauhaus by German politician Ursula von der Leyen. The basis for the film production – in which the selected protagonists are played by unprofessional actors – puts a strong emphasis on set design, drawing inspiration from the work of Selman Selmanagić as film architect at the UFA in Potsdam-Babelsberg in Germany, to which he returned in 1939 from Palestine in order to join the resistance against National Socialism. The plot – looking at the utopian and speculative references – is an attempt to bring back missing voices from the perspective of time, in which the urgent question raised by early modern thinkers moved from “how to live better” to “how to survive”.

Biographical note:

Jakub Danilewicz (b. 1992) is a visual artist and author of video and sculptural installations. He is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, Poland (2018) as well as the interdisciplinary study program at WHW Akademija in Zagreb, Croatia (2018-19), organized by the curatorial collective “What, How & for Whom?” and “Kontakt Art Collection” from Vienna. His artistic practice touches upon historical and ecological politics, bioethics and areas of exclusion. He is a scholarship holder of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in Poland (2020) and has taken part in exhibitions in Poland, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Lithuania and Venezuela, as well as art residencies in Spain (Politècnica de València) and France (Cité internationale des arts). Based in Berlin and Gdańsk, he is currently working as an assistant to the artist Wendelien van Oldenborgh.

Ohad Kabri

Camouflage and Taxidermy

There are buildings that lie. Not all of them, not all the time. But some buildings seem like one thing on the outside while being something completely different on the inside. When animals do this, we call it camouflage; sometimes they try to look like a dangerous predator when in fact they are vulnerable. Sometimes they want to blend into their environment like a leaf or a rock.

“Camouflage and Taxidermy” is a research project that deals with the phenomenon of camouflage in architecture. In the United States, government buildings like the White House and the Capitol look like ancient Greek buildings to link America as a direct descendant of Western culture. In Jerusalem, every building is coated with the same stone the ancient buildings are made of to look like they belong to their surroundings or to seem like a direct continuation of the city’s history. Another interesting example is the European trend of the 18th Century in which estate owners competed among themselves over who could build the most beautiful fake ruins. To this day, you can find ruins of buildings that look like they are from the era of the Crusades or Roman Empire, but are in fact from the 18th Century. The opposite approach was chosen by the Nazi architect Albert Speer when he designed buildings according to the “Value of Ruins” ideology, so that they would leave beautiful ruins behind in the distant future. There are many reasons for buildings to develop camouflage; this project examines those buildings and offers suggestions of its own.

Biographical note:

Ohad Kabri is a designer, design researcher and art director. In his projects, he moves from subject to subject effortlessly, between designing a furniture set for urban nomads to exploring the local food culture in Jerusalem and its connection to the history of Yemenite Jews. In the summer, he serves as the art director of an art and music festival (in the years before Covid-19) and in the winter he writes for a fringe theater show.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design in 2018 from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, he decided to stay in the city. His projects are local, inspired by the history, culture, politics and materials of Jerusalem, Israel and the Middle East. His works are often political but also have humor and never preach; all of his projects are based on in-depth research and therefore always touch on history, philosophy, religion and culture. Since graduating, he has taken part in Bezalel’s Incubator Program for promising graduates; was a founding member of “Ha’Miffal” – a Jerusalem-based cultural center; presented at the “Fresh Paint Fair” – Israel’s largest design exhibition; and served as art director and writer for several theater performances in Jerusalem.

Aleksandra Nowysz

Modernist projects of cooperatives and community-based urban farms in residential areas in German, Polish and Israeli cities. Their value in the contemporary context of sustainability.

Since various multidisciplinary studies have clearly indicated the positive impact of urban agriculture (UA) in social, ecological and economical areas, UA has become a commonly discussed topic in reference to sustainable development. The first UA concepts, being a response to the industrialization process in the 19th Century, were formed within the framework of the cooperative movement. In such projects, residential and service buildings are surrounded by green areas with agrarian and recreational functions. These urban farming examples of Modernity were a precedent for a trend of contemporary eco-urbanism and its idea of a comprehensive approach to development that links the production of foodstuffs with distribution, consumption and spatial design. Thus, this study proposal aims to investigate strategies that facilitate urban development, integrating the life of the city with food production. During the scholarship, the author intends to search for collective agrarian spaces in modernist projects. The scope of research includes theoretical concepts as well as modernist residential projects in selected cities in Poland, Germany and Israel.

Biographical note:

Aleksandra Nowysz (born 1987, Wrocław, Poland, affiliation: Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW) is an architect, photographer, and researcher of the architecture of urban agriculture. Since 2016, she has been studying at the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (Czech Republic). In 2019, she obtained her doctorate in Architecture and Urban Planning from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. She is a graduate of the Collective Sputnik Photos’ Mentoring Program, and a recipient of the city of Wrocław’s Jerzy Grotowski Scholarship for the field of art. The author of photographic projects devoted to vernacular architecture and landscapes, her works have been exhibited in venues including the Krakow Photomonth, BWA Wrocław Studio Gallery and Photon Galleries in Ljubljana and Vienna.

Daphna Noy

Daily Choreographies

As an artist whose body and movement are the tools of both my research and work, my interest is to examine the personal body in contexts and spaces with social connotations of power and empowerment. The focus of this examination is the way in which the body adapts to these spaces and physically interacts with them.

My research project “Daily Choreographies” focuses on an observation of social environments, collectives and communities, and the relationship between the individual and the group. As part of the project, I explored the Kolonia Wawelberga housing estate in Warsaw, where I reflected on the tensions that exist between the individual and the social environment.

Another point of reference for my artistic research is the concept of “home” developed within the kibbutz. The ideology that viewed an entire community as family and the surrounding physical spaces as “home” was developed in the Soviet Union during the 20^th century as part of its social experiments. In the kibbutz, the meaning of “home” has broadened to encompass both a sense of place and a physical and social structure. The collective home is based on three elements, as is evident in a study by Snir Choen (2014). The first two elements are the children’s home and “HaHeder” (“The room”) which is the residence and the communal home. The third element, which is relevant to the project I wish to create, relates to collaborative institutions, including the kibbutz dining room, laundry-room and public spaces. The communal home is the collective public space where familial functions such as dining, laundry and celebrations take place.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, Kolonia Wawelberga was designed by Edward Goldberg and founded by the Polish philanthropist Hipolit Wawelberg and his wife Ludwika. The colony, in the form of an apartment complex, was set up to improve the living conditions of low-income socio-economic residents in Warsaw and assist them in paving their way out of poverty. The tenants who lived in the complex’s apartments received playgrounds, medical services as well as education for the children.

The visit to Kolonia Wawelberga made me think about the possibilities of community and the place of private expression within social structures. As a former kibbutz member and someone who was raised and educated in a collective society, I research and explore the individual’s freedom of choice within the community and the boundaries of this choice. One of the questions that guide my work regards the individual’s decision to be part of the community and the extent to which the individual can express an authentic voice within a communal context. For me, getting to know the community structure of Kolonia Wawelberga presented an opportunity for a creative discourse that raises these questions and reflects on the role of architecture in shaping communities both in the Israeli kibbutz and the Polish residential colony.

Furthermore, figures such as Barbara Brukalska and Katarzyna Kobro influenced and re-shaped my thinking through their discourses and material expressions. They challenge the senses and define new possibilities for the occupation of space.

An example for such transformational thinking is the way in which Barbara Brukalska’s innovative vision of incorporating the kitchen as a room that is no longer completely separated from the rest of the house enabled the entire family to become visually and sensually involved in the action that takes place there, and thus the act of cooking becomes a performative action.

Another such example are Brukalska’s public garden designs, as can be seen at the Warsaw Housing Cooperative, in which there is an emphasis on organic, non-geometric shapes that allow for a free flow of movement and social interaction. In Kolonia Wawelberga, the communal garden has a more geometric shape and is enclosed by the surrounding apartments, thus giving a theatrical impression in which the people that attend the garden act as performers.

In the two cases above, as well as in the public spaces of the Israeli kibbutz, public gardens serve the purpose of freeing the body from the daily chores. The architecture is not directing the individual into any particular movement or action, but instead it is an optimistic ‘soft’ space, which encourages social encounters, and the gathering of a community.

Biographical note:

Daphna Noy is a visual artist working in a variety of media. Noy holds an MFA degree from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, where she enrolled after earning her BA in Dance and Choreography (B. Dance with honors) from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. Noy’s works have been presented at the Llorar Gallery (Mexico City), Florentin Quartet (Tel Aviv-Jaffa), HaShah residence (Tel Aviv-Jaffa) and more. Noy was selected for various international residencies including A-Z WEST (an artist residency program by the artist Andrea Zittel at Joshua Tree, California), SOMA (Mexico City, Mexico) and Exercising Modernity (Warsaw – Tel Aviv – Berlin). Noy is currently teaching at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

Agata Woźniczka

The Super Block

The Super Block is a speculative spatial typology derived from researching a modernist ethos in the architecture and urban planning of Germany, Israel and Poland. The research, presented as a series of multi-threaded graphical schemes (almost like an architectural comic book), defines interconnections between regional notions and international movements, also indicating the pre-modern predecessors

and future descendants of the Super Block typology. The new typology is derived from examined examples, a common imagery, sometimes opposing design philosophies and shared qualities. Zooming in on specific design examples put in a context of flagship manifestos creates a complex, yet comprehensible typology of the modern Super Block. The obtained quality model can be traced back to the history of modern architecture, but also evolve into the future of design. Therefore, the speculative part of the project translates the defined typology from a formal language of modernity into contemporaneity. A new Super Block takes the form of a Janus-like habitable object. Its complexity and multiplicity of values and threads is shown as a new urban block. Its form and features, its spatial solutions and its programmatic layout all manifest the Super Block qualities. The design of an architectural block uses its three-dimensionality to inscribe various features derived from the research. It is presented as a 3D model accompanied by speculative architectural details, renderings of its various phases and a set of standard architectural drawings necessary to show the Super Block project as a form in space.

Biographical note:

Agata Woźniczka is an award-winning architect and urban planner who runs the architectural practice BUDCUD that specializes in interdisciplinary strategies, public spaces and architectural installations. In addition to working on solicited projects, she conducts her own research, regularly tutors design workshops and consults on international spatial strategies. In 2020, she became a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Architecture at the Wrocław University of Technology. In 2019, she was a member of an international urban design team during the “Bauforum Magistralen” in Hamburg, working on the future of the city driven by a smart commute revolution, while in 2016, she worked as a curator of the Wrocław European Capital of Culture’s “Big A” cycle of architectural lectures and workshops. As part of the Exercising Modernity scholarship program, she is investigating public spaces of modernism in Poland, Germany and Israel, working on a speculative proposal of an international common ground.