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The skill of making things in conformity with a set of rules is often eagerly expressed through video-tutorials, despite that instructions form IKEA started showing not only how to put together a BESTA drawer, but also how to prepare the meatballs. As a matter of fact, DIY has long been suffused with the hacking spirit, oozing the power of authenticity and defiance of the dominant production systems with their directives of socially appropriate behavior and effective manufacturing. As is usually the case, the model of bottom-up, home-based actions has been intercepted and copied by creative industries. The constraining correctness intrinsic to instructions proves an irresistible temptation to breach it, while ostensibly still abiding by it.

This is why Maciej Olszewski revamps the “do it yourself” formula into a “destroy it yourself” call. Himself relying on video-tutorials to learn what others do, he reproduces other people’s actions. In his DYI project, a gopnik-like character puts together domestic terrorist/reconstructionist/survivalist toolkits, making items known from darknet forums as well as generally from accessible websites. A man sporting a balaclava is shown in a workshop, piecing a simple gun, a detonator, brass knuckles, etc. Making weapons according to art becomes a piece of cake for any do-it-yourselfer who has a lump of metal and a few hours of leisure on their hands. The participatory nature of the DYI movement suddenly reverberates with militarist and violent overtones.

The Cuban artist Yaima Carrazana offers instructions on how to cultivate abstract art. Or, more precisely, paintings that can find their way onto one’s fingernails. Her Nail Polish Tutorials is a series of video-instructions in which Carrazana step by step explains how to transfer the works of 20th-century classic painters onto one’s fingernails. It takes her no time at all to enable basically everybody to boast their own Mondrian or Malevich, as all one needs is just a nail plate, some paints, and some careful scrutiny. As a result, a portion of art is ushered into the domain of common use, celebrating multiplication as one of the central 20th-century discoveries of art (Warhol).

Rabih Mroue’s lecture turns into a briefing on how to view images. The Pixelated Revolution analyzes mobile-phone footages of sharpshooters. A new pattern arises: while you are pointing your rifle, I’m pointing my cell phone at you to bear witness. The structure of Mroue’s work is essentially informed by an interest in images which the eye records on the retina at the moment of death, preserving the image of the killer. The video shows pixelated images of snipers and registers pivotal moments in its exploration of the agency of ubiquitous images as poignant records and reliable documents.

Paweł Janicki’s famous performance Ping Melody invites reflection on the nature of analogue sound in confrontation with the internet approached as an improvising instrument. In collaboration with the cellist Jakub Kruk, Janicki employs the PING test protocol where the cello sounds, sent and echoed as data packets, return in a processed form, selectively rendering the sounds of the original piece. In this way, the line between immediate acoustic effects and the Internet space is blurred, as the audience experiences the blending of the original sound and its electronic echo coming back from the web.

Justyna Misiuk’s RGB Lookbook casts the life of women on social media as a ceaseless carnival and influencers’ never-ending play. Several monitors show looped video images of the three protagonists wearing, respectively, red, green, and blue dresses, representing the basic colors that define the palette of electronic screens. The screens become projections of imaginations and formally framed expressions of lifestyle trends. With the time suspended, the period of carnival is a strongly ritualized moment in which rules of the game are reversed and the beggar can become the king.

Chansons de Geste by Karolina Freino morphs into a theremin manual. A propagandistically marked instrument which the USSR authorities touted as a distinguished achievement of a Soviet inventor, the theremin is operated by hand movements which modulate the electric field between two antennas. Freino builds on the ideological and historical load of the theremin and gesture to compose a symphony of power. Standing at the instrument, a mime performs movements that imitate famous, or, for that matter, notorious, 20th-century leaders during their historical speeches. In this way, body motions – or, precisely, replicated body motions – produce music which would have accompanied these politicians if they had had a theremin in front of them. This high-powered soundtrack creates the Unheimlich effect by conjuring up an uncanny and eerie experience of encountering a medium and specters of the past.

The winner of the Critic’s Award at the 2019 WRO Biennale, the Predictive Art Bot by DISNOVATION.ORG generates artistic fakes which the audience can watch in real time. Connected to the internet, the installation harvests current news items from the world and uses a custom-made algorithm to process three news headlines, combining their keywords into a fourth title. In this way, Maria Roszkowska and Nicolas Maigret show how self-reliant artificial intelligence can actually be. What it needs is just a handful of guidelines and data bases; it can very well handle the rest all by itself.

MONDAY
Maciej Olszewski (PL)
DIY (Destroy It Yourself)
documentation of the installation
University Library in Wrocław
16th Media Art Biennale WRO 2015 Test Exposure

TUESDAY
Yaima Carrazana (CU)
Nail Polish Tutorials
artist talk and documentation of the installation
RenomaWRO exhibition
Renoma Department Store
15th Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 Pioneering Values

WEDNESDAY
Rabih Mroué (LB)
The Pixelated Revolution. Non-academic Lecture
documentation of the installation
The Rings of Saturn exhibition at former Ballestrem Palace in Wrocław
15th Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 Pioneering Values

THURSDAY
Paweł Janicki (PL)
Ping Melody
documentation of the performance
May 11, 2005
National Museum in Wrocław
11th Media Art Biennale WRO 05
cello: Jakub Kruk

FRIDAY
Justyna Misiuk (PL)
RGB Lookbook
artist talk and documentation of the installation
RenomaWRO exhibition
Renoma Department Store
15th Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 Pioneering Values

SATURDAY
Karolina Freino (PL)
Chansons de Geste
artist talk and documentation of the installation
RenomaWRO exhibition
Renoma Department Store
15th Media Art Biennale WRO 2013 Pioneering Values

SUNDAY
DISNOVATION.ORG: Nicolas Maigret, Maria Roszkowska
Predictive Art Bot
documentation of the installation
National Museum’s Four Domes Pavilion
18th Media Art Biennale WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT