LIGHT YEAR – exhibition
   

Nov 17, 2022 – Feb 26, 2023
Exhibition enhanced with new footage!

LIGHT YEAR – exhibition
   

Nov 17, 2022 – Feb 26, 2023
Exhibition enhanced with new footage!

Info

New content in the Light Year exhibition! Take a trip back in time – we are setting our clocks back to the 1990s. In addition to top artists’ names – such as Niemen, Manovich or Stelarc – the Timeline installation will answer the question of whether everyone at WRO always dresses in black and who wore dreadlocks back then. The Art Guides available in the gallery will not let you get lost in time and will help you with navigation. Teleportation deep into the nineties as always at WRO – for free.

We started the Light Year at the beginning of January by switching on a neon sign on the façade of the WRO Art Center. This phrase, thrown as a joke, became the watchword for our activities in 2022. In the following events, we explored micro- and macrocosms, burned pixels, filled fibre optics with data, illuminated clues and brought our archives into the light.

As we enter 2023, we are not turning off the lights, but illuminating the gallery space with interactive installations and objects that will light our way towards the WRO 2023 Biennale.

In addition to original (Attention: Light! by Józef Robakowski) and premiere installations (Attention: Light! v. 3.0 by Paweł Janicki) and relics of the post-apocalypse (Post-Post-Apocalypsis by the Dæd Baitz collective), we went on an exploration of our archives and the WRO Collection in search not so much of complete works as remnants, spare parts or prototypes. The whole process took on a bit of a Mad-Max feel as we searched for treasures in media art junkyards. Each object is an arte-fact purged of its junk status and contextualised with archaeological precision. We were tracing our own footprints while reconstructing our own media art timeline. Because the next stage of our expedition was to assign the elements we found to video-documentations presenting the works from which our arte-facts came. All in line with the idea of data ecology and in opposition to overproduction. Instead of elaborate and carefully directed montages, we decided to show never-used photographs, raw material that by hundreds of gigabytes is lying on our servers.

From all of this, an interactive trash-lab was created, examining scraps of information out of context. The panorama of the exhibition is like a post-apocalyptic landscape from which we are trying to reconstruct some jagged piece of history. And since the Light Year has become our watchword – that is why the exhibition shines. It shines with the light reflected from the remnants of creative processes. In the spirit of upcycling – nothing is lost. Everything stays in orbit. We still do not have the right technology to deal with the residues. And if you can’t get rid of them, let alone ignore them, maybe you just have to look at them, not look past them, but make sense of them. Not throw them away, but use them. Because every such remnant is a vehicle for renewable content. Depending on its position in relation to the event horizon and what and whose light it is able to reflect at any given moment.

Part of the exhibition are Thursday meetings, during which we will explore issues of arte-facts, data ecology and the light years ahead (or behind) us.

concept and development: Dagmara Domagała and Paweł Janicki

Pełny ekranOpen in new window

Works on the Timeline

A list of video documentations on display in the Timeline interactive installation, which is constantly being updated throughout the exhibition:

 

1989.12.04
Sound Basis Visual Art Festival WRO 89
opening coverage

1989.12.10
Czesław Niemen – special concert at the Philharmonic
Sound Basis Visual Art Festival WRO 89

1996.05.04
Józef Robakowski – I Am Electric
documentation of a performance broadcasted live from the TVP studio in Wrocław
WRO 96 Polish Monitor

1997.04.30
Marek Chołoniewski – Lighting and Doubles
documentation of a performance
WRO 97

1997.05.01
Muntadas – video show and an artist talk
WRO 97

1997.05.01
Lev Manovich – Seven things we can learn from Dziga Viertow – how to make new media more interesting
documentation of a lecture
WRO 97

1997.05.03
Jaron Lanier – How music will save the soul of technology. Virtual Reality as Musical Instrument
documentation of a performance
WRO 97

1997.05.04
Stelarc – Cyberhuman. Involuntary Body, Third Hand. Split Body Voltage-in Voltage-out
documentation of a performance
WRO 97

2007.05.20
Scanner + D-Fuse – Light Turned Down
documentation of a performance
WRO 07

2008.02.29
Paweł Janicki + Dominika Sobolewska – Painting with Light
Interactive Playground
opening of the WRO Art Center

2010.04.09
Rafał Jakubowicz – Sztuka pojęciowa/Post Scriptum
documentation of a neon on the WRO’s facade

2010.09.24
Jarosław Kapuściński – Where’s Chopin
documentation of a concert
Dilston Grove, London

2010.09.25
Where’s Chopin – Józef Robakowski, Jarosław Kapuściński, Paweł Janicki
documentation of an exhibition
Dilston Grove, London

2010.09.25
Józef Robakowski – Attention: Light! 2.0
cooperation: Paweł Janicki, Wiesław Michalak
documentation of an installation
Dilston Grove, Londyn

2010.09.26
Paweł Janicki – Mapping Chopin
documentation of an installation
Dilston Grove, London

2013.05.09
Justyna Misiuk – RGB Lookbook
documentation of an installation
DH Renoma
WRO 2013 Pioneering Values

2015.05.16
Michael Candy – Big Dipper
documentation of an installation
DH Renoma
WRO 2015 Test Exposure

2015.05.21
Kenny Wong – Squint
documentation of an installation
DH Renoma
WRO 2015 Test Exposure

2017.05.18
Andrey Ustinov – Film Noir
documentation of a public space event
WRO 2017 DRAFT SYSTEMS

2017.05.20
UFF feat. WRO
documentation of a BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) event
WRO 2017 DRAFT SYSTEMS

2019.05.15
Taavi Suisalu – Waiting for the Light
documentation of an installation
Four Domes Pavillon
WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT

2019.05.15
LIGHTUNE.G (Bojan Gagić, Miodrag Gladović) – lighterature reading
documentation of a performance
The Bakery
WRO 2019 CZYNNIK LUDZKI | HUMAN ASPECT