At the moment there is only one thing which interests me, and it is registering all the things which were not registered in the books
There is one motif of taking care, looking after things which have been forgotten, and restoring lost identity which runs through all joint actions undertaken by Alicja Karska and Aleksandra Went. The young artists attempt to restore significance of abandoned, 'dead' places, at least for a short instant or to take care of the marginal. Through their gestures they distract casual observers from their daily routine.
Their first video 'Spatial planning and organisation' (2002) was shot at construction site of a failed hotel. Huge frame construction was left unfinished when in the meantime structures made of concrete slabs went out of fashion. Years after decision was taken to demolish the huge wreck. Karska and Went entered the site when builders began demolition works and for one moment between the hotel's birth and death they gave it one instant of life, illusion of hustle and bustle connected with hotel life at this non-place. Dressed as maids they started 'organizing the space' among grey concrete slabs which only had begun to look like a hotel. Wearing neat, white aprons they are changing hotel bed clothes, they are making the non existent hotel beds, carrying luggage belonging to hotel guests. At the same time, the builders are removing huge concrete slabs which will never have a chance to protect guests of the seaside resort. Ghostly nature of the place makes the artists seem like somnambulistic apparitions dementedly repeating absurd actions. When the destruction process is over and the building disappears, they do not stop their bustle, undauntedly they spread sheets on the sand and continue playing their parts. Simultaneously, story of masculine and feminine stereotype takes place. Posh maids wearing high heel shoes, carrying gauzy white sheets represent purity and innocence and are contrasted with harsh world of builders wearing dirty overalls.
The movie's title itself, 'Spatial planning and organisation', is the name of the field of study from which Karska and Went graduated at Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk, and unwanted architecture also constituted subject of their later video "Stągiewna 45" (2004). Stągiewna mentioned in the title is one of the historical streets of the Gdańsk Old Town. On one side of the Stągiewna Street there is a row of stylised tenements, while the other one, with number 45, opens onto the destroyed Wyspa Spichrzów. Karska and Went take care of the abandoned facade - all that was left from the building. They paint the wall in accordance with original colours which they found under layers of scraped off plaster, while their moves are followed by astonished gazes of passers-by. The artists dressed in white coveralls look like nurses - another feminine part. Light blue and pink set against the background of sunny sky make the impression of stage scenery while ruins emerge from behind renovated shop window. Alteration is introduced in the next scene - paint covers also the window pane so that the devastated background is no longer visible.
"After all we exist in two realities and the fact that they do not meet does not seem to disturb us - so states Polish philosopher Jolanta Brach - Czaina - First one - so distinctive, striking, demands our attention so violently as if its existence was dependant upon this"1 The latter, which we fail to notice became subject of analysis for Karska and Went. In the installation 'Greenhouses' the artists from Gdańsk reach out to the miserable blades of grass which with effort but still sprout in various slits of the concrete, urban desert. They finely cut glass and connected panes by means of metal joints to create small houses which imitates real greenhouses. The small greenhouses are supposed to create microclimate suitable for small plants and protect them against hostile, urban climate. The urban nature orders ostensible chaos of nature and is represented by enormous stretches ruled in squares by concrete slabs. After some time between grey paving which cover almost every place of the city, slits and fissures appear, sometimes it is because of their careless arrangement, sometimes because of repeated frost or melts. It is through the slits that nature forces its way in the form of miserable blades. 'Szczeliny istnienia' is title of book by Brach-Czaina whose way of thinking is close Karska and Went's undertakings. She notices that next to the first, striking reality, parallelly, simultaneously there are inconspicuous, hardly noticeable events take place. Delicate zone. (...) Half transparent existence which one does not notice. Their presence is yet connected with peace of slow lasting and guarantees that basic matters are going on well although other are engaged in creating and admiring the garish side of events...'2 Small weeds treaded by soles push through by walls, on the courtyards, and on the streets which are not so often busy. We root them up because they disturb our sense of order, and Karska and Went took interest in this urban greenery which is being omitted and eradicated.
In "Greenhouses' there is reflection of earlier work by Alicja Karska 'Trees' (2004) which is in the form of a video recording and large format photographic print. It is an endless and monotonous landscape presenting grey block of flats interwoven with stumps of leafless trees. Yet another collision of two elements. But nature, although represented by means of strong limbs is cut to measure as if vitality was not welcome among raw cubicles used for living. The city is seen as coming into being by rejection of nature and is compared to cancer, an ulcer which grows on the tissue of nature. Vital force of nature is uncontrollable and therefore we aim at disciplining, urbanizing it by outlining these fragments of urban space in which we would allow for its development - only not too excessively since then it would be possible that alike the drop which little by little cuts the rock, the small plants spotted by Went and Karska could blast out the pavements. This small act of diversion is pointed against urban concrete. Nature element undetectable living its life under urban tissue.
It is hard to claim that the small life is being omitted unjustly. The second reality constitute inseparable shadow of the first, more important one. Wolfgang Welsch describes anaesthetics which constitutes the other side of aesthetics as the one which have its beginnings in callousness. Aesthetics is understood as knowledge about all kinds of observations, while anaesthetics includes all that is not notices. "We see not because we are not blind - we see because we are blind to most of the things; to make something visible means to make something other invisible. There cannot be aisthesis without anaisthesis"3 so states Welsch. There is no aesthetics without anaesthetics and the more aesthetics the more anaesthetics. The stronger the stimuli are needed to attract our attention, the bigger becomes the anaesthetics zone, the omitted. Welsch claims that aesthetics of our times should make anaesthetics the central point of its considerations. However, it is not known how this would be supposed to happen. "How to practically sensnsitize to anaesthetics?" he asks. Went and Karska penetrate the area and find the things our senses are most blind to. Carefully, they bring out for consciousness those aspects which have been anaesthetically hidden so far and they add value to this very element of reality. They do it by means of completely nonsense actions, which are unproductive in themselves, and it is up to everyone of us whether we notice their delicateness.