Through the example of the centuries-old historical urban fabric of the city centre of Poznań, Horizontal Disorder illustrates the disruption brought about by people creating ever more elaborate urban structures that eliminate non-human life. Thanks to the current shift in perspective, sometimes referred to as the “extra-human turn”, we now understand that humans have always evolved and collaborated with other beings on Earth – from microbes to mammals. Horizontal Disorder is a metaphor on feelings associated with the ways of being human in the extra-human world, and questions the role played by the city’s structure in the wider framework of life. Infrastructures, both human and non-human, are both permanent and fragile, hidden and visible, but always present and firmly embedded in a shared world.

Jarosław Kozakiewicz’s work was displayed at the Arsenal Municipal Gallery’s exhibition Refugia: Keep (Out of) of These Places (2021).

Jarosław Kozakiewicz, born 1961 in Białystok, is a visual artist, sculptor, and author of architectural projects that serve as instruments for critiquing architecture and urban planning. He is often referred to as a visionary. Between 1981 and 1985, he studied at the Faculty of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. From 1985 to 1988 he studied at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. He received numerous awards, including the Silver Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture in 2015. He is also professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts.

His works have been recognised at prestigious architectural competitions, including the design for the Centre for Contemporary Art in Toruń (2004) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2007). In 2005, Kozakiewicz’s project won the international competition for the Nations Reconciliation Park near the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. In 2007, his Mars Project, a multi-hectare earth sculpture transforming the landscape at the site of a lignite mine around Lake Baerwalde in Germany, was completed. His other projects include proposals, often utopian, for ecological or symbolic solutions in urban planning (Transfer, 2006) and architecture (Oxygen Towers, 2005). In 2006, Kozakiewicz represented Poland at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.