saturday, 27 april Open 12 — 19
Municipal Gallery Arsenał

ul. Szyperska 2/6-8, 61-754 Poznań
T. +48 61 852 95 02
E. arsenal@arsenal.art.pl

Opening hours:

Poniedziałek: nieczynne
Wtorek – Sobota: 12 — 19
Niedziela: 12 — 16

Krzak and Mszak
finissage of the Magic Engagement exhibition
15.11.2020, 2 pm

It will be a joint celebration of the Krzak Cooperative and the Inter-species Community, and at the same time the Poznań premiere of the Krzak Papier 02 magazine. The latest issue is 48 pages worth of texts by over forty authors, collected and submitted by the Krzak team. Apart from Krzak Papier, we will also bring some mud and print muddy patterns on the newspaper with rollers made on site. According to the main theme of Krzak Papier, i.e. we're grounded, we will ground ourselves to the spot, building, planting and celebrating the rooting rites. After all this, we will probably get a little mouldy.

In Krzak Papier 02, we are grounded and we are trying to understand what that means in emotional, ecological and political terms. What kind of relations do we have with the ground under our feet and on what basis do we decide where to plant our roots? Do we have the right to what is hidden under the surface of the earth? Why are some given more rights to the land than others? As we move between the stories of the soil, the ground and the landscape, as we learn from the other entities of the rooting strategy and as we listen to the experience of being deracinated out of the ground or that of forced grounding, we look at both the stability of the ground and its unexpected vibrations.

The Krzak Cooperative is a friendly collective, with its roots in the garden of the Jazdów Estate, a green enclave in the heart of Warsaw. The starting point was the gardening work, which is a pretext for meetings, but our activity goes far beyond gardening. Together we explore different views and responses to the climate and ecological crisis, through both daily activities around the garden and less common practices. We publish a newspaper, co-author exhibitions, workshops, debates, concerts, benefits, and protests along with other initiatives, artists and activists. For years, the Krzak garden has been a platform for collection, cooperation and exchange of knowledge and experience; nowadays, Krzak has a more nomadic structure, focusing on cooperation despite physical distance and on pursuit of opportunities and prospects for taking roots.

The Inter-species Community grew out of black earth, plastisphere and meanders of contact between baum cubes. Its aim is to protect biodiversity and to depart from the paradigm of the Earth's submission to man. Uniting beyond the divisions of particular species, the members are demanding the abolition of a hierarchical system based on ecocide and the sucking of juices from the planet. Symbiotically, they gather in an unlimited variety of rhizomes, husks, feet, fins, pseudopods, villi, and hooves. The community has its own system, doctrine, intestinal bacteria, and cult rituals. One of them is the Bryophyte ritual which takes place at least once a quarter. It is a celebration of the power of decomposition, part of the creative, vital matter of compost. Through its spiritual activity, the community supports grassroots civic movements working for the benefit of nature. Through the power of faith, rituals and direct actions, the community wants to restore subjectivity to oppressed organisms, to take care of river currents, ancient primeval forests, but also urban "wastelands full of weeds". The creatures associated in the community have absorbed via the bloodstream and digested the fact that nature is inside and not outside them. In order to effectively spread the idea of solidarity beyond species, the community is seeking an entrance into the Register of churches and other religious communities.