Finissage – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Guided tour of the exhibition in English

•   Guided by Ūla Tornau – co-curator of the exhibition
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• Meeting regarding the No. 9 issue of Obieg – News from Elsewhere

• We invite to a discussion, combining Polish-Lithuanian powers, on the exhibition Waiting for Another Coming and the latest issue of Obieg – News from Elsewhere.

• We would like start from the text Future-Past Infrastructures of Poland and Lithuania, published in Obieg. In the text the authors, Miglė Bareikytė and Viktorija Rusinaitė, look at the possible futures of both countries, critically reviewing the past. They dispel illusions of a brand new beginning or "year zero", the possibility of inventing an "accelerated" future ex nihilo. The example of Brexit proves that the mere pursuit of a new opening under triumphant slogans of liberation from the past does not always have to end successfully.

• We invited the curators of the exhibition as well as the authors and editors of Obieg to talk. Together, we shall reflect on the idea of Poland and Lithuania as multinational states and the tradition of the Polish-Lithuanian Union. We will refer to past visions of the future, created by various researchers, such as the Lithuanian geographer Kazys Pakštas (1893-1960), who proposed the creation of an "additional Lithuania", which would serve as a reserve country somewhere behind the seas, settled by Lithuanian immigrants, being a safe territory in the event of war. And also those put forward by social movements, like the General Jewish Labour Bund founded in Vilnius (1897-1948), a socialist party advocating, among others, for the secularisation and cultural autonomy of Jews, but against emigration to Palestine.

• Poland and Lithuania, both individually and in mutual relations, face the burden of history. It is exactly this burden that does not allow an escape from the pitfalls of mythologization, nostalgic numbness and colonial phantasms; it seems to be one of the main obstacles to thinking today what Poland and Lithuania will look like in twenty, fifty, or a hundred years.

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• Partaking:

  • Anna Czaban and Ūla Tornau – co-curators of the exhibition

  • Miglė Bareikytė and Dr. Viktorija Rusinaitė – researchers and authors of the text to the No. 9 issue of Obieg

  • Witalij Strigunkow – visual artist, co-editor of the No. 9 issue of Obieg

• Conducted by

  • Krzysztof Gutfrański – Editor-In-Chief of Obieg magazine