Spring in the Józef Bem Housing Estate

Collaboration
exhibition design: Matosek/ Niezgoda
photographic assembly by: Miłosz Onak; materials regarding the re-interment of General Józef Bem’s remains courtesy of the District Museum in Tarnów

Collaboration on the part of the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok
exhibition production: Zbigniew Świdziński
visual identification: Ewa Chacianowska
educational programme: Katarzyna Kida, Justyna Kołodko-Bietkał, Izabela Liżewska, Justyna Zieniuk.

Spring in the Józef Bem Housing Estate is an exhibition with a focus on historical politics and necro-violence, whether targeting bodies (exhumed, transported, exhibited – as in case of General Józef Bem’s remains) or symbolic. Dead bodies are valuable to politicians as symbols: since they cannot speak for themselves (albeit some time ago they could), they can be imprinted with any words or ideas.

The phrase “historical politics” was coined at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in Germany, a side effect of the so-called historians’ dispute. The concept of using history – employing assorted interpretations of the past as a useful tool in stabilising or destabilising political orders, preserving or overthrowing political power, changing cultural codes – is a long-standing tradition, after all. Consequently, one might ask what role is played by such “affective facts” today, in times of crisis, populism, and new media space?

The exhibition title references a Białystok housing estate clustered around General Józef Bem street, the name conferred upon the location exactly 90 years ago. Events accompanying the exhibition will be organised i.a. at the Józef Bem Housing Estate.

Translated by Aleksandra Sobczak-Kövesi

Accompanying programme:
28.07.2020 18:00
Nikolay Karabinovych, Play It Again, Bem! –  performance and afterparty (Musique sur les fuseées incendiares)
the concert will be held online on the FB website of Arsenal Gallery
https://www.facebook.com/pg/GaleriaArsenal/

Selected parts of the accompanying programme will be delivered at the General Zygmunt Berling Family Allotment Gardens in Białystok

For updates please visit the website
https://galeria-arsenal.pl/wydarzenia
https://www.facebook.com/GaleriaArsenal/