Secret Heart

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010 | Razstave

Exhibition: Secret Heart (solo exhibition by KOLEKTIVA)
Location: FPSW Foundation for Promoting Contemporary Art, Program Gallery, Warsaw (PL)
Date: December 18, 2010 – January 8, 2011

Secret Heart of Chopin

About the exhibition
Foundation for Promoting Contemporary Art invited KOLEKTIVA to make a new instance of the on-going project Special Place in the City in Warsaw. In this open end project we ask residents of different cities to show us their special place and share with us their personal stories, memories or opinions. The aim of this project is to give a voice to average citizen and to present small personal spaces and experiences as an alternative to official historical narratives that builds up a (tourist) image of a city.
The idea for the Warsaw project Secret Heart was inspired by an article Searching for Chopin, Finding Poland’s Past by Michael Kikmmelman published in New York Times on October 3, 2009. We learned that preserved Chopin’s heart is placed in a church in Warsaw. We think the fact that it stayed preserved even when everything around it was destroyed in the WWII is a great example and a symbol of survival and resistance. The absurd situation that a German general helped to save a national symbol of the very nation they wanted to destroy brings in an interesting twist. Since the heart’s whereabouts during the hiding are not known we find this secret place of hiding an actual special place of the city of Warsaw. KOLEKTIVA published international open call for a short story. By inviting people to write a story about the hiding place of the heart we were actually asking them for fiction stories about the course of events during the hiding of a heart which might be or might be not intertwined with real facts. In writing the story about the heart we see an opportunity for people to express their opinion and emotions in regards to the painful time of Warsaw Uprising and the WWII which has had a strong impact on the city and national identity.

At the exhibition KOLEKTIVA presented a large instalation of inflatable sculpture of a human heart, received stories from the short story competition and a sound piece.

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About KOLEKTIVA
KOLEKTIVA is an art group from Slovenia which was established in 2008. The three members of the group Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar and Metka Zupanič have worked on occasional common projects since 2003. Their projects are focused on various aspects of communication, inter-personal relationships and everyday life. They often engage with the various public such as individuals, art public, passersby or specially target groups and invite them to take an active part in the creative process and become the source and co-authors of the work. They understand the process of art making as a means of immagination, negotiation, exchange and cooperation.

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Curated by: Magda Marczak
Concept and production: KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Metka Zupanič)
Authors of stories: Sheila Bishop & Jacki Derrida, Sandra Blichert Christensen, Thomas Desi, Tomasz Drabarek, Silke Eggert, Nina Höchtl, Kerosinee
Narrator: Piotr Bardziński
Music: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin
Suported by: Ministry of culture RS, Embassy of Slovenia in Warsaw