white-noise

The idea behind WHITE NOISE – cross-generational workshops revolves around the reversal of roles and schemata in a combination of visual arts and ecology so that they may send a ripple right by the Baltic Sea in Ustka, at the Centre for Creative Activities. An open-air multimedia workshop for artists is at the core of the project. The long-established tradition of open-air meetings is going to collide with late autumn weather in an off-season spa town where people selected via an open call will carry out video projects in whatever form they choose, investigating subjects of their preference, focusing on the experience of place and using video media as tools.

~~WHITE NOISE~~ is a way to discover new meanings, diverse forms and colours that contribute to the picture of our planet. This is a search for harmony and social relationships destabilised by global crises, confrontation, and discovering one’s potential.

Beauty has been found in the pounding of waves or the rustling of sand since time immemorial, but, at the threshold of social changes, it is crucial to view environment as inspiration for action, challenging our habits, entrenched patterns of behaviour and long-gone truths.

In the ~~WHITE NOISE~~ programme technology lends support to nature, and art becomes the voice of ecology, including social ecology, indispensable today within the context of creating and fostering relationships and acquiring the ability to find one’s way through the chaos of information.

We seek to develop a new way for the cooperation between our institution and artists as well as the public by mutual extension of experience. Therefore, we are going to run, as an integral part of the cross-generational open-air session, a cycle of workshops for residents of Ustka conducted by non-artists from the local community. They will be held at the Sculpture and Ceramic Studio by the Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art, which has been a place for meetings, education and creative activities for years. As we are preparing for our workshops, we intend to use the possibility, absolutely critical these days, to rediscover the familiar and to revisit the subjects of vegetation and ecology, our habits and our knowledge of them from the perspective of art, botany or enterprise, and we wish to do so by working with natural matter of which ceramics are made and employing the method of performative workshops as a way of gaining understanding.

The contemporary world seems outright chaotic, but once we adopt an appropriate perspective, the chaos can be interpreted as a rhythm that helps regulate the tension we feel and brings solace. An image that seems to dissolve only to come up with a new network of connections may serve as a metaphor for how a society evolves and adapts to new challenges, especially those related to our social and ecological needs and responsibilities. Within this context, the energy channelled into disseminating information also becomes a tool of inspiration and provocation, encouraging us to think and act. WHITE NOISE forces some of us to abandon the role of a silent observer and adopt that of an active participant in a social and ecological dialogue, using new media such as podcasts, to reach a wider public and seek positive change.

Michał Żesławski

Curators of the programme WHITE NOISE – cross-generational workshops: Michał Żesławski & Weronika Teplicka Visual Identity: Kaja Gliwa