The collaboration of a visual artist and an experimental musician has resulted in a most interesting and thought-provoking artistic project. Mariusz Waras and Krzysztof Topolski’s spectacular site-specific installation was made specifically to be exhibited in the biggest room at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń.

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.
Bob Black, The Abolition of Work

For both artists, working on the project was a novelty. Mariusz Waras, an artist who has so far found artistic expression in two-dimensional murals, now constructs a huge, three-dimensional object; Arszyn supplies it with a special interface for interactive involvement of the viewer, offering each and everyone the possibility of creating an individual soundtrack. The vast, engine-driven factory is accommodated in an institution dedicated to contemporary art, like an ironic comment on the mechanisms of the production of artifacts and cultural policy. The m-city­ factory produces nothing, it serves no useful purpose, but it stirs the senses nevertheless, and its huge dimensions emphasize the transformations that contemporary culture is undergoing. This factory needs no workers. The engines that keep it going require little attention. The ghostly nature of the installation evokes a vague sense of danger and forecasts the end of physical work.

The installation highlights the notion which is common nowadays that physical work is disappearing. However, the end of work foretold by Jeremy Rifkin has not happened – its means has merely been shifted. A traditional Ford factory has indeed disappeared as the machines has been sent off to China. Workforce has been reduced and reeducated, and their work is now performed elsewhere. The factory is thus an image of the industrialization myth and its revolutionary connotations which, in Europe, have become history. Yet, is a contemporary museum not similar to a traditional production plant in a number of ways? Perhaps the factory and its mechanisms have been imposed on the entirety of societies, and Leaving the factory is no longer possible. Escape from productivity is the only way to oppose neoliberalist order.

Mariusz Waras

– born 1978 in Gdynia. A graphic artist, outdoor painter, traveller, amateur architect. Graduated from the Department of Graphic Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk where he is currently assistant lecturer in Prof. Jerzy Ostrogórski’s painting studio. The author of the m-city project including several hundred murals. His work focuses on urban space. His murals may be seen in the streets of Warsaw, Gdańsk, Berlin, Paris, Budapest, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bolzano, London and Prague, as well as in art galleries, including individual exhibitions at the Arsenal in Poznań (2005) and the CSW Łaźnia in Gdańsk (2006). He is also a curator of the 238×504 hoarding gallery in Gdynia as well as an archivist / collector of Polish street art. Freelance graphic artist, frequently awarded in various contests.

Krzysztof Topolski, aka Arszyn

– born 1973. A percussionist, electronic musician, improviser, creator of sound installations. He records as a solo artist as well as in collaboration with Emiter. In 1998, he was a cofounder of the workshop Pracownia Ludzie Gdańsk, he was also a member of the group Ludzie. Involved with the group Kobiety, the project RogulusXSzwelas as well as with the group Dzieci Kapitana Klossa. Initiator of the cycle of lectures Muzyka współczesna dla gospodyń domowych [Contemporary Music for Housewives]. Organizer of the educational projects Warsztaty Piezo and Roślinki, owoce i kwiatki in CSW Łaźnia as well as the sound workshop Kapusta at the Feliks Nowowiejski Musical Academy in Bydgoszcz; he conducted workshops in listening and acoustic ecology. Topolski performed at a number of festivals, including Stimul, Plain, Turning Sounds, Unsound and Alt+F4. He received a grant from Museums Quartier in Vienna. Organizer of the project Audio Tourism Kaliningrad-Gdańsk. He composed the music for Stanisław Wyspiański’s drama The Curse directed  by Łukasz Kos. In 2007, he received a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for his project Arszyn_Emigrant.