Published: 30 czerwca 2008 Views: 1284 Books, Publications

The Way Things Are…

This catalogue was published in conjunction with the Thyssen – Bornemisza Art Contemporary to coincide with the exhibition of the same name at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Toruń.

This selection of artworks drawn from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation explores the artistic representations of today’s ever more precarious work spheres within advanced economies. These dramatic but also multivocal ‚work histories’- as narrated by Los Carpinteros, Anetta Mona Chisa and Lucia Tkáčová, Julian Rosefeldt, Allan Sekula and Andreas Siekmann – result from radical shifts in production and work process, such as the outsourcing services to migrantworks, often sans papers, and from larger restratifications reflecting the changing orders of social representation.

While employing very distinct artistic languages – including theatrical reenactment, performative contextualization, poetic documentarism, and the appropriation of the figure of the craftsman – the works in the exhibition engage with rather than comment upon today’ s ‚ways of life’. What we find is a performative understanding of a larger historical shifts at work: rather than opting for the remote position of the observer, the artist situates their speech (or their images and representations) within the contigences of specific contexts and employ familiar tropes such as humor, slapstick, photography, and enactment to reach their audiences.

Offering a unique pictorial overview of the works from the collection, catalogue is complemented by a description of daily film series presented during the exhibition titled True (Hi)stories of Work, presenting works from the holdings of Thyssen – Bornemisza Art Contemporary, as well as other video and filmic works framing the topic within various geographical and contextual parameters. The accompanying texts explores the ideas behind the transformation of the work spheres.

The book contains:
Stefan Mucha Preface
Francesca von Habsburg A Maiden’ s Voyage
Daniela Zyman The Way Things Are…
Daniel Muzyczuk ‚Social change? Change is Eternal. Nothing Ever Changes.’ Art, Work and Machine.
Saskia Sassen Transformation in the Organization of the Labour Process
Andrzej Stasiuk Dukla
False Paradise: Julian Rosefeldt in Conversation with Joachim Jaeger
Brigitte Huck, Allan Sekula Fish Story
Eugenio Valdes Fingueroa The Key and The Keyhole in the Lock
Daniela Zyman The Craftsman Revisited
Konstantin Akinsha Playing with Modernity
Andreas Siekmann The Exclusive
Barbara Horvath, Daniela Zyman True (Hi)stories of Work

The Way Things Are…
Copy editing: Daniela Zyman (T-B A 21), Alexandra Hennig (T-B A 21)
26 x 20 cm., 216 pages, soft binding, colour pictures
Written in Polish and English
ISBN 978-3-86560-485-9, Toruń 2008