Aleksandra Wałaszek




Works



And If This is Home, Welcome Home
Stick and a Piece of Cloth
Down Below
Mobile Museum
Big Papa
Caution Female
Journey of Objects
B/R/Z  - Lost and Found
Little Sea
Pic Nic
Look Inside
Loss for Words
Dual Purpose Object
DWD / House Supporting Home
Mad Maps
Mega Mop
Only Traces
Panorama
Plant Passport
Sorry
Sun Effect
Calendar
Universal Structure to Perform the Ceremony
America, Love it or Leave it
350.20 ft³ of Warmth



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Panorama




audio recordings in four languages, installation, booklet and video, AIR Wro in San Sebastian/Donostia, Spain 2015-16






“Panorama” is an unbroken view of the whole region surrounded by an observer. It is the story of one place that becomes a story of another one and a way to get to know your city through the prism of recorded conversations between the stranger and the resident. Through the project I’m looking at the people as the heart of their city. Urban landscape doesn’t exist without the community, which is the main history creator. What I am searching for are “memorabilia”: urban legends, tales and histories. A simple set of memories being located in the topography, or rather: geo-biography. 

The “Panorama” project was made as a part of the Artist-in-Residence Program 
A-i-R Wro ESK and was launched in San Sebastian/Donostia in October 2015. During the residency I worked in cooperation with the local community: elderly people in the senior house: Hogar de Jubilado, students from the Zurriola Ikastola High School, Louis Childa from the Chillida-Leku Museum, ARTEK Lab, just to mention a few. 

The first phase of the project was based on interviews and talks with people I have met in different locations of San Sebastian/Donostia. Through many encounters I got to know the stories, both personal and factual, as well as legends significant for the region. This narrative became the main line for recordings divided into sixteen tracks and attached as a CD to a booklet with pictures I took on location.

Following year the project “Panorama” was expanded to a video and a mix media installation that was presented during the “BASK 2016” festival in Wroclaw, Poland. The exposition consisted of audio recordings, maps of locations, video and the “retouched” flag based on a well known sign in a Bask Country, Northern Spain - a white fabric with the slogan: “Bring Basque Prisoners Back Home”. By displaying the flag in the window or flying it from a balcony people expressed their support within the Basque Country prisoners. The new flag I made is shortened to one key word: “home”. According to the Basque writer and anthropologist Mikela Azurmendiego, the word “Etxea” in Basque language means both “me” and “home”. 

 Press: TVP3 Gazeta Wyborcza Wroclaw.pl