"ENTUZJASCI" / "ENTHUSIASTS" is an exhibition by Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings (Great Britain), two exceptional artists who have been working together since 1995.

ENTUZJASCI / ENTHUSIASTS is an exhibition by Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings (Great Britain), two exceptional artists who have been working together since 1995. In previous projects Lewandowska and Cummings have focused on the various complications and dependencies that arise between art institutions and the social, economic and political spheres. All of the artists' projects are preceded by an extended period of penetrating research and preparations, during which Lewandowska and Cummings utilize tools and "languages" developed within non-artistic fields of study like sociology, ethnography and history.

With the ENTHUSIASTS, the artists summarize nearly two years of research into films and documents related to the amateur film movement that flourished in Poland during the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Lewandowska and Cummings present a selection of amateur films in a gallery context that is new to them. One the one hand, they demonstrate these films to be documents of a certain reality and representative of individuals' desires, dreams and ambitions. On the other, the artists provide a contemporary reading of a phenomenon that interests them, transforming the materials into a critical commentary on today's culture of visual consumption. With this in mind, they have highlighted values that constitute the foundation of any amateur movement - including enthusiasm, self-presentation and self-organization - and that consumer culture has displaced.

In times dominated by a professional mass media, the efforts of amateurs, enthusiasts or hobbyists become invisible. Projects pursued outside the official cultural sphere as labors of love are often marked by distinct subject matter, tactics of hidden protest as well as a counter-cultural tone. During Socialist Realist times dominated by rational production systems, amateur creativity became an asylum for all that was marginalized and unmentioned, for dreams of happiness, love and freedom. The films made within Amateur Film Clubs (known in Poland as AKFs), especially those that operated under the auspices of state enterprises or trade unions, manifest a great deal of ambition and vary greatly in terms of the themes they explore. After 1989, most of the amateur films clubs that had existed in Poland ceased to exist in formal terms.

The exhibition will include a 'reconstructed' fictional club interior, a selection of official Polish newsreels made during the time when the AKFs existed and a presentation of amateur films arranged by genre (love stories, social dramas, political humor, abstract experiments, advertising). Also on view will be posters, photographs, awards and amateur film club chronicles, as well as a DVD archive (available for viewing) of all the films collected by the artists in preparation for the exhibition.

Exhibition opening: June 25, 2004, at 6 p.m.

Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
Centrum Sztuki Wspolczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski
Aleje Ujazdowskie 6, 00-461 Warszawa
tel. (+48 22) 628 76 83, 628 12 71-3, 628 64 08
fax (+48 22) 628 95 50
csw.art.pl

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