‘Dust thou art, so get up and dust yourself off,’ Rafał Wojaczek pronounces in Lech Majewski’s film, subverting the universally recognised encapsulation of the inevitable human fate. You won’t see the film at the exhibition State of Possession, just as you won’t see many other things. This exhibition is built upon the experience of absence: a lack of time and stability, and above all, a lack of financial resources – a lack resulting from the implosion of the institution’s budget and the depletion of the resources necessary to have carried out the planned activities. We, however – much like Wojaczek in his defiant assertion – are trying to harness this depletion, understood as a crisis, and find new, different models for working on an exhibition that engages with the MOCAK Collection.
In narratives about the museum, the theme of collapse keeps recurring: there is talk of a ‘long-standing crisis’ and a ‘current crisis’, the institution itself is even described as a ruin. In creating the exhibition State of Possession, however, we are attempting to use the term ‘crisis’ on our own terms – to transform it into a tool and a starting point for further narratives and (self-)analysis. This method reflects for example queer practice, through which the once-offensive term ‘queer’ was consciously appropriated and used for the purposes and needs of the LGBT+ community, gaining new meaning as a broad concept denoting diversity. This approach allows ‘crisis’ to shed its apocalyptic connotations and shift in the direction of change, a restructuring of paradigms, a new beginning, and experimentation. Building on this premise, State of Possession becomes a subversive declaration of the institution’s assets – an exhibition constructed around objects from the MOCAK Collection, yet also open to other, intangible resources: the people working at the institution, its audience, its procedures, archives, history, image, perceptions and possible futures.
As the entire MOCAK team, we wish to use this exhibition to assess the institution’s assets and state of preservation, as well as our own level of knowledge and state of health. At the same time, we are highlighting areas of activity on which we plan to focus in the future, whilst engaging both with our own identity and the reality that surrounds us. This unusual self-examination and stock-taking, coupled with plans for renewal, comes at a particular juncture in the institution’s history. On the one hand, it marks the 15th anniversary of the first exhibition opening to the public at MOCAK – an occasion that should be a time for celebration and reflection. On the other hand, MOCAK is experiencing the aftermath of the dismissal of its director, coming shortly after the dismissal of the previous director, which has sparked numerous discussions in the media and within the art world about the museum’s current state and future.
