Twenty-Two Tasks

2003-2005,

Artist for Rent Artist for rent. You can rent me. Free of charge. photos: Kuba Dąbrowski, John Hartley and Matthieu Bless, Matthew Cornford, Alex Döring, Mariola Groener, David Hatcher, Joanna Rajkowska, Christof Salzmann, Kerstin Schroth, Gabriele Stellbaum, Marek Szczepański, Stefan Saffer, Ioana Veleanu Song: Ania Gniadek help in translation: Krzysztof Kościuczuk, Warren Niesłuchowski, Andrew Dixon The project came about in answer to a proposal from the Müllerdechiara gallery in Berlin, which invited me to the Let the artist live program in 2003. A year later, while participating in the Łódź Biennale, the second, Polish part of the project was created. I was an artist for rent, anyone who wanted to, could contact me and ask to perform some task (within reason). Sex and violence were off-limits. People asked me for different things. I drew political cartoons for an anti-globalist organisation, designed a birthday invitation, decorated a house for a farewell party, supported a blood donation programme, helped at a photo shoot, accompanied a traveler to the airport and reinstalled a door, upside down, to change the bad memories of the bedroom to which it led. A photographic record of these Twenty-Two Tasks became the basis of a sort of collection of stories about the project, in which the written word is as important as the image. A show of slides, sort of a silent film was produced, telling the stories of meeting the people who responded to my idea. The narration portrays the tension caused by meeting someone accidental, creating a realm of contact, sometimes misunderstanding. Each of these stories is a small project unto itself, its' authors are the people who took part in the project. I left the viewer uncertain as to the purpose of these actions; it seems the only reason behind them is spending a couple of hours together in a tense relation that arises between people, and the project merely a pretext for this meeting.
2003, müllerdechiara gallery, Berlin
2004, Lodz Biennale, Lodz
2005, Program Gallery, Warsaw
2005, How to Talk about Contemporary Art?, Arsenał Gallery, Białystok, Poland
2005, Spectator T, Art Sheffield 05, Sheffield Contemporary Art Forum, UK
2005, Toward The Other, BWA Katowice