Aleksandra Kubiak (Poland)

Home-less (2009)

Programme: Public space: plac Lotników, Aleja Kwiatowa, Boulevard vis a vis Railway Station PKP Available from 19.03.09

Born in 1980 in Szczecin, lives and works in Szczecin.  A graduate of EAF in Warsaw, a diploma from Izabella Jaroszewska. She opened a photo studio BLUBOKS in 2006. She creates in the fields of photography and video. She builds installations.
Even though she has taken part in numerous photo exhibitions, diaporama shows and performances, she regards inSPIRACJE 2009 her debut, setting a further artistic path.

Home-less
Visiting my friends' flats, who often change their addresses, I have noticed a collection of common features – spaces filled with accidental objects, without history , always temporary. I called them Home-less.
Without the history of the choices made, no place of living may become a home  (...) John Berger
Moveable people, torn off their roots, places of birth, the world of their ancestors, they keep their identity, botching up improvised shelters. What do they create them from? – habits, series of repeatable actions changed into protective hideouts.  These habits concern words, jokes, gestures, acts and even the way they dress. A habit, even though it may be regarded as the same action, it is different in itself, typical for a certain person. Physical objects (furniture, a bed, a corner of a room, a corner shop) they are a stage setting, the background on which the habit becomes real. However , not a place but
repeatable actions or sets of actions fulfil the protective function.  These actions, chosen and not imposed, in the repetitiveness – even though they are short-lived in themselves, they give more shelter than any place for living. The adhesiveness of the improvised  home is memory and a secret – a blue box. Emigrants fondly throw into it tangibly exposed trophies, family souvenirs, photos, trinkets, sometimes they transform them into an activity that is known
only to them, by doing it in solitude. However the ceiling, walls, which maintain life inside are invisible, inaccessible for touch, biographical. Home is not a place of living anymore, but an untold story of life which is being lived. In the most drastic cases home is only somebody's name and surname, important for somebody who for most people remains nameless.
Cooperation in realisation of the project:
pictures, editor – Gniewomir Łuczak
music producer – Krzysztof Berg