“Melancholia” is a parafrase of a painting with the same title by Constance - Marie Charpentier from 1801.
I photographed myself in similar pose and used the image for a mural as an outside intervention for Myslowice.

Something Must Break

AN EXHIBITION
ON LISTENING AND HEARING
7-11 AUGUST 2008
MYS?OWICE, POLAND

something must break now
this life isn’t mine
something must break now
wait for the time
something must break

Joy Division, ‘Something Must Break’, from LP Still, 1977

The sentence ‘something must break’, borrowed from a Joy Division track, served as the title and motto of an international exhibition located in the Mys?owice urban space. The exhibition’s scenario, part of an alternative music event known as the Off Festival, is based on exploring connections between contemporary art and music/sound, as well as the political, emotional and (sub)culture-creating consequences of such relationships. Among the issues tackled by the invited artists are, for instanced, the manipulative role of the soundtrack (Erla S. Haraldsdottir, Anna Molska, Johanna Billing or Wilhelm Sasnal), the aesthetics of subculture (Jerzy Lewczy?ski, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Pawe? Ksi??ek), or quasi-scientific or even occult functions of sound recording (Leif Elggren, Pawe? Kulczy?ski & Hubert Czerepok, Erik Bünger).

We have witnessed the major impact the music revolts sweeping for some decades now through clubs and concerts halls have had on the profiling and functioning of progressive art institutions, as well as on individual artistic strategies. Nicolas Bourriaud points directly to the existence of the ‘twin figures’ of the DJ and the contemporary visual artist, whose practice consists in selecting ‘cultural objects’ and placing them in new configurations. In both areas – music and the visual arts - lot of significance has been attached to issues such as disputed authorship, collective action, use of archives, style juggling, or reconfiguration of existing elements.

Something Must Break focuses on the experiences of intentional listening and unwitting, accidental hearing. An important background of the exhibition is therefore the city’s natural ‘soundtrack’, for a couple of days enriched with interferences, distortions, musical traps. The exhibition features not only visual artists working with sound, but also musicians ‘sneaking’ into the territory of art galleries and museums, e.g. Eran Sachs, Anna Zaradny or Wojtek Kucharczyk.

The exhibition has been scattered throughout the city – it can be found in vacant apartments and the electronics shop near the Market Square, in courtyards, in the warehouse on Portowa street, the Mys?owice Culture Centre, and in the Przewi?zka, one of the city’s architectural symbols. It is the seat of Radio Simulator, an artistic platform initiated in 2006 by artists and music journalists from Poland and Germany, run by Adam Witkowski and Jacek Skolimowski. The online radio station is used here as a fully legitimate exhibition space. Something Must Break represents an additional layer, temporarily overwritten on the city’s sonic landscape.

Artists: Johanna Billing, Erik Bünger, The Complainer & The Complainers & Bartek Kujawski/8 rolek, Hubert Czerepok & Pawe? Kulczy?ski, Leif Elggren, Erla S. Haraldsdottir , ?ukasz Jastrubczak, Pawe? Ksi??ek, Jerzy Lewczy?ski, Anna Molska, Anna Ostoya, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Eran Sachs, Wilhelm Sasnal, Anna Witkowska & Adam Witkowski, Anna Zaradny, Artur ?mijewski + Radio Simulator (feat. Adam Witkowski & Jacek Skolimowski)