Joanna Wowrzeczka
THE PERIPHERY AND SOCIALLY SENSITIVE ART – THOUSANDS OF INSERTIONS

I asked Professor Tadeusz Sławek (with whom I was fortunate to consult the commoner’s  ^1  1  The term ‘commoner’ encompasses both the relationship to capital and the pursuit of producing alternatives. It refers to the common good. Commoner is a person who is related to the resource, the good being produced, but whose role is primarily management in a perspective not limited to oneself. Such person generates network thinking in which he or she is not the only commoner (M. de Angelis, ‘Ogólny wzór dóbr wspólnych’, Praktyka Teoretyczna, 2017, no. 3 (25), pp. 119–121). Close to the idea of mycelium and the shreds it consists of. ↩︎ dilemmas) to fill in the fundamental concept (periphery) and he sent me as response a handwritten sentence saying: ‘Cieszyn: a periphery without territory – if «territory» is derived from «terreo»: to be afraid of something/someone foreign, unknown.’

I was supported in drawing the field of socially sensitive art by Igor Stokfiszewski, creator of the category ‘art with community’.

I was helped in recognizing the key role of the commoner in strengthening the territory by Łukasz Dziedzic with whom I shared the difficulties of running the Szara Gallery at the beginning of its history.

Another participant in outlining the field and definitions were: Anna Cieplak – co-founder of the Krytyka Polityczna community centre in Cieszyn – writer, atomic energy of many initiatives; Urszula Markowska (editor-in-chief of Tramwaj Cieszyński – before moving to Słupsk, she created independent media in Cieszyn); Gabriela Lazarek – hairdresser who for two years from the self-immolation of Piotr Szczęsny protested every day in the Cieszyn market against the restriction of freedom and democracy in Poland; Ewa Gołębiowska – former head of the Cieszyn Castle – reflectively building bridges between the world of third sector and institutions; Agata Juroszek and Anna Grelowska they run with me the Women’s Strike in Cieszyn, and later became involved with the Krytyka Polityczna community centre, participants in the Youth Local Government Lab.

I selected from the responses received a few that gave me the opportunity to include the language coming directly from the place where I have been co-creating since 2016 the circulation of socially sensitive culture. This place previously housed the Juwenia Knitting Plant. In one of the rooms, I found binders with materials, abandoned for many years, which used to serve the female employees of that establishment until 2002 in the manufacture of clothing. One of them was a collection of patches. This captivating collection of machine-made pictures, which I painstakingly transcribed (embroidered, inserted) by hand, which was completely unprofitable in the context of the category of time, reveal the specific values of the periphery, the common good, the socially sensitive culture as well as the characteristics and obligations of a commoner. For me, personally, it was only thanks to this collision that the topic opened up.