"Monika Weiss-Sustenazo," Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, March 12-May 3, 2010. Video projections, sound compositions, drawings, photography, found objects. Photo: Maciej Czerniewski and Mariusz Michalski.
History for Internal Use In "Tygodnik Powszechny" By Marcin Wicha
Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw was once a military hospital. One of the rooms in the castle displays items from the hospital's past--old syringes, a rosary made from spent rifle shells. Some people may mistake them for works of art, but among the artists showing at the castle's Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA), only Monika Weiss has created work inspired by its wartime past. From March 12, in its cellars, we can view her installation, Sustenazo.
In her native Poland, Weiss attended the school of music and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts. She left fifteen years ago and now lives and works in New York City, exhibiting her work around the world. In the early summer and fall of 2009, the artist returned to Warsaw for three months as part of the CCA Artist in Residence program.
Weiss combines drawing, video, sound, and performance in her art. The documentation of her action in New York City in 2006 leaves a special impression. Near the destroyed World Trade Center people are lying on the ground, drawing--in the photographs they resemble insects lying upside down. Drawing becomes their trace, a notation of both movement and time. Drawing as trace--this is one of the recurring motifs in the work of this forty-six-year-old artist.
"I am not a historian," she says, "but sometimes I begin by researching documents, examining archives, and conversing with scientists." The history that interests her most is the marginal, the unimportant, what is considered peripheral to the events. Sustenazo speaks of the events of August 6, 1944, the sixth day of the Warsaw Uprising, when the German army ordered an immediate evacuation of the Ujazdowski Hospital. Coincidentally some of the most important elements of the installation were just a few meters from the planned exhibition site, in a brick pavilion (once a surgery department) that now houses the Special Collection of the National Medical Library. Weiss found the hospital's archives in the library's cellars: "These were not classified as documents of great importance; nonetheless, I pay special attention to such 'insignificant' documents. For dozens of years these documents were kept in the cellars, and many of them were never archived. I spent several weeks in these rooms filming artifacts such as postcards, medical correspondence, certificates, and discharge papers."
In addition to researching archives and filming documents, Weiss found individuals who lived through the events, and she recorded their stories. During a press conference attended by journalists, as well as several older people whom she had invited, she noted: "I would like everyone to experience the work in a solitary, private, and intimate manner, and for an extended period of time; openings are not conducive to that type of reflective viewing."
The cellars are the only original part of the castle; the rest was destroyed and dismantled in the early 1950s. A few decades later, a meticulous reconstruction of the historic building was begun. Within a vaulted space, at the end of a long, dark corridor, we hear someone reciting the poetry of Paul Celan, a poet whom the artist acknowledges as a major inspiration.
The first video projection portrays a lamenting woman, and the second one, nearby, hands turning pages of faded type from German medical books and poetry, while overlapping voices speak in Polish and in German. "Lament," says the artist, "is beyond language; it denies the heroism so often embedded in narratives."
The older people whom I had noticed earlier at the press conference are looking around. The artist approaches one of her heroes; the tone of her voice is almost apologetic: "I decided to use only women's voices, so yours isn't here."
"Oh, now I can hear," a woman with crutches says with joy in her voice. "It's me. I'm talking about how we found the cellar with the cabbages."
"And this is a container for the needles." The man looks at the screen where the images are changing. "We filled it with alcohol."
"Ninety percent?"
"No, seventy was enough."
"You were both here then?" I ask.
"I was carrying the stretchers with patients to Chełmska Street. We were four girls carrying them."
"Then the hospital went to Czerniakow."
"With the sisters."
"When the Germans bombed, people were set on fire in their beds."
"I got shot then. I survived because someone carried me out on his or her back. You hear only the whistle of the bullets that don't hit you. Did you know that? When they shot me, I didn't feel anything."
The older people continue recounting their memories while the artist gives interviews. The voices in the exhibition merge and alter, gradually change into a murmur.
I look intently at the documents in the video as multiple images overlap and reflections of filmed light run through the texts. Unable to read any names or dates, I mention this to the artist.
"My intention wasn't to create a historical work or take a sentimental approach to history. The work does not violate people's privacy or expose their personal destinies."
"Do you believe one shouldn't?"
"No, one should not use people in that manner. So much of importance can be expressed without literally 'using' people. The people whose voices appear in the sound composition have given me their permission to record them. Above the background sound--a group recitation from Goethe's texts--one hears fragments of the story spoken by Krystyna Zalewska, with whom I became friends. Ms. Zalewska knew her voice would eventually be heard in such a fragmented way and that ultimately she would not be identified as a specific woman, her story converted into a universal metaphor."
Entering the next gallery, we view a scattering of antique medical textbooks, volumes of poetry, and a nurse's handbag; in a black-and-white film, a gymnast is performing a double somersault. The walls of yet another gallery are covered with drawings made on pages that the artist has torn from books by Goethe and which are printed in a beautiful Schwabacher typeface. A large photograph--a view of Krystyna Janda's (1) bedroom--reveals an elegant setting resembling those in The World of Interiors.
"After the Uprising, the hospital ended up in suburban Milanówek," explains Milada Ślizińska, the curator of the exhibition. "It was located in the former Gruszczyński villa. It's an enormous house, built by the opera singer, who soon lost his voice. In Milanówek, where I was born, we all knew the story. When we were children, my mother and my aunt told us how they used to go there to help the wounded." The artist adds: "When after many years the Gruszczyński villa was bought by Krystyna Janda, neighbors used to ask her if she was afraid to sleep in her bedroom. It was the most beautiful and quiet room-and it was used for the patients in the worst condition. Many died there."
Two days after the opening of the exhibition I returned to the neighborhood and joined a tour organized by the Museum of Warsaw History, whose building is scheduled to be erected soon, in close proximity to Ujazdowski Castle. Shouting over the traffic noise from the Łazienkowska Highway, a young guide relates the history of the district: it was once a stronghold of the princes of Mazowsze (with a hunting manor), the Waza Castle, a field hospital (during the Insurrection), and, finally, the Ujazdowski Hospital. "It's excellent that the new museum will be built in this location," he says. "At last there'll be an institution that will teach Poles to be proud of their own history."
While it would be difficult not to agree with such an observation, I find myself pondering the fact that Weiss titled her exhibition Sustenazo, Greek for "lamenting together in silence." I am thankful that the artist does not try to teach us anything; rather, she merely enunciates the powerlessness of human language.
The exhibition Monika Weiss: Sustenazo, at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, is on view through May 3, 2010.
(1) Krystyna Janda is one of the best-known actresses of stage and screen in Poland today.
