URBAN PAUSES:
OLA KORBANSKA & IWO BORKOWICZ (PL)
installation programme
URBAN PAUSES/ August 16-19
9 installations / different locations
The main theme of the 2023 festival is "Urban Pauses" that focuses on the wastelands and voids of Tartu. These are transitional and untamed places, which at first glance seem to lack function, but nevertheless are valuable as they are. Together with artists we explore the impact and meaning of urban pauses in the city space. Installations inspired by urban pauses are created by nine artists or groups from Estonia and abroad, three of them are young architects that were selected through an open competition.
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OLA KORBAŃSKA & IWO BORKOWICZ (PL) “Mow the Collective Desire”
August 16-19 at 12-20
Mõisavärava bus stop (Raadi)
The homogenous space of a lawn constitutes a universal template to fill in the gaps in cities, gardens, and front yards. These beloved green carpets are in fact strictly controlled: from color, length, through social expectations and common aesthetic habits, representing the idealized landscape we by all means try to maintain.
With the act of collective walking artists together with the public recreate the shape of one of the greatest lawns — tapis vert in Versaille — a radical representative of the grassy simplicity of absolutism, a space one cannot enter, only look at.
The path created with each step will leave a visible trace of this arduous attempt to rethink the common gaze on lawns and our collective desires.
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Iwo Borkowicz works as an architect and a visual artist. He founded and runs JEJU.studio, an architectural practice known for a broad spectrum of projects, from objects and buildings up to master plans. Borkowicz is a laureate of the 2016 Young Talent Architecture Award by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe as well as EAAE Prize by the European Architectural Medals Committee.
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Ola Korbanska is a visual artist and writer, based in Berlin, a graduate of Design Academy Eindhoven. Using various media (text, textile, installation, performative acts), she explores the nature of objects in the context of changeability, and social perception. Korbańska's works have been exhibited in various design and art shows (i.e. Salone del Mobile, Dutch Design Week), and published in numerous publications.
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Ola Korbanska and Iwo Borkowicz collaborate since 2020 creating site-specific art installations in public spaces, exploring often idealised antropocentric relations with nature and resources in the urban context.