Constructive Dismantling

2011

Part of Designing Economic Cultures

During our residency at A-I-R Laboratory, CSW Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, between April and July 2011 we organised a series of five seminars that explored the topics of DIY culture & autonomy, people’s relation to time, food economy and public space in Poland. We were especially interested in finding out about the changes that happened in these fields after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989. While discussing the different topics with the guest speakers we invited, the main focus of the series was slightly widened. Also, we wanted to share and discuss the knowledge produced by this research with others. Therefore, we invited a group of six art and design students from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Art to join the seminar series.

12 April 2011
The relation to time in Poland before and after 1989 with Joanna Erbel (sociologist)

9 May 2011
The relation to public space in Poland, with Piotr Juskowiak (human geographer) and Jakub Szczesny (architect)

21 June 2011
DIY culture and autonomy in the everyday, with Adrian Zandberg (sociologist) and Slawomir Budaj (DIY furniture maker)

4 July 2011
DIY cultural practices in Moldova before and after 1989, with Teodor Ajder (artist and writer)

11 July 2011
Beat capitalism with a carrot – the Warsaw Food Cooperative, with Tomek Sikora (activist, freegan, founding member of the cooperative)

On the 28th June we organised a visit to the Museum of Cooperatives in Warsaw, which has on show an amazing collection of materials and documents from the period before the First World War, an incredibly active time for the cooperative movement in Poland.