Open Form

No.w.here as well as Lecture from behind the screen have been deeply influenced by the practice of the Open Form. The concept was proposed by the architect Oskar Hansen and developed further in the direction of film and performance by his students at Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. The 'open form' originated in the 1950s as a response to the ossified design principles of modernism and was intensively discussed within the frame of international debates on the architecture of late modernism (for example, in Team 10). In the 1960s and 70s, against the background of socialist Poland, young artists (among them: Gregory Kowalski, Zofia Kulik, Elizabeth Cieslar, Emil Cieslar and Victor Gutt) created innovative filmic works and performative interventions that give rise to interplays rich in associations between image space and real space. Today, Kowalski is one of the last if not the last Open Form teacher in Poland. No.w.here had an occasion to work with him on a project Image/Event in Centre D’Art Contemporain in Geneva in 2010 (read more). Kowalski's next workshop will take place Sept 3rd to 13th in Warsaw, Poland.

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Images: IMAGE | EVENT, Centre D’Art Contemporain, Geneva