LILIANA LEWICKA

I’ve been searching for Liliana Lewicka, a radical performance artist active in the 1960s in Poland, for several years. To learn that her ghost entered me into the fourth edition of the contemporary art biennale, Art Encounters, entitled Our Other Us, open in Timisoara, Romania, October 1 - November 7, 2021, is surreal. On October 5th, I was posting on Instagram my excitement about being included.

‘I’ve never been to Romania nonetheless now my art has! Happy to share I’ve been included in the fourth edition of the contemporary art biennale, Art Encounters, Our Other Us, open in Timisoara, Romania, October 1 - November 7, 2021. Showcasing the work of over 100 artists! Amazing!! Including, and I’m pinching myself, Sophie Calle, Ulay, Hito Steyerl, Nora Turato, and Agnes Denes among others. My artists loves. You never know what a new day will bring you, in this case - an art exhibition. My first biennial! Love brings love. Thank you to those who saw this work and wanted to include and share it with the public.’

After emailing the team of Art Encounters, in Romania, to ask how the selection of my work happened; the email reply I received would crush a person’s soul. I was told it was a misunderstanding. A different Liliana Lewicka, the one who is deceased, is the one in the exhibition. Oh, the shame, the heartbreak, and the anger. If this has taught me anything is that no one can take away personal power, not even a mistake made by a curator who googled Liliana Lewicka and found me, not her.

Our Other Us, how poetic…

2021: Art Encounters Biennial, Our Other Us, Timisoara, Romania

Can we live without plastic? Since the planet is burning in a climate emergency and the world will become inhabitable for the most vulnerable, I think about this often... what if artists didn’t use new plastic (resin) when producing new work? What if artists used material they found or material that is kind to the planet?

The last 15 years produced as much plastic as the 50 years before it, and since less than 10% of plastics are actually recycled, almost all of that winds up in garbage dumps or in the ocean—where it breaks down into microplastics, gets eaten by fish, and then winds up back on our dinner plates. Suddenly we’re eating a credit card’s worth of microplastics every single week.

What is the hardest plastic to recycle? The number is a resin identification code that tells you what kind of plastic that material is made of. Plastics that have #1 (PETE) or #2 (HDPE) are the most commonly recycled plastics. Plastics #3, #4, #5, #6 and #7 are generally tougher to recycle and are not universally collected in local recycling programs. Therefore, most plastic isn’t even recyclable.

I found recycled industrial plastic (PVC, Nylon, etc) at an industrial site outside of Chicago. These forms were so captivating, as I have not seen melted plastic up close, in person, and in such quantities. I do not wish to change these found forms, meaning go and remelt them to make new forms, I accept them as they are. Slowly learning to not buy it.

Do art galleries (building owners) have a responsibility to represent renewable energy?

The Digital T-Shirt Series is an ongoing online project working with art articles I have read on websites such at www.artnet.com or www.hyperallergic.com and photoshopped into a .jpg file making a digital T-shirt. Imagine wearing “art media information” as advertising. Alas, does the world really need another T-SHIRT to be manufactured? Questioning the marketing and consumption of fashion within the art context and our role as artists within a planetary climate crisis.

STUDIO VISIT is an art exhibit in a vacant studio apartment at Marina City in Chicago. Designed by architect Bertrand Goldberg in the 1960s and financed by the Building Service Employees International Union (a union of building janitors and elevator operators).

Working with network cables I am interested in the transmission of power and information. The use of fluorescent colors represents safety and visibility. The mylar blanket used for emergencies, invented by NASA, symbolizes survival and protection.

“Park(ing) Day” is held on the third Friday of September every year. Conceived as a DIY city planning intervention by a design firm in San Francisco in 2005, advocates for public access and alternative uses of parking spaces in cities. Today “parklets” have become a new urban space typology.

Co-curatorial project with Verda Alexander of Studio O+A in San Francisco.

Networking cables are used for communicating, meaning to connect two or more devices with one another. To transmit data is one reason for networking. Communication is the process of transferring signals from one point to another and there must be some medium to transfer those signals. In this case, Cat5e network cables are performing the role. Without network cables there would be no internet.

Network Topology, traveled from California to Norway, to be shown at Kunstforeningen Verdens Ende, Norway in the group show entitled HEAT curated by artist Anne Guro Larsmon.

Net activist Pit Schultz introduces artwiki.org, a collaborative historiography of contemporary art. The project is based on materials received in response to the open call by the curatorial team of Artur Żmijewski of the 7th Berlin biennale. With artwiki.org, Pit Schultz plans to take the submitted portfolios and political opinions of the participants into the digital domain, making them accessible to the public.

Złota Rączka means Golden Hand, Performance, Studio of Anne­ Guro Larsmon, Office of Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Berlin, Germany with Michael Forrey (USA) and Linda Kostowski (EUROPE), 2010

A group show curated by Liliana Lewicka; Works by Ninna Berger, Caitlin Denny, John Henderson, Parker Ito, Zachary Kaplan, Anne Guro Larsmon, Matt Momchilov, Justin Olerud, Job Piston, Melissa Sachs, Bailey Salisbury, and Justin Swinburne. Graphic Design by Slang International, Berlin, and writing by Maggie Taft.

Roots and Culture present a group show “We are the World,” showcasing work by 12 emerging, national and international artists. Curated by artist and California College of the Arts graduate, Liliana Lewicka, the exhibition features work in a wide range of media including illustration, new media, painting, photography, sculpture, textile, and video.

Prompted by the 1985 music project “We Are the World,” co-written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, and recorded by nearly 50 of the biggest names in music in an effort to raise money and awareness of the famine crisis in Africa, this current show asks artists born in the 1980s to reimagine on the original project. Conceived as both a critique of the ineffectiveness of the original program and an embrace of its cultural significance, the show reflects on the ways in which we can make and think art in the midst of crisis.

The “critique of the ineffectiveness of the original program” is a critique on philanthropy. We know that tax loops and tax credits are not the answer for equity and equality.

http://www.rootsandculturecac.org/show/we-are-the-world/

How Not To Cook Cookbook - lessons learned the hard way is a limited edition book and art project by Aleksandra Mir. The project invited 1000 people from all around the world to offer their advice on how NOT to cook.

Working in Max/MSP/Jitter patch by Cycling 74 (a visual programming language for music and multimedia) to allow the box to perform my reading from a book about conceptual art. The box would perform when room was silent, the box would not play when room was full of noise.

How to Dress a Loom is a digital video on loop, sped up 10x. If you want to slow down time, work on an analog loom. Special thanks to Bailey Salisbury.

Words from book entitled “Personal Power Through Awareness: A Guidebook For Sensitive People” by Sanaya Roman published by H.J. Kramer, 1986. Liliana Lewicka’s clothing performed by Shane Orr at California College of the Arts, Oakland, Studio 15, Irwin Building, 2007.

Special thanks to my friend Shane Orr for gifting me this book.

Painting: Justin Olerud, Photograph: Liliana Lewicka

Video: Liliana Lewicka, Sound: Joe Colley

Video recording of a mirror outside on the grass, then used the mirror effect in Final Cut Pro to produce this video art work in sync with the sound art (noise music) by Joe Colley.

Artist Statement written by six year old (Yosephina Peters) for a group exhibit at LoBot Gallery, Oakland, CA