For the past years it has been a field of possibilities. It does not impose a single style, or any particular aesthetic upon visitors. Temporary urban public art programs today are in some ways a contemporary parallel to the historic market place. It was an intermediate space where two worlds meet: the world of the local urbanite and the world of the rural dweller, the rafters, craftsmen outside the guilds, and of travellers.
Like the old markets Narracje is a meeting place: a melting pot of ideas and creativity; a place for encounters between strangers and exchanges between friends; and an occasion for memory and affect. Granary Island is emblematic of the intersections between past, present and new futures that interest us. Lying in ruins now for nearly 60 years, it has become a highly symbolic and hotly contested territory with many private and public interests vying for influence over its future.
But more than this, we are drawn to a special moment when artists, architects and writers turned it into an activist space from , specifically to address the way decisions about public space and urban planning processes excluded the participation and interests of ordinary people and of the cultural sector. The cultural citizens who occupied Granary, made actions on it, convened symposia and wrote about it; at least for a while made it a public sphere.
It became a meeting place for the exchange of ideas; and debates about power, planning, gentrification and citizenship. Drawing on the historic fabric of the area and on aspects of the current situation, artists offered responses, both poetic and critically engaged, with scent, sound, light, moving image, story-telling, sculptural installation and community participation.
Festiwal Narracje" by Urszula Abucewicz; in kowale. Harking back to the primal fire, the central hearth around which people came together at the beginning of civilisation, the piece questions what this might have been replaced by today: One feels attraction and warmth when looking at it, but on closer inspection one is confronted by a rather dubious message that unravels wider socio-political and ecological discussion.
