Foundation for Promoting Contemporary Art invited KOLEKTIVA to make a new instance of the on-going project Special Place in the City in Warsaw. In this open-end project we ask residents of different cities to show us their special place and share with us their personal stories, memories or opinions. The aim of this project is to give a voice to average citizen and to present small personal spaces and experiences as an alternative to official historical narratives that builds up a (tourist) image of a city.
The idea for the Warsaw project Secret Heart was inspired by an article Searching for Chopin, Finding Poland's Past by Michael Kikmmelman published in New York Times on October 3, 2009. We learned that preserved Chopin's heart is placed in a church in Warsaw. We think the fact that it stayed preserved even when everything around it was destroyed in the WWII is a great example and a symbol of survival and resistance. The absurd situation that a German general helped to save a national symbol of the very nation they wanted to destroy brings in an interesting twist. Since the heart?s whereabouts during the hiding are not known we find this secret place of hiding an actual special place of the city of Warsaw. KOLEKTIVA published international open call for a short story. By inviting people to write a story about the hiding place of the heart we were actually asking them for fiction stories about the course of events during the hiding of a heart which might be or might be not intertwined with real facts. In writing the story about the heart we see an opportunity for people to express their opinion and emotions in regards to the painful time of Warsaw Uprising and the WWII which has had a strong impact on the city and national identity.
At the exhibition KOLEKTIVA presented a large installation of inflatable sculpture of a human heart, received stories from the short story competition and a sound piece.
The soundtrack in the video is from the exhibition's sound piece:
story by: Tomasz Drabarek
narrator: Piotr Bardzinski
music: Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin
editing: KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec)
(Source: KOLEKTIVA)