I WANNA BE YOUR COL­ON­IZER Prze­mek Bra­nas 25 I 2019 – 3 III 2019 Gdańsk City Gal­lery CUR­AT­ORS Gab­rie­la Wa­rzyc­ka-Tu­tak, Piotr Sta­s­iowski

i wanna be your colonizer

This novel is set against the back­ground of real events. Yet, it is neither a faith­ful ac­count nor a doc­u­ment­ary re­port. The names of the prot­ag­on­ists, ships and other char­ac­ters as well as their be­ha­viour are all fic­tion; only the back­drop of the main plot has been taken from real life.

It is a story of a human tragedy per­pet­rated by the mer­ci­less sea.

To those who shall never re­turn to their home port.

Stanisław Gos­zczurny, Morze nie odda ofiar (Gdańsk: Wydawn­ictwo Mor­skie, 1981).

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

Who was that mys­ter­i­ous middle-aged man whose pho­to­graphs Prze­mek Bra­nas came across in a second-hand Dutch fur­niture shop? Twelve small-scale sepia im­ages fea­ture a white-clad sailor pos­ing for pho­to­graphs alone or in the com­pany of smil­ing women and men, against the back­ground of exotic ar­chi­tec­ture, lav­ish hotel in­teri­ors, vin­tage auto­mo­biles or by a ship bul­wark. Hand­writ­ten notes on the re­verse of the pho­to­graphs in­dic­ate that they were taken on the is­land of Curaçao between 1932 and 1937. How did they make their way to Jarosław, a small town in Podkarpacie, where Bra­nas found them? All at­tempts to identify the sea­man have failed. Nev­er­the­less, the artist re­solved to re-cre­ate his iden­tity as faith­fully as pos­sible with the help of the scarce traces avail­able and the as­so­ci­ations that the im­ages brought to his mind.

Bra­nas took the brief in­scrip­tions on the re­verse of the pho­to­graphs as his start­ing point. A graph­o­lo­gical ana­lysis al­lowed him to es­tab­lish a per­son­al­ity por­trait of the per­son who penned them. That per­son­al­ity re­vealed strong sim­il­ar­it­ies to some of Prze­mek’s own traits of char­ac­ter, such as in­quis­it­ive­ness, cre­at­ive drive, but also ex­tro­ver­sion that some­times bor­ders on bravado.

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak
I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

An­other step to­wards identi­fy­ing the fig­ure from the pho­to­graphs con­sisted in cre­at­ing a mix­ture of scents that could po­ten­tially ac­com­pany the sailor on Curaçao. Bra­nas had already ex­per­i­mented with scents in his work The Birth of Black and White presen­ted at the ex­hib­i­tion lords peas­ants peas­ants lords (pany chłopy chłopy pany) at the BWA Sokół in Nowy Sącz in 2016, as well as within his in­di­vidual show Moon­rise at the Centre of Pol­ish Sculp­ture in Orońsko in 2018. This time, the artist dis­tin­guished eighty dif­fer­ent fra­grance notes which he then merged into a single syn­thetic fra­grance, fol­low­ing the per­fume man­u­fac­tur­ing pro­cess. The scents in­cluded black pep­per, smoke, red saf­fron, tar and moss. An ob­vi­ous in­gredi­ent was also bit­ter or­ange, which is used in the pro­duc­tion of the fam­ous Curaçao li­queur. Apart from those, the com­pos­i­tion in­cluded some rather ab­stract com­pon­ents, such as the scent of a ship and col­our white. Re­search into ol­fact­ory memory (re­lated to the sense of smell) proves that smell is much more sens­it­ive than taste or sight, and we store smells in our memory since our early child­hood. When re­col­lec­ted, they trig­ger spe­cific re­ac­tions, of­fer­ing us a sense of se­cur­ity, pleas­ure, joy, or oth­er­wise a sense of threat or re­pres­sion. The at­tempt to re­cre­ate the smell that could po­ten­tially ac­com­pany the sea­man provided yet an­other layer of Bra­nas’ re­con­struc­tion of the stranger fig­ure.

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak
I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

The next stage in “dis­cov­er­ing” the sea­farer’s iden­tity in­volved re­cre­at­ing his out­fit on the basis of the pre­served pho­to­graphs: sailor cap, white uni­form, tailor-made leather shoes. Using the im­ages, the artist also cre­ated a mask of the un­known man, under which he hid a cast of his own face. This double por­trait forms part of the ex­hib­i­tion, which also fea­tures the artist in at­tend­ance throughout its run­ning time. Dressed in a sailor’s out­fit, Prze­mek par­ti­cip­ates in the show and an­im­ates it for three hours every day. Per­form­ing un­spec­tac­u­lar ges­tures and minor activ­it­ies, in­ter­act­ing dir­ectly with the view­ers, the artist “in­carn­ates” the evoked phant­as­mal fig­ure. A sim­ilar situ­ation was staged on­board a pas­sen­ger ship dur­ing Prze­mek’s jour­ney from the Tri-City to Karl­sk­rona and Malmö in the au­tumn of 2018 – dur­ing that short cruise, the artist por­trayed him­self in a sailor’s out­fit in pho­to­graphs and videos. Foot­age from that jour­ney forms part of the ex­hib­i­tion in the form of a film with added ex­cerpts from a range of mas­ter­pieces of cine­ma­to­graphy, such as On the Sil­ver Globe (1967–1987), Wa­ter­world (1995), Pas­sen­ger (1967), Pros­pero’s Books (1991), and Blue (1993). Se­lec­ted lines and dia­logues re­late in vari­ous ways to the idea of a sol­it­ary jour­ney, long­ing for dry land, the sea, bound­less azure blue. Com­ple­men­ted with static shots from the deck and from a cruise ship cabin where Bra­nas dis­played the found pho­to­graphs, the film ex­cerpts evoke pop-cul­tural clichéd vis­ions of sailor’s life shaped by the feel­ings of loneli­ness, bore­dom, wait­ing for land to ap­pear on the ho­ri­zon. The cruise to Karl­sk­rona took only a dozen or so hours, a mere er­satz of a long exotic voy­age to Curaçao. Yet, it was not Bra­nas’s in­ten­tion to sim­u­late the un­known sailor’s oceanic jour­ney, but to offer a con­densed ex­per­i­ence thereof. An ex­per­i­ence sim­ilar, for in­stance, to that of Pol­ish sea­son work­ers who reg­u­larly travel by sea to jobs in Scand­inavia. In a sim­ilar spirit of im­it­a­tion, the artist used a tan­ning lamp, which left him sun­tanned as if after a long sea­far­ing es­capade.

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak
I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

Olga Tokar­czuk coined the term bizarre tales (opowieści biz­arne), which shares an af­fin­ity with Anglo-Saxon mys­tery tales. Such nar­rat­ives are dis­tin­guished by a spirit of strange­ness, volat­il­ity, oddity, or even sus­pen­sion of sense. The arte­facts gathered by Bra­nas in his sea­far­ing ex­hib­i­tion em­an­ate ex­actly such “bizarre” char­ac­ter. At first glance, their con­nota­tions are far from ob­vi­ous. A sil­ic­one mask of the un­known sailor. A statuette in the shape of a sail­ing boat made of cul­tured cop­per sulph­ate crys­tals. A cop­per flounder which the artist made many years ago as a teen­ager using a clothes dry­ing rack. And fi­nally – a plastic bottle made of melted garbage washed ashore by the sea and col­lec­ted on an In­done­sian beach. A com­mon de­nom­in­ator between these ob­jects is a rather quirky mar­ine proven­ance, a term which turns out to be ex­tremely ca­pa­cious. The phrase mar­ine mo­tifs im­me­di­ately makes us think of paint­ings by such mas­ters as Jan van Eyck, Wil­liam Turner, and Claude Lor­raine. Yet, the In­ter­net quickly proves that as­so­ci­ation wrong: ships in bottles, dec­or­at­ive ship wheels and porthole-shaped mir­rors are also what stands for “mar­ine”. Not only does the term enjoy pop­ular­ity, but it is also often as­so­ci­ated with am­a­teur ar­tis­anal pro­duc­tion. Cre­at­ing his mar­ine arte­facts, Bra­nas does not aim any higher. His are still ar­tis­anal works that seek to ex­press his fas­cin­a­tion with the ocean-faring sailor. After all, the artist is no ex­pert in mar­ine mo­tifs. Born and raised in the moun­tain­ous re­gion of Podkarpacie in south­ern Po­land, his know­ledge of the sea is lim­ited to stor­ies, pop­u­lar cul­ture and tour­ist trips. His at­tempt to track the man from the pho­to­graphs ac­tu­ally of­fers a start­ing point for a broader re­flec­tion on the ques­tions of power and post­co­lo­ni­al­ism, as well as geo­pol­it­ics.

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak
I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

I wanna be your col­on­izer – reads a tat­too on the back of the sailor whose face is covered with a mask of the man from the archival im­ages. After all, sea­far­ing cul­ture is an area com­monly as­so­ci­ated with tat­too­ing. Long mono­ton­ous days and nights aboard ships com­pelled people to dec­or­ate their bod­ies with or­na­ment­a­tion. The eponym­ous slo­gan also refers dir­ectly to the his­tory of Curaçao, a con­stitu­ent coun­try of the Neth­er­lands in the Carib­bean ar­chipelago of the Lesser An­ti­lles. Wille­m­stad, the cap­ital of Curaçao, fea­tures in the pho­to­graphs found by Bra­nas. An on­line search al­lowed the artist to re­cog­nise sev­eral build­ings that still exist in the city. A Dutch colony since the 18th cen­tury, today the exotic is­land of Curaçao is mainly as­so­ci­ated with tour­ism and the Brit­ish-Dutch com­pany Shell, whose his­tory abounds in ac­cus­a­tions of caus­ing en­vir­on­mental dis­asters, col­lab­or­a­tion with mil­it­ary re­gimes, trad­ing in weapons. Hav­ing opened its re­finery on Curaçao in 1915, Shell pro­foundly trans­formed the is­land. On the one hand, it provided an im­mense stim­u­lus for its eco­nomic growth, while on the other hand – it proved ex­tremely det­ri­mental to the nat­ural en­vir­on­ment. Al­though in 1985 the com­pany sold the plant to the gov­ern­ment of Curaçao for a mere sym­bolic guilder, Wille­m­stad still sees deadly smog hov­er­ing above its sky­line, and the “as­phalt lake” con­tin­ues to exist in the Schot­tegat Bay. The re­finery is set to close down in 2019, yet the is­land, des­troyed by dec­ades of ex­ploit­a­tion and pol­lu­tion, will take long to re­turn to its nat­ural state. The situ­ation in Curaçao is merely a frac­tion of the en­vir­on­mental dis­aster whose ef­fects can be felt today across the globe: while some parts of the world suf­fer from hu­man-in­duced draughts, oth­ers are threatened with floods from melt­ing gla­ciers.

The con­text of the cen­tur­ies of col­on­isa­tion and en­vir­on­mental de­struc­tion of the is­land lends an omin­ous air to the cheer­ful pho­to­graphs of the smil­ing Dutch sailor with 1930s Wille­m­stad ar­chi­tec­ture in the back­ground. At the same time, the fact that the artist came across these im­ages in a small pro­vin­cial town in East­ern Po­land test­i­fies in a sym­bolic way to the global pro­cesses that we wit­ness, but also be­ne­fit from. In an at­tempt to track the in­di­vidual story of the an­onym­ous sailor, by re­con­struct­ing his fig­ure or even cre­at­ing it anew, Bra­nas at­tempts an in­di­vidual and sin­gu­lar read­ing of these pro­cesses. The artist’s nar­rat­ive can be read in the con­text of mod­ern-day geo­po­et­ics. Look­ing at the pho­to­graphs through the prism of his own self, his own trav­el­ling ex­per­i­ence, his de­sires and feel­ings, Bra­nas in­carn­ates the al­leg­oric sailor fig­ure and brings to life, once again, a homo vi­ator who roams the ex­panses of dysto­pia.

I Wanna Be Your Colonizer – wystawa – kuratorka: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak

PRESS K-mag Szum Szum Vogue PHO­TO­GRAPHY Bar­tek Za­lewski GRAFIKA Mar­cel Kaczmarek (cour­tesy of GGM) NEXT PRO­JECT→