Folk is a Strange Thing

From politics to witches to internet bots offering love spells; folk, magic and myth are back. But these interconnected aspects of belief are currently at odds with our technologically mediated realities. Ones where we’re forced to pick a position, do research, argue and never deviate. Not realising that we’re allowed to be full of contradictions.

This exhibition, featuring the work of Kuang-Yi Ku, Agnieszka Dratwa and Alina Słup, is the beginning of a long-term exploration into folk, how it’s practiced, and its contemporary relevance and role in our lives. Ziemniaki i is investigating these mythical things because it feels like we’re perpetually stuck between certainties of opinion, fact and belief. Folklore, from this position, invites a plurality and plasticity into our way of thinking. While also connecting us to non-humans and processes of making.

Whatever folk is, regardless of how or who captures it and for what, it remains something that evokes and build relationships, something based in craft. All of the works shown here are grounded in their making of alter-realties. For Ziemniaki i, myth isn’t something to retreat into but a place to explore and comprehend the complexity of contemporary life.

So what are the roles of the folkloric today? What can we resurrect from attitudes that were almost completely crushed and mixed into the concrete covering our forests? Some view the resurgence of myths within our society as a reaction to global insecurity, stimulating our need to seek out truth and the meaning of life. Others see them as a fantasy invented by nationalists to influence and coerce. It’s all of these things and more.

Modernity’s cannibalisation has showed its inner workings: extraction, degradation and humiliation. To many, this gnawing feeling has been there for a while. But with the climate catastrophe the dream of a better future that’s at odds with nature has proven to be deadly ignorant. A deeper connection with the natural, almost by definition, means a deeper connection with something else. 

Ziemniaki i fundamentally believes that there has to be a seismic shift in attitudes towards nature and the other. We cannot continue with a way of living based purely on extraction and expansion. We have to believe in something else. The famous Mark Fisher quote, that it’s easier for us to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, finds relevance in any future oriented attitude. So as soon as water is no longer simply functional, but something alive and with agency, the future begins again.

We believe that a key aspect of our renewed relationship with the earth will have to come from a rekindling of our relationship with myth, folk and the unexplained. But the coexistence of this way of thinking and that of the scientific is again only dividing. Our task is to explore how art and design can bridge these worlds. Technology is not going anywhere, but sadly, nature is. 

We don’t have to steadfastly believe in things just because they're steeped in tradition. We can hold them up, see what it is they can offer, and choose to take part or not. The anachronism, combined with the taboo, questions what our knowledge is. To be inflexible and not see room for different possible worlds forecloses on the potential of thought.

Kuang-Yi Ku’s Tiger Penis Project, although future oriented, is kind of anachronistic in approach as speculative design suffers from expectation fatigue. It has envisioned so many possible micro-futures that the bigger, systemic landscape is often forgotten about. This is not so much a criticism as a reorientation. We should remember that affect can be reduced to affectation. But Kuang-Yi’s work drags us, and the pieces it’s next to, into a near future anyway. This time-jarring allows us to see where folk has been, what it is and where it’s going.

Now a taboo (and rightly so), the consuming of a tiger’s penis is supposed to confer virility to the impotent male. A twisting of roles and contexts swirls around such toxicity. Kuang-Yi draws from the past and forces it almost unwillingly into a future. Placed next to the work of Alina Słup, it confers a different meaning on a taboo subject in Polish society: the Smoleńsk air disaster. Her work 10/04/2010 uses the traditional folk art of Pająki (Spiders) as a way to memorialise and open up the subject and its lasting legacy. Like a seasoned interviewer, the object speaks with authority. But only for a brief moment. Its strength lies in its drawn out pauses as it hangs in the air; waiting for us to fill the awkward silence.

The pieces by Agnieszka Dratwa, aka Aga the Tailor, act like a binding agent connecting all the works together. Women have always been the driving force behind folk-crafts, and in Aga’s work we can we can see worlds colliding. In her Floating Jeans collection, we’re reminded of the ritualistic relevance of clothing and costume. Creating of old responded to belief systems that we now know to be claustrophobically conservative and often violent. Using those metrics, we can see that the landscape has changed, but maybe not the attitudes. The response here, for me at least, is to the degradation of a specific dream. 

All that pain and all those futures hang off our bodies when wearing them. They materialise what we already know while suggesting something else. They’re suffused with hope because they know exactly what’s happening and are directly responding to it. There is no wallowing in nostalgia here though, as the collection only uses recycled clothing cut to be gender neutral. They escape the purely artistic and cross over into the commercial, into a different reality. One where we can actively wear the pieces day to day, imbuing us with a bit of magic.

Folk is back. Only this time it’s darker and operating at a lower frequency.

Exhibition Address: Targowa 15/79, 03-727, Warszawa.

Date: 30.09.21-10.10.21

Ziemniaki i would like to thank Krzysztof Pyda (Studio Pyda) for the graphic design, identity and excellent conversations; Joanna Żaboklicka and Marek Konatkowski for their support, generosity and late night discussions; and to Julia Owczarczak for always picking up the pieces, her creative energy and emotional labour.