The Attempt

The Attempt

Alicja Rogalska

The future seems to be the focal notion in Próba – The Attempt or The Essay – reminding the Museum employees and audiences that the Museum collects art from the past to preserve it for A future. The pre-prepared “attempt” is an attempt to/at strike, protest or revolt against the present oppression of past conditions to resolve in a hopefully bettered future, a social improvement. I wonder whether the subjects of future protest are indeed capable of assuming the perspective on their present condition that would allow them to go beyond the internalised indifference to possibility, created by their fairly acceptable economic status and the local culture’s preference for opportunism, and envision their future in currently taken actions leading to an actual change.

The doubt might be nothing more than my bleakish vision of our institutional realities and the profound internalisation of neo-liberal values by contemporary Poles, resulting in the economic success of the country paired with growing social disintegration. All the more do I enjoy Alicja Rogalska intervention in the National Museum, the essence of which was numerous conversations with the ‘people of the Museum’. If all else fails and the ready-mades for a future strike will turn out to be nothing more than an essay in the dust, the conversations, I’m quite convinced, have already empowered the people, created a change and have been an action that will ripple and might bring the people together to take a common turn.

Piotr Mierzwa