Hidden parameters
Anna Bera, Huba (Jakub Ciemachowski and Piotr Kołakowski), Agata Marchlewicz, Olga Micińska, Olga Milczyńska/Wiesław Bartkowski, P55 Mirrors (Beata Ludwin and Łukasz Wołek), Rest (Dominika Gacka and Julia Piekarska), Jakub Święcicki, Iza Tarasewicz, Zinaida Tchelidze, Marek Wodzisławski.
Curator: Marta Lisok
Opening: 17.10.2025, 19:00
Exhibition duration: 17.10.2025-22.02.2026
Press pack: https://bit.ly/4oUapg4
Admission to the exhibition is free of charge.
The exhibition Hidden Parameters is conceived as a record of the body’s activity – tirelessly gathering, smoothing, weaving, and connecting. It forms part of a long-term project in which a group of participants experiment with diverse materials. While rooted in methods derived from craft traditions, it simultaneously engages conceptual strategies. At the heart of this exchange lies an attempt to devise tools for testing new modes of sensing and thinking. Situated at the intersection of science, art, and craft, the project functions as a kind of remedial programme, carried out in response to the environmental challenges of our time.
The shared denominator of the exhibition is a set of practices grounded in metaphors of composting – not only as a strategy of reuse and a reflection on the concept of degrowth, but also as an invitation to think collectively, to manoeuvre beyond fixed definitions, and to embrace that which is ambiguous, incomplete, uncertain, or not yet fully articulated. Composting here becomes a way of seeking alternative means of describing reality: by drawing upon indigenous and pre-industrial knowledge, or by looking forward towards speculative tools, biomaterials, and new models of cooperation.
Examples of such approaches in the exhibition include giving voice to matter, mapping the effort embedded in interaction with it, and assembling an archive of labour already undertaken. These practices arise from the need to describe activities that sustain bonds forged through collective acts of digging, raking, gathering, and cleaning. The featured works attempt to capture and illuminate those moments when language dissolves because the hands are occupied and the body, absorbed in a familiar rhythm, begins to ease. Thoughts then flow freely, weaving connections into stories suspended between fact and conjecture, the truth of matter and the play of imagination.
From this perspective, the objects in the exhibition reflect time spent grappling with the transmission of tacit guidelines – filtered through bodily memory, which can be communicated only through shared practice.The heightened awareness that arises in such moments resonates with the ancient concept of mētis: a form of embodied, scattered knowledge grounded in the subconscious capacity to respond to shifting variables – the dynamics of materials, atmospheric fluctuations, pressure, humidity,
or the direction of the wind.
Long dismissed by philosophers, mētis was rooted in patient observation and waiting for the right moment; in sensitivity to the subtle signs of change. It was associated with a willingness to immerse oneself in matter, to adhere to it and merge with it, producing a soothing sense of liberation from the illusion of separateness and independence.
Within this framework of embodied, elusive knowledge, the “hidden parameters” invoked in the exhibition’s title transform the presented objects into forms resembling abandoned armour, skeletal frameworks, or moulted skins. The archive of their production processes becomes not merely a record of individual gestures, but also a chronicle of interactions, of coexistence with other species, and ultimately of research itself. It acts as an incentive to unsettle rigid systems of data organisation, to dissolve initial assumptions, and to follow the lead of the material.
Curator: Marta Lisok
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▪️Organizers: NÓW. NOWE RZEMIOSŁO, OP ENHEIM, VOP
▪️Patron: Ergo Hestia, Fundacja Artystyczna Podróż Hestii
▪️Honorary Patron: WOMAK
▪️Co-financed: Funded by the European Union NextGenerationEU
▪️Partners: Heinle, Wischer und Partner Architekci, KEIM, OPEN Reklama Oksana Solnik Krzyżanowska
▪️Media patrona: TVP Kultura, Contemporary Lynx, Artinfo.pl, Format Pismo Artystyczne, MINT Magazine, NN6T, PLNDESIGN.PL, Rynekisztuka.pl, Well.pl
