Exhibition Info
The exhibition entitled Seeing Stones and Spaces Beyond the Valley – the main event of the second edition of Biennale Warszawa 2022 – is devoted to relations between power, authoritarianism, capital, extractivism, and technology. This perspective is supplemented by the presentation of technological alternatives, prototypes, ideas, and speculative projects that enable us to imagine a more democratic and egalitarian future.
The name of the exhibition refers to the motif of palantíri – the seeing stones in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At the same time, Palantir is the name of a technological company founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, a conservative lawyer and investor, which engages in advanced data analysis, mainly for the US government. The second part of the title alludes to Ramesh Srinivasan’s book Beyond the Valley: How Innovators around the World Are Overcoming Inequality and Creating the Technologies of Tomorrow. The author presents alternative solutions, objects, and prototypes serving as a potential counterbalance for the current technological model created and governed by private, monopolistic corporations in cooperation with political centres all over the world.
One part of the exhibition addresses the conservative ideology of Silicon Valley, the data transmission infrastructure, the materiality of technology, the state’s role in digital systems of surveillance and control, and the extractivism of resources and data. Meanwhile, the second part presents algorithmic, organisational, ecological, and infrastructural alternatives allowing to overcome the intertwinement between the authoritarian power and technology.
An integral part of the exhibition is a public programme consisting of workshops, lectures, performative lectures, talks and debates.
Colophon
Anne Alombert, Clara Balaguer, Andrea Beste, Zach Blas, Border Emergency Collective, Tega Brain & Julian Oliver & Bengt Sjölén, Paolo Cirio, Frederik De Wilde, Forensic Architecture, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Kyriaki Goni, Vanessa Graf, Grow You Own Cloud (Cyrus Clarke & Monika Seyfried), Yuk Hui, Karolina Jarmołowska, Vladan Joler, Paweł Kobielus, Paul Kolling, Weronika Koralewska, Steffen Köhn & Nestor Siré, Luis August Krawen, Michał Krzykawski, Kuba Kulesza, Felix Lenz & Angela Neubauer & Eszter Zwickl, Ulises Ali Mejías, Metahaven, Joanna Murzyn, Helena Nikonole, Bahar Noorizadeh, Matteo Pasquinelli, Špela Petrič, Laura Poitras, Oleksiy Radynski, Daniel Ross, Jan Skoczylas, Ramesh Srinivasan, Jenna Sutela, Magda Szpecht, terra0 (Paul Kolling & Paul Seidel), Territorial Agency (John Palmesino & Ann-Sofi Rönnskog)
Organiser: Biennale Warszawa, Cultural Institution of the Capitali City of Warsaw
Curatorial team: Bartosz Frąckowiak, Anna Galas-Kosil, Paweł Wodziński
Architectural design: CENTRALA (Simone De Iacobis, Małgorzata Kuciewicz)
Project of visual identification and website: Jakub de Barbaro; cooperation: Mikołaj Hałabuda, Marta Kowalska, Alina Lysachkova
Production team: Ewa Kozik, Marta Michalak, Ela Petruk
Public programme coordinator: Joanna Saran
Communication & PR team: Klara Duniec, Justyna Gill-Maćkiewicz, Magdalena Jankowska, Aleksandra Kardaczyńska, Przemek Rydzewski, Agnieszka Tiutiunik
Content-related cooperation: Ewa Kozik
Engineering: Marek Jeżewski
Exhibition execution: Artmontage
Audio-visual execution: Eidotech Polska
Video recording: Filip Drożdż, Stefan Łazarski, Michał Mądracki
Website: Michał Szota
Editing, proofreading and translation: Paulina Bieniek, Justyna Chmielewska,Tim Churcher, Ewa Cybulska-Bohuszewicz, Aleksandra Czyż, Klementyna Dec, Anna Dzierzgowska, Bartosz Frąckowiak, Dominika Gajewska, Sylwia Hajduga, Lucyna Khvorost, Ewa Kozik, Monika Krawul, Sławomir Królak, Jerzy Listwan, Mateusz Myszka, Agata Rudowska, Katarzyna Slabý, Aleksandra Szkudłapska, Malwina Szymczak, Dariusz Żukowski
Office and financial department: Robert Jaworski, Angelika Malon, Bożena Marczykowska, Michał Markowicz, Ewa Orlińska-Pięta, Bartosz Ziemba
Legal services: Paweł Siemianowski
Public procurement: Mateusz Saczywko