Current and announcement
Intertwined, Embedded, Subordinated – Institutions as Representations of the State in Conservative Modernity
Tuesday, May 12, 2026, 6:00 PM
Participants: Joanna Krakowska, Przemysław Wielgosz, Anna Nacher
Moderators: Łucja Iwanczewska, Paweł Wodziński
The first meeting in the series “The Institution Between Pacification and Immobilization” will be devoted to reflections on institutions as forms of state representation in acts of dependency, subordination, and service to dominant ideological fictions. At the same time — and perhaps above all — it seeks to broaden awareness of the connections and relationships between the state and institutional practices, as well as practices of resistance, dissent, and refusal in the face of hegemonic narratives, models, and modes of governance. Another key aspect of the discussion will concern the notion of conservative modernity — a term proposed by Wodziński to describe post-transformation Polish reality and to conceptualize the conservative interpretation of Polish social and cultural life.
The series “The Institution Between Pacification and Immobilization” is dedicated to the relationship between cultural institutions and structures of power. The influence of political authority at various levels on the profiles, programs, and appointment of leadership within Polish cultural institutions is extremely strong. Institutions are organizationally subordinated to authority and have become forms of state representation, in many cases functioning as ideological apparatuses. Attempts to loosen or disrupt this conservative and hegemonic system — both in terms of programming and organizational models — encounter resistance. Alternative institutional solutions are either pacified through administrative measures or immobilized, with their energy redirected toward internal institutional operations. In the face of the influence of conservative political power on Polish cultural institutions, as well as political polarization, geopolitical tensions, the dominance of computational technologies, and social fragmentation, concepts such as practice and infrastructure gain particular importance.
The series “The Institution Between Pacification and Immobilization” is inspired by the theses presented in Paweł Wodziński’s forthcoming book “Between Pacification and Immobilization: The Clash of Art with Conservative Modernity in Poland”, scheduled for publication in autumn 2026 (Flying Publishing House / Institute of Art, IFIS PAN, 2026).
The event is part of the “Futurological Congress” carried out within the framework of the “Aesthetic Congress” — a year-long series of exhibition and performative events aimed at rethinking and updating the formula of the art institution through the engagement of diverse and complementary artistic languages and tools, as well as the participation of artists and curators. The primary point of reference, and at the same time the starting point, is BWA Katowice — an institution embedded in the urban and social fabric of the city as a tool of social engineering. The modernist pavilion, now recognized as an architectural monument, is contemporaneous with the emergence of the Polish wave of institutional critique. The necessity of its spatial and ideological renewal becomes the point of departure for a discourse on the meanings and dynamics of the art institution understood in a universal dimension.
Curator of the “Aesthetic Congress” — Łukasz Trzciński
