Lisa Torell

Kultura przyjemności / Pleasure Culture, 2015

sound installation, performance, video projection

by the former Morski Dom Kultury at 15 Marynarki Polskiej Street (1A), fence by the ferry (1B), watchmaker’s workshop at 5 Wilków Morskich Street (1C)

Pleasure Culture combines three different points on the map of Nowy Port: the building of the Cultural Centre, the canal embankment and a clockmaker’s shop. Employing mutually complementary languages – text, action and image – the artist constructs a narrative about culture faced with changing times and the transformation of the city. Time is subject to deformation, as is social space. It can speed up, rewind or go forward.

Lisa Torell has based her message on the figure of the Master Clockmaker, one of the last active craftsmen in Nowy Port. A clockmaker is a link between the present, the future and the historic past (utopian romanticism). Time resonates in the ticking of the clocks, in the contemplative movement of the painter delineating the boundaries, and also in the words spoken by the narrator. The work Pleasure Culture resists current consumerist praxis. It counts on the indulgence of the patient viewer and the “space in-between” – the, hard to come by nowadays – slot for going for a walk, for contemplation. Lisa Torell takes on board the values that have been distorted, such as language and manual work. The artist asks: How should we best use our time in a world governed by a dramaturgy of the pecking order of perks, “being there” and “likes”?

Lisa Torell (b. 1972) – lives in Stockholm and Tromsø. She studied in Umeå and Stockholm. She takes on board public space, cultural manifestos and the issues connected with individual and national identity and their representations. She works with multimedia and her texts have appeared in print. One of her works is Camouflage – Terrors of Daily Life, in which brings into the light problems of those who perform social functions traditionally regarded as subordinate.