photographs taken during the project: Alina Żemojdzin

Citizens of far-off islands set sail to exchange necklaces and bracelets with residents of other far-off islands. The transferred objects were important because of who had owned them before, and the exchange entailed the obligation to continue the ritual. While the market economy involves exchanging goods for money, the gift economy relies on interpersonal relations. In this latter system, objects are exchanged to strengthen bonds and accumulate social capital.

Maryna Tomaszewska proposes a participatory project that invites the NARRACJE audience to place their gifts in a time capsule. These small objects will act as physical representations of our lives, dreams, fears, love and hate affairs. Together with the festival participants, the artist creates a collection of personal trinkets that will be placed in a capsule and buried in Przeróbka. In line with the idea of the gift economy, everyone donating an object will be given an opportunity to capture this moment in a photograph made by Alina Żemojdzin.

The collected objects will create a symbolic monument of our time. Dug out in tens or hundreds of years, they may become an archaeological treasure or an incomprehensible scrap of history. What gifts will we leave to people from the future?

Maryna Tomaszewska is a concept artist, author of art books, installations, video works and performances, and editor-in-chief of Periodyk Najgorszy. She runs the Experimental Text Studio at the Faculty of Media Art of the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. In her work, she combines an educational mission with artistic practice. She is interested in aspects related to text in the field of art, the mechanisms of power, and feminism. Her art books are kept, among others, at MoMA, SFMOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, TATE, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.