Ewa Partum is one of Poland’s most prominent conceptual artists from the 1960s and 70s and was a forerunner of feminist art in Poland. She has created performances, activities in public space, experimental films, and visual poetry. Their works from the series Active Poetry (1971) are based on a repetition of passages from modernist texts by authors such as James Joyce and Marcel Proust and strategically combine transgression and deconstruction. Here, the artist appropriated cardboard letters that were used in the propaganda slogans displayed on boards in public and work spaces in Poland. She scattered the letters across various landscapes, showing the materiality of language and creating poems shaped by coincidence.
In conjunction with National Poetry Month and the Cold War Spaces program Open Space: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain, we invite you to explore Active Poetry. Poem by Ewa and eight of her other short films, available to watch on the Filmoteka of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw’s website.
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Virtual Film Picks are inspired by the in-person Friday Night Films at the Wende program series. This selection is part of a curated list of weekly movie suggestions that can be watched at home, in conjunction with #WendeOnline.
