MEETINGS: "Closed Loop: The Creativity of Matter, Interspecies Fluid Exchange, and the Hydrocommons". A performative tour of Jan Baszak’s exhibition led by Andrzej Marzec

Jan Baszak invites us to enter a circular, closed-loop reality—“One Within the Other and One for the Other.” This somewhat claustrophobic space is characterized by an intensity of relationships, entanglements, and connections that sustain life while simultaneously appearing repulsive.
The lecture will begin with Timothy Morton’s concept of dark ecology, which aptly describes a world in which proximity, intimacy, and softness are inextricably bound to darkness, strangeness, and the discomfort of not knowing. We can never fully know who or what we are connected to as “strange strangers,” nor which nonhuman beings we owe our lives to—a life that is not ours alone, but merely borrowed.
Together, we will reflect on matter’s unsettling creativity, which escapes human control, viewing Baszak’s textile sculptures not as lifeless objects but as vibrant, active entities.
Drawing on new materialist theories, we will discover that within a closed-loop reality, even the repulsive elements we reject—such as microplastics circulating through our bodies or honey understood as bee vomit—possess transformative and world-making power.
Finally, we will turn to Astrida Neimanis’s hydrofeminist perspective and examine the radical porosity of our bodies. Through the exchange of fluids, sweating, and constant leakage, we enter into intimate relationships with other bodies of water, becoming part of an interspecies community.

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Series of events accompanying Warsaw Gallery Weekend MEETINGS, co-financed by the City of Warsaw and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage with the support of the Society for the Encouragement of Fine Arts.