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🔸 ARTISTS for HUMAN RIGHTS 🔸

What is the most important human rights?
For me personally the answer is obvious. The most important thing I talk about in my work is the right to access to clean water.
In the project “Imagine A World Without Water” I spoke about it since 2016

The access to clean water for all living humans is the basis Human Right.

In July 2010, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution recognizing that – the right to safe, clean, safe drinking water and sanitation is an indispensable right to enjoy life and human rights to the full – (A / RES / 64/292 of July 28, 2010).

The European Pillar of Social Rights proclaimed by the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on 17/11/2017 foresees an explicit reference to the right of citizens to water and sanitation under principle 20 – “Access to essential services”.

Furthermore, the problem of access to water was the first European Citizens’ Initiative having gathered the required number of signatories. The name of it was Right2Water. It was submitted to the Commission on 20/12/2013:

https://europa.eu/citizens-initiative/water-and-sanitation-are-human-right-water-public-good-not-commodity_en

2022 is a special year – we can all see how threatened Europe’s energy security is. All of us will be affected by the unprecedented increase in energy prices. The consequences will be very serious. This could have been avoided by timely political decisions and increasing independence from single source supplies.

At the same time, in 2022, severe droughts caused water shortages in many EU countries. So far, the main response to this crisis has been only a temporary reduction in the supply of water for economic purposes. Drinking water is still flowing from the taps in our homes, the toilets are still working, the prices have not increased significantly. Due to climate change, however, this problem will increase in the coming years. What if we do not create a mechanism to shield EU citizens from the long-term effects of this process?

I would like to find the answer to this question in my artistic action, which I will carry out in the building of the European Parliament as part of your artistic initiative. In order to get our representatives to think and act, I would like them to feel the effects of a possible water crisis on their own skin. On the agreed day, the day of the plenary session, during the busiest hours, I would like to completely close the water in all parliamentary buildings for 4 hours. The action must cover all restrooms, restaurants, cafes, offices and any water abstraction points for human use. Of course, water must be available for critical building infrastructure, e.g. in fire protection installations.

A few days earlier, messages saying “Imagine A World Without Water” will appear in toilets, restaurants and in the aisles. These will be stickers, posters, monitors, or even text messages.

Details of the project are to be discussed in detail. It is a complicated logistics operation that requires a group of motivated volunteers. The project budget must possibly include compensation to restaurants and cafes for losses caused by the action. There must be cisterns in front of the building from which drinking water can be drawn. Prices for bottled water available in restaurants must increase during these hours, e.g. fivefold. And so on.

The implementation of the project is likely to cause outrage and protests from parliamentarians and employees. I believe it will work to our advantage and will raise the profile of the project, even in the mainstream media and internationally. We must also be prepared to respond to what we want to achieve by implementing such an action. The answer to this will most likely be a detailed analysis of the documents created in connection with the Right2Water initiative. To what extent have the solutions proposed at that time been implemented? In the event of extreme drought on land, do we have alternative sources – for example, means for desalinating sea water? Should we increase our efforts in this direction now, not waiting for a repeat of the situation in the energy market (single source dependency)?

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During my performance in the EP, I continued my 10-year long project “Thoughts”.

This time, I was thinking about Peace.

I would like to wish us Peace.

Free Ukraine

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Urban Nation Artistic Residency
Berlin / Germany / 2018-2019
Curated by Yasha Young and Marcin Rutkiewicz

I lived in West Berlin between1986 and 1990. The city was still divided by the Wall. I went to an German elementary school in Stieglitz, but at the same time I had to study at a Polish elementary school in East Berlin. Three times a week I crossed Checkpoint Charlie, border crossing between two worlds. In both parts of the city I had friends with whom I spent time after the school, with my parents I went for walks and shopping on both sides of the Wall. It may be strange, but for me Berlin was already one, undivided city.

Today memories of those times are a mix of images. Sometimes I’m not sure on which side of the border something happened. Was it Ku’damm or Alex? A friend from school on the West or East side?

“Copy + Paste” is a project inspired by the mosaic of childhood memories of Berlin, it is his material representation. In the places that were important to me in the past, I have collected clay prints of walls and sidewalks. After drying and burning, I swapped them places. Those from Ku’damm I glude somewhere on Alexanderplatz, those from the school in Stieglitz – in Mitte…

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Sandymount, New Zealand, 2016
Zegrze, Poland, 2017

In 2015, the World Economic Forum acknowledged the water crisis as the greatest threat to world order, greater than mass epidemics or conflicts with weapons of mass destruction. Today nearly a billion people have no access to running drinkable water. At the same time, there are those promoting the idea that water sources should be privatised and access to water should be paid for. That view should definitely be fought against.

On 28th July in 2010, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that recognised access to clean water as a fundamental human right. We shall not stop climate change, but we can mitigate its effects. The technology does exist. Ensuring drinkable water for millions of suffering people would cost a fraction of what we’re spending on wars caused by water shortage. And a fraction of a fraction of what we’re going to spend.

New Zealand

Poland

The process

The post “World without water” | New Zealand & Poland | 2016 & 2017 appeared first on NeSpoon.

“Subvert the city” – international action against advertising and consumerism in public space.

Project “One of 1580” by SC Szyman and NeSpoon

After the fall of communism in 1989, the public space of our country, Pland, was literally flooded with adverts. There were no legal tools to control this process. Earlier, they were not needed, as outdoor advertising behind the Iron Curtain was almost non-existent. Later, both international corporations and local businessmen used all the legal gaps to transform the landscape into a visual rubbish tip.

We couldn’t stand this and in 2007 as a group of friends we launched a NGO, “Miasto Moje A w Nim”. It had one aim, to introduce law that would control and limit the presence of adverts in the public space. After seven years of lobbying, we managed to convince the parliament to pass a suitable act. Today, the flashiest ad forms are disappearing from streets and advertising agencies are observing the rules.

At the beginning, our NGO had many invitations to directly and physically attack ads. Not even subvertise but simply destroy them. We were always against this. We stood in a position that if we followed that path, we’d be called radicals and lose credibility. We’d no longer be perceived by authorities as serious partners in a debate, as it happens with radical ecological organisations. This strategy turned to be right.

However, as  street artists we use subvertising to prostest against all forms of the advertising in public space, because the problem is not the amount of it, but the fact that it still shaped the city landscape and promote consumerism.  The best example of it is a fact, that the city of Warsaw changed lately 1580 bus stops into advertising structures in the process of “modernization”.

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Making laces was allways an activity meant to integrate women from the local community. They would make laces together, sing, talk and share their joys and sorrows. They give each other advice and support. I observed these meetings in many countries and I have always sensed a strong emotional bond between these women, full of closeness and warmth.

The installation ‘Lacemakers from Póvoa da Atalaia’ commemorates the vanishing relations, built on the basis of integration and the supportive role of the female circle of lace makers.

The post Póvoa De Atalaia, Portugal | 2017 appeared first on NeSpoon.

Prypiat – Charnobyl Exclusion Zone1 / Ukraine / 2017

It was 1986 when disaster occurred in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

115 000 locals were immediatley evacuated and the government subsequently resettled another 220,000 people. Until today, it is forbidden to live in the Zone.

The Chernobyl disaster is one of only two nuclear accidents classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The second disaster was Fukushima in 2011.

Although the Chernobyl accident was well documented, the public have failed to recognize the hazardous effects of Fukushima.

Due to the earthquake and subsequent tsunami the nuclear reactor caused the largest radiation release into the Pacific Ocean. For the next 6 years
at least 150 tonnes (daily) of radioactive water have constantly leaked into the ocean. The pollution increases each year, detrimentally affecting the marine life. Yet, the source of this leak cannot be accessed by humans or robots because it is extremely radioactive.

The Fukushima disaster is still in progress.

The installation was made in the amusement park of the abandoned town of Pripyat.
The park was to be open for Labour Day in 1986. The explosion occurred four days earlier.

The post “Fukushima”, Chernobyling Festival | Ukraine | 2017 appeared first on NeSpoon.

Statue, bronze, 57 cm / Hand painted pedestal / Digital print / Stickers
Curators: Sasha Krolikova, Marcin Rutkiewicz

Statue ‘Precariat’ is a metaphor for a new emerging social class; a class that is fundamentally rooted amongst young people living without social and legal guarantees, permanent work, often burdened with large student debts or other loans and unsure of the future. These people are the engine of protest movements, such as “the Arab Spring”, “Occupy Wall Street” and those fighting for protection of the Taksim-Gezi Park in Turkey. They have the potential to change the world, but they don’t have the global awareness of unity of interests yet.

All over the world precariat have the same problems caused by modern neoliberal corporate capitalism and globalization. In the light of growing political tensions in the world and the decreasing social security, NeSpoons sculpture is an appeal to keep unity. It is a protest against building invisible walls, based on nationalism, between people in similar economic and social situations, a protest against manipulating them and colliding with each other for the benefit of multinational corporations, financial institutions and ruling classes. It is a call for global solidarity.

Big thanks to Sasha Krolikowa, Sabina Chagina, Yuliya Vasilenko.
Special thanks to Dariusz Klechowski / Polish Institute in Moscow

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