8th edition of Open City Festival deals with the relation of contemporary art projects in the public space to the heritage of monumental art. The latter has cherished a long tradition of presence in the public space, and managed to develop a language of plinths, pedestals, statues, commemorative plaques generated over the centuries, as well as a canon-like set of characters and topics (prominent figures, important historical events). Contemporary art, on the other hand, is usually experimental, it involves searching for new forms of artistic expression in the public space. The festival explores alternative topics for monumental art, as well as new areas of public space interconnected with the media.

Konrad Smoleński chooses cinema for an extension of modern public space, a domain perceived by the today’s culture as an attractive place for building monuments (suffice it to mention movies such as “Katyń”, “Wałęsa”, “The Battle of Warsaw” or pending projects intended to commemorate the Cursed Soldiers, which correspond to traditional monuments devoted to important figures and historical events). A film displayed on a big screen has a relevant monumental scale and at least comparable power of persuasion. Therefore, Smoleński has decided to erect a film monument, at the same time testing the ability to extend an alternative, non-heroic and non-historical narrative.

Smoleński’s work “Eight people and thirteen tasks” is a set of short movies (each lasting from 2-4 minutes) intended to be presented on a big screen in a public space of a movie theatre which is a space for projecting our group ideas. Each movie commemorates and builds a monument for a single, everyday situation taken out of a context.
“I asked 8 individuals to perform a number of activities in front of the camera – said the artist. The tasks required of them to be absolutely engaged and focused on the activity, thus allowing them to get isolated from the surrounding reality. These were: physical effort, alcohol intoxication, lack of oxygen, prolonged deprivation of sleep, drug intoxication, physical contact, playing an instrument or dancing”.

Each of the 13 movies is a simple real-life situation – a cinematographic monument for an experience isolated from the course of life events.