Piłsudski Square

2017

Video Performance

One- or two-channel projection, 8’03’’, two letters

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Bronisław Piłsudski was a world-renowned ethnographer and a scholar of Ainu culture. In Poland, however, he remains an almost unknown figure—overshadowed by his brother Józef, a national war hero.

 

At Józef Piłsudski Square—the most representative public space in Poland, where all state ceremonies take place—I organized a symbolic ceremony dedicated to Bronisław Piłsudski, featuring Ainu prayers preserved in the Polish language thanks to his research. I inscribed one of the prayers in chalk on the ground, creating a symbolic plaque that commemorates both the ethnographer’s academic legacy and the culture of the Ainu people.

 

The work juxtaposes the literal, Christian, institutionalized culture with the oral, animistic, and tribal. The square becomes a space of encounter between two brothers representing different values. On one side: Józef Piłsudski, war hero, symbol of independence, and figure of authoritarian strength. On the other: Bronisław Piłsudski, diplomat, pacifist, scholar—a defender of illiterate, animistic peoples on the other side of the world.

The project stems from a protest against the glorification of war and from the negligence with which Poland treats individuals who have contributed not through combat, but through the advancement of science, empathy, and culture.

 

I concluded the action with a letter to the mayor of Warsaw, requesting the installation of a commemorative plaque for Bronisław Piłsudski and the Ainu people on Piłsudski Square.