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Thisyear a high construction resembling a ski jump or trampoline placedin a pool may become an attraction in the Polish pavilion. It is themain element of the Agnieszka Kurant and Aleksandra Wasilkowska’sinstallation Emergency Exit, whichaccording to the artists’ intention, is an attempt to cross thereality of urban logic by creating a portable teleportation hole. Theproject is a critical reference to dilapidated Polish sportsfacilities. At the same time, it is an ironic answer to the subjectset by the curator of the pavilion, EliasRedstone, who invited several Polish architectural agencies to enterthe competition to demonstrate „howbuilding and public space can be used for the integration of sportsand game with urban space and publiclife”1.Kurant and Wasilkowska distance themselves from the Olympic Gamesoffering a new discipline - a jump into clouds. A jump into cloudsis not an escape into the world of fantasy but a diversion towardsurban utopia. It makes it possible to perceive architectural andartistic projects which are of the ludic nature and seemingly lightas a space of political transgression. Theski jump-trampoline, the main element of the EmergencyExit,will jut out over white clouds. Spectatorswill be able to jump from thisteleportation hole through white clouds and down into the pool. Thejump will be very safe as there will be a special air mattress tobreak the fall. The mattress will be invisible for persons about tojump and the thick clouds will make them feel they are theedge of a precipice.The authors of the project meant this construction to „evokefeeling of mystery, risk, danger and even fear.The very jump isto release „thea nice feeling, rewarding the fear felt prior to it.”2It is to be a conscious loss of control. The soft landing will be theaward for overcoming the fear and taking a potentially dangerousdecision - jumping persons can never be sure whether the mattressis still down there. Intheir work, Kurant and Wasilkowska refer to the city as anunpredictable and complex system, which canbe fully understood if we recognize the existence of interpenetratingreal and imagined spaces modified by extremely rare events„.City structure is very complex, formed by material factors making upurban tissue and activities undertaken by its residents, whoseinterests are very often contradictory. At the same time it is shapedby non-material factors such as gossip, city legends or myths, whichinfluence our behaviour encouraging us to spend time in spaces thatwe find safe and friendly and avoid others that are associated withrisk like dark backstreets and the Vistula bank. They make us seethat the city should combine the need of stability and solid supportin the form of procedures with the openness for spontaneity andnovelty still poorly represented in urban planning. TheEmergency Exit encourages us to welcomeunpredictable, unknown but appealing and to enhance the potential ofaccidental events which may change the logic of urban life. Thejump into clouds is a proposition of a new sports discipline whichdevelops in us the utopian thinking skills and ability to takeradical actions when our future is misty and uncertain. It meets ourneed of spontaneity, risk and craziness tempered by a rational lookon reality, which in the case of the city realizes itself by treatinga development plan as the answer for all urban maladies and completeignorance of natural, well-functioninginitiatives like local markets and neighbourlyundertakings.This project is a metaphor of a portable teleportation hole used as”ahybrid machine for the transfer to other realities, perforating thesystem of the city”3andenhancing the status of what is happening in the spots where thesolid structure cracked. Wasilkowskaand Kurant, by creating the space where thebody is involved in a series of jumps, offer us a form of escape fromsymbolic references, confusion of meanings entangling our thinking inintellectual charades and crippling our actions. The porous structureof the Emergency Exitinstallation will make it possible to easily cling to it, touch it,hang some elements on it and do other things apart from jumping. Itcan also serve as a meeting point for people who will want to checkthe gossip that in the Polish pavilion one can really jump intoclouds, thus carrying out the central idea of the biennial exhibitionthat is people meeting in architecture. TheEmergency Exit isthe second project made by Wasilkowska (thefirst was an installation realized together with Michałem Piaseckimfor the Parade Cirtical Pracitice4)which explores the idea of porousness as the basis for aparticipation structure. The Parade,Assemblage in Public structure,composed of four thousand plastic bottle crates, created a porousspace, pleasant and easy to cling to. It was accessible as it hadbeen made from elements of everyday use, therefore there was no needto familiarize oneself with it to approach it. At the same time, thevery composition of the elements made people eager to penetrate,touch, put hands into it, check possibilities - put differentthings into it or on it (bottles, mugs) tie, untie, cut or addsomething. It was easy to cling to it but the manner of clinging hadnot been determined, nor did it force an excessive innovation.Therefore, even a person with poor competence could made anintervention and leave a material trace - one could hide asomething for oneself or other person - a book, newspaper, bottleof wine, sun cream, and the like. The light and partly portablestructure of the Paradewas not overwhelming but at the sametime stable and solid. One could play there, rest and work. A porous,easy to handle form as an indispensible element of a participatorystructure as well as the transformation of the jump into cloudsmetaphor into a new experience encourages visitors to radicalthinking.It is an attempt to go beyond the limits of thinking about the citynot through debates or other forms of intellectual reflection but atthe level of engaging the body in action. Italso shows a sensual dimension of experiencing urban space. The life and co-existence in the city is not based on the rationalperception of space but it is a radical form of a bodily experience.Cities stimulate our senses: attack us with colours, deafen withnoise, seduce or push us away with different fragrances, evoke thefeeling of security or anxiety. They set our pace of life, give powerand take energy. They have influence on our working conditions, onhow we spend our free time and how we envision possible forms ofbeing together. Space barriers and urban regulations enter our bodiesand outline the horizon of our imagination. The space we live in isreflected in our dreams, shapes out fantasies showing us the barriersto cross to live a better and more comfortable life. The materialityof the city suggests solutions for everyday dilemmas: what is thefastest way to get from one place to another: on foot, by bike, bycar, by tube, by scooter or by water tram. Where to have breakfast,spend one’s free time: at home, in a cafe, at friends’, at theshopping centre? What is the most effective way to improve one’sstandard of living: get a better job and consume luxury goods, moveto other city, get involved in some form of urban activism and demandhigher standard of living for all? Thecity logic affects our daily practices and determines ourunderstanding of safety, comfort of living, freedom and shapes ourattitude to otherness. Socially and esthetically homogenousspace weansus away from diversity. Surveillancecameras and walled housingestates make us believe that safety can be guaranteed by increasingcontrol instead of social confidence. High rents for apartments makepeople take credits to buy their own flats and force them to workmore to be able to keep the flat. Prices at cafes and restaurantsdecide whether eating out is a luxury or serve as a pretext formeeting with others, friends or strangers, being with people. TheBaum stone tiles, one of the most popular paving materials in Polishtowns and the country, makes us easily seduced by its cold smoothgranite surface increasing the esthetic standard of our surroundingand think of it as of the obvious alternative for the presentsurface. Homogenous esthetics and the excess of space order inducereluctance to what is new, spontaneous and unexpected. Thecity designates the borders of our daily sensual pleasures derivedfrom the contact with its tissue. Depending on the urban order orkind of architecture, it enables to catch life with a voyeuristicdelight and feeling of accessibility through shop and bus windows orcontrol procedures, as in the case of the Bundestag’s glass dome inBerlin. It also gives us an opportunity to gather on a huge squarefor a common prayer or go through the main streets in a joint massprotest. Thesatisfaction taken from obeying or breaking the rules in the citieswhere, like in New York under Rudy Giuliani or in Singapore, even thesmallest offense (breaking a window) and deviation from the standards(spitting out chewing gum in the street) were penalized, becomes amanifestation of protest and act of courage, thus redefining thenotion of resistance. Walled housing estates, in turn, dividing thecity into inaccessible for passers-by sectors, deprive us from thepleasure of penetrating dark corners of the streets, touching woodbanisters in stairwells of old tenements,climbing roofs and looking at the city from different perspective.They hinder the need to look for new solutions and unknown routesgiving an illusionary feeling of security connected with excessivesurveillance. Thecity, as Krzysztof Nawratek points out in TheCity as Political Idea (Miasto jakoidea polityczna), is an oppressiondevice which directs our body and imposes certain kinds of socialinteraction while hinders others. There is not escape from the city,which from its very nature outlines the framework of our thinking -unless to another city. An effective way to cross the barriers of ourthinking is often simply moving to a space that offers other standardof living (not necessarily better but different) which enables us tofeel and realize other system of relationship between urban tissue,our body and different objects. A good example can be Berlin andAmsterdam or other cities providing bike paths, the possibility forusing alcohol in public spaces, drinking tap water, wheelchairand pram ramps. Other cities likeIstanbul, Mumbai, Damascus, show that the lack of traffic regulationis not always synonymous with risk, but may result in a moreeffective traveling through the city, and what from a distance seemsto be chaotic is an alternative form of public organization whichabsorbs new phenomena faster and moreefficiently. A sensual experience, placing the body in another spacesystem is necessary to let be carried away by an alternative way ofexperiencing the city and be able to defend it with full conviction. Beingseduced by other cities often means beginning radical activity inone’s own surrounding. The necessity of bodily experience is moreand more valued by the city authorities, which in recent years moreand more often send their workers for training to European countriesso that they could observe novel local solutions. However, suchapproach has its own limitations. On the one hand, it allowsto feel some other system of social relations but on the other, it does not enable us to imagine the scenario that has not been realizedyet. Moreover, the system of space elements, the community of humanand non-human actors, people lying on benches, cyclists, fountains,Indian fast food bars, seven pavements, easily accessible publicbuildings often differs a lot from what we have got used to in ourcity. This may get us come to a false belief that the best way to abetter city is to change all its components. Ananswer to the limitations connected with inability to bodilyexperience the space that does not exist are micro-laboratoriescoming into being in the field of art and, as in the case of theEmergency Exit,from the meeting of art and architecture. They make it possible toembody other system of social relation and at the same time to referto the local - urban, Polish context. They resonate with our fears,amplify what is present but pushed back by a prevailing logic. Theyshow the potential of actions that are often considered hazardous butnecessary to change the current state of things, such as suspendingprocedures and making potentially risky decisions as well as doingthings against dominant logic. TheEmergencyExit suggeststhat the principle of the transgressive thinking of the city shouldbe work at the level of bodily experience, performed earlier in otherpublic space projects - micro-laboratories of urban utopias.Multisensual involvement of the body is an indispensable dimension oftransgression. Oneof urban laboratories that dramatically changed the thinking of thepublic space potential was Joanna Rajkowska’s public art project,Oxygenator.It gave the local residents the feeling that their neighbourhood canbe a friendly, comfortable place where one can spend ones time withno specific purpose and no money to be spent. A possibility to usepublic space for relax and physical exercise was also undertaken byAgnieszka Szreder and Kuba Szreder as part of the action „Remember!The crisis does not excuse you fromrelaxing5and Picnic promoting active and passivelaziness organized by MartinKaltwasser and Folke Koebberling6.Making streets green by unrolling grass and setting up plant pots aspart of the action Park(ing).7An attempt to embody an alternative form for being together has alsobeen also made by the KNOT8,a mobile platform presenting art and other projects in the publicspace of Berlin, Warsaw and Bucharest. In the course of this projectone can contribute to critical knowledge in a series of seminars anddiscussions as well as developing skills inguerilla, crochetingduring Maja Brzozowska and Monika Rosińska’s workshop or jumpingover a replica of an underground turnstile, part of the project byIgor Krenz and Tomek Saciłowski. Theabove micro-interventions into city tissue and other laboratoriesarising from the meeting of art and architecture are privilegedareas where one can test alternative forms ofsocial relations. In the case of theEmergency Exitby Kurant and Wasilkowska, learn how to overcome one’s fear of whatis new, alluring but potentiallydangerous or find pleasure in being together in other context thancity traffic or trade exchange. One can also develop new skills suchas crossing urban barriers, fences, turnstiles and walls. Suchmicro-laboratories are an emergency exit indispensable in the momentsof intellectual impasse and when onecannot imagine any other system of social relations. The contactwith an artistic or architectural object in public space may providenew forms of sensual experience and open our minds. New experiencesmay be embodied as points of resistance in the struggle for othervision of the city, since revolution in action does not begin withimagination but bodily experience. 1http://wwww.obieg.pl/felieton/16958. 2Pressrelease for the exhibition in the Polish, EmergencyExit, www.labiennale.art.pl. 3Ibidem. 4Projectrealized as a part of Polish Year in Chelsea School of Art andDesign, London, May 21st-23rd,2010. 5Pamiętajkryzys nie zwalnia Cię od odpoczynku! (Remember!The crisis doesn’t relieve you from leisure time!),urban picnic, Chłodna 25, Warsaw, April 26th,2009. 6Parkin front of Contemporaty Art Center, Warsaw, 20.06.2009. 7Park(ing),Krzysztof Herman, Warszawa, September 17th-18thand 21st-22nd, 2009. 8http://obieg.pl/prezentacje/17670.
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