Co-Creating Reality: Creativity, Collaboration and Re/Pairing Heritage at Polin, The Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Abstract

This project investigates Presence / Absence / Traces, an artist residency cycle at Polin, The Museum of the History of Jews in Poland, for its explorations of and experimentations with formative elements of Polish-Jewish history and heritage. Recognizing the complexity and diversity of positions on this subject, it is the proposal of this project to examine how socially oriented art projects such as this demonstrate new methods of inquiry, critique, and presentation of the past. The goal of this research is to identify those strategies that artist-institution-community partnerships offer which complicate, question and raise doubts into the aprioric qualities of memory, material culture, and oral testimony that inform historical narrative and heritage. In doing such an investigation, platforms are revealed that develop skills in observation, imagination, and abstract thinking. These, in turn, have the potential for productive and transformative engagement with what is ‘yet to come’ institutionally, politically and socially.