The starting point for the “Under the bridge” project is a space of two bridges – over Church Road in Garston, a suburban part of Liverpool, and in Gdansk over Szopy Street. What do they have in common? They are quite remote to each other in physical space. The bridge in Garston was established in 1980 as part of a road leading to the centre of Liverpool. Its construction, once complete, changed the image of the district. The flyover has cut Garston, a “living urban body”, into two clearly separate parts. The part located close to the port changed from a typical English suburb into a moonscape, subject to constant transformation – the old houses are slowly being pulled down and replaced by new ones, and the area is undergoing intensive revitalisation. Gdansk bridge over Szopy Street is part of Podwale Przedmiejskie – a high speed road designed there during the Second World War. It divided Lower Town (Dolne Miasto) from the rest of Gdansk, thus cementing the division into a historic part and a “poor” industrial part of the city. A simple decision of city planners had a dramatic impact on the micro scale. Both bridges have become a border line, a space in between – a symbolic passage or transition between two incompatible worlds. As under a magnifying glass the two bridges show the problems of the districts. Having crossed the border line you feel as if teleported – you are suddenly transferred into a completely different space in time. In what way do the divisions made by the bridges influence the perception of space? What impact do they have on the consciousness of local people and of visitors? “Under the bridge” is about the series of artistic interventions in the public and “mental” space of two bridges, and seeks to analyse the subconscious of the district, symbolically linking two spaces. Can art for at least a short while eliminate the ugliness of the two bridges? Will their oppressiveness disappear for a moment? The artistic interventions will take place once a month. We have intentionally chosen to move away from the festival form for the benefit of long-term activities. Will such form have a stronger impact on the inhabitants? The “Under the bridge” project questions the role of art and artists in public space. Are they capable of influencing society? Are their ambitions nothing but utopia, or maybe just another fashionable trend of contemporary art? What is the place of man in the art infrastructure?

Under the bridge in Liverpool

Roman Dziadkiewicz, Bridges (tools to overcome limitations in emotional involvement)
The artist operates on the border between artistic and social activities. His projects may take the form of a workshop, surveys, texts and manifestos or long-term research studies. The project in Garston will be an attempt to build up experimental links between individual, private experiences and group experience, and it will be an attempt to stand up to indifference and its opposition to emotional involvement. The artist explains that Garston with its social and cultural locality, history, topography, is compared with singleness, individual character and histories of individuals invited to the project. The artist also has the ambition to create yet another link – between the macro and micro scales. The project will take the form of a series of discrete actions, interventions, micro-performances and observations, performed together with the Garston community which has been invited to co-operate.

Elzbieta Jablonska, with Przemyslaw Paszek
It is a difficult task to describe Elzbieta Jablonska’s artistic works. The artist in her works uses and transforms cultural stereotypes and clichés associated with woman and womanhood. She plays with them in an intelligent game, full of humour and warmth. In contemporary society the typically womanly works are embarrassing and enclosed in the four walls of private homes, marginalised. The artist makes them visible and enhances their status through art. An interesting aspect of her endeavours is the spectators’ responses to her projects. Very often they reveal feelings which are invisible, hidden in the course of everyday life.

Dorota Buczkowska, Fountain
In her works, Dorota Buczkowska highlights similarities between the human body and city infrastructure. In Buczkowska’s graphic arts, drawings and installations the arteries are transformed into water supply pipelines, while the organs are transformed into washbasins, sinks, toilet seats, and taps. Roads and streets are formed as veins. Merging and mechanical circulation are occuring. What is alive is transformed into artificial; what is artificial changes into living objects. Her works show the world of mutual inter-relations which make up the living system in the triangle of man-architecture-city. Fountain in Garston will be an extension of everyday circulation, the daily flow of machines, people, energy, it will reveal the invisible in the forgotten space under the bridge.

Lukasz Jastrubczak, Eclipse
Lukasz Jastrubczak is a young artist with a very clearly defined view of his creations. “In my activities everything makes a whole and is interdependent. My inspiration comes mainly from movies. I like air a lot” – says Lukasz about himself. Lukasz is interested in the surrounding reality, in actions in it and on it. Simple ordinary situations in a city space are a starting point to create narration, to shape his own quasi-fiction based on objects and minimalist interventions. They are like frozen frames from movies, prolonged in time. The meaning of his works are developed in contact with their place of appearing. Jastrubczak doesn’t close his activities; he leaves the situations open. He responds to surroundings and to changes around him. His ephemeral interventions are a break from reality. They make obvious things start to look different than at first it seems.

Under the bridge in Gdansk

Ross Dalziel, Close encounters
Ross Dalziel lives and works in Liverpool, and is active mainly in the area of searching for sound and new media. In his work the bridge is more like a barrier than a link; not only in the architectonic sense but also in an economic perspective. The artist, in his activity, makes attempts to break the barrier by referring to tiny human gestures of entropy noticed in the city structure. He uses a reconstructed galleon anchored on Motlava River, kayaks, mobile advertisements. The galleon, renewed history, will never sail to Dolne Miasto; it moves on the historic, also reconstructed part of Gdansk. Ross Dalziel, by his action, is trying to create an impossible situation, to get the galleon to Dolne Miasto, to invoke the situation of a “River Festival” taking place between the Old and Lower City. His project is about architectonic barriers, cultural differences and universality, and the popularity of fake history which is a lure to visitors.

Rita Maria Slater, Guerrilla Karaoke
Rita Maria Slater is interested in human relations. In her sculptures, the artist uses ready elements. A discreet change reveals hidden stories. The artist is also interested in the human voice – its social meaning. The Guerrilla Karaoke Project will have the form of an audio event. A group of people will meet under the bridge to sing some jointly selected songs. The defencelessness of their voices will be confronted with the oppressiveness of the concrete architecture. The voice will reverse the function of the bridge; the space in between will be the place of a mysterious meeting, will witness the creative process, building of relations, and temporary shelter from the eyes of other people. May the space be regained by the volatile, vocal guerrilla act; may the space regain its lost human dimension? The joint singing is to her an attempt to reach another human being, to communicate beyond the language barrier and ambiguity or words.

Maeve Rendle
The way in which Maeve Rendle works results from thinking about sculpture but the final work seems faraway of it. “I work with objects readily available, from and in any given environment. What begins as a curious investigation into any part of anything, ends in a gradual manipulation to reveal a physical difference or potential within the object. It is photographed at every stage of this manipulation, which acts simultaneously as an aid to the creation of, and relief from logic and reason. The sequence of photographs presented once the action has concluded, often constructs a narrative from a language seemingly foreign to the object in its original form. “In my practice the working process is the work itself. The process is synonymous with the work in progress. The process stops with the presentation of the photographs, rather than the conclusion of the process itself. I can direct the work instinctively but can never predict the outcome.”

Kevin Hunt, Stephen Forge, The maze
“I make sculpture using found, redundant objects which are reconfigured into something new through an act that may at times be premeditated but regularly turns out to be more casual, allowing for serendipitous and chance happenings”, explains Kevin Hunt. “The objects used are often rendered functionless by the act of beautification or their function is shifted in some way, eradicating any original purpose whilst exposing an inherent aesthetic or beauty that has always lay within.”

The project “Under the bridge” originally developed as a part of “For The Likes Of Us...” an exchange programme between the Liverpool Biennial Big Table partners and “corresponding” organisations across Europe, contributing towards the objectives of the Cities on the Edge network. Under the bridge is within the framework of Polish Year in Great Britain. “Under the bridge” is supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Republic of Poland.