still from In Practice     © Joanna Malinowska 2015

We’ve put together a DVD of short films made by artist Joanna Malinowska, which will be available for the public to borrow and watch at home. The DVD will be found in Artoteket, a library for artworks, hosted by Skanes Konstforening between February 12 and May 27. Artoteket was launched in 2014 by the artist Hans Carlsson in close collaboration with Konstframjandet (The People’s Movement for Art Promotion) and Tensta konsthall.

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“The curatorial framing of Artoteket RUT is an attempt to approach questions and dislocations related to the notion of the public and the private, the home and political power and the human and her lived environment. The historical background of Artoteket is the biopolitical turn, visible in the turn away from the political ambitions of the establishment of Artotek 73 (financed by the Swedish art organization Konstframjandet in the 1970′s) and the tax deduction for domestic services introduced to Swedish tax payers by the Swedish government in the early 2000’s.”

– from the introduction to the second edition of Artoteket, by Hans Carlsson

still from In Practice     © Joanna Malinowska 2015

We’ve collected 7 videos made by Joanna Malinowska for her project In Practice (2003-2011). These videos are usually shown as part of an installation, and this will be the first occasion to watch them in a home environment.

Joanna Malinowska emigrated from Poland to USA in 1994. She educated herself in Fine Arts at Yale University, among other places, and eventually settled in New York. In one of her early art projects, she advertised as a woman seeking work doing housecleaning and household chores, preferrably with intellectuals and academics who could pay her by giving her private lectures.

The text for the ad which ran in the New York Review of Books in October 2002 read:

“A responsible, trustworthy woman, who enjoys daily housework will undertake any chores or similar duties, in exchange for academic lectures (especially in philosophy).”

still from In Practice     © Joanna Malinowska 2015

In a series of short videos recorded between 2003 and 2011 we see Joanna Malinowska performing tasks such as cleaning blinds and ironing shirts, while we hear male intellectual Americans in the background, lecturing her on subjects such as the world of ideas according to Plato. The DVD begins with a video in which a pianist performs Etude in C minor Op. 10 no. 12, or Revolutionary Etude, by Frederyk Chopin (in his day also a Polish emigrée), while in the foreground Joanna Malinowska vacuums the floor.

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still from In Practice     © Joanna Malinowska 2015