A text about the affirmative nature of our work*

Each and every branch of this “art business” requires good time management, sharing of responsibilities, patience, general enthusiasm, and stable levels of discipline. This “art business” is not intended to make money. Of course, all of our activities not related to painting are amateur in nature and we usually have to pay extra to carry them out. However, we do not mind doing that, since these are not exorbitant amounts of money, and the capital in a form of satisfaction and the sense of creating something together is invaluable.

One of the key forms of our activity is film production, which we perform together with our friends. It is obviously more of a playful use of the convention of a film rather than “serious” production, although we are by all means committed to it. To emphasise the significance of this activity we called ourselves Potencja Film Group. Working within this branch, we managed to produce a few films and advertisements, but most importantly, a series of posters, trailers, and an exhibition drawing on the cinema convention. Tomek and Cyryl were responsible for the films, while Karolina made the ads. We had the biggest fun while making the posters to which everyone contributed, making 3-4 items.

When it comes to exhibitions at Potencja, we always share the responsibilities spontaneously. Karolina likes responding to emails and filling out various kinds of agreements. Tomek avoids signing any contracts because he remains unemployed to have the access to health insurance, so he asks Cyryl or Karolina to take the contract work themselves whenever possible. Renovation work related to exhibition arrangement is shared equally between us. There always comes a time for activities such as painting the walls, dismantling or cleaning, especially since at the moment (the beginning of June) we have no exhibition planned and the leftovers from the last one are still piling up in our gallery. The corridor is messy too, and it is going to be cleaned up probably around the time of the next vernissage, after the holidays, perhaps? Some tasks related to the exhibitions are always assigned to one person, e.g. Cyryl always takes care of photo documentation, he usually also updates our social media. Tomek and Cyryl take photos at the vernissage and Tomek uploads them to Potencja blog, however with a long delay, so there is no regularity. Karolina usually does the pre-exhibition mailing, but sometimes this responsibility is taken over by Tomek. Karolina also creates Facebook events and Cyryl makes the graphics taking turns with her, but since Tomek makes them too, there is no single rule. 

The idea of creating Łałok newspaper came to us at the beginning of 2018. We held a meeting during which we wrote on a board what we thought should be put in the newspaper, how many pages it should have, if it should be sold, how to distribute it. Everyone suggested columns which were going to appear in the newspaper on a regular basis. What was left was to create a title – here, a few proposals had been made, but finally Cyryl came up with the best one. In principle, everyone has to design a few pages. Karolina would preferably design all the pages herself since she has already developed methods of Photoshop typesetting and she is very good at it. Tomek does it in Open Office, Cyryl uses Photoshop as well. All the pages are put together by Tomek who is also responsible for printing the whole newspaper. Then we all bend and staple the pages. After the third issue was published, we managed to collect enough money from selling it to publish the fourth one.

* A very subjective text, ignoring various drawbacks and difficulties related to this work.