Living in huge cities, in post-modern reality, being inhabitants of the shrinking world which becomes smaller and smaller, more and more accessible… we are participants of peculiar travel. We get on the plane at the airport, full of metal gates, glass walls, halls of terminal which are mirrors of open spaces of runways and then, just few moments later, we get off at the delusively similiar airport in the other part of the world. We are thousend kilometers of the start point of our journey, but we coudn’t feel it in fact, as we see so similar space.

This kind of impression becomes also an important part of an experience of somebody who is travelling by subway. For sure, in case of travelling by subway in Warsaw. It could take us far away from the center, far away at south. This southern part of the city could be seen by someone who doesn’t live there as the unknow area, amazing maze, where streets, buildings, parks and  stairs, seemingly so identical, involve in the great game of expoloring.

Exploring Ursynów.

This comparison of plane and subway, airports and metro platforms let me see the proccess of discovering Ursynów as a game. When you get off the plane first time in the foregin city, country or continent, you never know what will be the next, what will happen, what will you see. It is time of anxiety but also a moment when imagination work extremely intensively.

When I get off the subway at the first moment I feel like a child without parents, like a turist without a map. There is not enough points which could help my orientation. I don’t know where should I go and what I will see at the end, on the top of the stairs.

Thinking that way I have decided to create a game-map of Ursynów. Board concentrated around the line of subway and stretched between exits of successive stops. Photos announcing riddles. Common task for people – guest of Warsaw Breakfest – to guess where does every photo come from? Very simple rule: where this collective, elaborated in the tangle of barracking answer is correct, our common pawn could be moved to the next filed of guessing.

In fact, during taking photos, I was a kind of guinea pig – as a person who doesn’t know this part of the city, I was looking for interesting points, views, characteristic contrasts and personal discoveries.

 Young people from our workshop group from a school placed in Natolin, pointed their favourite places, streets, spots of meeting and spending time. Some of there arised then in the game board. Other created a map of magic, strange or special places. Map of the district where I feel like a tourist, guest, somebody like an intruder, but first of all as a person put in the middle of an exotic but also fascinating maze.

In this maze our young collaborators were more oriented, it was for them familiar an well-known area. This combination of two perspectives and two ways of percepting the space turned out the most interesting.

But, in fact, it was not only juxtaposition of viewpoints during Warsaw Breakfest. The second one brought together glance from the inside -from this maze, glance of newcomer and visitor -and, on the other hand, the bird’s eye view. This last one was initiated by our special guest – Marek Budzyński, an architect and designer of Ursynów. His story was a great mixture of historical, social, anthropological and technical ingredients, narration not only about possibilities of space use, but also about philosophy of space.We had a great chance to touch and see in this story an increadible proccess of creating in mind and imagination a part of the city, a part of public space with its sharp, clear and amazing idea….

Maybe now, although there is no additional subway line, Ursynów becomes a little bit closer…

[mygal=ursynow]