Mateusz Kowalczyk
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Herba Polonica
The Polonica Herba in Latin translation means "Polish grass". Herba is also a herb, used according to the SJP dictionary mainly on prescriptions. In slang, grass and herb means marijuana, another well known variety rich in THC, with which hemp is most often confused. One of the aims of my degree piece is to take off the stigmatization that cannabis has grown in social and law terms.
Herba Polonica is also the title of a quarterly magazine published since 1955, the only specialist scientific journal in the country devoted to the progress of cultivation, breeding, phytochemical, pharmacological and clinical research of herbal plants; it includes experimental and review articles.
The history of cannabis in Poland goes round the wheel, from the common plant, cultivated and exported, to the illegal existence, put into the Poland’s Drug Act in 1997, next to the „dangerous” poppy. Wide use of cannabis is well known for using hemp yarns to produce clothes, ropes and recently parts for German cars and even Lego blocks. In medicine, industrial hemp has become a gadget that can be rubbed in the form of CBD oils and burned in the form of drought. Despite such free availability on the market, its presence in Polish law is still a taboo subject. Ironically, another cannabis strain, better known to us - commonly referred to as marijuana, brings social stigma and police control to its owner and user.
On the first day, when the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw closed down, I have founded a document on the Internet, which allowed private individuals who do not have a business, neither are farmers to apply for industrial cannabis cultivation. This letter was issued by Kombinat Konopny, which, as an association, has been fighting for last 15 years for the availability of this plant in Poland. For the last months I have been unsuccessfully applying for permission, calling the offices in Warsaw. Some of the conversations I had at that time became a motive to create a video work - a documentation of illegally growing cannabis, which sowed itself for the third year in a row, probably brought by birds, this year at one of Warsaw's allotment gardens in Bielany, privately owned by my family. An unwanted problem - a matter in which I am still looking for a solution, is still going on in my life, sent further by the authorities themselves, about which I was informed laconically, by e-mail. Due to months of problems, I started to look for an alternative form of expression - a performative action in public space. This resulted in two consecutive parts of the diploma - a costume, and five separate video. The costume, designed and sewn by me, was created on the basis of a suit intended for use during the time of epidemiological threat. It was sewn from jute bags and natural cotton threads - in this way, I limited the use of artificial materials to zero. In cooperation with a farmer who owned a hemp field 1.5 years ago, I bought an appropriate amount of dried hemp (about 9kg), which I sewed on the suit in its entirety. In the prepared outfit I performed the performance in four locations in Warsaw - on a meadow, at Anielewicz's Bunker, in front of the main entrance of the Palace of Culture and Science, at Ujazdowski Castle, and at Moczydowski Mound.
The symbolic gesture, of meditative and slow laps, and above all of shaking off the drought of hemp, refers to sowing with the body movement of seeds, in special places both socially and historically, referring to the past, what lies under our feet in Warsaw, as well as references to contemporary respect for the freedom of society. The four locations selected for the recordings symbolize the directions of the world - openness to what each direction brings, as well as the desire to sow without borders.