Agnieszka Polska

The Sun as a witness to what happens on Earth is the focus of the film What the Sun has Seen. What unfolds before its eyes both climate change and war, but also epic beauty, impossible to put into words. Tears flow when the Sun looks into the innocent eyes of the Earth. We meet it in all its turbulent emotional states: love, sorrow and despair.

Polska’s animated sun refers to Walter Benjamin’s notion of the Angel of History, which he formed late in his life, before committing suicide as he fled the Nazis. His angel is an involuntary fixture in the sky, pushed forward by a strong wind from paradise. It moves in reverse, with its back turned to the future, eyes fastened on what has passed behind it. As such, it bears witness to the tragedies of history with no option to intervene, forced as it is into continuous movement. The film contains a bizarre mix of digitally manipulated imagery. A floating cigarette butt, Ayn Rand, remorseful and in tears; rotting fruit and vegetables; an underwater city; all in a steady flow we recognise from the infinite scroll of the internet browsing, or flicking through TV channels. Polska’s Sun sings an ambivalent serenade to the Earth and its people about heaven or paradise. We will make it to there before it’s too late. Everything will be fine. But perhaps it’s not quite true; perhaps the Sun only says these things to comfort us.

The work is on view at the city library, second floor.

Agnieszka Polska (b. in Lublin, 1985) is an artist based in Berlin.

Work

What the Sun has Seen, 2017

Location

Luleå konsthall
17.11.2018–17.2.2018