Have we done enough?
oryginal tittle: “Have we done enough?
Vistulan Boulevards, Warsaw 2022
The action with Bartek Kiełkowicz
Photo:
Mateusz Syta, Oleg Marusic, Dominik Łowicki
Sculpture:
Mermaid (2022)
170 x 56 x 25 cm
Concrete
The Warsaw Mermaid is dead. She was killed by our indifference – says Ida Karkoszka, sculptor and activist.
The mermaid lies in a body bag. Above her, a group of artists is sketching a large inscription on the steps. They finish their work after several hours and the question they leave is: „Have we done enough?”. Why in English? – I ask Bartłomiej Kiełkowicz, visual artist and co-organizer of the action. – „This question, 'Are we doing enough?', we direct to everyone, not just to Poles. I ask myself that question. In relation to the war in Ukraine, the polluted Oder River. Every day, I crossed the Gdańsk Bridge to my studio and saw how shallow the Vistula River is. I wondered if I was doing enough to save it. Whether what I'm doing is enough at all.”
And why did you write it with chalk? – Because we are shouting into the ether. After two or three days, the writing begins to disperse. Then it gains additional meaning. Like at protests, where we put in a lot of effort, but after some time, everything fades and evaporates – says the artist. Kiełkowicz grabs the mermaid by the shoulders, while Ida Karkoszka takes her by the tail. They lead the deceased towards the Vistula. From a distance, the sculpture looks like a corpse in a body bag. – At first, the mermaid was black. I painted her silver-pink-blue when I saw pictures of dead fish from the Oder. The Oder died, and this sculpture represents death – says the sculptor.
As I am editing the film material, both artists amuse me with reports on what happens next with the mermaid, and their stories keep getting stranger. „Yesterday, they took her, so we got her back,” Kiełkowicz writes. „The mermaid is on the back of a truck, caught in a net.” The mermaid was collected by cleaning services on the boulevards, but after a conversation with the sculptor, the workers returned the sculpture. „They are taking down the mermaid's details,” Kiełkowicz writes a moment later, attaching a photo where a city guard is indeed standing over the sculpture, taking notes. „Two plainclothes officers are sitting in a car, keeping an eye on the mermaid,” I read. The men were supposed to approach Bartek and ask if it was his work. „One of the gentlemen kindly explained to me that the inscription is visible from the bridge. And he showed me in Google Translator what it means.” „The sculpture is gone,” says Ida Karkoszka. „Bartek was with it at 1 PM, and at that time, it was still by the Vistula. But by 4 PM, it was already gone. The man Bartek spoke to sat on a bench for an hour and a half, but saw no one. So someone must have taken the mermaid between 1 PM and 2:30 PM.”
To determine the mermaid's fate, I called the spokesperson for the city guard – „I don't know anything about it,” he disappointed me with his answer. „I heard in the morning about an incident with the sculpture, but I don't know what happened to it. We certainly didn't take it.” When asked if this was the official position of the city guard, he said he did not know what was happening with the mermaid at the moment.
Dominik Łowicki
SCULPTURE 
Siren / Mermaid
oryginal tittle: “Syrena”
(2022)
170 x 56 x 25 cm
Concrete