Slavs and Tatars
SOCIETY OF RASCALS
For their second show at Raster, the Slavs and Tatars collective presents an installation in the form of a pickle-juice bar. The title Society of Rascals (Towarzystwo Szubrawców) was drawn from the name of a now-forgotten literary society of 19th-century Vilnius, famous for its heavily ironic, caustic displays of satire that stood counter to the self-important stance of the romantics, their soothsaying and exalted engagement in the nationalist discourse. The pickled juices served by the artists along with provocative lexical gymnastics are meant to suggest an antidote for the pathos of Polish patriotism, while also expressing their own soured regard for any politics based on the oppositional binary of us-versus-them.
