Episode 08 
I COULD HAVE GONE ANYWHERE,
I ASKED TO BE DRIVEN HOME... 
09.03.2024 
millage: 78.262 km 
53°38'27.3"N 22°27'41.0"E 
artist: Martyna Modzelewska 
curator: Magdalena Komornicka 

 

I could have gone anywhere, but I asked to be taken home… I needed rest, and I rest best in Grajewo. I still haven't gotten used to Warsaw – everything is too loud, too fast, too bright, there's just too much of everything. I'm still translating distances here into the most familiar ones – like “from Grajewo to Szczuczyn", like “from one end of Grajewo to the other"... I'm trying to live the life of a big city, translating it into small. I wanted to reverse this order – to show what life in a small town is like. Like mine – an unremarkable town in Podlasie, with 20 thousand inhabitants, without tourist traffic, without exceptional monuments. Just a typical town. The kind that there are most of in Poland.

I talked about the church in Szczuczyn, whose altar I was afraid of as a child. About the trend among violent boys from years ago – taking photos in the local park with the barrel of a tank between their legs. About my grandmother's apartment, who out of longing for the family estate lost during the war, worked as a cleaner in the United States for 40 years to finally furnish her dream home on the first floor of a communist-era apartment building with a fake fireplace and a golden wall...