Matt's Gallery - Robin Klassnik, Mike Nelson and Susan Hiller

Mike Nelson's new work, More Things (To the memory of Honore de Balzac)
http://mikenelson.org.uk/

Susan Hiller new work, Channels - collection of audio records of people's near death experiences
http://www.susanhiller.org/

End of a one hour conversation with Robin Klassnik (in orange), founder of Matt's and collaborator and artist - also joined by a random Russian thinker and here below, second from right, Simon Raven artist - he  once owned Mike Nelson's old miniature snooker table !
http://www.nevarnomis.com/index.php?/projects/its-ok-to-be-boring-/

I was taken by Robin's story towards the end of the conversation - why he opened Matt's in the first place.

Inspired by his visit to Jarosław Kozłowski's Akumulatory 2 Gallery, in Posnan, in the early 1970s - needed a non standard space to point him in his future direction - will YPOM do the same for us?

Interesting use of a non commercial gallery space to attract artists from around the world - Matt's has become the same - even in our short hour there we met and conversed with three other artists- Robin, Russian thinker man and Simon Raven - the gallery as both a meeting, discussion and collaboration space.

see below for background to gallery

Also Simon Raven owned Mike Nelson's old miniature snooker set …

BEYOND CORRUPTED EYE
AKUMULATORY 2 GALLERY, 1972–1990

This exhibition is an attempt to present the history of a gallery that for eighteen years of its operations remained a non-commercial space for presenting the work of artists from all over the world. The exhibitions and discussions initiated there and a critical discourse pursued in both theory and practice situate it among the most significant actors on the then map of artistic geography. Functioning in defiance of geopolitical divisions, the Akumulatory 2 Gallery was a place where the public was able to become familiar with art from the East and West, with artists from Eastern and Western Europe, the United States and Canada, from South America and Asia.

The gallery’s origins date back to the NET idea, formulated in 1971 by Jarosław Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski, and a subsequent manifesto mailed to some three hundred and fifty artists and art critics in Poland and internationally, inviting collaboration and a free exchange of artistic facts. Despite official reprisals, the idea of an anti-institutional, non-controllable NET was continued and developed at the Akumulatory 2 Gallery in Poznań, founded by Kozłowski in 1972. Functioning until 1990, the gallery was a space where various artistic ideas and philosophies intersected, where various forms and modes of art’s functioning were presented and discussed. The gallery showed artists associated with conceptual art, minimal art, land art, mail art, concrete poetry, Fluxus, as well practices combining the visual arts with music.

From 1972 to 1990 the Akumulatory 2 Gallery presented a total of one hundred and ninety five events, from exhibitions, through performances, actions and music projects, to lectures. The gallery functioned as a quasi-institution, lacking institutional support and often changing venues. Run, and largely financed, by Jarosław Kozłowski, it was a space that was put at the disposal of the invited artists without obliging them to adhere to any predefined agenda.