Adam Szymczyk
Adam Szymczyk, Vienna, 14 March 2023
“I like being exposed to languages I don’t understand.”
Polish curator and art critic Adam Szymczyk, who curated 2017’s Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens, has been a member of the Kontakt Collection’s Art Advisory Committee since 2004. In this conversation, he speaks about a collecting policy that refrains from seeking out “incumbents,” his affinity for the critically distanced stance of his countryman Witold Gombrowicz, Japanese poetry that blossoms only when performed, curators as translators, a proclivity for unintelligible languages, and his most recent attempts to re-translate and evaluate some of his own early short stories.
“I like being exposed to languages I don’t understand.”
Polish curator and art critic Adam Szymczyk, who curated 2017’s Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens, has been a member of the Kontakt Collection’s Art Advisory Committee since 2004. In this conversation, he speaks about a collecting policy that refrains from seeking out “incumbents,” his affinity for the critically distanced stance of his countryman Witold Gombrowicz, Japanese poetry that blossoms only when performed, curators as translators, a proclivity for unintelligible languages, and his most recent attempts to re-translate and evaluate some of his own early short stories.