Fotograf Magazine

A blob of off-white goo floats up and down, set in motion by the membrane of a speaker. For a fraction of a second, it hovers in the air like an organic abstract sculpture, resembling a miniature of a Barbara Hepworth piece. It’s called “Monument Generator For the Public Space of the Ideal State” and it’s a piece by Nomadic State–the duo of Stach Szumski and Karolina Mełnicka. The average life span of a monument in midtown Warsaw, where Mełnicka and Szumski are based, is even shorter than that of a human. It turns out that stone is even more fragile than flesh, and heroes quickly become public enemies. Nomadic State’s generator is a cheeky response to that problem–a device producing abstract monuments, erected and toppled within a second in a potentially never-ending cycle.

The generator was part of the temporary embassy that Mełnicka and Szumski established in Munich, but normally their state is, in fact, a nomadic one. The trips they set out on do not at all resemble carefully scheduled diplomatic visits. A fortuitous road trip to Siberia with a retired physician yearning for the USSR times? Check. Travelling through tourist resorts on the Sinai coast, abandoned before their completion? No problem. Going through the far reaches of northern Russia, Korea and Japan, the artists ask about the meaning of life, talking to local shamans (the project “In Search of the Meaning of Life”, 2018). In Egypt, they watch the political unrest shaking the mirage oasis of peace and luxury (project “Tourrorism all inclusive”, 2017). On the outskirts of Warsaw, they traverse Chinese supermarket like Indiana Jones excavating ancient cultural treasures (“Free Export”, 2018).