vernissage: 4.04.2024 / Thursday / 17:00 / Silesian Museum in Katowice / T. Dobrowolskiego St. 1 / outdoor area, Fajrant Square / Duration of the exhibition: 4.04 - 30.06.2024
The Gliwice radio station is an important symbol of the city, a landmark, an element combining what is historical with new symbolic identifications. Made of larch wood, the radio station's mast is the tallest wooden structure in Europe and also the tallest wooden broadcasting station in the world.
The radio station is a Monument to History - it was there that the Gliwice provocation, a false flag operation that was a propaganda diversionary action, took place on August 31, 1939. To gain a pretext for declaring war on Poland, the Third Reich planned a series of staged events on the Polish-German border. In Gliwice, German attackers posing as Poles attacked a radio station. Franciszek Honiok, considered the symbolic first casualty of World War II, was killed in the action. From the prepared message, only nine words finally reached radio listeners: "Attention, this is Gliwice. The radio station is in Polish hands...".
An article on FALSE FLAG appeared in. KF43
The contemporary image of the Gliwice tower is a visual sign associated with the city. Jadwiga Janowska's series "False Flags" is a photographic project about the subjectification of symbols. Janowska alludes to history, using archival photographs taken during the construction of the radio station's mast, then depicting its contemporary face. She shows the omnipresence of the tower, towering over the city, emerging from behind buildings and trees, present in public and private spaces, and even on the bodies of residents. The sign is exploited in various ways. In a perverse way, the photographer emphasizes that the symbol of the city escapes rigid frameworks and becomes a way of identifying with a place. "False flag" by Jadwiga Janowska indicates that the symbol of a given space is, on the one hand, something permanent, and on the other hand it is also the most subjective thing in the city.
Curator of the exhibition: Dominika Szczech
