Ursus. Symphony of a Factory

Open gates, no fences, boards sticking out of the mud, barking dogs.... When I saw it all for the first time, it was silent, decayed and devastated. Initially searching through the memory of my father, I wanted to hear more and more from witnesses. The factory workers who have responded to my call began to populate the hitherto empty halls. They filled them with a workers’ everyday life and work. I was getting close to subsequent narrators in sites of encounters such as flats, parks or senior citizens' clubs. My questions – their memories: squinted, their eyes were reaching out to a still accessible past; their hands extracted souvenirs, photographs and things wrapped in paper. The memories gradually began to live their own lives; recalled, they took on new meanings, sounds and colors.

The voices of former Ursus employees sounded most loudly from the loudspeakers carried on our backs, so that they would fill every piece of the factory space anew, break through the ruins and sail along the streets. We walked in crowds passing the traces of former splendor, the crumbs of infrastructure. At the end, inside the buildings, in derelict rooms, silent prototypes, historical models, the oldest specimens, monuments, books, banners – the factory’s museum. We visited also these specters together, united by the memories that surrounded us. There we re-created a common good, developed constancy in spite of the crouching devastation and demolition. We are no longer guests. We stand with them. We become them. Subsequent actions situated us more and more in this space.

The body remembers: hands, legs, back do the work again, although there are no machines, there is no factory. They show me, so that I can imagine and understand. The film is based on the memory of the body. The script, based on sixteen biographies mapped onto the factory, was written in cooperation with Igor Stokfiszewski. The choreographic and sound workshops were led by Rafał Urbacki (movement) and Dominik Strycharski (sound). They encouraged us and brought us all together. We got to know our names. Greetings and farewells have become tender. We moved on to the beginning of the shooting days, returning to the places of the work and movement. Our protagonists stood in their former workstations and started to reenact the choreography of their work. They were proud and authentic, engaged and moved. Their movement was amplified by the choir (multiplying the soloist’s activities). The return of the work has become a gesture of resistance against the destruction of the factory. Just like the arrival of vintage machines from all over the country. They merged with their creators. With each recorded shot we saved the factory. We restored its materiality in film. Soon afterwards, more places disappeared. The film remains.

Jaśmina Wójcik

Symphony of the Ursus Factory (2018)