Supersam | Collection Co–selection

The authors of the Supersam are three German artists – photographers, filmmakers and installation artists: Marcus Kaiser, and the artistic duo – Andree Korpys and Marcus Löffler. They are interested in social and political issues, as well as artistic explorations concerning contemporary transformations of the media in the documentation of social phenomena.

The film Supersam is the outcome of a residence at Ujazdowski Castle in 2002. At the time, a decision was made to demolish the modernist structure and replace it with a new building. The interesting architecture of Supersam, its history and, above all, the people who have been working there for over forty years, provided the artists with material needed to create a fascinating documentary.

The film features interviews with people who have worked at Supersam and know it inside out. The film is a kind of scripted documentary: emotionless employees describing the opening ceremony, the store’s commercial offer and the internal rules of running the store, are in fact reading texts prepared by the artists in advance. The staged “interviews” are deliberately contrasted with scenes depicting their daily activities: preparing cuts of meat, counting money, or taking lunch breaks, during which the artists recorded their natural behaviours, jokes, and casual conversations.

This film is part of a larger body of work that deals with the subject of socio-cultural transformation in Poland. It has both historical (it features an outstanding architectural object that no longer exists, and takes into account the social contexts of architecture) and artistic value – it is an interesting experiment with the documentary film formula.