Alex Baczyński Jenkins

Us Swerve is a choreographic score for performers on rollerblades who orbit one another whilst reciting, remixing, and reformulating fragmented lines of poetry that meditate on desire. This contingent, polyphonic script circulates among the performers and is perpetually altered by their movements, attitudes, and affects. Through their continuous speech, the performers begin to channel a queer archive of verses and inflections, including lines from Essex Hemphill, Eileen Myles, and Langston Hughes. The rollerbladers both move through and are set in motion by these articulations of desire and the sensuality of repetition.

Alex Baczyński-Jenkins works with choreography and performance. He has previously presented solo exhibitions in venues such as the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland (2019), Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, Poland (2018) and Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK (2017). He has also presented work at: Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich, Switzerland (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2017); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2017); Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, New York, US (2016); Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland (2016); and Basel Liste, Switzerland (2014). He is one of the co-founders of the feminist and queer project space Kem in Warsaw. Kem have recently realized projects at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (namely “Kem Care” in 2017) and have been on a one-year residency at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in the same city (titled “Three Springs,” 2018–2019). Baczynski-Jenkins was a fellow at the Home Workspace Program in Beirut, Lebanon, between 2012–2013. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Arts Foundation Award and the Frieze Artist Award.