Mózg Club - 30 years of successful experimentation

Mózg in Polish means the Brain and the origin of the name is in the play written by Tomasz Gwinciński who will be an important character in this story later, anyway the play was written in an invented language and its full name was ”Mózg, Fabryka Rzeźb Gadających Ze Sobą” (in English - ”The Brain, A Factory of Sculptures Talking To Each Other”). Over time, the name of the club was shortened to just Mózg which is a common name of the place among the locals these days.

From its very inception in 1994, Mózg was supposed to be something more than just a music venue, the building on Parkowa 2 right next to the Park of Kazimierz Wielki hosted a huge variety of exhibitions, poetry slams, raves, jazz and noise concerts, theatre plays and much more. It seems to be a living breathing organism on its own with an experimental scene that organically formed around it. "How did it all start?” and ”Where is it heading now?” became central questions of this article. There was no better person to ask for this information than the man who alongside Jacek Majewski became the founder of Mózg, that person is Sławomir Janicki.

He is still an active musician and his jazz group Trytony was in the middle of the rehearsal schedule for their long-awaited new record when we scheduled the interview.

”There’s no light in the cloakroom,” he says as we enter the room to talk. Being in this space made me realise how little has visually changed in the club since my last visit here months ago, but that’s a rather positive thing. ”It’s the fourth day of rehearsals which is really bizarre in my life, as for over 20 years I didn’t do any rehearsals as I dedicated myself to doing a completely different kind of music. Nonetheless, the material we’re currently working on definitely will be a combination of what we created these 30 years ago and who we are now so that looks to be very interesting” - said Janicki.

When one digs deeper into the circumstances surrounding Mózg’s foundation, the rather obvious conclusion is that the economic transformation in Poland caused by the fall of communism was a deeply important factor. Here’s what Mózg founder had to say about that ”From the time of grim, deep communism Poland has transformed into a free country, we’re speaking about freedom that’s even difficult to imagine now, because this freedom doesn’t exist today in the same form as it did in the 90s. There were no rules in many areas and you could do whatever you want, and obviously certain people used it in the wrong way by forming mafias and stealing while others like us used it in a good way, feeling that it is a time to experiment equally with music as with visual arts.” The improvised music or as Mr.Janicki corrected my reasoning ”playing music while improvising” is still an integral element of the scene surrounding the club, on the day of the interview there was a group of drummers performing while encouraging other members of the crowd to join them. When asked about what remained unchanged and what evolved over the years Janicki pointed out ”a lack of prejudice towards other sexualities and towards famous people who can feel at ease in Mózg is something that remained unchanged (…) over the years Mózg became much more open towards different genres of music, in the beginning we were much more orthodox and jazz-oriented, but we were much younger as well”.

Tomasz Gwinciński, a bandmate of Janicki from Trytony while also mentioning the fall of communism as an important factor in Mózg’s inception was slightly more bitter than Janicki when I asked him about the upcoming jubilee of 30 years of existence of the club ”Robert Graves said something like that about Nobel Prize - once you get the Nobel Prize you’re finished, people just stop doing anything interesting after that. And I think that’s true I just don’t enjoy testimonial games”. Individualism and an approach to art without bias of consumerism and commercialism seem to be the central idea that was the backbone of Mózg in the 90s and is still at the forefront. Gwinciński seemed to agree with me on that saying ”We didn’t have half of a million dollars to start this thing, to be fair we didn’t have anything (…) the idea that was the most important thing from the very start is you’re not pretending to be someone else, you’re not exaggerating, you just present what you have to say, and that’s everything that’s the idea of Mózg”.

Our final interviewee was Grzegorz ”Pleha” Pleszyński seemed to share the sentiment of his fellow artistic colleagues, there is no Mózg without freedom. ”In my personal hierarchy freedom is one of the highest values,” says Pleszyński ”Mózg for me was a place where I was free, able to do what I want to without enslavement or manipulation. There I was able to experiment accompanied by people who thought similarly or even when they didn’t I was able to learn something from them” he continues. Mr.Pleszyński had an opportunity to present his work in Melbourne, London, and Berlin so I thought it was valuable to ask him the question if Mózg is heading towards the international scene status, growing out of Bydgoszcz so to speak. He said,” We used to and we are still, to be frank working with avant-garde of world’s art, we have contacts, do mutual projects and without recognition of Mózg as an important place for art no one would agree to play there, it’s great that ideas from all over the world appear here and I would even say they appear in rather organic manner”.

Mózg has evolved over these 30 years, from its inception on the breath of freedom of political and economic transformation, from the orthodox jazz club to a place that’s more than a club and to a building that welcomes everyone no matter the background as long as that person respects and shows interest in art. It eventually even outgrew Bydgoszcz becoming a place recognised by alternative artists from all over the world. There is no other place in this part of Poland like Mózg and its welcoming character is best summed up by the text written in white bold letters on its outside ”Mózg is like one big apartment” it truly is.