The exhibition explores the paradigm shift of “being an artist”. During the past 20 years, artists have been forced to redefine their place on the map of social roles and economical interdependences. A stark example of this transformation that took on quite a radical form was the artists' strike in May 2012, initiated by the Civic Forum for Contemporary Art. This topic constructed a bracket for this exhibition that was largely inspired by the libretto of the first national German opera by Carl Maria von Weber's entitles Freelancer (premiered in 1821).

The compilation of video presented in ursula blikle lounge is a selection of works from the Zachęta video collection. The programme of the thematic screenings of videos is a spectrum, in other words a certain organized selection of phenomena and concepts analysed by the films’ authors. It is a presentation of works of the newest video art in Poland, created by outstanding artists of the young and middle generation. The screenings that comprise the project Spectrum have been divided into the following thematic blocks: sound, gender, social portrait and roles. The selection made was dictated in part by the technical conditions of the place of presentation – the videos selected were one channel projections, whose theme and aesthetics made them appropriate to be shown in the proposed form. The choice of these works was also an attempt to underline the range of themes that Polish video artists engage with. It shows both a cross-section and the spectrum of problems relevant today in Polish art. This should not be treated as a full picture, but rather as an overview of Polish video art of the last two decades.