066 / AS / 94 is the inventory number of a table located in the waiting room for visitors of the remanded in custody at the Detention Centre in Torun. The surface of the table is entirely engraved with inscriptions, signs or slogans. I have created a light box based on the tabletop, which I used to prepare a frottage (scale 1: 1) at first. The created object is in the form of a table supplemented by photos documenting the room, where the table was originally located.
Torun’s Detention Centre is the only prison building in Poland in a form of a rotunda. This kind of Panopticon, popularly called ‘the barrel’ is located in the heart of the Torun’s historic old town. Engraving and signatures found on the tables, benches, trees, walls are clearly a manifestation of freedom and presence, they speak of the need to be significant and remembered, express the zeitgeist. The signages carved on the tabletop at the waiting room of the Detention Centre in Torun since 1994 in a particular way highlight the desperate need to designate its area of freedom.
Photos: Tytus Szabelski
Translation: Pamela Cora