24 Mar – 09 Oct 2016

WAKOU…co?/ WAKOU…what?
A story of an unnamed toy.
Museum of Toys and Play, Kielce, Poland
Curator and Collector: Monika Patuszyńska

How does it feel to have no name? How does it feel to be one of the most popular toys of the XX century and not to be an object important enough in a serious world to be awarded its rightful place in history? To arise during the Second World War and to have nothing to do with it? To have two inventors in Switzerland, who never talk about themselves and Mr Schowanek (by some called ‘Little Bata’) from Czechoslovakia, hidden in the darkness of history, who, according to those who recently bought his factory, which was founded over 100 years ago, manufactured the toy even before its inventors…

Giving a name is a way of taming and at the same time distinguishing a thing. How did it happen that all over the world despite the ongoing battles between the producers, this particular toy never had the privilege of having its own name? Why for so many years did the languages of the countries in which it appeared not find a word that would suit it? Though it was present in the lives of successive generations since the beginning of the XX century, there was never the need to give it individuality, or identity. In a sense, without a name, could it exist beyond the material world? Could it cross the boundary between the external world and the world of our thoughts?

Our memory of push up toys rests in our muscles – our fingers perfectly remember how hard and at what angle to push the button to produce the desired effect. When resting in the hands they invoke memories. The muscles remember them better than the mind.

Not to have a name, it is almost like not having a shadow, not existing. The memory, which is accustomed to work with words, displaces anything which has no name in the first place.

So can one tell about something with no name, about something that cannot be described in a single word? Something that is only acknowledged through the senses employed to experience the world, not to analyse it?