TZ: Konteksty 2012

Contexts – the 2nd Sokolovsko Festival of Ephemeral Art., August 18-22, 2012 is the second edition of an event promoting this area of artistic activities. Apart from presenting performance art, it features screenings (also with live music), exhibitions, workshops, documentation and talks. We invited a group of over fifty artists, critics, curators and art historians representing seven countries.

The programme offers an remarkable perspective at performance art in the context of the pioneer work of Zbigniew Warpechowski. Two historical points of references are avant-garde artists Franciszka and Stefan Themersons and Andrzej Partum (exhibitions, films, documentation, talks). Presentations of classics- nestors Jerzy Bereś, Józef Robakowski, Roland Miller, Shirley Cameron, Alastair MacLennan, artists of middle generation, incl. Nigel Rolfe, Janusz Bałdyga, Ines Amado, Ewa Zarzycka, Jiri Suruvka, Nenad Bogdanovic, John Newling, Anna Płotnicka, Adina Bar-On and the young generation artists (off festival) will form a contemporary, critical picture of performance art.

CONTEXTS is not a canonical festival of performance art. We focus on widening the perception of ephemeral art by presenting its roots. Building an installation (Warpechowski’s The Boat of Progress), performative objects (Anna Płotnicka), creating situations related to the cultural roots (Niedziółka’s „The Archeology of Meeting” involving the inhabitants of Sokolovsko and festival participants in building and firing an object-kiln) mark this direction.

The festival is accompanied by „Perforations” International Artistic Encounters, a workshop for the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw and Poznan, its instructors including Marcin Berdyszak, Colm Clarke, Sybille Omlin and others.

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Curators: Małgorzata Sady, Ewa Zarzycka

The festival is located in an extraordinary place” in progress”which is being built by InSitu Foundation. Both, the art centre and the festival may become a very special spot on the artistic map of Poland, Europe and the world.

Artists, curators, art critics, theoreticians and historians participating in the Festival: Zbigniew Warpechowski, Inês Amado, Janusz Bałdyga, Adina Bar-On, Marcin Berdyszak, Jerzy Bereś ,Bożenna Biskupska ,Nenad Bogdanovic ,Grzegorz Borkowski ,Shirley Cameron, Andrzej Ciesielski, Colm Clarke, Małgorzata Dawidek Gryglicka, Andres Galeano, Jerzy Grzegorski , Łukasz Guzek, Florian Feigl, Angelika Fojtuch, Bogusław Jasiński, Sophie Jocz, Alicja Jodko , Mariusz Jodko, Adam Klimczak, Leszek Krutulski, Alastair MacLennan, Mrin Mierzicki, Holly Morrison, Wanda Lacrampe, Marcin Michalak, Roland Miller ,Maria Morzuch, John Newling, Tomasz Niedziółka, Sybille Omlin, Anna Płotnicka, Marcin Polak ,Zygmunt Rytka, Dawid Radziszewski, Iza Robakowska, Józef Robakowski, Nigel Rolfe, Andrew Spira, Jiří Surůvka, Paweł Szamburki, SzaZaZe, Maria Wrońska, Patryk Zakrocki, Ewa Zarzycka, Hubert Zemler, Andrzej Partum, Franciszka i Stefan Themersonowie

Artyści programu Off: Michał Bałdyga, Loïc Bertrand, Oskar Chmioła, Tomasz Drewicz, Jagoda Kiciak,Magdalena Kita, Petra Filipovska, Paweł Korbus, Tomasz Koszewnik, Karolina Kubik, Giulietta Ockenfuß ,Katerina Olivová, Przemysław Przepióra, Natalia Sekuła , Jakub Słomkowski, Katerina Sudolska, Dawid Szuwarski 313, Monika Szydłowska, Łukasz Trusewicz, Michelle Yom

Information on Festival programme

The programme of Contexts 2012 - The 2nd Sokolovsko Festival of Ephemeral Art is focused on Zbigniew Warpechowski, his artistic practice and approach to art. He is the key to all references in the festival and the unifying element of its structure.

When one thinks “Warpechowski” one cannot overlook some of his performances, including “Nothing”, “A Dialogue with Fish”, “Closing the Darkness in My Hands”, “Emptiness – Quotations from Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tse” and “Shofar”.

Almost every paragraph in Warpechowski’s books can be used as a motto for “Contexts”. One of them is: “The acts of true art in all its manifestations are unpredictable, that is we cannot force the Giver to offer us new gifts, plead him for them or demand them from him. We are not able to train ourselves to be creative in a planned proportion or at a given time”.

Each invited artist is equally important at the festival. What matters is all of us getting together and what can result from it, sharing the space, practice and thoughts. It is important to create a platform for communications between well-established artists and young beginners. As Warpechowski says “novelty in art, the true one is not an enemy of “the old”. It brings out, emphasizes, explains and establishes. The old completes and resounds. It cannot be threatened by any novelties. The youth that is the novelty of art also benefits from it, when the old is noble, weighty and behaves with dignity with respect to the youth. It is the best test for both parties. The standards go up, forward and backwards.”

We believe that the accumulation of so many people, ideas and approaches will not only bring out artistic acts, constituting a new place will be constituted. This situation will open space for the unknown and unsaid.

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Apart from presenting performance art the festival programme features:

• The Urge to Create Visions (continued), an exhibition presenting the selected areas of Franciszka and Stefan Themersons’ rich and versatile oeuvre. It focuses on the relationships between images and words, images and sounds, and explores the triad photogram –photograph - film. The exhibition is accompanied by cinema screenings, including theThemersons films, reconstructions of their lost films, documentaries about the Themersons and feature films, and a concert.

• Other Places in This Place – several well established art places present their activities in Sokolovsko, a new art place, still in its formative stage. Artists and art curators provide us with information about their places in different ways, sometimes in a form of documentation, sometimes – discussion and sometimes - creative acts.

• The exhibition documenting Zbigniew Warpechowski’s oeuvre consists of video and photographs of his most recognized performances that he has realised worldwide for almost 50 years. During the festival the artist will be building an art object in the park.

• The oeuvre of the late Andrzej Partum is presented through talks, video documentation and photographs. Images, sounds, words and objects as well as memories convey the unique poetic and conceptual qualities of his art.

• „ The Archeology of Meeting”, a pottery workshop run daily by Tomasz Niedziółka. This worskhop is a place of sculpting a ceramic object and „preserving” it. Everybody is invited to join in, local people, especially children and young people, students and the festival participants. The workshop is run from 11 a.m. every day.

• SzaZaZe ( Szamburski, Zakrocki, Zemler) perform live music to the Themersons’ films. They created an original soundtrack to the amazing cinematographic experiments of Franciszka and Stefan. The sounds generated by percussion, clarinets, violin, marimba complement and add another dimension to the films.

• Perforations Artistic Encounters - a series of workshops and lectures run by the practitioners and theoreticians of performance art - Janusz Bałdyga, Marcin Berdyszak, Colm Clarke, Sibylle Omlin, Nigel Rolfe, Ewa Zarzycka, Jiri Suruvka, Alastair MacLennan, Adina Bar-On) targeted at art students.

Curators: Małgorzata Sady, Ewa Zarzycka

German section curator: Georgi Begun

Koordynacja / Coordination: Antoni Burzyński, Zuzanna Fogtt

Organizer: Fundacja Sztuki Współczesnej „In Situ” | In Situ Modern Art Foundation

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Festival website here