HARMONY OF CONTRADICTIONS. POLAND
Research of site-specific form, interactions between performers, space and audience.
Performance of Studio Matejka’s piece featuring invited artists (Czech Republic, France, Greece, Poland, Italy, USA), partner Grotowski Institute, Burghers Brewery, Wroclaw, Poland, 2014
The performers: Cécile Da Costa, Agnieszka Ćwieląg, Marek Gluziński, Teodora Grano, Orfeusz Jakubiszyn, Kamila Klamut, Aleksandra Kugacz, Claude Mumbere, Bartosz Ostrowski, Natalia Pieczuro, Orest Sharak, Wiley Naman Strasser, Konstantinos Symsiris
Director: Matej Matejka
Assistant directors: Alexandra Kazazou and Irena Tomažin
Stage manager: Racha Baroud
Choreography: Magdalena Koza
Set design: Tomáš Žižka
Intermedia: meg janus, Alexandra Bury
Music: Maok and DJ Teskko
Voice: Jacek Zawadzki
Costumes: Dominica Kuźniar and Simela Ziota
Concept and organization: Matej Matejka, Agnieszka Ćwieląg, Marek Gluziński
Technical coordination and lighting: Kamil Piwko
Poster designer: Paweł Janczarek
Graphic design, photography post processing: meg janus, Alexandra Bury
Technical supervision: Piotr Jacyk
Photography: Karol Jarek, Alexandra Bury, meg janus
Video documentation: Monika Kaczmarczyk, Rafał Łukasz Renner, meg janus
Coordinators of the project: Aleksandra Konopko, Beata Wrońska (Grotowski Institute)
Production: Studio Matejka Foundation in collaboration with the Grotowski Institute
PR: Monika Łuczkowska
Harmony of Contradictions. Poland is about watching Poland from a distance, with irony, but simultaneously with commitment and seriousness. It is both a return to the past, and a critical gaze at our current reality filled with absurdities and contradictions. The project attempts to understand and convey some aspects of Poland’s juxtaposed identity. It does this by presenting a symbiosis of opposite standards, attitudes and behaviours. Using a combination of contemporary performance, new media and installations, the artists create a subjective landscape of what Poland means for them.
Moving through the spaces of a former Wrocław brewery, the viewer becomes a witness and active participant in both public and intimate situations. They will literally and imaginatively pass through places forgotten by our collective consciousness and history, and places constantly recurring in our present. The brewery becomes an arcade of consumption, a pillory of the past and a grandstand built from the fragments of what for the artists, Polish and international, is the essence of the Polish soul.
