Varia
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Present Performance 5: Future Perfect
Present Performance 5
Future Perfect
Time: June 30 – July 1, 2018
Venue: Gdańsk-Brzeźno, Lido Dom Przy Plaży and J. J. Haffner Brzeźnieński Park
Artists: Przemek Kamiński, Małpeczki (Maria Magdalena Kozłowska and Maria Toboła), Ania Nowak, Zuzanna Ratajczyk and Juan Pablo Cámara, Paweł Sakowicz, Marta Ziółek, guest of honour – Leszek Przyjemski, and others
Curator: Mateusz Szymanówka
Coordinator: Gabriela Warzycka-Tutak
Graphic identification: Marcel Kaczmarek
The fifth iteration of the Present Performance festival is devoted to events from the past that are not entirely certain to have happened at all. Performance will provide the way to spend time, slow time down, squander time, kill time and manage time, but above all it is a medium that allows one to warp space-time and look out for the future on the horizon. The invited artists will once again present themselves in Brzeźno – a seaside district of Gdańsk, where the division between “before”, “now” and “after” sometimes seems merely arbitrary. This time we can meet them not only at the J. J. Haffner Park, but also at Lido – Dom Przy Plaży in 4 Brzeźnieńska St. – an edifice raised on the former site of the famous Seestern Hotel, whose halls regularly witnessed dance tournaments and receptions. Built at the turn of the 20th century, the Star of the Sea burnt down in 1949 during one of such events. Local legend has it that fire was caused by Russian guests celebrating New Year’s Eve at the hotel.
This year’s festival will be inaugurated by its permanent participant – Leszek Przyjemski, whose action International Meetings of Non-Existent Galleries in 1975 inspired performance presentations in this very area. He will be followed by Paweł Sakowicz’s demonstration of his jumping technique in an open air rendition of his work Jumpcore, inspired by the mysterious suicide of Fred Herko, one of the stars of Warhol’s Factory. In the evening, viewers will be able to watch a two-hour version of Ania Nowak’s latest work Untitled #3 at one of the Lido rooms, whereas the hotel basement will host the post-apocalyptic duo of Zuzanna Ratajczyk and Juan Pablo Cámara: I remember the last episode but not the last anecdote, followed by a party with festival artists. The second day of Present Performance will feature an action by the Małpeczki duo, a solo performance by Marta Ziółek and the first season of the performative science-fiction series Soft Spot by Przemek Kamiński, whose five episodes reveal the subsequent parts of a choreographic mystery.
PROGRAMME
JUNE 30th SATURDAY
4.00 p.m. Walk around Brzeźno with Dorota Kuś
begins at Lido – Dom Przy Plaży (ul. Brzeźnieńska 4)
J. J. Haffner Brzeźnieński Park
5.30 - 7.00 p.m. Leszek Przyjemski – guest of honour // Paweł Sakowicz – Jumpcore
Lido - Dom Przy Plaży (Brzeźnieńska street 4)
7.00 - 9.00 p.m. Ania Nowak - Untitled #3
9.00 p.m. Zuzanna Ratajczyk and Juan Pablo Cámara – I remember the last episode but not the last anecdote
10.00 p.m. Past Future Party: Tancereczki (Paweł Sakowicz/Mateusz Szymanówka), Zuzanna Ratajczyk, Juan Pablo Cámara
JULY 7 SUNDAY
J. J. Haffner Brzeźnieński Park
4.00 - 6.00 p.m. Małpeczki
6.00 - 8.30 p.m. Marta Ziółek // Przemek Kamiński – Soft Spot (Season 1, Episodes 1-5)
Paweł Sakowicz - Jumpcore
Choreography and dance: Paweł Sakowicz
Dramaturgy: Mateusz Szymanówka
Music: Indecorum
Outfit: Doom 3k
Production: Maat Festival, Studio Dance Scene, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
It is not entirely certain if Fred Herko was planning to end his intimate performance with suicide. He took a bath, played Mozart’s Coronation Mass and began dancing nude in his friend’s living room. He approached the open window several times. When Sanctus came to an end, he took a running start and jumped out of the apartment’s window on the fifth floor of a building in New York’s Cornelia Street. For every ballet dancer has the impression that they can fly, and they do fly once suspended for a second in mid-air.
Ania Nowak – Untitled #3
Collaboration: Dusty Whistles, Jayson Patterson, Agata Siniarska, Ola Osowicz
Includes excerpts from texts by: Kaitlyn Boulding, Ron Padgett, Charles Bukowski, Rumi
Production: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle/Artistic Residency Department
In Untitled #3 (Ohne Titel #3) Ania Nowak reflects on the possibility of losing attachment to obvious categories and binary divisions into thought/feeling, fact/fiction, work/free time, communism/capitalism. Her performance explores the work of tenderness and rhythms of wrath in late capitalism. The artist investigates language, kiss and breath as ways of communication.
Przemek Kamiński – Soft Spot
Choreography: Przemek Kamiński
Creation and performance: Przemek Kamiński, Suvi Kemppainen, Julia Plawgo, Alistair Watts
Dramaturgy: Mateusz Szymanówka
Outfits: Konrad Parol
Financed from the funds of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe
Support: Polish Institute in Berlin, Tanzfabrik Berlin, TATWERK – Performative Forschung
Soft Spot is a science fiction drama performance series choreographed by Przemek Kamiński, with Suvi Kemppainen, Julia Plawgo, Alistair Watts and Przemek Kamiński in the main roles. Set in the fictional city of Berlin, Germany, in the late 2010s, it portrays four strangers who lives become connected due to a strange dream. The first season concentrates on the group’s search for the legendary “soft spot”, amongst supernatural events happening around the city. It consists of five episodes – “What We Saw in the Dream”, “Full Moon”, “The Cave/Time Warp”, “I Knew You Were Waiting” and “To the Mountain/Nucleus” – that can be presented separately or in any order. Each of them reveals a different part of a choreographic mystery.
Paweł Sakowicz
choreographer and dancer. Graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in political studies and holds an MA in performance and choreography from the London Contemporary Dance School. Sakowicz created the works Bernhard, TOTAL and Jumpcore. Collaborates with choreographers and visual artists in Poland and abroad; works as a choreographer in theatre spectacles. Sakowicz received a distinction in the 22nd National Competition at the Polish Contemporary Art Exhibition. Holder of a scholarship of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, nominated to the 2016 Polityka Passport Award in the Theatre category.
Active in the field of broadly understood choreography. Creates solo and collective works that explore the tensions of language as well as understatements and transformations of the body. Nowak pursues research on love as a strategy of knowledge production (http://technologiesoflove.tumblr.com), within which she investigates affective economies, unstable structures of care and makes attempts to redefine sensuality. Her projects have been presented at Sophiensaele and Akademie der Künste w Berlinie, Nowy Teatr, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Art Stations Foundation in Poznań and Arts Santa Mònica in Barcelona, amongst other venues. Graduate of studies in choreography at the HZT Berlin. Lives and works in Berlin.
Zuzanna Ratajczyk ( b. 1989 in Warsaw)
Lives and works in Berlin. Her works have been presented at KEM, Museum of Modern Art, Studio Theatre in Warsaw; Yvonne Lambert, Import Projects, DOCK 11, Broken Dimanche Press in Berlin; Jacuzzi, Arti et Amicitiae, Veem House for Performance in Amsterdam; National Dance Center in Bucharest, amongst other venues, and at the online exhibition organised in Athens (http://anightinalexander.gr/). Since 2015, co-creator of Plural Melts, a cycle of events and performances at Yvonne Lambert in Berlin.
Juan Pablo Cámara
Born in Argentina, where he began his education in the field of dance and theatre and worked as an actor and performer. In 2013, he moved to Amsterdam to study choreography at the SNDO (School for New Dance Development), from which he graduated last year. His works have been presented at festivals and exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Amsterdam, Berlin and Vienna. Collaborates as a performer with choreographers Jefta Van Dintherem and Michele Rizzo.
Małpeczki, or superheroes of culture and art, is a duo formed in 2015 by Maria Toboła – visual artist, sculptress and performer and Maria Magdalena Kozłowska – voice performer, singer and director. Małpeczki [Little Monkeys] is above all an online variety show that features sketches, songs and guest performances by other artists. Situated at the intersection of video art, theatre and performance, the essays thematise specific topics – death, respect, creative process, money. The superheroes rely on repetition – both named Maria and sharing physical resemblance, they deliver the lyrics simultaneously in an old-fashioned manner of kittens from the communist past. In their subsequent incarnations, Małpeczki appear as tricksters, TV hosts, detectives, gurus, hooligans. Their adventures have been presented by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, Zona Sztuki Aktualnej in Szczecin and Bęc Zmiana foundation. Authors of the Manifesto of New Oneirism.
Marta Ziółek
Choreographer and performer. Studied at the Inter-Faculty Studies in the Humanities at the University of Warsaw and the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Her work relies on the language of popular culture and new technologies. Interested in the question of identity and new rituals, investigates the borders between visual arts, performing arts and choreography.
Przemek Kamiński
Performer and choreographer based in Berlin. Works both in the context of performing arts and visual arts. His recent works were presented, amongst others, at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, Kunsthalle Zurich, Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, Art Stations Foundation in Poznań, Sophiensaele in Berlin, Polish Institute in Berlin and during Malta Festival in Poznań. Graduate of HZT Inter-University Center for Dance Berlin.