2014

To be finally given peace and respite

From rallies revolutions and nuclear bombs [...]

To not be incited by threatening posters

Of urgent service to the Power of the Fatherland

To not be ordered to improve myself [...]

To be allowed to have something of my own So that You [...]

To not be forbidden to forget about life

Rafał Wojaczek, The Prayer of the Average Man

 

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.

 

Harmony of Contradictions: Poland is Studio Matejka’s new, site-specific work based on the interactions between performers, space and audience.