„Neighbours: the limits of proximity”
performative installation of Strefa WolnoSłowa Foundation
curator: Agnieszka Różyńska
December 8 and 9, 12 a.m. – 6.00 p.m.
December 8, 7.00 p.m. – performative walk

Adam Durjasz (HU) / Ivana Drenjanin (SRB) / Kseniya Homel (BY) / Pavlo Lukowy (UA) / Agnieszka Nasierowska (PL) / Mohammed Rezazadeh (IR) / Inga Shemaeva (RU) / Daniel Sadr (IR) / Michał Salwiński (PL) / Izabela Stolarska (PL) / Ada Tymińska (PL) / Dorian Widawski (PL)

Neighbours: The Limits of Proximity is a project in which young artists from different backgrounds have been invited to lead creative work with migrant groups and to reflect on our social responsibility to be together.

The creators of the performative installation are building a space in which we can jointly experience artistic interventions located at the interface between the performing and visual arts, based around the theme of biographies. In the process they ask questions about the identities that form at the intersection of their experiences from their countries of origin, on the one hand, and their observations and experiences of life in Poland, on the other. The space will be a ‘movable’ site on the map of artistic events happening within the mental and territorial limits/borders of Polishness. 

We have heard a lot about limits/borders in recent years. New divisions have been emerging in public debates, media reports, state documents and daily conversations. The concepts that have so far given us a relative sense of security are being redefined and transformed.

Faced with the radicalizing judgments disseminated by the media to mass audiences, many artists use familiar forms of expression and communication, but also search for new artistic tools to ask questions and construct alternative answers relating to the contemporary public sphere. They ask about who and how (on what terms) can engage freely in it, and who and why is denied this right. They comment on the opinions of those who can influence our coexistence and attitudes towards each other.

Our response is the experience of being neighbours and of the limits of its closeness: being together in process and action, jointly building intimate experiences at the intersection of performative and artistic, on the one hand, and documentary and social, on the other, making work based on small and personal stories or gestures of sensitivity and, most importantly, exploring one’s own and other people’s identities and discovering empathy for those who come into our lives as the ‘other’.

Curated by Agnieszka Różyńska, the project is run by Strefa WolnoSłowa in partnership with the Poznań’s Scena Robocza (Working Stage).

We encourage forum participants to see 12 performances and installations that will be staged/mounted in the spaces of the Teatr Powszechny.