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Culture sub-Program
Strand/category Cooperation projects
Deadline
01/10/2014
Cultural operator(s)
Name
Teatr Studio im. St. I. Witkiewicza
Short
description
The Studio Theatre was established in 1972 from the Classical
Theatre with help of Jozef Szajna - an eminent scenographer, director,
painter and theatre theorist. The same year a contemporary art
gallery was established as a part of the theatre.
Since then, the Theatre is associated with exhibition and stage
activities - an experimental stage and open to searching for new
formal solutions. Theatre offers wide range of educational activities
prepared by both the Theatre and Gallery.
The Studio Theatre is located in the centre of Warsaw, in the Palace of
Culture, and has an extensive infrastructure facilities - offices for each
department, three theatre stages, foyer (for theatrical activities and
workshops), two exhibition halls, rehearsal rooms, storage rooms,
dressing rooms, and technical studios.
Contact details
[email protected]
Project
Field(s)
Theatre, visual arts, exhibition, performance
Grant project title: THE BOUNDLESS CONTINENT/KONTYNENT
BEZ GRANIC
Description
The nineteenth century was the time of nations awakening;
particularly in Central Europe, this awakening had a dramatic character,
since the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Hungarians – subjugated by the
Russian and Austrian empires – were deprived of political freedom. The
process of the crystallization of nations, which began around the time of
the French Revolution, ended in the twentieth century, and the nation-state
became the fullest embodiment of this process. The result of the rise of
nation-states has been nationalism that has taken on many different forms
from racist to democratic. Nonetheless, regardless of the context-specific
way in which nationalism functions, its main preoccupation is delineating
boundaries and borders between the national and the Other.
The various boundaries and borders generated by nationalisms
constitute the source of contradictory identity tendencies, which in turn are
the root of conflicts, wars, and family tragedies. Not only do the borders
divide territories but also they tear apart social groups, as well as
individuals, causing painful fissures. Borders unite and divide
simultaneously; the world outside the borders becomes an imaginarium of
Others who constantly threaten the community united as a nation. One of
the tragic symbols of the twentieth century has become the barbed wire; it
has entered our common memory and to a large extent it has contributed
to – first to the idea and later to the creation of – Europe without borders.
However, the experience of the last centuries makes us realize that borders
do exist or remain, even when they have been invisible, dismantled, or
moved.
The fundamental border of contemporary Europe has become
the outer border of the Schengen area: a line created by the borders
of member states, which changes when the European Union accepts
new members. Immigrants and refugees, who come from countries
and continents outside this clearly defined territory (particularly from
poor region), and who cross the border of the European Union, have
become a global phenomenon. Their migration has created new lines
of division inside Europe.
Invisible borders still divide Europe and affect the identity of
communities in ways that are at times difficult to discern. Divisions
frequently overlap, thus creating contradictions that reveal themselves as
indeterminate areas in the symbolic sphere – a tool of political and social
conflicts.
Institutions of culture and art, which are responsible for the
shaping of national identities, support the system of domination and the
distribution of values produced by political leaders and historical politics.
In the process of executing government-supported cultural projects, new
social, aesthetic, and other borders and boundaries are performed and
instituted.
The goal of our grant project is the revealing of the borders and
divisions that exist in our minds and have profound impact on our
behaviors, goals, and choices. Also, we wish to show “borders” as a
category that possesses its own identity. At the same time we conceive of
a post-national and post-colonial identity of a contemporary European as a
polysemic, decentered, unclear, and borderline identity (I/not me). The
liminal position lets us observe strategies and structures that allow the
marginalization the majority of the population and the exclusion of a
stratum of society, based on age, gender, or ill health. The idea of the
nation dissolves into the imagined narrative of how the social and
economic organization of the world functions internationally and
globally. The idea of a “natural” world order is based on the idea of
the alleged “authenticity” of local cultures and on the geographically
constructed image of the world.
On the one hand, today’s democracy celebrates human rights and
accepts the practice of social dissent, while on the other hand, it
perpetuates all kinds of social, national, and racial hierarchies. The fact of
global communication in the English language creates a global
hierarchy of languages and cultures. Social events and conflicts, which
take place in remote parts of the world, become a part of our lives via
the Internet, TV news programs, photography, and tourism. Reality is
created with the help of images; reality is also produced with various
tools of social manipulation. The result of such practices is the
destabilization of borders and boundaries between one’s own reality
and the reality of others, and between the objective and imagined
reality.
GRANT PROJECT EVENTS
A WORKSHOP: THE DEMARCATION LINE
The grant project will allow us to co-organize with our grant partners a
month-long workshop, in the course of which the participants will work on
communication techniques, using the tools taken from the field of acting,
dance, and photography. They will also take part in a seminar moderated
by communication experts.
The workshop will be based, inter alia, on Leonora Carrington’s play, The
Hearing Trumpet, and on the texts proposed by the workshop’s authors.
The place where the workshop will take place is to be still determined.
A PERFORMANCE: LEONORA CARRINGTON’S THE HEARING
TRUMPET
We plan to collaborate with grant partners (actors or other artists) on a
multi-media performance, a part of which will be Leonora Carrington’s
play, The Hearing Trumpet, produced in the Studio Theater. The second
part of the performance would be produced in a grant partner’s theater,
with the participation of at least one actor or other artist from the Studio
Theater.
AN EXHIBITION: MAKING BORDERS
We propose to create an exhibition that will engage the Gallery of the
Studio Theater and other grant partners, which will display cartographic
images and allegorical graphics that show the changing territories of
Poland, Spain, Germany, and Romania, within Europe across centuries.
We will also present sets of symbols considered to be markers of national
identity.
AN ACADEMIC AND ART CONFERENCE: THE BORDER IS
ELSEWHERE
We wish to organize a conference that will bring together scholars from
renowned academic centers, as well as artists who work on the idea of the
“border.” The main organizers will be the Institute for Literary Studies at
the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN, Warsaw, Poland) and the
Pottsdam University (Germany).
A DANCE SHOW: THE BORDER ZONE
We would like to explore the topic of border zone through a contemporary
dance performance created by dancers and choreographers from Spain and
Poland. The dance show would be preceded by 12-day improvisations and
group work.
A BOOK: THE BOUNDLESS CONTINENT
A book would be the tangible record of the grant project. We envision the
book as an album including the conference and other texts, photos from
the project events, as well as iconographic documentation of our
exploration of the issue of “borders.”
A WEBSITE:
We will design a website that will be a companion to the grant project and
as such it will include information on project evens, reports on the creative
processes, and theoretical texts pertaining to the topic of “borders.”
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