About Public Forum
Każdego dnia Przeglądu wykłady / spotkania / debaty / warsztaty
wstęp wolny
The Art Transparent Foundation team invites you to the 22nd edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review in the Brochów housing estate, which can be easily reached in a few minutes by train from Wrocław Główny station or by special city buses from the city centre. In addition to the core of the festival, which is an exhibition of contemporary art, a series of events are planned as part of the Public Forum, which will focus on contemporary social and civilisational challenges, as well as on the history and culture of Brochów.
Get to know Brochów
Visitors wishing to learn more about the history of Brochów are invited to join a historical walk led by Zbigniew Kuriata of the Society of Friends of Brochów. The event will take place on Sunday 23 June at 5 p.m. and is open to the public without prior registration. As the inhabitants of Wrocław pay special attention to water, it should come as no surprise that this aspect of Brochów has also been included in the programme. Professor Wojciech Browarny and his team will deliver a lecture, accompanied by (photo)graphic material and followed by an open discussion, about the Brochówka – a stream flowing through the estate and the surrounding area.
The lecture and meeting will focus on the importance of the Brochówka in preserving the memory of the place, integrating cultural and natural heritage, and the social production of locality. It will be an opportunity to find out the preliminary results of the research conducted by the team of the Regional Research Centre at the University of Wrocław as part of the scientific and educational project “Guide to Lower Silesia. Waters of the region as places of remembrance and natural and cultural heritage” (2024). The Art Transparent team invites you to the meeting Brochów_ka: Places of remembrance, natural and cultural heritage, and the production of localities on Tuesday 25 June at 6 p.m. Throughout the Review, visitors will also be able to take an audio historical walk through the most interesting points in the neighbourhood. You will hear the story of how the construction of a huge railway junction in Brochów at the end of the 19th century affected the area and the future of its inhabitants. To go on the walk, simply scan the QR code at the infopoint (or visit the festival website and follow the instructions).
Art for the people of Brochów
The Art Transparent Foundation has not only been organising the SURVIVAL Art Review since 2003, but has also initiated and participated in numerous art projects, including international ones. One of them, called DemArt – Democratising art commissioning by involving local communities, has been included in the Public Forum programme. Brochów residents will choose one of the three presented artistic ideas, which will then be implemented into a work of art especially for them. The project is carried out as part of the Creative Europe programme.
Among the proposed ideas is the mural Four Seasons of the Block, put forward by Filip Skont Niziołek – an artist from Wrocław who creates graffiti, murals, paintings and wall portraits, and who considers human life to be the most important theme in art. Skont’s idea is to create a mural in Brochów inspired by the stories of the local residents, featuring portraits of people he has met. The whole idea is based on becoming part of the Brochów community by being in it and talking to the people.
Jagoda Dobecka, a graduate of the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław and a doctoral student at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, has come up with the idea of creating a cookbook entitled The Brochów Book of Comfort. It would bring together Brochów’s diverse culinary traditions in order to collect and preserve the various food-related customs that can be found here. The artist will talk to local residents about the dishes that give them joy and a sense of security. During workshop sessions, participants will share their definitions of comfort and the dishes they associate with it. The recipes will be written down in different forms and then the Brochów community will together cook the dishes and taste them at a table. The communal cooking, which will also be a negotiation, a social gathering and a physical effort, will raise the issue of work that brings comfort. The project is intended not only to discover Brochow’s culinary gems, but also to create a space for sharing experiences and building bonds between people from different backgrounds.
Partners in life and art, Project sketch, material by the author duo, aim to connect people through inclusive and social art. They believe in fun and the art of failure, working at their own pace and on their own terms (which the attendees are also encouraged to try). They express themselves through music, comics, literature and painting. Their idea for the residents of Brochów is to organise a month of creative and communal workshops, which will be summarised in a publication entitled Brochów Town, archive the contemporary history of Brochów, and organise a picnic. The publication will be prepared in a way that will make it possible to replicate the project on other estates. Moreover, an unofficial logo for Brochów will be created during the workshops.
The artists will talk more about their projects on Saturday 22 June at 3 p.m. This will be an opportunity for residents to find out more not only about the concepts of the proposed activities, but also about the people behind them. Afterwards, the residents of Brochów will choose which action they would like to take part in.
On the same day (22 June) at 6 p.m., the lecture How to tell art in social media? will be given by Tomasz Szymański, known as the creator of the Solo Show channel dedicated to contemporary art, who uses short films on Instagram and TikTok to introduce the work of visual artists. A philosopher and accountant by training, he believes that contemporary art is for everyone – it just needs to be presented properly. In his talk, he will share techniques and strategies for reaching a wider audience and promoting culture. The audience will then be invited to discuss how messages about cultural events can be made attractive to the target group and at the same time reflect the creators’ ideas. This will be followed by a reflection on the reactions of online audiences in order to find out how online declarations translate into actual interest in cultural projects.
On anger and art in public space
After Tomasz Szymański’s lecture, it is worth staying a little longer in the Festival Club. The next event – on 22 June at 8 p.m. – is a discussion on public space, violence and anger, which the Art Transparent Foundation decided to initiate after the April hate campaign. The meeting will be moderated by Dr Przemysław Witkowski, a historian of political thought, journalist and researcher of political extremism. The discussants will include: Aleksander Hudzik, editor-in-chief of Mint Magazine, arguably the best Polish cultural magazine; Bek Berger – an artist, curator and producer originally from Australia, now based in Riga, whose practice binds curiosity with innovation in order to design new models of connection, collaboration and reciprocity between artists and communities, across borders and art forms; Bartłomiej Świerczewski, who deals with broadly-defined participation and civil society issues in the Wrocław Municipal Office; Daniel Valtueña, a Madrid-based independent researcher and consultant on arts and culture in the fields of strategy, internationalisation, audience development, professional development and participation; and Karolina Bieniek, a doctor of social sciences, director of the Art Transparent Foundation and a specialist in foreign policy and cultural diplomacy.
Europe-Tanzania residency projects
As part of the four-year EU-funded project called Deconfining, the Art Transparent Foundation (Wrocław) and Nafasi Art Space (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) have organised research residencies for artists from Poland and Africa specialising in video art. The aim of the residencies is to foster relationships between artists and practitioners of art and culture in both regions. An overview of the residency projects will be presented at the Festival Club on Sunday 23 June, from 3 to 6 p.m.
Czech artist Lindi Dedek’s site-specific artistic research focuses on the mpingo tree, whose wood is used in Makonde sculpture and in natural medicine, among other things. The tree, also known as Dalbergia or African blackwood, is an endangered species today. It provides a starting point for the artist to develop new creative methodologies that consider environmental and economic postcolonial perspectives in a sensitive and critical way.
Naitiemu Nyanjom from Kenya will examine traditions and rituals to show how elements such as dance, music, art, food and symbolism transcend geographical boundaries. Juxtaposing scenes from Polish traditions, ceremonies, food, architecture and nature with those of African tribes, in particular the Masai, she will explore the possibility of cross-cultural understanding and unity, while celebrating the uniqueness of both cultures.
Since 2018, Jan Moss from Poland has devoted most of his creative energy and efforts to promoting contemporary African culture in Poland and other European countries. He regularly collaborates with the Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes. As part of the Deconfining project, he will collaborate with Tanzanian singeli artists. Moss seeks to help deconstruct harmful stereotypes, demonstrating that imagined differences between cultures and economies are greatly exaggerated and often unrealistic.
The egalitarian nature of dance is central to the work of Ugandan-born Kizza Moses, a.k.a. Teflon. Working with a dancer on crutches and inspired by his brother’s story, Teflon looks for answers to fundamental questions about dance – the right to judge, its social and cultural role and function in everyone’s life.
In her artistic and research practice, Michalina Musielak (Poland) looks for alternative knowledge production through interaction with local heroines and heroes, artists and researchers. Musielak’s experimental documentary tells the story of the construction of a day care centre (DCC) in Dakawa, Tanzania, as an example of multi-layered forms of solidarity focusing on the care perspective.
Tanzanian-born Josephine Kiaga focuses in her project on menstrual poverty. She wants to bridge the gap between cultures so that they can come into contact and try to understand each other in new ways, appreciating both differences and similarities. The story she wants to tell uses metaphorical imagery to highlight societal prejudices against people who menstruate.
DECONFINING is a four-year EU-funded project bringing together cultural practitioners, artists, policy makers, and audiences from two continents – Europe and Africa. Dedicated to contributing to a better understanding of (social, political and economic) confinement patterns from different viewpoints, the project aims to explore and develop new ways of intercontinental artistic and cultural (policy) cooperation and provide better access and information for intercontinental mobility and co-creation.
Workshops for families with children by the Made in Brochów foundation
The SURVIVAL Art Review is always organised in consultation with institutions based in the vicinity of the selected venue. Therefore, in the case of the Brochów edition, it was impossible not to involve the Made in Brochów foundation, whose main objective is to carry out activities that contribute to social development opportunities by improving access to education and culture, supporting creative activity and promoting the idea of civil society. The foundation pursues its mission by organising events for local residents.
Brochów is a green housing estate that used to be called a garden city. It is a place with a small-town character where traditions connected with the railway have always been important. Made in Brochów will organise workshops on Sunday 23 June from noon, during which participants will learn about the symbols of Brochów and how to make creative use of the local flora. The programme will also include learning how to weave with natural materials, make stained glass with floral motifs and paint with natural paints made from plants. The materials used during the workshops will be sourced from the foundation’s neighbours.
A scientific take on post-romantic themes
SURVIVAL’s Public Forum will once again involve scientists from SWPS University. On Monday 24 June at 3 p.m., during the lecture entitled Is it possible to digitise the soul? Romantic paradoxes of the digital revolution era and delivered by Jakub Kuś, we will look at the digital revolution and try to decide whether concepts such as the “soul,” myths and legends still exist. The lecturer will also discuss the question of what indigenous psychology is and whether we can become “independent of algorithms” in times of the digital revolution. On the same day at 6 p.m., Agata Gąsiorowska of the SWPS University will give a lecture entitled Love? Hate? Independence? How to build a healthy relationship with money, in which she will talk about how we make financial decisions and what our most common pitfalls and mistakes are. Drawing on the latest research findings from the field of social and economic psychology, she will explain how money can influence interpersonal relationships and human behaviour. The lecture will also be an opportunity to compare our attitudes towards money with those of other Poles.
Admission to all events is free of charge.
22. SURVIVAL Art Review
FRENZY AND INDEPENDENCE
21-25.06.2024
Brochów estate, Wrocław
Curators: Michał Bieniek, Daniel Brożek, Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz, Ewa Pluta
Organiser: Fundacja Art Transparent / www.arttransparent.org
