The 13th edition of NARRACJE festival will be held on November 18-19th 2022 in Przeróbka district of Gdańsk. The curators: Emilia Orzechowska and Bogna Świątkowska, together with The City Culture Institute and the Gdańsk City Gallery, invite you to discover the district through a series of artistic activities and interventions in public space. The program also includes educational activities for families with children, walks around the district led by its residents and music events at the festival club arranged in one of the halls of the former Railway Repair Plants.

The festival takes place in autumn when most of the cultural activities enter into galleries and institutions. NARRACJE give you a reason to leave the house on two November evenings and discover the city anew. During the event, we will see the works of the following artists: Agata Biskup, Paweł Błęcki, Natalia Budnik, Simone De Iacobis (Centrala), Elżbieta Jabłońska, Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek, Mirek Kaczmarek, Małgorzata Kuciewicz (Centrala), Robert Kuśmirowski, Diana Lelonek, Piotr Pawlak , Joanna Rajkowska, Alicja Rogalska, Katarzyna Roj, Mikołaj Szpaczyński, Maryna Tomaszewska, Jaśmina Wójcik, Paweł Żukowski.

– To this year’s NARRACJE we invited artists whose experiences and creative practices are the starting point for us to develop a ‘tender narrative’ about the crisis we are currently in, but also about the potential for change. Listening to the Nobel speech of Olga Tokarczuk, which has become a direct inspiration for us, we want to strengthen all ‘tender narrators’ of our day to day life – give them space and voice so that city herstories and stories would resound – says Emilia Orzechowska.

NARRACJE will take place in the Przeróbka district of Gdańsk. It is a small working-class district – there are neither significant institutions, nor a church, nor even a single park. The buildings, however, are relatively diverse and include small houses surrounded by gardens, brick tenement houses or even 10-story skyscrapers. The history of Przeróbka can be summarised in one sentence: until the 20th century, there were meadows where raftsmen dried – ‘processed’ – the grain sold in Gdańsk, and then the local small settlement turned into a working-class district, the shape and rhythm of which were determined by Railway Repair Plants. The geographic location of the district is extremely interesting as it occupies the western part of Port Island, the second largest island in Gdańsk, after Sobieszewo Island

– Przeróbna district has so little that it could have everything – unlimited potential, the elements of which can be invented, sensed, discussed, designed. What monuments can we ‘imagine’ looking into the future of Przeróbka? What ideas and attitudes will we put on a pedestal? In the slogan ‘we were, we are, we will be’, commemorated by the boulder standing here, we see an interspecies mix: human activities in the past, the surrounding matter existing today and the potential of all non-human beings that will appear here. We want to be close to the ground, proclaim the postulates of an ‘interspecies community’ based on abandoning old habits and noxious habituations, and on transforming them into a new imagination. We need a makeover – and a major makeover! EXPO are the largest exhibitions presenting the achievements of countries, cities and communities. Their leitmotifs are often challenges that we are forced to face. So we invite you to EXPO Przeróbka! Let’s meet to find dazzling hints in what is underestimated and incidental – says Bogna Świątkowska.

NARRACJE – about the festival

The first few editions of the festival influenced its present shape: effective light installations quickly gave way to forms that favoured a critical view of space and allowed to initiate a closer dialogue with it. Every year, NARRACJE entered the city deeper and deeper – it left the city centre to venture into new districts with growing courage. These new areas became the co-organizers and co-curators of the festival. It is the city that lends its stories to NARRACJE, suggests themes, provokes solutions, resisting certain realisations and favouring others.

The strength of the festival lies in the respect with which its creators approach the living organism of the city and their intuition in the way they work with space and its valid residents – the inhabitants. The projects presented at NARRACJE are created using various techniques: audiovisual artworks, light, interactive, performative and film works, among others. A large part of them is usually created just for the festival and are site-specific.

NARRACJE # 13, EXPO Przeróbka. we were, we are, we will be

Gdańsk-Przeróbka, 18-19 November 2022

www.narracje.eu, FB/NarracjeGdansk  

Curators: Emilia Orzechowska, Bogna Świątkowska

Organizer: The City Culture Institute, co-organizer: Gdańsk City Gallery

Media patrons: Radio 357, Magazyn Szum, Notes na 6 tygodni, Trojmasto.pl, Gazeta Wyborcza Trojmiasto

Emilia Orzechowska – curator, artist, producer and culture animator. Currently director of the Art Centre Gallery EL in Elbląg. She graduated from film studies at the Institute of Audiovisual Arts at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, finished the Course of Culture Animators in Gdańsk with a film specialisation, and art criticism at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk. Founder of the A KuKu Sztuka Association, where, until 2017, she carried out original and interdisciplinary artistic projects, including Parkowanie (2007-2016) and the ARTLOOP Festival (2011-2017). In the years 2012-2021 she worked at the Miniatura Theatre in Gdańsk as a theatre producer. In 2018-2020 she worked as the manager of the exhibition production department and curator at TRAFO Trafostacja Sztuki in Szczecin, and in 2021 she was responsible for the annual program of the Jedna Druga Gallery in Szczecin. Member of the W788 Foundation and the ARBUZ Association. The initiator, together with Piotr Pawlak, of the newly established LEKKOŚĆ Foundation, which will start its activity in autumn 2022 in Gdańsk.

Bogna Świątkowska – initiator, founder and president of the board of the Bęc Zmiana Foundation, where she has implemented dozens of projects devoted to public space, architecture and design, as well as competitions addressed to architects and designers of the young generation. Initiator and editor-in-chief of the magazine Notes na 6 tygodni. Her practice is interdisciplinary and popularising. The projects she creates are most often platforms that combine the knowledge of experts and professionals with the approach of curious amateurs and enthusiasts. She was granted the Minister of Culture and National Heritage Scholarship (2014). She is a member of the Social Culture Council of the President of the Capital City of Warsaw (2012-2015), Council of Architecture and Public Space of the Capital City of Warsaw (2015-2018), as well as the Expert Team for Local Culture at the National Centre for Culture (2015-2017). 

www.beczmiana.pl

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