The inaugural edition of the “(Non-)Presence” Festival of Performance is based on the motto “Hide or Seek”, which encompasses themes such as a search for safety, hiding, but also conscious visibility and responsibility.
The game of hide-and-seek is governed by a set of simple rules. The players determine the area and duration of activity and designate the seeker. In a broader social context, the rules of the game can be situated within the context of the need for privacy and autonomy that protect us from the pressures of other people’s expectations and conformity. By hiding, we detach ourselves from problems, responsibilities, and life’s difficulties; as we “play the game,” we conceal our true nature, shirk our responsibilities and escape into temporary zones of safety.
On the other side of the hide-and-seek dualism are the desire to understand the essence of things and the courage and willingness to accept responsibility for our words and actions. The ultimate outcome of the game is always the same: either we are found or we reveal ourselves. Our safe havens from responsibility are thus temporary. By choosing to remain in them, we break the rules of the game, lose our authenticity, and become enmeshed in a vicious cycle of actual absence of the “here and now” interspersed with projections of the past and unreal visions of the future.
The “(Non-)Presence” Festival of Performance is a multifaceted event that opens up a space for a variety of artistic styles and social themes, while focusing on the notion of presence. The festival will begin with a series of presentations of Polish performance art in partner institutions in Germany and the Czech Republic, which will draw upon the rich tradition of “action art” in Wrocław, or more broadly, in Lower Silesia, which dates back to the 1950s.
The first edition of the festival will provide an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of performance art in society, and above all to search for that which is most important in humans: emotions, sensitivity and responsibility. At the same time, it will be one of the first large-scale reviews of Polish performance art outside Poland, featuring both well-established artists and their promising young colleagues.
Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś, curator of the Festival
