Polish Cultural Institute

Symposium: And Will Europe Be Stunned?

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:38:00 +0200

Friday 18 May, 2-6pm
Whitechapel Art Gallery,
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Tickets: £15
Book online

This symposium – And Will Europe Be Stunned? – opens up the debates sparked by these highly ambitious and contentious films: beginning with a keynote paper from Gil Hochberg, Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA, there will then follow a Q&A with the artist and a panel discussion with Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and Jacqueline Rose, Professor at Queen Mary University. And Europe Will Be Stunned (2011) is the compelling trilogy of films made by Israeli artist Yael Bartana, which premiered at the 54^th Venice Biennale last year, making Bartana the first non-national to exhibit in the Polish Pavilion. Revolving around the activities of the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland, a group that calls for the return of three million Jews to Poland, Bartana’s films traverse a landscape scarred by the histories of competing nationalisms and nightmares across Europe and the Middle East. Organised in association with Artangel, who are presenting Bartana’s trilogy at Hornsey Town Hall from 22 May to 1 July, and supported by the Polish Cultural Institute.

Avant-Garde Visions: The Themersons and Gaberbocchus Press

Tue, 15 May 2012 12:57:00 +0200

Friday 15 June 2012
Queen Mary University of London (ArtsOne 128) FREE, but please register as spaces are limited: avantgardevisions(at)yahoo.co.uk
Franciszka and Stefan Themerson (1907-1988, 1910-1988) made a significant and diverse contribution to the twentieth century’s avant-garde. Their work spans the visual arts, literature, publishing, filmmaking, theatre, music and philosophy. This conference, which will be both a scholarly and a celebratory event, will look at the ways their lives and work intersected with other figures and currents within the international avant-garde.

From their rise to prominence in their native Poland in the early 1930s, through their founding of the Gaberbocchus Press in Britain in 1948, until their deaths in 1988, the Themersons consistently championed the avant-garde, both in their own work and in the work of others. Thanks to them, key European texts by such figures as Alfred Jarry, Raymond Queneau, Anatol Stern and Pol-Dives were made accessible to English-speaking audiences. By publishing books by Kurt Schwitters and Raoul Hausmann, Oswell Blakeston, Henri Chopin, Bertrand Russell and the Themersons themselves, among others, the Gaberbocchus Press further underlined the vitality of an evolving modernist enterprise. www.themersonarchive.com
Programme

9.30
Registration 10.00
Introduction
Stefan and Franciszka, a short documentary by Tomasz Pobóg-Malinowski (1976)

10.30
Stefan Themerson reciting Kurt Schwitters on television
Nick Wadley “Kurt Schwitters and Stefan Themerson”
Roger Cardinal “Kurt Schwitters’ English Poems”

11.30
Coffee break

12.00
Audio recording of Stefan Themerson reading from Semantic Sonata (1950/1956)
Rod Mengham “Dual Conditions: The Early Fiction of Stefan Themerson”
Debra Kelly “Cozette de Charmoy”

1.15
Lunch (own arrangements)

2.30
Jasia Reichardt “Gaberbocchus Common Room”
Madeleine Renouard “Barbara Wright and the Themersons”

3.30
Tea break

4.00
Elza Adamowicz “Looking at Alice: Franciszka Themerson’s illustrations for Through the Looking Glass”
Barnaby Dicker “The Gaberbocchus Cartoon Books of Franciszka Themerson, Beverly Jackson Huddleston and Stevie Smith”
Organisers
Professor Elza Adamowicz (Queen Mary, University of London): e.adamowicz(at)qmul.ac.uk
Dr Barnaby Dicker (University for the Creative Arts, Farnham): bdicker.s1(at)ucreative.ac.uk

"Stage and Twist" Anna Molska and Ciprian Mureşan

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:59:00 +0200

25 May – 14 October 2012
Tate Modern, London
17 January – 28 February 2013
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

In Stage and Twist a child drinks a mixture of Pepsi and Coca-Cola, a giant puzzle is played by two half-naked young men, an iconic work by Yves Klein is re-enacted with the artist leaping into the void and hitting the pavement below and a group of workers assemble a monumental sculpture out of scaffolding in an empty field. In all of these works history is both re-staged and twisted as a means to engage critically with the present day.

This exhibition brings together the Polish artist Anna Molska and the Romanian artist Ciprian Mureşan for their first museum exhibition in London. Molska and Mureşan draw upon historical events and art history to highlight the power of the collective experience in the post-communism era. Both artists question social mechanisms and the construction of individuality. Rather than glorifying the past, each work cheerfully accepts the uncountable failures and shortcomings of contemporary society.

The exhibition is curated by Capucine Perrot, Tate Modern and Magda Lipska, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.

Project Space at Tate Modern (formerly the Level 2 gallery) is dedicated to presenting contemporary art through a series of collaborations with cultural organisations around the world. It brings together emerging curators from both Tate Modern and other international venues for contemporary art to work together on an exhibition for both locations. Based on curatorial exchange and dialogue, the series showcases the work of new, recently established or rediscovered international artists. The exhibitions therefore open up the possibility of introducing new work and interpretations within differing global contexts.
Anna Molska (born 1983, Prudnik, Poland) lives and works in Warsaw. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw in 2011. Selected solo exhibitions include: Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (forthcoming, Autumn 2012); The Forgetting of Proper Names, Calvert 22 Foundation, London (2012), Anna Molska, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2010). Selected group exhibitions include: The Third Room, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf (2011); Rearview Mirror, The Power Plant, Toronto (2011); While Bodies Get Mirrored – an exhibition about Movement, Formalism and Space, Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2010); The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); 5th Berlin Biennial, Berlin (2008).

Ciprian Mureşan (born 1977, Dej) lives and works in Cluj, Romania. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, Cluj-Napoca in 2000. Since 2005 Ciprian Mureşan has edited IDEA art + society magazine, published in Cluj-Napoca. Selected solo exhibitions include: Recycled Playground, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2012); Ciprian Mureşan, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, Germany (2010). Selected group exhibitions include: The Beauty and the Distance, 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia (2010); Les Promesses du passé, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2010); The Generational: Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York, (2009); Seductiveness of the Interval, Romanian Pavilion, 53 Venice Biennale (2009); Staging the Grey, Prague Biennale 4 (2009).

Organised in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

The exhibition is supported by Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

The Traditions of Post-Secular Europe

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:47:00 +0200

30-31 May
UCL Campus, London
FREE but prior registration is required: f.guesnet(at)ucl.ac.uk
Over the past decade, the concept of post-secularism seemed to solve several of the conundrums an exploration into the present and the future of intercultural interaction has to face today. In contrast to the doom-and-gloom visions of the inevitability of conflict between religiously defined global regions, famously defined by Samuel Huntington as clash of cultures, post-secularism hopes to reconcile diverging interests in multicultural societies, to allow for a dialogue between diverse religious commitments, and, more importantly, to establish common ground between faith-based communities and societal constituencies which reject any form of religious identity or commitment.

The workshop will inquire what the tools to investigate earlier examples of multicultural cohabitation can teach us about the potential of post-secularism, and develop a critical assessment about the limits of its applicability. It is directed at academics and graduate students (MA and PhD) in the Humanities and in Social and Political Sciences. For all three panels, registered participants will receive a selection of readings preparing for the discussions.

The language of the meetings will be English. More information online
Programme 30 May 3.30
Coffee and Registration 16:00-18:00
Workshop panel I: Secularisms, Postsecularisms and Beyond
Venue: Rockefeller 337
Introduction and chair: Dr Andrea Schatz (Reader in Jewish Studies, Department of Theology & Religious Studies, King's College London)
How can we move beyond secular conceptions of time and space, when thinking about religion? A discussion, based on readings of Jonathan Sheehan, José Casanova, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmoud, and others.

18:5-18:45
Refreshments will be served before the lecture from 6.15pm. No registration required for the lecture! 18:45
Keynote lecture
Venue: J.Z. Young LT, Anatomy Building, UCL, Gower Street
Professor David Sorkin (Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Beyond the Secular-Religious Dichotomy: Four Characteristics of the Religious Enlightenment

31 May

9:30-11:15
Panel II: The Religious Enlightenment
Venue: Taviton (16) 431
Academic lead and chair: Professor David Sorkin (Graduate Center, City University of New York).
A discussion of the religious enlightenment and its relationship to philosophy, based on readings from David Sorkin: The Religious Enlightenment. Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna, Princeton 2009, and others.

11:15-11.30
Coffee/tea break 11:30-13:15
Panel III: Religious culture and political transformation among the Jews of Eastern Europe
Venue: Taviton (16) 431
Academic lead and chair: Dr François Guesnet (UCL), with Dr Michal Galas (Jagiellonian University Kraków) and Alicja Maslak, MA (Jagiellonian University Kraków)
A discussion of cultural and religious diversification among the Jews of Eastern Europe in the 19th century, and its possible impact on the relationship of "the religious" and "the secular". Readings tba.

This Graduate Student Seminar has been developed in cooperation with the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL, the Department of Jewish Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, the Department of Humanities, the Polish Cultural Institute, London, and the UCL European Institute.

Zygmunt Miłoszewski in London and Oxford

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:19:00 +0200

Wednesday 16 May, 6.30pm
British Library, The Conference Centre
96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB
Tickets £6/£4
Book online Zygmunt Miłoszewski will discuss his work and read fragments of his latest novel, Grain of Truth, as one of the European Literature Night's featured writers. More information about European Literature Night online. Thursday 17 May, 6pm
Albion Beatnik Bookshop
34 Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AA
Tickets £2 An evening with Zygmunt Miłoszewski and his translator, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, chaired by Ania Ready. Zygmunt Miłoszewski (b. 1976) is a Polish novelist, journalist, and scriptwriter. His first novel, a horror story called The Intercom, was published in 2005 to high acclaim. In 2006, his novel for teenagers, The Adder Mountains, appeared, and in 2007, his first crime novel, Entanglement, gained him a popular following in Poland and abroad. This year, a sequel called A Grain of Truth was published and became an instant bestseller. On the strength of this novel, Miłoszewski was nominated for the prestigious "Passport Polityka" award given annually to writers under the age of 40. An English translation is forthcoming in August 2012. In 2011, a film based on the novel Entanglement was released with the same title. Miłoszewski is now writing the third and final part of the trilogy. He is also a screen writer (mainly for television), and is planning to write sci-fi in the future. Antonia Lloyd-Jones is a distinguished translator and recipient of the Found in Translation Award 2009. She has rendered Polish fiction (Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Olga Tokarczuk, Paweł Huelle) and non-fiction (Wojciech Jagielski, Wojciech Tochman) into English.

Entanglement
Uwikłanie (WAB, Warsaw 2007) - Entanglement (Bitter Lemon Press, London, 2010; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
Also published in Russian (Ripol), Czech (Host) and Croat (Edicje Bozicevic)
Filmed as Uwikłanie, directed by Jacek Bromski, 2011 Entanglement is an exceptionally fine combination of crime story and psychological thriller. The morning after a gruelling psychotherapy session in a central Warsaw monastery, Henryk Telak is found dead, a roasting spit stuck in one eye. The case lands on the desk of State Prosecutor Teodor Szacki. World-weary, suffering from bureaucratic exhaustion and marital ennui, Szacki feels that life has passed him by, but this case changes everything. He must steer his way through a gallery of colourful characters: a flirtatious young journalist, an eccentric psychiatrist, a lecherous police colleague and a paranoid historian. Szacki's search for the killer unearths another murder that took place twenty years earlier, before the fall of Communism. The trail leads to facts that, for his own safety, he'd be better off not knowing.
A Grain of Truth
Ziarno prawdy (WAB, Warsaw 2011) - A Grain of Truth (Bitter Lemon Press, London, due August 2012; translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones) Sandomierz is a picturesque town full of churches and museums. Early one morning in spring, a woman's naked body is found outside a former synagogue. Someone has slashed her throat open-and it looks as if it was done with the enormous razor found lying nearby. Quite by chance, Public Prosecutor Teodor Szacki just happens to be on the scene. How come? Six months earlier he broke up a gang of sex traffickers who had a drop-off point in this town. On a wave of short-lived fame, Szacki decided to move there permanently from Warsaw. But a few months after separating from his wife and daughter, and leaving the big city behind, he knows he has made a mistake. The cadaver outside the synagogue is a chance to put an end to his small-town ennui. Szacki conducts the investigation with the help of an aging policeman and a reluctant lady prosecutor. Gradually he discovers the subtle ins and outs of local society and history. In his efforts to solve the mystery he investigates a love triangle, an ancient Jewish ritual, and some Nazi symbols. In this latest detective novel from Zygmunt Miłoszewski, the author takes us to the Polish equivalent of Twin Peaks, where the scenery is coloured by present-day emotions and desires, as well as events from the seemingly distant past.

Yael Bartana "And Europe Will Be Stunned"

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:39:00 +0200

22 May – 1 July 2012
Tuesday and Wednesday, 13.00 – 20.00
Thursday and Friday, 13.00 – 21.00
Saturday and Sunday, 12.00 – 18.00
Hornsey Town Hall,
The Broadway, Crouch End,
London, N8 9JJ
Free entry, no booking required

The trilogy begins with Mary Koszmary (Nightmares). A young politician makes an incendiary speech in Warsaw’s empty Olympic Stadium. He calls for the return of 3.3 million Jews to their ancestral homeland. Responding to the call, Mur I Wieża (Wall and Tower) shows his idealistic followers, the Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland (JRMiP), building a new settlement on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. But the fences, barbed wire and a tower suggest an ominous future – a fear borne out in the final film in the trilogy, Zamach (Assassination). The politician lies in state, red and white roses on his chest, in Poland’s Palace of Culture. Struck down by an unknown assailant, he is grieved for by his wife, mourned and eulogised by members of the Movement. YAEL BARTANA was born in 1970 in Kfar Yehezkel, Israel; she lives and works between Tel Aviv and Berlin. Her artistic practice includes film, photography, video and sound installation. In 2011 Bartana represented Poland at the Venice Biennale, where she premiered the trilogy of films And Europe Will Be Stunned. The trilogy has subsequently been exhibited at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2012), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012), Art Gallery of Ontario (2012) and Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2011). Major solo exhibitions of her work have been presented at Moderna Museet, Malmö (2010), the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2009), PS1, New York (2008), the Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv (2008) and Kunstverein, Hamburg (2007). Bartana is the recipient of several prestigious awards including Artes Mundi 4 (Wales, 2010) and Anselm Kiefer Prize (2003).
As the trilogy unfolds it becomes increasingly unclear whether Bartana’s work is a fantasy, a hallucination or a nightmare. Her bold project blurs fiction and reality, connects traumatic pasts to worrying futures and opens up debates about nationhood and homelands in Europe and the Middle East. Who has the right to return? Who determines who belongs and who does not?

And Europe Will Be Stunned premiered to great acclaim in the Polish Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Artangel’s London exhibition will also include a series of talks exploring themes that Bartana addresses in her films. Supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London. For more information please visit: www.artangel.org.uk Accompanying event: Symposium: And Will Europe Be Stunned?
Whitechapel Art Gallery, 18 May
Tickets: £15
Book online
This symposium – ‘And Will Europe Be Stunned?’ – opens up the debates sparked by these highly ambitious and contentious films: beginning with a keynote paper from Gil Hochberg, Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA, there will then follow a Q&A with the artist and a panel discussion with Joanna Mytkowska, Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and Jacqueline Rose, Professor at Queen Mary University.
This event has been organised with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute.

The Saragossa Manuscript screened at BFI Southbank

Wed, 02 May 2012 13:29:00 +0200

Mon 11 June at 6.10pm

at BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road
South Bank
London SE1 8XT The Saragossa Manuscript
dir. Wojciech Has
with Zbigniew Cybulski, Iga Cembrzynska, Elzbieta Czyzewska
Poland, 1965, 181 min.

This version of Count Jan Potocki's 1813 gothic novel is an unlikely film to come out of Communist Poland; it is defiantly unorthodox, full of strange omens, eroticism and occult adventure. A young officer journeying through the Spanish desert during the Napoleonic Wars stumbles into a world of seduction and death and a maze of stories within stories. Recently restored to its original length, there has never been a film quite like The Saragossa Manuscript. Introduce by Dominik Power

Janusz Korczak Family Day

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:22:00 +0200

5 May 2012, 10am – 2pm,
Ulster Museum
Botanic Avenue, Belfast BT9 5AB
www.nmni.com/um

This year Poland celebrates the life and works of Henryk Goldszmit, better known by his pen name Janusz Korczak. The Polish-Jewish children's author and paediatrician, Korczak is remembered today primarily for his contributions to education. His orphanage, set up in a cramped school in the Warsaw ghetto, provided shelter to 200 homeless kids. In the final roundup he refused to accept a Swiss passport and boarded the train to Treblinka concentration camp with his orphans.

The family day will focus on Janusz Korczak work and will include film screenings, reading and workshops.

This event is supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London.

DVD Release"Mother Joan of the Angels" (1961) dir. Jerzy Kawalerowcz

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 14:05:00 +0200

This title will be released on May 28, 2012
EXTRAS:  New filmed appreciation by Michael Brooke  and Booklet essays
Second Run DVD
Pre-order now
Based on the documented story of the demonic possession of a group of nuns that led to the burning of a priest at the stake in Loudun, France in 1634 (which also formed the basis for Ken Russell s notorious 1971 film The Devils and provided inspiration to Aldous Huxley for his renowned novel The Devils of Loudun). In acclaimed director Jerzy Kawalerowicz's hands Mother Joan of the Angels is a spare, visually astonishing and profoundly disturbing exploration of faith, repression, fanaticism and sexuality. Aided by an extraordinary performance by Lucyna Winnicka as Mother Joan, Kawalerowicz produces one of cinema s most evocative and intense studies of the tragedy of emotion repressed by dogma.

Visually this film is a masterpiece. Spooky and haunting it is an exemplar of how, in filmmaking, less can be so much more.

Having received the Jury Prize at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, Mother Joan of the Angels does not fall into that category of ‘lost’ films. However, it is certainly a film that deserves a much better reputation and a wider viewing public. Yes, it does contain exorcism, flagellation and murder but it is the opposite of The Devils Ken Russell’s overblown (though wonderful) take on the same story. Mother Joan is a quieter, more subdued film and all the more effective for that. Any fan of classics of the strange such as Nosferatu and Witchfinder General should find much to enjoy in Mother Joan of the Angels.

Cult Polish crime film "Interrogation" screend as part of Polish Cultural Week in Belfast

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:54:00 +0200

Thursday 10 May, 7pm
Red Barn Gallery
43b Rosemary Street, Belfast BT1 1QB
www.rbgbelfast.com Poland, 1951. Tonia (Krystyna Janda) is a cabaret singer. One night she gets very drunk and wakes up in a prison cell. She is asked to give evidence against a former lover. She refuses, and the authorities try to break her through a long process of brutality and intimidation.

Interrogation (Przesłuchanie) is a 1982 Polish crime film directed by Ryszard Bugajski. Due to its anti-communist themes, the Polish communist government banned the film from public viewing for over seven years, until the 1989 dissolution of the Eastern Bloc allowed it to see the light of day. The film had its first theatrical release in December 1989 in its native Poland, and was entered into the 1990 Cannes Film Festival where Krystyna Janda won the award for Best Actress and the film itself was nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Courtesy of Second Run DVD www.secondrundvd.com Supported by the Polish Cultural Institute in London.