Performing Arts Festival

50 international artists, including 10 from Poland, art installations, an open off-stage for young artists, film screenings, discussions, art sessions, meetings with artists, presentations, VestAndPage workshops referring to the Themersons’ work

Festival programme

Festival artists

On the performative arts festival “Stories. The world is more complicated than our truths about it” – a few words of introduction a few words.
Before the whole thing began to take a real shape I had a serious dilemma: how to call a substantial artistic endeavor, which was to be implemented both in Norway and Poland over 12 months and include a wide spectrum of diverse events with an opening act of performative arts festival. What could function as a common denominator, not limiting, but setting a direction, a structure or anything else that allows us to situate our world, express it and pass it on.
And then the word ‘stories’* emerged. Stories are fundamental to our thinking and our search/finding the meaning of existence. We all carry stories within us and convey them to others. Storytelling is the most natural means of communication, not necessarily verbal. One can tell a story through gesture, movement, sound, light, image, all the vast instrumentation available to the animate world. Life is full of stories, those real and those fictional, the ones that are entirely created and the ones based on memory, modified almost every time they are being told. Stories accompany us throughout our lives, we listen to them and tell them ourselves. Sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they are cruel. Why are they so important? It happens that they deaden the fear of mortality, distract us from penetrating deep into our own being, and sometimes, on the contrary, allow us to explore the inaccessible layers hidden inside of us. Stories are a broad concept, hence we avoid limiting artists in what they can and want to tell us. They are allowed to spread their wings and visit ‘the regions of the great heresy’. Our intention is far from imposing anything, but it is all about opening possible doors through which we will enter personal, significant, unusual, beautiful, difficult, colorful or black-and-white worlds… We trust that this privilege will be bestowed upon us by the invited artists.
We have chosen as our patrons a pair of uncompromising avant-garde artists – Franciszka and Stefan Themerson (1907/1910 – 1988) whose oeuvre covered a wide spectrum of the fields of art (including avant-garde film, painting, graphics, literature, illustration, design, theater, stage design, opera, publishing, typography, philosophy, photography), came into being and was presented internationally. which corresponds to the multifaceted nature of our undertaking. Besides, both had family ties to Plock and Mazovian Museum is proud of having the only permanent exhibition of theirs in the world – the Themerson Gallery.
Stefan Themerson once wrote “The world is more complicated than our truths about it” (WOOF! WOOF! Or Who Killed Richard Wagner). He continues that as a result of this state of affairs, “an interpretation directed toward the general public is required, and this task is undertaken by artists”. We want to urge our audience to reject the established patterns, leave the one-sided view of the world and look at it from many points of view. Nowadays when we experience so much absurd evil and injustice, the domination of low instincts, we desire people to turn to open and untethered thinking. May free and open-minded thinking be praised!

Time without stories is dead and might as well not exist.
Olga Tokarczuk, Playing on Many Drums

A story never belongs to one person. It belongs to everyone who has ever told it and to everyone who has heard it. That’s why storytelling is so important.
Beth Hautala, Waiting for Unicorns

Yes, some things no one will know about unless I tell about them. And when I completely lose my memory, even I won’t know about them anymore. Only rumors will remain, in which the truth will disappear.
Adrienne Sharp, The True Memories of Mali K

Ever since Eliza discovered a book of fairy tales in Mrs. Swindell’s store and sank into its faded pages, she has understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to fill the void in people’s hearts and wounded minds.
Kate Morton, Forgotten Garden

People are a bit like stars: they shine though sometimes from very far away, but they shine and always have some interesting story to tell…. Only that it takes time, sometimes a long time, for their stories to reach our hearts, just as the light of the stars reaches our eyes. Alessandro D’Avenia, White as milk, red as blood

The Performing Arts Festival is an event with 50 performers from around the world. The curator of the festival, Małgorzata Sady, has invited both world-famous performers and young, still unrecognized artists. From 19 to 22 July 2023, they will be performing in our Museum’s various spaces, including the assembly hall, the patios of the museum buildings located in Tumska and Kolegialna Streets, and the temporary exhibitions venue. The artists will be presenting their festival contributions in the streets of Płock and the cathedral. The festival — ephemeral in nature, happening here and now, responding to the local environment — corresponds to the polyphonic character of the Themersons’ oeuvre, featuring performance art, installation, poetry, theatre, choreography, music, film, and new media art. The festival is going to engage its audience, pose questions and build a platform for understanding.
The festival will be preceded by a 7-day co-creation run by VestAndPage. 15 young artists (including 5 Ukrainian ones) will be participating in it and the results will be presented on the first day of the festival.

Małgorzata Sady writes and talks about film, art and literature, translates, photographs, paints, and creates sound spaces. She works on documentaries and animated films and lectures at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw. Since the late 1970s, as a curator, translator and author of artistic projects, she has been cooperating with art centres, film studios, universities, theatres, performance art and film festivals in Poland and on all continents. Author of numerous translations in the field of contemporary art, literature, philosophy and history (Wittgenstein, Russell, Themerson, Czechowicz, Poświatowska and others). Two-time scholarship holder of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Curator of the Themersons’ permanent exhibition at the Mazovian Museum in Płock. Since 2002, she has been publishing Themersons’ Scattered Works in her publishing house “Gaberbocchus in Poland”. She has been collaborating with the Themerson Festival in Płock since its inception. The work of this extraordinary pair of artists was the subject of many of her lectures, presentations, exhibitions and publications in Poland, Japan, Israel, Belarus, Switzerland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden and others. Currently, she is implementing a one-year project financed by the Culture Program — EEA Funds, inspired by the work of the Themersons, and is finishing work on the biography of Franciszka and Stefan, with whom she was friends for the last 10 years of their lives.

She leads a nomadic lifestyle in search of universal values ​​and beauty.