The festival continues! Throw away the patterns, the world is much more complicated than our truths about it!

Nearly 50 artists from all over the world, a program filled with events from morning to late evening for four whole days and art happening here and now, at your fingertips. The International Festival of Performing Arts began at the Masovian Museum in Płock. It will last until July 22.

The first performance was “The Truth about Home” prepared by participants of workshops conducted a few days before the festival by the renowned Italian-German duo VestAndPage. A dozen or so people from all over Europe – Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Italy, Great Britain – through gestures, sparse words, and the created mood – told a story about the search for a home and a sense of security in a world at war.

Then there were, among others: – a dance inspired by the Japanese tradition in a box shining with white light in the dark room, a performance referring to the centuries-old tradition of weaving Turkish carpets and the secret language of women weavers, a piano and echo concert on the patio of a hundred-year-old Art Nouveau tenement house of the Masovian Museum, a film by the famous Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska projected on wall of an art deco tenement house.

What lies ahead? For example, on July 20, on Thursday evening, in the Płock cathedral on the edge of the Vistula escarpment, Canadian artist John Farah will play Bach in an electronic style. On Saturday afternoon, Sylwia Hanff, a Polish pioneer of butoh dance based on the Japanese tradition, will present the performance “Wars. The holy blood of the Dreamers.” The festival will end with a spectacular performance by VesAndPage “1 9 Monologue”.

– The four-day performance festival in Płock is part of the “Stories. The world is more complicated than our opinions about it” carried out together with the Center for Contemporary Art in Hamar, Norway – says the director of the Masovian Museum in Płock (https://muzeumplock.eu/), Leonard Sobieraj. – Its spiritual patrons are Franciszka and Stefam Themerson, avant-garde artists associated with Płock, people who have influenced many generations of filmmakers, photographers and poets around the world. We have the “Themerson Gallery” in our museum, an exhibition devoted to their work. The project also includes, among others: an exhibition of Norwegian art and crafts, to which we invite you from August 10.

– Stefan Themerson once wrote “The world is more complicated than our truths about it” (Woof! Woof! or who killed Richard Wagner) – adds Małgorzata Sady, an expert on the Themersons’ work and curator of “The Stories”. – We want to encourage the recipients of our events to reject established patterns, abandon a one-sided view of the world and look at it from many possible points of view. In these times, when we experience so much absurd evil and injustice, the domination of low instincts, we call for open, broad and unbridled thinking.

“Stories” are financed by the EEA Funds and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Admission to the International Performing Arts Festival is free.