INTERIOR LANDSCAPES
As Jolanta Brach-Czaina wrote: "The basis of our existence is everyday life. And since we experience the fact of existence as extremely important, so we are overwhelmed with amazement whenever we realize that it passes in trifles. Everyday life, which is the existential background of extraordinary events that we expect - often in vain - can thus determine everything. It has a petty dimension. Frequency is high. It is imperceptible."*. Everyday life over the past two years has taken a variety of forms. It was deposited in the corners of bedrooms, in piles of dishes and unlaid clothes. She passed for isolation, longing for touch and waiting for conversation. She expressed herself in the strength of the crowd taking to the streets, in a loud voice full of courage, in disobedience, in defiance of hatred and war. It recurred day after day, for each person differently. The participation of internal images in this process of daily existence was unique - for some they became a means of escape, for others a refuge. These images sometimes returned unexpectedly, like phantoms, but more often they responded to the invitation of memory. They grew, then shrank again, until finally they began to resemble an uneven landscape.
The last two years have in many ways reminded me of a sequence of scenes from a movie Chungking Express, where Faye, one of the main characters, visiting the apartment in the absence of its owner, made small, almost imperceptible changes. That's how a pirated version of the single appeared in the record collection California Dreamin' team of The Mamas and The Papas, a new fish has arrived in the aquarium, and the flappers have changed color from blue to pink. Each of the characters Chungking Express was in its own way submerged in solitude, bathed in yellows and greens, filled with the sweet and full flavor of pineapple, sultry from the rainy season. This interior landscape resonates in my mind whenever I hear somewhere by chance California Dreamin' or I'm trying to sort out my daily life.
The dusting off of sentiments often accompanies the memory walks we take in visiting interior landscapes. It's a return to childhood imagination, play and creativity, to memories of summer, a hand in a cast, riding a bicycle, boredom in the rain, eating ice cream, trampling mirabelles and contests of spitting cherry stones at a distance. As Brach-Czaina wrote: "The gesture of spitting announces the death of the cherry. But the cherry grows from the stone and perdition can result in rebirth."*. Likewise with interior landscapes, some we just can't get rid of.
In the swirls of memory, it is sometimes difficult to cut a corner. Naturally, derailment accompanies inner landscapes, and often enriches them with new and ever-expanding territories of sensory reference. These journeys are not limited to the world as we know it, to trails already laid out, to maps and lands that have been divided and appropriated. Careful attention to the details and patterns of the world around us, both locally and globally, allows for a different perspective that can bring elements of the abstract, the uncanny or the dreamlike into the everyday.
Finally, in the interior landscapes lies the power of community building, both human and interspecies. This process is accompanied by learning to sensitize, appreciate and protect nature, to respect animal life and its environment. Our existence becomes coexistence, and the images, woven like a spider's web, become places of contacts, crossed paths and, finally, encounters. Waving under the eyelids, memories of the smell of flowers, the laughter of a loved one, the singing of birds, the creaking of snow, the softness of fur, the porosity of skin, return to us at the most (un)expected moments. Let's care for them with tenderness so that we don't forget them.
This year's festival will blossom with interior landscapes of creative individuals, sensitive to both current themes exploring the present and themes reworking the past. The numerous exhibitions of the main and regional program will be accompanied by a theoretical and practical seminar, dedicated to traces of memory, as well as lectures and workshops, expanding reflection on the medium of photography. Concluding in the words of Brach-Czaina, may this festival bring you "the incomprehensible grandeur of the joy of insight, aroused by the inner stirrings of the"*
JULIA STACHURA
* All quotes are from the book "The Cracks of Existence"..
The slogan of the 6th edition of the Festival"Interior Landscapes". addresses the surrounding changes resulting from the climate, political and pandemic crises. It focuses attention on those creative attitudes that turn "inward" and explore issues related to memory, trauma, isolation, individual and social imagination, among others. The events of the 6th edition of the Wielkopolska Festival of Photography are divided into Main Program i Regional Program.
As part of the Main Program There will be 4 exhibitions in Poznań, as well as projects selected as part of an open call entitled "The most important projects of the year". "Playground". Developing the exhibition program will be accompanying workshops, lectures, seminars and meetings that deepen the thematic area of "interior landscapes."
The exhibitions of the Main Program weave a multi-threaded story around the Festival's slogan. Karolina Ćwik, depicting intimate spaces of everyday life in frames from the series "Don't look at me", reveals her ambivalent experience of being a woman, mother and artist at the same time. It's a story about moving on the edge of one's own bodily and mental boundaries. On the other hand, Marta Normington's exhibition "Cosmic Navel and Other Stories" centers around the mythical center - the center of all things. Referring simultaneously to mythology and history, the artist tells of nomadic wanderings in search of a relationship with the world and attempts to anchor herself in reality. She also asks the question about the consequences of the authoritarian gesture of pointing to the "navel of the world."
"To be Developed" by Jaroslaw Klups is a journey on the trail of afterimages of experiences and emotions accompanying the exploration of photography. The artist introduces the viewer to the world of tangled objects, sounds and smells, revealing to him the fascinating spaces of the development of amateur photography in the 70s and 80s. Meanwhile, Karolina Wojtas and Maciej Cholewa undertook a rescue mission of space conquest, investigating "The effect of vacuum on living organisms." Their expedition, however, is doomed to failure in advance. Since, using all the technologies and theories available on Earth, we can't stop the coming catastrophe, will we be able to survive thanks to them on another planet?
Regional Program was created as a result of cooperation with cultural institutions, photographers and photographers, theorists and theoreticians, as well as art groups operating throughout Greater Poland. The rich and varied program includes a number of exhibitions and events that will take place in: Gniezno, Kalisz, Kleszczewo, Konin, Krotoszyn, Koszuty, Międzychód, Mosina, Nowy Tomyśl, Poznań, Piła, Pleszewo, Słupca, Śrem, Trzcianka, Trzemeszno, Wągrowiec and Zbąszyń.
The Ireneusz Zjeżdżałka Wielkopolska Festival of Photography, held since 2012, is the province's largest photographic review showing the condition of regional photography, the forms of involvement of male and female artists in the life of local communities and documenting the changes taking place in the region and contemporary reality.
Detailed program: https://wbp.poznan.pl/fotografia/wff/6wff-krajobrazy-wewnetrzne/
The festival is co-created by Kamila Kobierzynska, Julia Stachura (content assistance), Agata Grzych (curator of "Playground"), Agnieszka Zdziabek (visual identification).
Source: festival organizer