Transitions Central Europe: Small Narration

POLAND

In the autumn of 2006, Wojtek Ziemilski learned, out of the blue, that his grandfather, an upright citizen of Wroclawin Poland, had informed for the Communist secret police for many years. His family couldn’t get over the shock of this unexpected revelation and sought to learn everything they could. Ziemilski created a performance in the form of a lecture—about long and short narratives—in an effort to understand the power artistic decisions can have over a (hi)story he can no longer influence.

Ziemilski combines new media with activism and various ways of addressing the public in a work which lies in the grey zone between theatre, the visual arts and dance. In this production he combines personal confessions, historical documents, video art and contemporary choreography.

Memory is the sphere is which loss makes itself felt, he says, setting out to reveal through his work the link between personal memories and the construction of a narrative. A performance/lecture which tackles memory, identity and absence through a form which straddles the real and the imaginary, the personal and the collective, art and academia.