On Saturday August 23, the Polish-Icelandic project FOLK? I do (not) agree! produced by the Ciało/Umysł Foundation and Reykjavik Dance Festival will have its premiere. The project is a series of artistic and performative events inspired by a performance by Edyta Kozak and Roland Rowiński with a similar title. The starting point was the attempt to redefine the notion of folk and show it in a broad context, both as a cultural form and as a social and political construct.
The selection of artists for the exchange was rooted in the question of how artists in both Iceland and Poland might be incorporating, and engaging with, ?disappearing folk cultures? in their artistic practices. As such, we were specifically concerned with inviting artists whose artistic practices had previously engaged with giving life to, or reinventing, the apparently forgotten, or currently absent, rituals. Artists seeking to bring about a certain condition of attention towards the world, or a particular space of encounter with it, through the staging of these rituals and their spatial and temporal structures., say the Icelandic curators Ásger?ur G. Gunnarsdóttir and Alexander Roberts.
During the Raykjavik Dance Festival in the unique space of Theatre I?nó, performative and interactive instalations prepared by Valdimar Jóhannsson, Sigur?ur Arent Jónsson, Erna Ómarsdóttir, Edyta Kozak, Ásrún Magnúsdottir, Lech Rowiński, Roland Rowiński, Iza Szostak, Karol Tymiński and Wiola Ujazdowska will be shown. The Polish premiere of the project is scheduled for September 20 at Teatr Studio in Warsaw, as a part of the 13-th Body/Mind International Contemporary Dance Festival.
The FOLK? I do (not) agree! project is supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants and co-financed from Polish sources.