Since its beginnings as Cracow Gallery Weekend KRAKERS in 2012, Cracow Art Week KRAKERS has developed into one of the key platforms for contemporary art in Kraków, connecting independent spaces, institutions, and audiences across the city. Initiated and produced by Fundacja Wschód Sztuki, the project reflects the organisation’s long-standing commitment to promoting contemporary art, supporting artistic communities and expanding access to culture.
The 15th anniversary edition, held from April 23 to 30, unfolds under the theme Hunters, Gatherers, Practitioners of the Future, taking inspiration from Tomasz Rakowski’s study of post-socialist communities, which traces how experiences of marginalisation and powerlessness can give rise to unexpected forms of resourcefulness and agency. Building on this perspective, the festival shifts the emphasis from limitation to potentiality, exploring how artists navigate fragments of the past while imagining what lies ahead. Through practices of collecting, reassembling, and reinterpreting, this year’s programme positions the city as both an archive and a living laboratory. It invites audiences to move through Kraków as attentive observers and active participants, gathering fragments of stories, images, and encounters along the way.
In a moment shaped by uncertainty and rapid change, the festival proposes a slower, more attentive mode of engagement, grounded in reflection and care. We spoke with members of the KRAKERS team – Małgorzata Gołębiewska, initiator and head of the artistic concept, Katarzyna Mierzwińska, chief coordinator of Cracow Art Week KRAKERS, Ewa Kawecka, author of KULTOUR guided tours and coordinator of the main programme, and Marcin Gołębiewski, organiser and president of the Foundation – about the ideas, tensions, and artistic strategies shaping this year’s edition.
Patrycja Poznańska: Kraków appears, within the framework of the festival, as a space of tension between the past and what is yet to emerge. Are there places or projects in this year’s edition that particularly highlight this relationship between memory and the city’s future?
Małgorzata Gołębiewska: Kraków, as explored during this and previous editions of KRAKERS, reveals itself as a city of tensions, where memory and the future do not oppose one another but co-create a single dynamic process. In past editions, we have questioned the myth of the avant-garde, engaged with futurological visions, emphasised multiplicity, and framed artistic practices within philosophical concepts of openness. We consistently aim to stimulate reflection at the intersection of past and present, challenging the status quo. Critical analysis, carried out by artists and activists, encourages audiences to rethink existing mechanisms.
Ewa Kawecka: At the centre of this year’s narrative is the LABORATORY section project Konie Hazard, coordinated by Angelika Wojas. It functions as an excavation that reconfigures traces of former stables, a military casino, and state-run betting institutions, merging them with rave, trash, and glitch aesthetics. Archaeology becomes fuel for collective artistic practice, while the metaphor of gambling reveals the risks shaping contemporary urban life.
Alongside this, Jakub Maciejczyk’s installation I Have a Garage in Silicon Valley, but… offers an ironic take on innovation myths, showing how futures are often assembled from leftovers. The exhibition Poland China in Two Hours revisits the informal economies of the 1990s, presenting temporality as a survival strategy.
Other projects, such as Villa Fatale and Smutek Ogrodów, introduce a more subtle, organic layer, while the former University Hospital complex on Kopernika Street becomes a vast archive and laboratory where memory and urban rhythms are continuously reworked.
We consistently aim to stimulate reflection at the intersection of past and present, challenging the status quo. Critical analysis, carried out by artists and activists, encourages audiences to rethink existing mechanisms.
PP: Within the framework of this year’s theme of “hunters and gatherers,” what is the role of the audience? Can viewers also become “gatherers,” and if so, what do they collect?
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: Absolutely. In a metaphorical sense, visitors become gatherers of emotions, reflections, knowledge, connections, and memories. The programme offers many opportunities for this kind of collecting.
Marcin Gołębiewski: Collecting and processing are universal experiences, which is why audiences easily recognise the strategies used by artists. Some visitors are also collectors themselves, whether of contemporary art or everyday artefacts.
Małgorzata Gołębiewska: Artists today operate as hunters of ideas and objects. Their practice resembles bricolage, as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss, where available materials are reworked into new meanings. This approach is driven not by exhaustion but by care and a desire to build relationships. By reactivating overlooked objects, artists restore them to the circulation of meaning and affect, searching archives for elements that can shape alternative futures.
Artists today operate as hunters of ideas and objects. Their practice resembles bricolage, as described by Claude Lévi-Strauss, where available materials are reworked into new meanings.
PP: The theme references the book Hunters, Gatherers, Practitioners of Powerlessness by Tomasz Raczek. Why shift the focus from powerlessness to potentiality?
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: Contemporary reality is complex. The proximity of artificial intelligence and social media exposes the limits of our own perception and emotions. As organisers, we want to offer an alternative by presenting a creative, diverse environment that asks essential questions and seeks answers through direct, shared experience. It is a move away from powerlessness, mediation, and distance.
PP: Disorientation and the need to relearn the world are central to transformation. Are there projects in the program that strongly engage with this condition?
Ewa Kawecka: In this year’s program, disorientation becomes a tool rather than a crisis. The project Do Not Kill the Messenger by the OWL group reimagines Hermes within an algorithmic reality, where fragmented, AI-generated messages create uncertainty.
Similarly, Salto Mortale explores disorientation as an existential condition tied to risk, while Everything You Can Carry reflects navigating the world without stable reference points. In Brikolerzy. Architekci resztek, disorientation becomes a creative method.
Małgorzata Gołębiewska: Other projects engage with excess, chaos, or slowness. Need for Speed disrupts the logic of acceleration, while What’s in My Bag?! reframes everyday chaos as a survival strategy.
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: All these works share the belief that disorientation opens space for new ways of seeing and understanding the world.
PP: How can practices inspired by marginalisation avoid becoming merely aesthetic narratives within the art system?
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: The key lies in authenticity, genuine engagement, and a willingness to understand marginalisation both systemically and at the level of individual experience.
PP: Does contemporary art still “rewrite” reality, or does it remain at the level of interpretation?
Marcin Gołębiewski: Artists often act as cultural animators who work with marginalised communities to rewrite existing hierarchies and stereotypes. Contemporary art not only interprets reality but actively produces new ways of understanding it.
PP: How is the process of rebuilding meaning after a crisis reflected in this year’s festival?
Małgorzata Gołębiewska: We invite audiences to discover the answer starting April 23.
Contemporary art not only interprets reality but actively produces new ways of understanding it.
PP: If the protagonists of Rakowski’s book attended the festival today, would they recognise elements of their own experience?
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: They would likely find common ground in Łukasz Surowiec’s public installation on the Planty, where temporary structures made from reclaimed furniture are created collaboratively with participants from the Emaus community. The project emphasises relationships and shared work, addressing housing instability and precariousness.
Małgorzata Gołębiewska: The Sketch for a Monument to the Victims of Eviction transforms everyday objects into acts of memory, shifting focus from monumentality to collective remembrance.
PP: If this year’s edition could be captured through a single “found object,” what would it be?
Marcin Gołębiewski: It would have to be something that is both residue and resource. This edition focuses on exploring remnants and assembling them into new constellations that shape future narratives.
Katarzyna Mierzwińska: It could be a fossil-like form, what we call the “central find,” symbolising something valuable retrieved from the chaos of everyday life and given new meaning.
