810 events, 470 events in the main programme, and 340 accompanying events. KRAKERS Cracow Art Week is a captivating journey through the heart of contemporary art in Cracow, one of Poland’s most vibrant cities known for its rich cultural scene.
From April 19 to April 26, 2024, KRAKERS Cracow Art Week invited you to traverse a diverse landscape of galleries, studios, and unconventional spaces, where each corner held a story waiting to be felt. This year, the theme “Feel, feel, keep feeling” (“Czuj, czuj, odczuwaj”) served as a poignant reminder to dive deep into the wellspring of emotions, transforming the act of creation into a profound journey of self-discovery. The event was organized in collaboration with The East of Art Foundation (Fundacja Wschód Sztuki) and the University of the Commission of National Education (Uniwersytet Komisji Edukacji Narodowej).
We talk with Małgorzata Gołębiewska, Marcin Gołębiewski, and Arkadiusz Półtorak — curator of the winning Laboratory project “We have all been inflamed with the desire to live a happy life”, a performance by Fanni Malinovska.
The project that hugs its city, is one worth attending
Monika Juskowiak: This being the 13th edition of KRAKERS, with the “Feel, feel, keep feeling” theme inspired by a Polish scout call, how did it come to symbolize the essence of the event?
Małgorzata Gołębiewska and Marcin Gołębiewski: The theme changes with each edition. We closely observe events impacting daily life and artists’ creative processes every year. Over the past few years, we’ve noticed growing concerns and their accumulation. Artists, with their unique sensitivity, must cope with this. From observing creators, it’s evident that they prioritize awareness and the need to better care for well-being, both individually and collectively. Mindfulness and nurturing are essential demands, not only in interpersonal interactions but also in interspecies relations.
MJ: You mentioned sensitivity. How does the underlying sense of this gentle perceptiveness, tenderness, and empathy resonate throughout the program and accompanying events of KRAKERS?
MG, MG: The event’s theme invites discussion, an annual dialogue undertaken by artists, curators, animators, and gallery owners. This year, many of them incorporate positive emotions, often intimate, depicting relationships with the surrounding world, such as fears, stresses, and universal anxieties. The program includes sensory, communal, and highly participatory projects that delve into autobiographical threads.
MJ: Arkadiusz, how are the feelings encapsulated in this year’s edition reflected in Fanni Malinovska’s concept?
Arkadiusz Półtorak: The work taps into the theme of this year’s Cracow Art Week in a somewhat twisted way. While the organizers draw attention to the affective potential of artistic and cultural practices that espouse the ethics of care and radical empathy, we wanted to draw attention to the role that affects and emotions play in “the theatre of war”, to use a centuries-old metaphor.
MJ: From what you are all saying, emotions, feelings, thus psychology plays a significant role in the concept of this year’s edition. Magłorzata, Marcin, how does the psychologisation of creativity intersect with the KRAKERS events, and, in your opinion, in contemporary art in general?
MG, MG: The recent editions of Krakers have been dedicated to various concepts and themes. For example, slogans like “We are diversity” or the Fluxus slogan by Ala Hansen, “Art always wins,” served as focal points for the event. This year’s theme revolves around emotions, sometimes dramatic, associated with war, which has influenced the transformation of entire social and cultural life. Explaining phenomena and facts from a psychological perspective is also present in the creative process, with contemporary artists often showing interest in the tools of this science. Sensitivity to stimuli from the external world and a desire to explore one’s emotional states are reflected in the events of KRAKERS.
MJ: I want to bring Cracow into the discussion by first going back in time. In 2019 both of you decided to transform the well-known art event into a week-long event and celebration of creativity, community, and emotional exploration. Why did you decide to expand the Cracow Gallery Weekend into a week-long event?
MG, MG: The idea to transform the event from a weekend format to a week-long one arose due to organizational and logistical reasons. However, most importantly, we wanted to expand the scope of the event beyond the gallery weekend to encompass a week of art, which better reflects the specificity of venues presenting contemporary art in Cracow; not all of them are galleries. Each year, the event program has grown, and we wanted to allow the audience to participate in vernissages, calmly explore exhibitions, and actively participate in them. In the three-day format, these opportunities were limited. That’s why, for the past six years, we have been organizing KRAKERS as a week-long event, allowing us to dedicate the first three days mainly to vernissages and events organized by cultural institutions as part of the accompanying program. The remaining part of the week provides the opportunity for free movement between galleries – independently or as part of guided tours from our KULTOUR series.
MJ: The city has a rich history and cultural heritage, how did you incorporate it into the fabric of the current edition?
MG, MG: We openly acknowledge that KRAKERS is closely intertwined with Cracow’s essence. Since 2012, we’ve been bringing this event to life and observing how it shapes, evolves, and adapts within the local art community. We receive support from Cracow’s prominent artistic universities and cultural institutions every year, deepening KRAKERS’ resonance with the city. Every edition is accompanied by a public space project where we annex squares, parks, and plazas, with artists drawing inspiration from Cracow’s rich cultural heritage.
MJ: There’s this interesting division in the programme, on one hand, there’s the City section, and on the other hand, the Laboratory section. Can you tell me more about how it’s mirrored in the programme?
MG, MG: We highly recommend the Laboratory Section – 10 projects selected by the jury as part of the competition. Every year, ambitious and coherent creations, both collective and individual, that align with the main idea of Krakers, have the opportunity to receive financial support from us. The City Section exhibitions offer a wide range of performances, ephemeral artistic actions, installations, painting displays, intriguing debuts, and encounters between contemporary artists and the legacy of Krakow’s classics. Experimental exhibitions in artists’ spaces are juxtaposed with presentations from gallery programmes representing selected artists and trends. New venues continue to emerge on Krakow’s map, alongside galleries and entities that have been operating in the city for decades, showcasing photography and painting in a comprehensive and intergenerational manner.
MJ: Arkadiusz, as mentioned, Fennina’s performance was among the winning ones. Tell me more about the central concept driving the performance.
AP: ‘We Were All Ignited by the Desire for Happiness” is a solo performance by the dancer-choreographer and intermedia artist Fanni (Faina) Malinovska. Over 30 minutes, Malinovska progresses between movements inspired by modernist choreography, military training exercises, and more laidback techno-style dancing – while the soundscape evolves from abstract ‘clicks and cuts’ generated by the artist interacting with magnetic tapes, through military songs, to techno remixes of the latter, which are circulating in the Ukrainian social media at the time of war. The work resulted from Malinovska’s investigation into 20th and 21st-century strategies of wartime social mobilization, which have always made use of music and choreographed movement. Vlad Piletskyi’s costume and Denys Hryshchuk’s stage design helped Faina develop an environment where reminiscences of the two world wars and experiences from the ongoing war in Ukraine mirror each other.
MJ: Are there any plans to expand the ideas presented in KRAKERS into a broader concept?
AP: An updated version of the performance will be shown this autumn at an exhibition at Krakow’s C U at Sadka Gallery alongside works by Fanni Malinovska’s artistic partner and co-founder of GRAM Group, Denys Hryshchuk. Meanwhile, its recordings will be integrated into a larger video work that Fanni is currently working on. We also hope that with the help of the work’s co-producer, The Goethe Institut Kraków, the performance will be shown in various institutions as a standalone work.
MJ: Is there anything additional you’d like to communicate or any special invitation you’d extend to potential viewers of the performance?
AP: The work might well be interpreted as a critical account of the war-related instrumentalization of culture. However, we do not shy away from taking a stand against Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine – and we do want Faina’s work to be seen as a voice of support for fellow Ukrainians. The artist wants people to remember and talk about the Russian-Ukrainian war, so it does not expand or repeat anytime. While investigating the wartime culture from a critical distance, Malinovska’s work was created with a lot of sympathy and tenderness for the thousands of soldiers fighting on the Ukrainian front. The artist had the opportunity to work with some of them as a translator, and this experience certainly influenced the shape of the performance.
MJ: Thank you all!
The multidisciplinary art scene & the discovery of the new
Another project awarded in the Laborary competition is “I Love Gas Stations at Night”. There, artist Kuba Krokosz, in collaboration with Bałuckiego 15 Collective, expresses emotions and fears through VR aesthetics (the exhibition portrays a desolate space, echoing the loneliness experienced during nocturnal journeys between gas stations). There’s also an international accent, the “Chromophilia” exhibition, where six artists from Poland, Portugal, and the Netherlands, Jacinta Costa, Monika Nęcka, Alicja Panasiewicz, Rob Boersma, Carlos Casimiro Costa, Adam Panasiewicz, present creative interventions within the collection of the Ethnographic Museum. Their works delve into objects imbued with cultural significance, exploring themes of locality and individual human experiences within their original contexts.
Alongside the exploration of individual emotions, Cracow Art Week also seeks to address broader social issues, such as climate change, through the lens of personal experience and intimate storytelling. One such artistic dialogue is “The Unbearable Melancholy of Detail or Unsettlement” by Aleksandra Młynarczyk-Gemza. The exhibition, influenced by the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic, social isolation, and environmental threats serves as a philosophical exploration of the concept of HOME through photography, video, and spatial arrangements.
The University of the Commission of National Education in Krakow, co-organizer of KRAKERS, on the other hand, will present two exhibitions: “Keep feeling!” at Galeria Podbrzezie revolves around themes such as practicing sustainable design principles, empathizing with users’ needs, or balancing work and leisure in the design process. The other exhibition titled “Crisis”, held at the former Main Post Office building, “poses the question of the current iteration of the culture of war and whether it has imprinted itself on the practices of visual artists associated with Cracow”.
Cracow and the art world invite you in
Through a combination of exhibitions, workshops, and interactive experiences, KRAKERS Cracow Art Week offers participants a unique opportunity to engage with contemporary art in a meaningful and transformative way. By encouraging both artists and audiences to embrace vulnerability and emotional authenticity, KRAKERS aims to create a space where profound connections can be forged and artistic boundaries can be pushed. Join the transformative journey through the kaleidoscope of contemporary art, where every brushstroke and every word is an invitation to feel and to keep feeling!
