Once again affirming its status as one of Poland’s most dynamic site-specific art festivals, the 2025 SURVIVAL Art Review, titled 3s/8h, explored the notions of time, labour, and attention, while delving into how they have evolved historically to shape our perception of leisure. Organised by the Art Transparent Foundation, this year’s Review was held from June 18–22 in the evocative setting of Leśnica Castle in Wrocław – a location as historically layered as the themes explored within it.
We spoke to Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz and Michał Bieniek, curators and organisers of the Festival, about the conceptual framework of this year’s edition, the site-specific resonance of Leśnica Castle, and how international collaborations continue to expand SURVIVAL’s reach beyond borders.
Aleksandra Mainka-Pawłowska: This year’s edition of the SURVIVAL Art Review explored themes of time and productivity in an age of overstimulation and shrinking attention spans. Can you tell us more about the significance of the titular 3 seconds and 8 hours, and how they reflect the transformation in our perception of time?
Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz: The titular three seconds and eight hours are units by which time is currently measured in the context of work. The eight hours representing the working day as demanded by the labour movement at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the three seconds being the minimum time frame considered to count as content engagement on social media. Between these three seconds, a short, fleeting moment of constant distraction, and the eight hours, a measure of productivity that historically divides time into work and non-work, lies the framework within which we consider not just working time, but more importantly, free time. In today’s attention economy, free time is filled with scrolling, absorbing content, and to a large extent, it is no longer truly free; rather, it becomes yet another contribution to the contemporary economy. Except this is labour we perform for free.
The way we perceive time has undergone a massive shift in recent decades and a profound transformation over the centuries. We’ve long since abandoned a lifestyle dictated by daylight hours or seasons. Today, we are constantly illuminated by the glow of screens, which reorganise our perception of time in an even more radical way. We live in a fragmented, dispersed time. We’re in several places at once – replying to emails while responding to text messages, all while something is probably playing in the background. Our presence in time is, in a sense, everywhere and nowhere at once. It unfolds across multiple spaces simultaneously. And all of this comes at the cost of our attention, our well-being, and our sense of being grounded in the here and now.
AMP: The festival took place over the long June weekend on the grounds of the Leśnica Castle and its surrounding park. What role did this timeframe and location play in the context of this year’s theme?
MM: This year, the festival took place at a slightly different time than usual – we aligned with the long June weekend, which is quite interesting and ties directly into this year’s theme. Through both the exhibition and the location, we offered a moment of pause, a chance for rest and relief. The festival happened at Leśnica Castle, specifically, in its casemates, the former “Forty” nightclub. It’s a fantastic space where Renaissance walls mingle with 1990s-style bars. For those who may not know, Leśnica is one of Wrocław’s most remote districts, once an independent town. The castle itself sits amidst a beautiful park, where the Bystrzyca River flows and beavers roam freely.
So this year’s edition of the Review also served as an invitation, almost like a mini holiday, a day trip to Leśnica: a walk through the park, an encounter with art, and a chance to physically experience how free time can be structured. It was an opportunity to sense what it’s like to live more in the realm of eight hours than three seconds and how that shift can impact our well-being.
What’s more, in the castle’s casemates, where the main exhibition took place, we’re surrounded by thick, ancient walls that block out mobile phone signals. So, at least during your visit, there was a chance to disconnect from our phones and immerse yourself in a different story about attention and time.
“We believe that boredom and leisure deserve a critical look: to reconsider them as resources for collective life.”
— Michał Bieniek
AMP: You also encouraged visitors to rest and even to socially embrace boredom. Today, boredom is often seen as something negative. We even have sayings like “only boring people get bored”. And yet in the past, only a select few could afford to do nothing. How would you like to reframe the concept of boredom in the context of this year’s theme?
Michał Bieniek: Boredom, as a facet of free time, can be creative and even community-building. We believe that boredom and leisure deserve a critical look: to reconsider them as resources for collective life. Shouldn’t we, as a society, begin to use our free time more consciously, more actively, rather than treating it as what we call in the curatorial text phantom time?
Not only are the contents we consume, especially on social media and the internet, superficial and quickly forgotten, but our attention itself is being capitalised on. Large corporations profit from it. They treat our focus as a commodity and something to monetise. In short, we invest our attention, and on top of that, we pay for it.
AMP: As part of the Review, you presented works that were created during the four-year Deconfining project, which aims to foster connections between artists, cultural practitioners, and art audiences from Africa and Europe. One of the core principles of the programme is collaboration based on equality and mutual respect. What challenges do cultural institutions face when working across different cultural and social contexts? Has the Deconfining project encountered such challenges as well?
MM: Part of this year’s exhibition included works created within the framework of the Deconfining project, an initiative under Creative Europe, in which we are participating. The project explores collaboration between European and African countries. In our section of Deconfining, we carried out a series of research-based artistic and curatorial exchanges, as well as the creation of new video works, which premiered this year.
Another important element worth mentioning is the publication we produced, focused on cultural exchange between Central and Eastern Europe and East Africa. This publication aimed to map out ways of thinking about collaboration that are not solely shaped by colonial history or by postcolonial logics rooted in Western European experience. Our cooperation with artists and practitioners from Tanzania and Uganda was a deeply enriching and inspiring experience. As part of the residency programme, we also sent artists from Poland and the Czech Republic to Dar es Salaam. Our partner in Tanzania is Nafasi Art Space, based in the capital.
One of the core principles of the Deconfining project is collaboration based on equality and reciprocity. A big challenge we encountered in organising this initiative and building these relationships was, first and foremost, the administrative side of things. The logistics of travel, obtaining visas, and enabling artists from Africa to come to Europe are incomparably more difficult than our journeys there. So the very first obstacle to true equality and reciprocity lies in something as fundamental as passport access. We know that many of our partners in the project have faced the same issues, and these are ongoing challenges for many cultural practitioners seeking collaboration with Africa.
Another challenge, perhaps, lies in different approaches to time and ways of working. Our partners often demonstrate significantly greater flexibility and spontaneity in their actions – something we absolutely see as a strength, and something we know we have a lot to learn from.
AMP: And these artworks presented at the festival were selected from among several hundred submissions. What criteria did the curatorial team use when choosing the artists who will ultimately present their work? What did that, undoubtedly challenging, process look like?
MB: It’s true, it’s a demanding and very lengthy process. Each year, we launch an open call, and from that pool, we select a portion (usually around two-thirds) of the works that are then presented during the Review. The open call is announced in the autumn to give artists about two or three months to prepare their concepts. We typically receive the applications by the end of February, and for some time now we’ve been receiving over 300 – this year it was 360. We have a very short window to read, review, and discuss them: two weeks to read, followed by about a week to ten days for curatorial meetings and final selections. In the end, we usually select about two dozen artworks.
By March and April, spring is already underway, and we have to move quickly because most of the selected projects are brand-new works, sometimes very complex, and as the organising foundation, we are largely responsible for their production. So May and early June are already tight in terms of time. It’s barely enough to produce the works, organise meetings with the artists, and discuss technical, financial, and exhibition details.
As for the selection criteria, these are always related to the theme we announce in the open call, and, crucially for SURVIVAL, the site context. From its very beginning, SURVIVAL has been a site-specific event, and the location largely shapes the content of each edition. With this year’s theme, 3s/8h, such a thematic direction felt natural as we’re working in an 800-year-old castle, later rebuilt multiple times. After being almost completely destroyed in a fire in 1953, the castle was reconstructed with a classicist, historicist exterior, but a thoroughly modernist interior.
We wanted to respond to this layered history and the fact that it was once the residence of aristocracy, a social class that, for centuries (if not millennia), was essentially the only group that had what we now call free time. For the lower classes, especially the peasantry, life was work, and the notion of free time didn’t exist. That’s why we asked artists to reflect with us on how we perceive free time today, and how we use it. Issues of community, togetherness, and the potential of free time as a resource for building social bonds were central to us.
AMP: Speaking of which, one of the key elements of SURVIVAL is the Social Stage, which hosts discussions on social, economic, and political topics. This year’s programme included conversations on technology, the attention economy, and the disappearance of free time. How do these events help audiences better understand the artworks on display? What is the relationship between these two elements of the Review – are they developed in parallel?
MB: It varies. Some of the Social Stage events are developed in parallel with the curatorial themes already introduced in the open call and developed with the artists to offer deeper or alternative perspectives on the exhibition’s subjects. Others are added as the festival takes shape, and we see the need to further explore a specific theme.
This also connects to the fact that, as the Art Transparent Foundation, we run many other projects throughout the year, including large international collaborations, such as Deconfining and The Big Green, a pan-European initiative with 12 partners across the EU focusing on the intersections of culture and climate protection. Often, these projects culminate in artistic outcomes that become key components of the festival. This year, works developed during the Deconfining residencies formed an important part of the exhibition. That’s why we also expand those conversations within the Social Stage.
And I think it’s very valuable that these debates and presentations happen within the Social Stage framework, because the collaborations they reflect are far from obvious and rarely realised in Poland. They open up artistic, curatorial, social, and political perspectives we don’t often encounter. That intersection of culture, art, and politics is very important to us. I think it’s also something our audience finds engaging.
The Social Stage has long been built on stable partnerships. One of the longest-standing is our collaboration with SWPS University, which prepares two or three lectures each year tied to the festival’s curatorial themes. For the past two years, we’ve also worked with the MINT magazine, which curates debates based on topics explored in the main exhibition. And this year, we began collaborating with the Gabriel Narutowicz Institute of Political Thought, a relationship that emerged from our work last year with Dr. Przemysław Witkowski, who led a debate during the last SURVIVAL around the wave of hate attacks that targeted Art Transparent. That discussion focused on hate in general, but also hate directed at art, artists, organisers, and cultural workers. This year, the Narutowicz Institute and Dr. Witkowski organised a debate on the culture of rebellion, which is a direct continuation of those conversations.
“On a social level, I believe that meeting one another, as institutions, self-organised groups, and independent artistic initiatives, brings value to both sides.”
— Małgorzata Miśniakiewicz
AMP: But the Deconfining project, which began in 2022, is now coming to an end. Looking back on these past few years of intense exchange, creative work, and intercultural dialogue, what do you consider its greatest achievement? Are there aspects of this collaboration that have the potential to live on beyond the project’s institutional and time-based framework?
MM: In my opinion, the greatest achievement and potential of the Deconfining project lies in the relationships – the collaborations, friendships, and the opportunity to connect with incredible artists, curators, and cultural organisers in Dar es Salaam. That is definitely something we hope to continue and develop further. We’re actively looking for ways to maintain and deepen this cooperation.
Another significant outcome of the project is, of course, the artworks and publications that emerged from it. We’re very proud of the book I mentioned earlier, but also of the new artistic works that we presented at the festival. One example worth highlighting is the two-channel video installation by Lindi Dedek, which poetically weaves together a narrative about mpingo (ebony tree) with the story of Central European willow trees, forming a beautiful dialogue that is a blend of a poetic essay and documentary. Another standout work is by Moses “Teflon” Kizza, who collaborated with Joseph Tebandeke, a dancer with a physical disability due to polio. The piece breaks taboos around disability, which remains a stigmatised topic in Uganda, and speaks to the power of pursuing dreams and finding liberation through art.
One more important work is a five-channel sound installation by Janek Moss, who returns to Dar es Salaam to reconnect with a group of singeli musicians who were the protagonists of a film he made five years ago, which was released in 2023. Janek revisits them to see how their careers have evolved, how their lives have changed as Singeli gained more international recognition. I believe Janek’s work is a great example of a long-term collaboration. His project has taken shape across various institutional and non-institutional settings, and it shows how lasting relationships, rooted in genuine interest and artistic connection, can lead to continued cooperation.
Within the Deconfining project, there are also several working groups, including one focused on policy: drafting recommendations for building cultural collaboration not only on the artistic level but also in terms of legislation and political advocacy. Our contribution to Deconfining has mainly focused on artistic collaboration, but I think one very tangible outcome will be a kind of opening up, a mutual recognition and understanding. The visits of artists and curators from Tanzania to Poland were incredibly meaningful, both for us and for Polish audiences, who had the chance to engage with creators working in very different cultural and institutional contexts. On a social level, I believe that meeting one another, as institutions, self-organised groups, and independent artistic initiatives, brings value to both sides. Building international networks of cooperation can resonate far beyond the art world. It allows audiences to engage with cultures they might not be familiar with and helps shift the lens through which we view places that are often overlooked or underrepresented.
AMP: Meanwhile, the Review has been running since 2003. Over that time, Poland and the world have undergone major social and cultural changes. How has the mission of the festival and its reception by audiences evolved over the years? How do you envision SURVIVAL’s future in the coming years?
MB: SURVIVAL has grown a lot, especially in terms of personnel. It’s now a large, international event, logistically complex. Each edition includes about 40 artists or artistic groups from around the world. Then there’s the Social Stage, the Sound Stage, and many accompanying events. But let’s not forget what has always been a defining feature of SURVIVAL – it’s still a nomadic, site-specific event. That means each year is an entirely new production, curatorial, and exhibition challenge.
None of the spaces we work with are designed for showing art. When we enter, the first task is to adapt it: clear it, clean it, install power. Sometimes the site is partially in use, sometimes there’s ongoing construction. It all generates layers of complexity – working with city offices, securing permits for murals, public sculptures, road closures, etc. It’s a massive logistical undertaking. I look back fondly on the early years, especially the first five editions, when I was curating and producing the entire thing on my own. I honestly don’t know how I managed. Thankfully, SURVIVAL has grown, and we now have an amazing team, but even now, it remains an enormous effort.
In terms of content, SURVIVAL hasn’t changed so drastically. It’s still nomadic, and the theme is always tightly connected to the location. What has changed is the world around us, and I feel like the art of young artists today, and SURVIVAL itself, has become a kind of barometer. It reflects the issues bubbling up in the public sphere. The themes that artists explore, and the curatorial narratives we build around them, are each year a kind of diagnosis of where we are, what matters, what’s being talked about, and how quickly and strangely the world is shifting.
I remember the sixth edition of SURVIVAL, which took place in Wrocław’s District of Four Temples or Four Denominations. It was a difficult, but beautiful and inspiring edition. I wrote the catalogue essay that year, and in it, I said “…places like the Four Temples District, scattered around the world, are more than just sets of dilapidated, dirty facades which need painting. They are primarily burdensome and denied areas, explosive areas. Their complex and difficult histories are a lesson worth taking before we cover them completely with new paint”. The district itself was undergoing major revitalisation at the time, and I wrote that these unresolved and ignored problems were simply being painted over with a thin layer of fresh paint.
That was 14 years ago. And I still feel there’s truth in that observation. The world is changing rapidly, both locally and globally, socially and politically, and it’s bringing us full circle in many ways. I hope we don’t complete that circle entirely, that we can still learn the lessons. But as I said, I believe what we do acts as a kind of barometer illuminating the complex challenges we face on local and international levels alike.
