L'animoteur 14 — donkey stor(i)es

intervention and ritual in public space in Płocku Poland

* good-bye of all performers in Warsaw, photo by a passers-by *

words from Małgorzata Sady, the organizers of the festival and exhition on Stefan Themerson, on the background of the performative arts festival

On the performative arts festival «Stories. The world is more complicated than our truths about it» – a few words of introduction a few words.
Before the whole thing began to take a real shape I had a serious dilemma: how to call a substantial artistic endeavor, which was to be implemented both in Norway and Poland over 12 months and include a wide spectrum of diverse events with an opening act of performative arts festival. What could function as a common denominator, not limiting, but setting a direction, a structure or anything else that allows us to situate our world, express it and pass it on.
And then the word ‘stories’* emerged. Stories are fundamental to our thinking and our search/finding the meaning of existence. We all carry stories within us and convey them to others. Storytelling is the most natural means of communication, not necessarily verbal. One can tell a story through gesture, movement, sound, light, image, all the vast instrumentation available to the animate world. Life is full of stories, those real and those fictional, the ones that are entirely created and the ones based on memory, modified almost every time they are being told. Stories accompany us throughout our lives, we listen to them and tell them ourselves. Sometimes they are beautiful, sometimes they are cruel. Why are they so important? It happens that they deaden the fear of mortality, distract us from penetrating deep into our own being, and sometimes, on the contrary, allow us to explore the inaccessible layers hidden inside of us. Stories are a broad concept, hence we avoid limiting artists in what they can and want to tell us. They are allowed to spread their wings and visit ‘the regions of the great heresy’. Our intention is far from imposing anything, but it is all about opening possible doors through which we will enter personal, significant, unusual, beautiful, difficult, colorful or black-and-white worlds… We trust that this privilege will be bestowed upon us by the invited artists.
We have chosen as our patrons a pair of uncompromising avant-garde artists – Franciszka and Stefan Themerson (1907/1910 – 1988) whose oeuvre covered a wide spectrum of the fields of art (including avant-garde film, painting, graphics, literature, illustration, design, theater, stage design, opera, publishing, typography, philosophy, photography), came into being and was presented internationally. which corresponds to the multifaceted nature of our undertaking. Besides, both had family ties to Plock and Mazovian Museum is proud of having the only permanent exhibition of theirs in the world – the Themerson Gallery.
Stefan Themerson once wrote “The world is more complicated than our truths about it” (WOOF! WOOF! Or Who Killed Richard Wagner). He continues that as a result of this state of affairs, “an interpretation directed toward the general public is required, and this task is undertaken by artists”. We want to urge our audience to reject the established patterns, leave the one-sided view of the world and look at it from many points of view. Nowadays when we experience so much absurd evil and injustice, the domination of low instincts, we desire people to turn to open and untethered thinking. May free and open-minded thinking be praised!

Time without stories is dead and might as well not exist.
Olga Tokarczuk, Playing on Many Drums
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full text here  ...  about the whole project «Stories. The world is more complicated than our truths about it»  ...  program