Last year’s The Artists Festival constituted a recapitulation of the most important audio and music projects undertaken by visual artists in Poland in the last few years. Participants included young-generation artists for whom working with sound is an inherent part of their practice, and also those for whom musical activity represents a separate field of investigation and experimentation and is not strictly connected with their visual work.
This year’s edition of the festival will also feature mid- and older-generation artists, reactivated cult bands and the recreation of historic sound performances: we invite onto the stage idols of young generation sound artists, both Polish artists and those from UK, US and Israel.
In the second edition of The Artists, we concentrate on a play with the conventions of a “concert performance.” The festival programme features projects in which the most important element is the analysis of the behavior of artists performing on stage and an investigation into viewers’ expectations. Their objects of interest are various aspects connected with performing music – from stage rituals, through the fetishisation of instruments and musical equipment to the very idea of performing live. The eponymous Artists appear in a variety of roles, not necessarily that of performing in person on stage. In the park concert amphitheatre this year it will be possible to see and hear such performances as the newest project by Zbigniew Libera prepared especially for The Artists, a performance of the Israeli artist Naama Tsabar in cooperation with Polish musicians and a “painting” performance by Dean Allen Spunt (known from the group No Age). The first part of the festival will be closed by the controversial British artist and winner of the Turner prize, Martin Creed with his band. The second part will take place in the club Dzik, where it will be possible to discover such mysteries as what is so-called mic swinging in the frame of an unusual sound performance by Alona Rodeh.
LINE UP:
Martin Creed and his band
Black Square
DJ Jansi (Janek Simon)
Leszek Knaflewski
Libera i jego nowe babcie
Daniel Malone
Peine Perdue
Alona Rodeh
Jan Smaga
Dean Allen Spunt
Naama Tsabar
Warszawska Orkiestra Rozrywkowa Im. I. Krenza
organiser: Zachęta – National Gallery of Art
curators: Katarzyna Kołodziej, Magdalena Komornicka, Stanisław Welbel
partners:
Centrum Promocji Kultury Praga-Południe
British Council Polska