Feminist Futures Festival // Breaking the Spell

 

How do we make art between the ends of the world? What spells do we have to break in order to get out of the trap of the patriarchal order and ongoing exhaustion? What if we think of feminism not only as an artistic choice, but mainly as a logic of work? How, working in different contexts, can we build local and transnational alliances? 

 

Between 17th and 20th November InSzPer (Instytut Sztuk Performatywnych) invites Warsaw audience to the FEMINIST FUTURES FESTIVAL, as part of the European project “apap – FEMINIST FUTURES”. The festival, which will take place first in Berlin and then in Warsaw and Salzburg in November, is conceived as a journey through different parts of Europe. Some of the invited artists will travel to all three cities, present various pieces and participate in discursive formats, paving a common path between these three contexts, localities and temporalities. 

 

The Warsaw edition of the festival is hosted by Komuna Warszawa and takes place together with the third gathering of Breaking the Spell - an international artistic research project on feminist practices of being-with in performing arts. Curated by Marta Keil and co-produced by InSzPer, Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, Müncher Kammerspiele and Viernulvier Ghent, Breaking the Spell is a temporary space of common learning and mutual support for artists, curators and thinkers who redefine the arts by deeply transforming the ways of co-creating, producing and encountering with spectators. The artistic proposals gathered, practiced and researched within the Breaking the Spell pay a special attention to the embodied experiences and to the lived knowledge; they focus on setting the frame of gathering with collaborators and audiences as much as they focus on its topic; they approach feminism not necessarily as a topic, but mainly as a logic of work; they practice thinking-with and being-with (as Donna Haraway has it) and offer space for their non-human companions; they acknowledge the labour of care and maintenance as crucial elements of artistic practice and refuse to take part in the competition for new and loudly shouted ideas. “Breaking the Spell” emerges from the desire to understand how to make art in the moment of loosing the world as we knew it. The Warsaw gathering will take place with Aleksandra Borys, Silvia Bottiroli, Alicja Czyczel, Marta Jalowska, Lina Majdalanie, Agata Maszkiewicz, Agata Siniarska, Swoosh Lieu and Sarah Vanhee (Bodies of Knowledge).

 

The common journey of three sister festivals was imagined and designed i companionship by three performing arts institutions: Tanzfabrik in Berlin, InSzPer in Warsaw and SZENE Salzburg; and three artists supported by the apap: Milla Koistinen, Sergiu Matis and Agata Maszkiewicz. In Warsaw, their performances will be presented together with the works by Harun Morrison, Ivana Müller and artistic duo Weronika Szczawińska & Piotr Wawer Jr., who will present their newest performance Mushrooms, produced by Teatr Powszechny im. Z. Hübnera in Warsaw.

 

 

FF Festival in Warsaw is curated Marta Keil in collaboration with Agata Maszkiewicz and Grzegorz Reske

Producer: Olga Kozińska

Partners: InSzPer (Instytut Sztuk Performatywnych), Komuna Warszawa and Teatr Powszechny im. Z. Hübnera w Warszawie

Breaking the Spell is curated by Marta Keil and co-produced by Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, Müncher Kammerspiele, InSzper and Viernulvier Ghent.

 

 

Co-produced by apap - FEMINIST FUTURES, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union

 

Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

 

Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

 

With the kind support of the Institut français and the French Ministry of Culture / DGCA. ​