– When we started working on the program, the word COMMUNITY – chosen about the edition – had a different emotional charge than today. After Russia’s unjustified and criminal attack on Ukraine, while millions of Ukrainians and Ukrainian women have been forced to find a temporary home, everyone views values such as unity and solidarity differently. Today, when the media changes the slogan “European community” by all means, and hundreds of people organize to help those fleeing the war, we want to believe that it is the “community” that will allow us to survive this crisis – say Franek Ammer, Krzysztof Candrowicz and Marta Szymańska from the Fotofestiwal curatorial collective.
Triple Fotofestiwal in Łódź in June. What projects will you be able to see?
Fotofestiwal invited two festivals to Łódź, the Month of Photography in Minsk and the Odesa Photo Days, which could not be held this year in Belarus and Ukraine. Both will present part of their program in Łódź. On the initiative of Fotofestiwal, a film about the situation on the Ukrainian border is also being made by the Palestinian director Mohamed Almughanni, and a film about refugees in Poland by the Syrian filmmaker Rami Shai. Some projects and activities are created on an ongoing basis and it will probably be one of the most up-to-date editions of the festival.
At the same time, the basic core curriculum built around the slogan, which has gained in importance in such a surprising way, does not change. The idea of ”community” is a point of reference for curators, artists and activists, and institutions invited to create the program of this year’s Fotofestiwal. Exhibitions can be seen in the festival centers: Art_Inkubator, the Book Art Museum, in the post-factory complex of OFF Piotrkowska, the historic post-university building of the University of Lodz, as well as in over a dozen city galleries participating in the City Program.
The works and experiences of strong women will show how the community can become a form of resistance and therapy after tragic events. Rahima Gambo in the new version of the multimedia project “Tatsunya” will propose a poetic, fairy-tale-like story about schoolgirls from north-eastern Nigeria. In 2013, a terrorist attack by the Boko Haram group took place at their school. The girls tried to tame the difficult experiences, incl. through an appropriate educational program that also included workshops with Gambo. Corresponding with the project will be the works of Denae Howard – an American visual artist, created especially for the Fotofestiwal, who will continue the topic known from her previous works – the experiences of the black community of New York and the USA.
The Earth Women project by Mahé Elipe will show how the experiences of domestic violence and economic oppression have become the starting point for five women to create a completely new community. With stubbornness, fighting for emancipation, they started a new life on their own territory in the rural part of Mexico City, and thus made an attempt to build an ideal “sister community”. . Untold Stories of Polish Photographers “at the Museum of the City of Łódź.
The extended concept of community, based on the relations of people, other animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms, will be proposed by the artists participating in the group exhibition “Freedom_Równość_Bioróżóżność!”. Francesca Todde will talk about interspecies cooperation using the example of Tristan’s activities. This bird educator develops a proprietary way of communicating with animals based on how their senses work and what their sensitivity reacts to – such as the intensity of their gaze or even the intention behind Tristan’s every move. Projects by Daniel Szalai and Marta Bogdańska will, in turn, draw attention to harnessing animal abilities for strictly human purposes: breeding genetically modified hens needed for vaccine production or the participation of spy squirrels, photographer pigeons and nuclear lizards in armed conflicts and other military activities.
These are only some of the projects referring to the topic of community. The artists invited to the exhibition “Joyful Death of Images” will look at the phenomenon of temporary communities built around the process of creating and experiencing images. Another exhibition is devoted to projects created with and for migrants, and the artists and artists participating in it (Archives of Public Protests, Karolina Gembara, Yulia Krivich, Marta Romakiv and Pamela Bożek) argue that artistic activities have a real power to influence the lives of individuals. Students of the Lodz Film School will ask how contemporary communities are formed and what constructs them. The exhibition, created in cooperation with the University of Łódź, will feature works by such artists as: Zygmunt Rytka, Cecylia Mailik, Piotr Wyrzykowski and Anna Konik. The Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź appealed to community thinking already at the stage of creating the concept of the exhibition and invited other academies to cooperate – the result will be a nationwide review of art schools.
The Open Program will present the most interesting photo projects, selected from among almost a thousand submitted for this year’s competition by artists from 40 countries. In this part, a very personal and at the same time universal project by the French artist Mathias de Lattre about hallucinogenic mushrooms and their importance both in the traditions of many world cultures and in the treatment of the artist’s mother’s disease. A difficult family experience – grandmother’s progressive dementia – also became the starting point for the Hungarian artist Balázs Turós. In his project, he asks questions about collective and individual memory, transience and possible ways of coming to terms with one’s own mortality. In turn, the difficult stories of their countries will be brought closer to us by two artists. Santanu Dey’s work concerns the Marichjhapi island massacre in India. Turkish artist Cemre Yesil Gönenli, in her award-winning project “Hayal & Hakikat: Forgiveness Handbook and Punishment Handbook”, recalls archival photographs of prisoners’ hands, on the basis of which Abdul Hamid II, 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was to decide who was guilty of the crime he was accused of. Mateusz Kowalik, on the other hand, in his poetic series of black and white photographs, looks at the need to escape to nature.
– Fotofestiwal itself has been created for 21 years in the spirit of cooperation. The program will include, in addition to over 40 exhibitions, a number of events created for and with the members of the community closest to the festival. In three districts in Łódź, there will be a Neighborly Photo Studio, where you will be able to take a portrait with your closest neighbor. Together with the inhabitants of Księży Młyn, we will invite you to picnics. And the Museum of Art will organize the ‘Sunday at the Museum’ event for closer and more distant neighbors. Special events will also be organized for lovers of photo books and films. – said Franek Ammer from the curatorial team.
The organizers themselves have been operating for several years in a democratic, horizontal structure and with this year’s program they want to express their conviction that it is the communities that will save us from the anachronistic, patriarchal model of the world. That is why, for the twenty-first time, they invite you to an event that is to be a place for meetings, dialogue and new, upbuilding experiences.
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Source: Gazeta
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
