About the festival
From May 19 to June 1, we invite you to performative events, film screenings, artistic installations, debates, and workshops that will take place in various locations in Warsaw. The festival partners are: Zachęta - National Gallery of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw Culture Observatory, Komuna Warszawa Theatre, and Zygmunt Hubner Powszechny Theatre.
The public opening of the festival will take place on 20 May at 6 p.m. at the Warsaw Cultural Observatory
What are we talking about when we talk about so-called climate migrations? How do we shape narratives regarding the mobility of people and other living creatures? Justice of movement begins with the question: do we have the ability to decide about our movements? Why do we give some creatures the right to survive, caring for the possibility of movement of endangered species, while we deny others this freedom by fortifying borders?
The climate crisis is not limited to recent years; it is a specific model of development based on values such as progress, evolution, or advancement. The planet allows us to question the current system by developing mindfulness, imagination, cooperation, and interspecies solidarity.
As part of the festival, meetings, workshops, seminars, and performances, we will examine how movement is an inseparable element of our existence and how limiting it deprives people, plants, and animals of dignity and prevents survival.
Curatorial collective: Alicja Borkowska, Weronika Chinowska, Maciek Diduszko, Magdalena Duszyńska-Sasin, Olga Klip, Stanley Ndua, Łukasz Wójcicki.
On the way to the body, on the way home
Workshop with Aleksandra Lemba
19-20 May, 12:30-17:30
Zachęta - National Gallery of Art (Plac Małachowskiego 3)
The workshop is based on the assumption that conscious dance and movement can be effective tools supporting the process of internal integration of the body and mind. Its main goal is to build a relationship with the body as a safe base—a place of settlement, contact, and self-regulation.
Participants will be invited to search for new (and sometimes old, forgotten) paths leading to self-regulation and building well-being. The process is based on strengthening the ability for self-reflection and mindfulness towards one's own internal states, as well as opening up to non-verbal messages coming from the body.
The practice of movement will be the starting point for developing a dialogue with oneself—both in the context of the internal world and relations with the environment. The workshop supports building mental resistance by developing contact with the body as a resource.
The methodological basis is practical and developmental tools inspired by Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP/DMT) and the Laban/Bartenieff Movement System.
Aleksandra Lemba - dancer, psychologist, DMP psychotherapist, workshop trainer, intimate scenes coordinator
The limit of places has been reached, thank you for your applications.
BEYOND PANIC - Reimagining Mobilities seminar (University of Bologna)
25-27 May (Sunday-Tuesday), 2:00-6:00 PM
Zachęta - National Gallery of Art (Plac Małachowskiego 3)
Event for a group selected through an open call
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Reimagining Mobilities is a research collective affiliated with the University of Bologna. Reimagining Mobilities explores the tensions and contradictions between climate justice policies, practices and narratives and different systems of mobility. Through creative research practices and actions that start from the recognition of one’s own privileged position, the collective aims to share strategies and tools to combat injustice and social exclusion. As part of the festival, members of the group will run a workshop for artists, journalists, activists and researchers on the role of art in shaping narratives about migration in the face of climate catastrophe. The workshop will be a kind of seminar ending with a meeting/open show work in progress.
Who are migrants today? And how is migration related to climate change? Can we really say that migration, like the climate crisis, has a greater impact on “others” than on “us”? What narratives are circulating around the topic of climate change and migration and how to describe the complexity of our times in a way that avoids simplifications? The seminar will address the issue of mobility from the perspective of the concept of justice, as well as the topic of the “right to breathe”, living in a healthy and clean environment, from the perspective of climate justice.
Hosted by - Reimagining Mobilities:
Pierluigi Musarò - Full Professor of Sociology, Culture and Communication at the Department of Sociology and Economic Law at the University of Bologna. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne and a Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Institute for Public Knowledge-New York University (USA) and Monash University (Australia). Coordinator of the PhD Program in Sociology and Social Research. She is the author of books and articles on media and migration, borders and human rights, performing arts and active citizenship, president of the Italian NGO YODA, founding director of the IT.A.CÀ_migrants and travellers festival, founding member of the Italian Network Against Hate Speech, founding member of the Reimagining Mobilities collective.
Elena Giacomelli is a visiting fellow at the Center for Integrated Earth System Information (CIESIN) at Columbia Climate School and a Marie-Curie researcher at the University of Bologna, and the head of the global project “PANICOCENE. Reframing Climate Change-induced Mobilities”, which aims to investigate and analyse how media discourses and narratives can lead to stereotypes about climate-induced migration. Her research focuses on the themes of mobility and migration, borders, climate change, ethnography.
Stefania Peca - researcher at the University of Bologna, member of the Reimagining Mobilities collective, consultant for third sector entities and public administrations in the field of migration and social integration. Since November 2023, she has been an assistant in the Effetto Farfalla project. I am talking to people in the world about discrimination and in the Turismo delle Radici project. She collaborates on the project on climate migration Re-think the challenge, a series of seminars that will use creative tools, such as creative writing, to create cooperation between different target groups: activists/activists, researchers and scientists, journalists. Feminist.
The workshops will be held in English.
Participation in the workshops is free of charge, with a limited number of places.
The workshop will be translated into Polish Sign Language
The workshop "Beyond Panic. Climate Migration and Other Contemporary (In)Justices" is held as part of a project co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
CROSSWORLDS – The Game of Worlds
May 29, 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
WOK LAB (Warsaw Cultural Observatory, Marszałkowska 34/50)
An open evening for the public, during which artists from Cantieri Meticci will invite participants into a unique performance-workshop made up of exercises and games that transform stage action into a tool for reflection and activism. At the center of these experiments will be imagined rituals, symbolic challenges, and collective trials that merge theatre, ecology, and social imagery. The artists will showcase elements of their theatrical method, weaving together performance, video art, and active participation.
Through the body, voice, and imagery, we will explore the boundaries between individual gesture and collective action, memory and desire. In an era of environmental and social crisis, we aim to create a game that becomes a tool for resistance, transformation, and alliance between humans and non-humans—a bodily reflection on the clash (and meeting) of nature and culture, where art does not explain but engages; does not represent but sets things in motion.
Free admission. Registration required: [REGISTRATION FORM]
The event will be held in English and interpreted into Polish Sign Language (PJM).
PLANT MANIFESTO – A Performance
May 31 at 7:30 PM
June 1 at 6:00 PM
Powszechny Theatre in Warsaw, Small Stage (ul. Zamoyskiego 20)
Plants do not recognize hierarchical authority. They form communities based on the relationships between the organisms that make them up. They understand that every being is essential for the survival of the plant-animal community—because we are one. Plants limit their growth when resources become scarce; they care for future generations. And what about us?
Article 7 of the Plant Manifesto reads: "The Nation of Plants does not recognize borders. Every living being has the right to move and to choose where to live."
Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy asylum in other countries in the case of persecution." But this is not enough. It’s not enough to have the right to migrate only when fleeing persecution. Migration is both a necessity and a choice. We should always have the right to migrate. Animals migrate, plants migrate. Migration is a natural survival strategy—and restricting it is a denial of dignity. Movement is also much more than that. It is the very essence of life.
Creators: Emil Al-Khawaldeh, Alicja Borkowska, Weronika Chinowska, Adrien Cognac, Magdalena Duszyńska-Sasin, Tatiana Dzivakova, Wojtek Kaniewski, Natalia Lis, Pavlo Luhovyi, Svitlana Makedon, Łukasz Nadwodny, Stanley Ndua, Piotr Pieczyński, Mikołaj Poncyljusz, Michał Rezazadeh, Syfon Studio, Emilia Szuchniewicz, Marek Śmietana, Magdalena Walusiak, Łukasz Wójcicki, Luxuan Wang.
The performance includes English subtitles and Polish Sign Language (PJM) interpretation.
Colophon
The festival takes place as part of the Re-think the Challenge project, funded by the Allianz Foundation.
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