The title of project organised within the framework of the Festival of World Cultures is a bit provoking – after all „a planet” is a whole world. Can we call this part of Asia? Europe? a planet and why are we discussing about it here, in Central Europe, already united with the western structures, in an old harbour city that stands much closer to Bremen and Lubeck then to Batumi or Makhachkala.
Maria Przełomiec
PROGRAMME
Thursday, 25 November
5.00 pm - Studio Planet Caucasus
Maria Przełomiec’s conversation with: Andrzej Brzeziecki, Dorota Gierycz, Wojciech Górecki, Dawid Kolbaia, Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich and Oleg Panfiłow.
6.45 pm – Meeting with a writer Wojciech Górecki
About the writing of Wojciech Górecki – dr Magdalena Horodecka
Questions to the writer – prof. Cezary Obracht-Prondzyński
Caucasian impression – photographies of Wojciech Górecki prepared by Radosław Jachimowicz
Fragments of Górecki’s books reads Ryszard Ronczewski
Wojciech Górecki, born 1970 in Łódź. Historian, writer, journalist and diplomat. Among others, he worked for: „Gazeta Wyborcza”, „Życie Warszawy”, „Rzeczpospolita”, „Więź”, „Res Publica Nowa” and „Tygodnik Powszechny”. Member of editorial staff of „Tygiel Kultury”, associate with „Nowa Europa Wschodnia”. Within 2002-2007 first secretar and advisor in the Polish Ambassy in Baku. He was the UE expert in chamber investigating circumstances of war in Georgia in 2008. Works in Centre of Eastern Studies in Warsaw.
Author of books: Abchaskie elity wobec niepodległości (1996), Łódź przeżyła katharsis (1998), Planeta Kaukaz (2002, 2010), La terra del vello d'oro. Viaggi in Georgia (2009) and Toast za przodków (2010). Translated into Italian, lureate of Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize.
Friday, 26 November
5.00 pm – Debate Caucasian Dialogue
A conversation about the cultural image of Caucasus will focus on different approaches and points of view. Our perspective is – despite all the diversity – European, though, we hope, not Europecentric. We take a glance at Caucasus from outside with a bunch of different scientific, journalistic, artistic and travellers’ experiences and reflexions.
Interlocutors: Agata Bachórz (leading), Dorota Gierycz, Wojciech Górecki, Witold Hebanowski, dr Dawid Kolbaia, Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich, Justyna Mielnikiewicz, Maciej Nowak and Oleg Panfiłow will try to cover the following topics:
- region’s cartography
- Caucasian memorials
- Caucasus standalone
- colonization
- Caucasian arts
6.45 pm – opening of exhibitions
Caucasus – frontier and community / photographs of Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Port of call / photography of Agnieszka Rayss
Exhibitions will be open 25 November – 8 December 2010, each day between 10.00 am – 6.00 pm.
In conversation with artists about the exhibitions will tell Adam Mazur.
Caucasus – frontier and community / Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Historical, cultural and ethnic diversity of the South Caucasus became a mail plot in photographic narratives of Justyna Mielnikiewicz, who – with passion – tell about a complicated world of the region that mingles with the fate individuals.
In a series of black-and-white photographes we observe an everyday life of Caucasus influeced by the conflicts that recently died down. Whereas also presented colored pictures are a beginning of a new, started in 2010, ciclus that shows women of the Central Europe and former USSR. Its firs part was realised in Georgia and aims to answer a question: how (and weather) have modernity and the Western culture influenced life of Georgian women.
Justyna Mielnikiewicz
Freelance photojournalist from Poland. Based in the Republic of Georgia, mainly covers the countries of the former Soviet Union. Regularly cooperates with The New York Times, Newsweek Poland and Eurasianet.org. Additionally, works have been published in various news publications: Monocle, Russian Reporter, Ogoniok, NG Travel, Le Monde among others.
Started her work as a photojournalist in 1999 as a reporter for Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2002, became freelance and moved to Georgia, where started to work on her long-term project about the South Caucasus.
The project was awarded second prize in the Santa Fe Center for Visual Arts Project and got an honourable mention from the Dorotea Lange/ Robert Taylor Prize in 2003. The Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts bought her works for their museum collection. Recent publication of her work came in the German yearbook of Reporters without Borders.In 2009 received Second Prize in World Press Photo Competition -for Coverage of War in South Ossetia.
Source: www.justmiel.com
Port of call (Miejsce postoju) / Agnieszka Rayss
A story about an illegal stay of Georgian 38-year-old woman, Tamriko, in Poland.
Agnieszka Rayss
Freelance photographer based in Warsaw. She studied Fine Arts History at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and the Sorbonne in Paris before switching to photography. She is interested in documenting the influence of western pop culture, as well as gender issues and sports in young democracies. Her work has been exhibited the Noorderlicht Photofestival and the Prague Biennale. She was a Hasselbad Masters Award finalist in 2009. Co-founder of Sputnik Photos International Association of Photojournalists Collective.
At present she’s working on a project called „American Dream” that tells about the triumph of popculture in the countries of Central Europe, that should meterialize in a photo album.
