Akcje Azjatyckie / Asian Investments
Akcje Azjatyckie / Asian Investments
Malta Festival Poznań
By curated by Stefan Kaegi
“About Lithuania, needless to say, I know less than about China.”
Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady, Part III
Over two thirds of the world population is Asian. At first glance, this is not so obvious in Poznań which is the formal place of residence of eighty-eight Chinese and six Vietnamese persons. You may also encounter a small group of Syrian and Jordanian students, in addition to several coaches of Japanese tourists and about twice as many people without any formal documents. Not a lot in comparison to Venice where Italian restaurants are staffed with increasing numbers of people from China, or to Vienna, Asian students’ favourite venue for studying music.
But Asia is, indeed, present in Poland, albeit in a somewhat backdoor way. Toys, clothes and modern electronics – all feature “made in China” labels; the largest steelworks in the country belong to the Indian tycoon, Mittala; Chinese construction companies are building Polish motorways and stadiums; Polish soldiers are loosing their lives in Afghanistan, and Europe as a whole is hoping to pay its debt with the assistance of Asian banks.
Until a while ago, the word “Saigon” was used in the Polish language to denote chaos. Today “Chińczyk” (which literary means “Chinese” but is also the Polish name of the game ludo) is a game in which the faster one wins. Europe is experiencing this game at an extremely high pace owing to the geopolitical tug-of-war between Russia, Western Europe and China, as well as to the race to Kazakh and African natural resources and to the attractive Indian markets.
If globalisation is turning the world into a village then who are our neighbours from across the street? Who makes our t-shirts in the cheap manufacturing shops? Who, in a Chinese factory that belongs to an American computer corporation, throws themselves of the roof not being able to bear the murderous work pace?
Whilst, in the last century, Asian theatre and art would come to Europe primarily as an exotic phenomenon presenting kung fu, bhuto, khatakali or sufi music, today artists in Europe and Asia are focusing on their mutual relations. Together they are looking at the structures of world power in which multinationals circumvent their own national boundaries and ignore social laws through outsourcing and special economic zones.
The Idiom Akcje Azjatyckie/Asian Investments programme features projects in which artists are capable of noticing China from the perspective of their own downtowns; of seeing the violence in Lebanon as export from the West; of confronting the city centre in Poznań with the Israeli issue; of locating Polish and German deportations in Kazakhstan, and of imagining that Asian capital stands behind extraterrestrial powers.
But the Idiom programme is more than just the performances of our guest stars. It is also a series of Malta Festival Poznań co-productions. Hence, the production of this year’s festival t-shirts will be intentionally moved to North Korea where the German artist Dirk Fleischmann will thoroughly supervise the manufacturing conditions he will have created and record them for festival purposes. Furthermore, especially for Malta Festival Poznań, Ant Hampton will organise a series of encounters in the United Kingdom, during which Asian faces will be projected on the faces of viewers. Finally, a group of Polish artists will go an expedition to Indonesia in search of a certain Chinese dynasty.
We are proposing to you a new dimension of intercontinental relations: stories instead of missiles, research instead of investments, encounters instead of pipelines, and, first and foremost, a festival that does not isolate itself within its own artistic domain, but invites you to a trip to Asia which may turn out to be not as remote as you might have thought: Asia - made in Poland.
Akcje Azjatyckie / Asian Investments is the Idiom of this year’s Malta Festival Poznań. The Idiom Curator is Swiss/German artist Stefan Kaegi
With Projects by WITH PROJECTS BY:
OMER KRIEGER / PUBLIC MOVEMENT (IL)
ANT HAMPTON (GB)
WOJTEK ZIEMILSKI (PL)
LIVING DANCE STUDIO (CN)
RIMINI PROTKOLL (DE)
DRIES VERHOEVEN (NL)
LIVING DANCE STUDIO (CN)
RABIH MROUÉ / LINA SANEH (LB)
CHRIS KONDEK / CHRISTIANE KUHL (DE)
DIRK FLEISCHMANN (ROK)
EX NIHILO (FR)
WANDA WASILEWSKA (PL)
AMONG OTHERS