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08/06 - 28/06/2015

photo David Ruano
Galleryphoto David Ruano
  • An important part of the Idiom thematic section of the Malta Festival Poznań is the FORUM, which complements the artistic programme with discussions of issues that are vital to the humanities of today. We recommend them to everyone wishing to combine their festival experience with topics relevant to changes in the contemporary world.

    FORUM is not an academic conference. It is a meeting, a conversation, a kind of round table, whose participants include representatives of various disciplines and people with different experiences, such as scholars, journalists, artists and writers.

    SATURDAY, JUNE 28

    12.00-12.30 Opening lecture – Suely Rolnik
    12.30-14.00 Recent history: Latin America yesterday and today

    The starting point of the discussion of twentieth-century Latin American history will be an analysis of the mirrored history of leftist movements in Poland and Latin America's right-wing dictatorships. We will examine the legacy of the leftist movements of the 1960s and 1970s and their influence on the socio-economic structures of Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico after their freedom from right-wing dictatorships. To what extent were they attempts to distance themselves from a colonial past, to escape their poverty and dependence on the West? To what degree has Polish history influenced our understanding of these movements?
    Participants: Mario Galdamez, Jarosław Gugała, Adam Leszczyński

    15.30 – 17.00 A Brave New World – On the Outskirts of Memory

    The title of this year's Idiom – Mestizo – is a metaphor for utopia, the idea of dialogue, confrontation, the abolition of cultural, racial and ethnic barriers. Beyond this idealised vision, however, lies a complex reality – an uneven distribution of wealth and great social inequality. Even in multi-ethnic Brazil, it is mostly the suburbs that are “coloured” while the elites remain white, and the indigenous population is particularly marginalized. Natives in Latin American countries are stripped of their rights while indigenous languages disappear. In this discussion, our Idiom's title will serve as a link between political and social issues and cultural themes.
    Participants: Bogumiła Lisocka-Jaegerman, Justyna Olko, Mariusz Kairski

    SUNDAY, JUNE 29

    12.30-14.00 Meeting with Rodrigo García, Idiom curator

    Rodrigo García is one of the most original, committed and creatively radical artists in theatre. An Argentine living in Spain, he personifies and bridges Latin America and Europe. García is not only this year's Idiom curator but also the Director of the play Golgota Picnic, which will be presented at the festival. This meeting will be an opportunity to talk about his experiences in Argentina, the concept of this year's Idiom and the play being staged at Malta.

    15.30-17.00 The artistic reality of contemporary Latin America

    This year's festival program has been created by artists who grew up in the social, historical and cultural paradoxes of Latin America; creators holding definite political views and working with a distinct set of aesthetics. Where does their “volcanic activity” which Rodrigo García describes in his curator's notes as having “its beginning in the distant past and does not wither even when grants and market interest dry up”, come from? What is the daily reality for artists working in Latin American countries? What problems do they struggle with? What defines them? Is there such a thing as a common Latin American aesthetic?Participants: Suely Rolnik, Fernando Castro Flórez and other artists representing the Idiom - Latin America: Mestizos


     

  • Fernando Castro Flórez is a Spanish philosopher specialising in aesthetics. He is a professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid, a curator and a theatre critic published in various periodicals, including El País, El Independiente and El Sol. Fernando Castro Flórez has authored many books and has contributed essays to collective works and magazines. He has curated over a hundred group and individual exhibitions across the world.

    Mario Galdamez is a Chilean who has lived in Poland since 1977. In the early 1970s he took part in the student movement in Chile and, following the 1973 coup, in the resistance against Pinochet’s dictatorship. Exposed and subjected to repression, in 1975 he was forced to flee the country. In Poland he completed his studies at the University of Warsaw Faculty of Journalism and Political Science. He has worked in Polskie Radio and written for the periodicals Gazeta Wyborcza, Trybuna and Le Monde Diplomatique. He is a Spanish teacher and translator.


    Jarosław Gugała is a Polish Hispanist. Between 1999 and 2003 he was Ambassador of the Polish Republic in Uruguay. He is a television journalist and has worked for the broadcasting corporations Telewizja Polska and Polsat as a reporter, producer and manager. He is currently an anchorman for Polsat’s evening news programme Wydarzenia in addition to hosting the news magazines Gość Wydarzeń and Wydarzenia Opinie Komentarze on the Polsat News channel. Jarosław Gugała is also a translator and musician. Since 1983 he has been a member of Zespół Reprezentacyjny, a band dedicated to the adapting and staging of various musical pieces from Poland and other countries, including the songs of Lluís Llach and Georges Brassens, or Sephardic or Brazilian songs.


    Mariusz Kairski is a Polish cultural anthropologist and an Amazonian researcher who has been studying the Amazon region in Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru for 25 years. He is currently a faculty member of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of Gdańsk. The focus of Mariusz Kairski’s research is on matters regarding time, space and identity in the so-called “pre-state” societies, as well as on cultural transformation and the theory and methodology of studying dissimilar societies and cultures.

    Adam Leszczyński is a Polish journalist, reporter and historian. He is a columnist for Gazeta Wyborcza and an assistant professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences. As a student he travelled across Latin America: from Mexico to Argentina and from Peru to Uruguay. In his historical research Adam Leszczyński specialises in under-development, modernisation and peripherality in Poland and beyond. He has recently authored two books: Skok w nowoczesność. Polityka wzrostu w krajach peryferyjnych 1943–1980 [A Leap into Modernity. The Politics of Growth in Peripheral Countries from 1943 to 1980] (2013), and Zbawcy mórz oraz inne afrykańskie historie [The Saviours of the Sea and Other African Stories] (2013).

    Justyna Olko is a Polish historian. She is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of “Artes Liberales” at the University of Warsaw, and Head of the Laboratory of Encounters between the Old and New Worlds. She specialises in the ethnohistory and anthropology of pre-Hispanic and colonial Mesoamerica. She has authored several books, including Turquoise Diadems and Staffs of Office. Insignia of Power in Aztec and Early Colonial Mexico (2005), Meksyk przed konkwistą [Mexico before the Conquest] (2010) and Insignia of Rank in the Nahua World (2014). Justyna Olko is holder of a Knight’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2013) and a winner of the Academia Europea Burgen Fellowship (2013).

    Bogumiła Lisocka-Jaegermann is a Polish Hispanist and geographer interested in the social and cultural reality of Latin America, which she studies from the perspective of cultural geography and development geography. She holds field experience from her stays in South America, including Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela. She is a member of the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies at the University of Warsaw and her current research focuses on Afro-Latin American communities.

    Suely Rolnik is a psychoanalyst, a renowned cultural philosopher, a curator and a Professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo where, in 1982, she established the Centre for Subjectivity Studies in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Studies Programme. Since 2008 she has been working with the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) where she is a visiting professor. She has written many books, essays and texts, which have been printed in magazines and catalogues in Europe and both Americas, including Micropolítica. Cartografias do desejo (with Félix Guattari, 1986), published in five languages.