East European Performing Arts Platform (EEPAP) supports the
development of contemporary performing arts (dance and theatre)
in 18 countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Malta Festival Poznań, 8-28.06.2015, Poland
It has been a quarter of a century since Malta started to ask questions about the world and observe its changes through art trying to understand them. This year, the world – the living space of us all – will be pondered on from the political and social perspective, as a place which keeps on redefining its order, introducing new orders organizing the life of the community and the individual. We are also posing questions about the meaning of art and its potential to discover anew that which surrounds us. Both of those issues will be present in Tim Etchells’s Idiom “New World Order”, in the programme revolving around the works of Thomas Mann prepared especially for Malta’s 25th birthday, and in Generator Malta, the festival’s socio-artistic heart.
We are interested in art’s political dimension understood as a potential to change one’s viewpoint, way of thinking, looking at one’s own role and position in the world – in society, family and with respect to oneself. Looking anew, in another way, as if everything could be different.
This state of alertness, opening towards that what is coming can be read from the sign NEVER SLEEP which will be present for the three weeks of the festival by the entrance to Stara Rzeźnia. NEVER SLEEP is a multi-layered metaphor – of life which is too short to sleep it through, the high pace of a large city and work which in the modern-day world is no longer measured in hours, but dominated the entire day and night. Thus, it is both a diagnosis and reminder – an alarming message sent in the world which calls for a passive acceptance of the fact that social solidarity and close interpersonal bonds are ever more often transformed into an insurmountable distance.
I also think that this phrase is a symbolic summary of Malta’s history to date and heralds its readiness to enter the next stage. On the occasion of the festival’s 25th birthday, I would like to thank all artists, spectators, co-creators and critical observers for the years of looking together at the world in a different way. I hope that this year Malta will provide many reasons to open the eyes even wider – due to amazement, emotions, happiness and delight – that once again art will not let us sleep.
MICHAŁ MERCZYŃSKI
DIRECTOR OF MALTA FESTIVAL POZNAŃ
Festival Programme:
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