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Krakow at Electronic Literature Conference in Bergen

On August 5 in Bergen, the Electronic Literature Organisation 2015: The End(s) of Electronic Literature conference will take place. This is the most important conference in this area of digital literature. Along with the Ha!art team, Polish artists and researchers will prepare a common attack under the slogan “POLISH IMPACT.” Katarzyna Bazarnik, Zenon Fajfer, Jakub Jagiełło, Aleksandra Małecka, Piotr Marecki, Anna Nacher, Martyna Nowicka, Mariusz Pisarski and Kaja Puto will prezent Polish digital literature and related phenomena, including: liberature, the Polish demoscene (the HooyProgram group), collaborative novels, improvised games (KELET), automatic translations and more. Below are a couple useful links for those interested:

More information on the event’s website: conference.eliterature.org
The conference’s full programme: elo2015.sched.org
Catalogue of events: ha.art.pl/ebooki/ELO_2015_conference_program_and_festival_catalog.pdf

About the Polish Impact project:

Polish Impact tells of Polish experiments, but the brochure itself is not experimental. What’s more, it’s a piece of cake, to use a cliché. Our purpose was to present the greatness of Polish experimental literature in such a way that the average Bulgarian, American, Peruvian or Czech would understand the message. Thus we presented our story in the form of a square children’s book (IN ENGLISH!). Katarzyna Janota’s illustrations play the same essential role as Katarzyna Bazarnik, Mariusz Pisarski and Monika Górska Olesińska’s teksty oprowadzające. On the cover, the reader will see the figure of the great King Ubu (the founding protagonist of all literary experiments taking place in Poland). We decided upon the narrative that this is the ruler of the existing or non-existing Empire of Experimental Poland. The greatness of this empire in part results from the fact that everything started there. We place the evidence on the table. In the brochure, we ignore the existing Centre/Peripheries divide. We present our narrative in such a way as if nothing had happened between us.

A free PDF of the Polish Impact brochure: ha.art.pl/e-booki/Polish_Impact.pdf

Accompanying events:

P2P Exhibit: A Comparative Exhibit of Experiemental Polish and Portuguese Literature in Print and the Digital Era (curators: Piotr Marecki, Álvaro Seiça and Rui Torres) was organised as part of The End(s) of Electronic Literature Decentring Festival in Norway (July 4-8, 2015). The exhibit includes works from outside the Western mainstream. During the event, works from Portugal and Poland, Europe’s western and eastern continental margins.

 

Audiences at this year’s Brusselspoetryfest on September 11-13 had the opportunity to familiarise themselves with “liberature,” an innovative approach to literature created by Polish writers Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik. Festival attendees had the opportunity to meet with the creators of this concept and learn all about what exactly liberature is.

The term “liberature” was coined by Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik in their 1999 book Oka-leczeniu. Liberature works convey literary meaning not only in the text, but also in the book’s physical presence: the cover, blank spaces or drawings that convey poetic meaning, the type-setting… Mr. Fejfer is a contemporary Polish poet, while Ms. Bazarnik is a lecturer in literary theory and specialist on James Joyce (whose ideas influenced the advent of liberature) at the Jagiellonian University. Together, they combine their respective theoretical and practical knowledge to create this iconoclastic new genre.

The Brusselpoetryfest featured the premiere of Mr. Fejfer’s new collection of poetry, Widok z głębokiej wieży (“The View from the Deep Tower”). Meanwhile, the festival audience had the chance to listen to a lecture by Ms. Bazarnik about liberature and see an exhibition of Mr. Fejfer’s liberature books. You can access the festival’s full programme here: http://poetryfest.brussels/.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Lithuania regaining its independence. On this occasion, thematic programming dedicated to the literature of our northern neighbours will hold a special place in the programme of the 7th Conrad Festival. This is the first presentation in Poland of such scope about this corner of literary Europe that is still unknown but so close! There is no shortage of writers in Lithuania who combine profound knowledge of European literature with philosophical flair, essayistic passion and political courage. Two excellent representatives of the Lithuanian liberal tradition, born in dissident and émigré circles – Tomas Venclova and Prof Leonidas Donskis – will talk on Tuesday, 20th October, about the complex relations of politics and literature and about why creations of a writer’s imagination convey the experience of totalitarianism, the common burden of the nations of Central Europe, better than the best philosophical treatises. The renowned poet, a long-time friend of Czesław Miłosz and consummate connoisseur of his work, opposition activist and Yale University professor will face off with the philosopher, historian of ideas, former Member of the European Parliament and Zygmunt Bauman’s co-author on Moral Blindness: The Loss of Sensitivity in Liquid Modernity, presenting ideas from W poszukiwaniu optymizmu w epoce pesymizmu. Europa Wschodnia – przeczucia i prognozy [In search of comfort in the era of pessimism. Eastern Europe – premonitions and predictions], a volume of conversations between the speakers, published this year by the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański College of Eastern Europe. The meeting will be conducted by Krzysztof Czyżewski – writer, poet and co-creator of the Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations Centre in Sejny. Ziemowit Szczerek will lead the Friday meeting with Herkus Kunčius – writer, playwright and author of radio plays, the former president of the Lithuanian PEN Club. The novel Lithuanian in Vilnius, the second work by the author published in Poland, is a dreamlike odyssey through Vilnius and a kind of kaleidoscope of founder myths about the city. The hero, named Napoleonas Šeputis, a janitor from a primary school in Kalvarija, comes to Vilnius for the Song Festival. Wandering through the city, he visits not only Gediminas Tower and the Gate of Dawn, but also the local sobering-up station and the psychiatric hospital, experiencing prophetic visions, compared by the author to the phenomenon of Jerusalem syndrome. The meeting, titled “Syndrom wileński” (“The Vilnius syndrome”) will take place on Friday, 23rd October at the Pałac pod Baranami. The silva rerum – a literary form shared by Polish and Lithuanian nobility from the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – will be the subject of Michał Nogaś’s meeting with Kristina Sabaliauskaitė – currently the most widely-read Lithuanian writer. Her trilogy, Silva Rerum, the first part of which was published in Poland this year, is a multi-layered Baroque-style saga of the Narwoysz family, troubled by a rash of unexplained deaths. The novel, written by an art historian with Polish roots, offers a passionate look at the common history of Poland and Lithuania. Silva Rerum has the status of a cult novel in Lithuania – to date, the first part of the trilogy has been reprinted 15 times, the second 10 times, and the third 5 times, while in Vilnius, walks are organised following in the footsteps of its heroes. The meeting with Kristina Sabaliauskaitė will take place on Friday, 23rd October. The Lithuanian programming at the Conrad Festival will conclude on Sunday, 25th October, with a meeting with Alvydas Šlepikas, author of the novel My Name is Marytė, the Polish translation of which will be published at the beginning of October by the College of Eastern Europe. Along with the meeting moderator, Justyna Nowicka, we will travel for a while to post-war Lithuania, where “wolf children” (Wolfskinder) – orphans left behind by Prussian Germans – wander about. We will think about the way that the memory of the concealed tragedy of the inhabitants of Eastern Prussia appears in Polish and Lithuanian public debates. All guests of the Lithuanian programming will also be present at the International Book Fair in Krakow, where Lithuania will be the guest of honour. Meetings with Lithuanian authors at the Conrad Festival are part of a larger project, entitled Litwa w Krakowie – sezon kultury 2015 [Lithuania in Krakow – Season of Culture 2015], which will comprise, among others, an exhibition of paintings and illustrations by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis at the International Cultural Centre, an exhibition dedicated to the YIVO Institute in Vilnius, a cross-sectional exhibition of modern Lithuanian photography, curated by Wojciech Nowicki, an exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian art at the Bunkier Art Gallery, as well as a showing of a unique tapestry from King Sigismund Augustus’ collection, normally kept at the Palace of Lithuanian Grand Dukes in Vilnius. The Litwa w Krakowie – sezon kultury 2015 project is organised by the Lithuanian Cultural Institute in Vilnius. www.litwawkrakowie.lt Come and join us!

Nearly 150 guests, approximately 100 meetings and a rich variety of accompanying event series: for the seventh time, guests from Poland and abroad will descend upon Krakow to take part in the Conrad Festival on October 19-25, 2015. This year’s slogan will be “Against the Current.” The light of the lighthouse, which the town hall at the City of Literature’s Main Market Square turns into each year, will shine soon.

It’s time to reveal the details of this year’s programme!

This year’s slogan means that we will explore the less-than-obvious areas of reality, laying down problematic matters, in addition with the help of a very particular and revolutionary tool – literature – that rarely has the opportunity to appear in the public square so intensely. We will experience the festival alongside writers, publishers, designers, artists, translators and, above all, readers who search for literary experiences without pause.

“As in previous years, we will focus on hidden places on the map of world literature, less commonly known languages and ideas that have not been fully embraced yet,” Michał Paweł Markowski, Artistic Director of the Conrad Festival, announces. “We will look for inspiration in surprising phenomena and in unusual artists.And we will do all of this in order to complicate the understanding of literature and the thinking process and to disturb the good mood of culture consumers.”

“Against the Current” is the direction towards diverse literary experiences. For this reason, there will be no shortage of outstanding guests from abroad. During the meeting “Russia’s Unwomanly Face,” we will look east with the help of Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian writer censored in her homeland. Meanwhile, thanks to György Spiró (the meeting titled “Messiahs”), we will look at our own Polish culture through the eyes of the Other. Certainly, it will be iconoclastic for many. The Turkish writer Aslı Erdoğan will share her experiences of her participation as a fellow in the ICORN programme, a network of cities offering refuge to writers persecuted for political reasons (it was in Krakow that Ms. Erdoğan has found asylum). Writing against the current, despite conventions, also can be found in Robert Coover’s revolutionary practices. Mr. Coover is one of the most important contemporary post-modernists. He will convince us that “Post-Modernism Isn’t What You Think.” Finally, we will meet with Gonçalo M. Tavares, “the Portuguese Kafka” (in Poland, his novels Jerusalem, The Neighbourhood and Learning to Pray in the Age of Technique: Lenz Buchmann’s Position in the World have been published), which will allow us to draw from the darkest corners of existence. This year, we will also feature the already announced Jonathan Franzen, an American prose writer and essayist gifted with a sharp critical way of thinking. Mr. Franzen is the author of the moving novel Corrections and has received the National Book Award, Whiting Writers Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His photo was featured on the cover of Time magazine. We are also impatiently waiting to meet with Hooman Majd, and Iranian-American writer inspired by his dual perspective in his texts about contemporary Iran. He will tell us about this during the meeting “A Translator of Cultures.”

Among the Polish writers who will be guests at this year’s festival, it is especially worth noting Wiesław Myśliwski. Along with the author of Ostatnie rozdanie (“The Last Deal”) and A Treatise on Shelling Beans, we will look for ways to “domesticate the world” and to maintain its appetite for experiencing it thanks to literature. The award-winning writer and reporter Hanna Krall, author of the famous book Shielding the Flame, needs no introduction. What is more, Mariusz Szczygieł and Wojciech Tochman (a winner and a finalist of the Nike Literary Award, respectively) will also take part in the meeting with Ms. Krall. Of course, you can find the profiles of the remaining guests – who include Inga Iwasiów, Zbigniew Libera, Adam Lipszyc, Tadeusz Sławek, Tomas Venclova, Ziemowit Szczerek and Wit Szostak – along with the events in which they will take part in the programme on our website (its new version will premiere soon!).

‘This year’s Festival is another opportunity to fall in love with literature again,’ says Izabela Helbin, Director of the Krakow Festival Office.‘We have ensured that the festival week abounds in diverse events and that it inspires and encourages participants to do their own searches, so we will meet writers from different corners of the world in Krakow.We are certain that, thanks to the Conrad Festival, Krakow will be the world’s most literary city in October.’

“Against the Current” also means once more, but as never before. We will meet famous writers who have already achieved much in the literary world, but we want to devote much attention to debuting artists and their first promising texts. Hence the idea for a new Conrad Award that will support and promote them, helping them take the next steps in their literary career. It will be advantageous not only to up-and-coming writers, who will find out too often what it means to “swim against the current” of various institutions, social conditions and life situations, but also to readers for whom the horizon of literary opportunities will become broader.

Other parts of the programme will be more familiar, such as the Reading Lessons with Grzegorz Jankowicz, Małgorzata Łukasiewicz, Anna Wasilewska, Agata Bielik-Robson, Kazimiera Szczuka and others. The festival will abound in meetings, workshops (including those for kids), vernissages and surprising combinations with the new media, the world of film, computer games and the blogosphere.There will also be the “Book Industries” series, industry meetings and literary walks. The festival’s unique atmosphere will be supplemented by the 19th International Book Fair in Krakow. We strongly encourage you to take part.

We will actively use social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,, encouraging readers to be close to the festival in this way as well.

This short preview cannot present everything that will take place at this year’s Conrad Festival.You can get a fuller picture of the festival only after studiously looking at the programme. However, we encourage you to think against the current also in this case and look for your own path through upcoming festival days. We will do everything to facilitate this. For this reason, there will be more information introducing each event (and unveiling more surprises) soon.

We would like to extend a warm welcome to conradfestival.pl and are waiting for you in Krakow!

On September 6-12 Tel Aviv will host the 6th Summit of UNESCO Creative Cities in the field of design. Krakow UNESCO City of Literature will join its colleagues to present on the innovative trends in literature that the city organizes and promotes.

The conference theme Cracking the Innovation Code is the largest such event in Israel and attracts leaders from companies such as Intel, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

Readers know her above all thanks to her daring books about the overlooked and ignored history of Russia: the catastrophe in Chernobyl, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the participation of women in the Second World War, the wartime experiences of children and everyday life after the fall of communism. The Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Alexievich will meet with readers in Krakow during the Conrad Festival. She will join other illustrious guests at this year’s edition, including Jonathan Franzen, Hooman Majd, Hanna Krall and Wiesław Myśliwski.

The Conrad Festival is organised by the City of Krakow, the Krakow Festival Office and the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation. This year’s edition, whose slogan is Against the Current, will take place on October 19-25, 2015.

The writer herself defines her national identity as being complicated. At various points in her life, she fluctuated between feeling Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. However, she feels most connected with the latter nationality. In her prose, she frequently emphasises the necessity of the democratisation and modernisation of Belarus. Consequently, her books have been banned in that country. Ms. Alexievich has written numerous reportage books, including: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, in which she describes the nuclear power plant catastrophe from the perspective of its direct witnesses; War’s Unwomanly Face, a brutally honest history of Soviet sexism hidden behind the facade of false liberation for which she won the Angelus Central European Literature Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage; and Second Hand Time: The Demise of the Red (Wo)man, which is a history of the socio-economic changes that took place after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ms. Alexievich is the winner of many international awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Swedish PEN Club’s Tucholsky Preis, the Leipziger Book Prize on European Understanding and the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize. Furthermore, she is considered to be a serious contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

We cordially invite you to a meeting with Ms. Alexievich on October 19. The Conrad Festival’s full programme will be made available on September 9, 2015.

On September 1st, Krakow had the pleasure of hosting representatives from Dunedin City of Literature. The New Zealand capital of the book joined the UNESCO Creative Cities in December 20014. The delegation came to Krakow in order to learn more about the literary city, to build closer cooperation and to discuss joint promotion and projects. After three days in Krakow, the delegation, which was composed of The Polish Heritage of Otago & Southland Trust members, including Ms. Ewa Rożecka-Pollard, fell in love with our local bookshops. Justyna Jochym from the literary department at KBF took the delegation for a literary walk, presented some projects in public space, talked about our literary heritage, great writers and contemporary initiatives that have as their goal the promotion of literature and integrating the literary sector in Krakow and Poland, including the planned creation of the Literatre Forum, support for young writers, independent publishers and bookstores, as well as use of new media and technology in the promotion of reading.  

Although it is only the seventh-largest city in New Zealand in terms of population, it is one of the nation’s leading cultural centres. Many influential writers have called Dunedin home. The poet Thomas Bracken, who wrote New Zealand’s national anthem “God Defend New Zealand,” lived and died there. Charles Brasch, who founded Landfall, New Zealand’s most important literary journal; Nobel Prize-nominated poet and novelist Janet Frame; and playwrights James K. Baxter and Roger Hall were associated with the city. The nephew of Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns was one of Dunedin’s founders; because of this fact and the strong literary influence of Scottish immigrants to New Zealand, his statue has a prominent place in the city. David Elliot and Tania Roxborogh, prominent writers and illustrators of children’s literature, live in Dunedin. Although European influences are most strongly felt on New Zealand’s literature, contemporary literature also reflects the country’s Maori and Pacific heritage. Other aspects of cultural life are vibrant in Dunedin. 

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