The Art Institute (VMU) invites you to one more finissage of the ANIMATOR project – presentation of the book ‘The Wonders of Kaunas: a field guide’ for Kaunas residents and guests. Come to the gallery ‘Meno parkas’ in the old town at 6 pm on Wednesday 7 May, get your copy of the book, take a glass of traditional punch, chat with co-authors of the book, learn more about cultural animation, meet your neighbors and friends. And don’t forget to bring your own wonder of Kaunas with yourself!
The Wonders of Warsaw and The Wonders of Kaunas - two model projects each resulting in a publication that was launched as part of the PoWisle i Po Pradze event on 28th April.
Click here to download information panels about the Wonders projects.
Young deaf people in Warsaw share their wonders of the city.
This film was created by Brendan Jackson and Paulina Paga with pupils attending the Jakuba Falkowskiego Deaf Institute, premiered at the ‘PoWisle i Po Pradze’ event, in Warsaw on 26 April, 2008.
Why work with a deaf group? Well, I kept seeing a lot of deaf people on the bus from the centre to Praga, and often would see groups of people signing at Wilenski. Here was a group of people that no-one from cultural animation had any experience of working with. I wanted to invite them to participate in the project, to use their beautiful visual language of hand movements to tell us about their Wonders of the city and to document this on film for a wider audience. Simple and straightforward, yes? But how to communicate with this group of people as a non-Polish speaker? I made some drawings of their hand movements on the bus and showed them to the signers. They shrugged and smiled and probably thought I was a little crazy. I needed a Polish speaker with me to explain the idea – as some of them would no doubt be able to lip-read. Paulina offered to help and we were put in touch with the Deaf Institute and met with the Director. He agreed to participate and showed us round the Institute. It turned out they had a group of teachers and students interested in film-making – mostly documenting events or making some films to promote the work of the Institute. Paulina met with them for two workshops, to make a powerpoint presentation about the context of the overall project and to encourage them to think about what they would choose as a wonder and storyboard this. The third session was the actual filming. Ideally, we would have gone to each location that each individual described, but we had limited time with the group. So we agreed that they would each choose a location in the vicinity of the Deaf Institute as the backdrop. The filming session took about 2 hours. They had rehearsed the presentation of their idea and all contributions were filmed in a single take – except one when the group wanted to edit the contribution from Michał. He had about a dozen wonders he wanted to share on camera. They agreed on two at the end.
We had a discussion about whether or not to have any explanation of the signing – the group decided that there should be sub-titles after each person, in Polish and English and provided the text to accompany their signing. The background track is a recording of the ambient sound in the vicinity of the Institute, with all the sounds of the city in this particular locality.
One or two people attending the event and viewing the film asked us if the group were singing – due to the speed of some of the hand movements. Now, there’s an interesting idea to pursue….
Cuda: With students from - Udział wzięli uczniowie
Instytutu głuchoniemych im.Ks. Falkowskiego w Warszawie
Thankyou to - Specjalne podziękowania dla Pan: Moniki Dobrowolskiej, Joanny Łachety, Małgorzaty Czajkowskiej-Kisil oraz Pana Dyrektora Tadeusza Adamca.
The video is below but you can also go to youtube and view it full screen.
Soon after Wonders workshop (October 2007) we gathered participants involved in the project to discuss all its advantages and disadvantages. They evaluate Wonders model and develop new ideas for cultural work based on this general idea.
Text of the discussion (in Polish)
On the way to Kristaus Prisikėlimo - in the search for Wonders of Kaunas. Created by students from the Art Institute and the Institute of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University and from the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University - Rita Akelaitytė, Vilma Balčiauskaitė, Aistė Kasperavičiūtė, Arnas Šedovas and Patrycja Proniewska - working with Pamela Wells from Laundry.
The confluence of the Nemunas and Neris Rivers - in the search for Wonders of Kaunas. Created by Beata Godlewska working with Brendan Jackson from Laundry. Part of workshops run by Laundry with students from the Art Institute and the Institute of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University and from the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University.
A silent movie searching for Wonders of Kaunas in Vilijampole. Created with Ania Bas from Laundry and Vaida Gedzevičiūtė, Sandra Kliukaitė, Indrė Šurkutė, Rūta Vainauskaitė, and Agnieszka Nasierowska - students from the Art Institute and the Institute of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University, and from the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University.
Beetwen visions and dreams, in the maze of blocks and in the tangle of subway – searching for wonders of Warsaw we came to the southern part of our city.
With student of grammar school in Natolin, having them as a guides of this, still not enough known district (not enough by inhabitants of central Warsaw, of course) we were asking this returning question: what is interesting in that apparently uninteresting place?
Of course a subway. As a metaphore of postmodern journey and space. It became a game with photo-riddle during Breakfast. (see also play the game description).
Of course their school and roads to school. But also other, not so obvious: Kazurówka hill – place of bikers struggles and illegal fags, some shops and… bus stops and all terminus …One of our participants – Szympans – knows all of it by heart and he took care of putting them on our map. But not only that – he also recitated, without any mistake, all routes of bus lines… It turned out that the best one in Ursynów is 503 – starting in Nowodwory with finish in North Natolin.
All of these wonders appeared on the map or during the game. The nice point, as usual was food – Pawel didn’t dissapoint us also this time. The real hit was nougat – a subtle reference to the name of one of the street in UrsynówJ
We had also two guests – Aleksander Mann talking about history and mithology of Ursynów and Marek Budzyński who shown us presentation ilustrating proccess of creating Ursynów and told fascinating story not only about architecture but even more about space philosophy.
It was the last Breakfast. But still so much in Warsaw to discover left… So, maybe, see U soon in the next Warsaw Breakfast’s edition!
The Pink Group - Rita Akelaitytė, Vilma Balčiauskaitė, Aistė Kasperavičiūtė, Arnas Šedovas and Patrycja Proniewska, working with Pamela Wells - when we were exploring our section of Kaunas, we asked people what they found ‘wonder’ful about Kaunas.
This is what Vilma wrote from our day and it was part of our installation: