Between late September and early October 2025, together with Lukas Wójcicki, we had the opportunity to conduct a series of performative guided walks as part of Kraków’s Nowa Huta Odyssey, organized by Teatr Łaźnia Nowa and Dom Utopii, at the invitation of the Museum in the Underground and the event’s curator, Łukasz Trzciński. The space of the Nowa Huta Administrative Centre – with its heavy, monumental architecture and parallel, multi-layered histories—was not merely a backdrop but a living partner in action.
We didn’t want to “point at” works one by one. From the start, it mattered to us that the walk would be neither linear nor illustrative. We wanted to enter the space, enter into relations with the artists, and move on our own terms—improvising, reacting, singing—allowing the situation to arise in real time. In this context, the writings of Jerzy Ludwiński resonated with us deeply. Especially his remarkable intuition that traditional forms of presenting art tend to “capture only its appearance,” while the art itself “increasingly slips away from us.” Already over fifty years ago, he wrote about a “zone free from convention,” in which art surpasses ready-made frameworks and becomes a process of thinking, acting, relating. It was precisely within this kind of “zone” that our three-hour wandering through the NCA took place: ephemeral, impossible to choreograph, unpredictable, responding both to the presence of the people traveling with us—viewers-co-authors—and to the works presented within the Odyssey.
Classical guided touring gave way to performance—every interaction became a one-off event. Any fragment of the “S” and “Z” buildings could transform into a pretext for action. We also brought into this shared journey a two-meter-tall plush elephant that I sewed specifically for the occasion. Beyond its mass of upholstery foam, it carried a hint of humor and a weight of history (the “Z” building—the former administration—was long nicknamed “the elephant,” as its monumentality, opulence, and dominant position set it apart from the more modest “S” building intended for the general public). This architectural “elephant” became for us a symbol of the heaviness of the old system, in which the apparatus of power rolled through social life, controlling and regulating everything. Simply entering that excess—kilograms of marble, steel, and crystal—is enough to stir the imagination. Why illustrate further, when “an elephant is exactly what it is”? It was enough to “lift” it—literally and metaphorically—to let the history of the space and its tensions reveal themselves on their own.
In this sense, the Nowa Huta Odyssey became for us a kind of “art laboratory” in the spirit of Ludwiński:
a place where “artists’ interests may reach an unprecedented degree of diversity.” At the same time,
it became a space—again in Ludwiński’s words—where “special zones of attraction” arise, where one can sometimes sense the energy of crossing boundaries. During the guided walks, we tried to grasp those critical points: the brief moments when artistic practices, space, and audience fuse into a single, fleeting situation.
a place where “artists’ interests may reach an unprecedented degree of diversity.” At the same time,
it became a space—again in Ludwiński’s words—where “special zones of attraction” arise, where one can sometimes sense the energy of crossing boundaries. During the guided walks, we tried to grasp those critical points: the brief moments when artistic practices, space, and audience fuse into a single, fleeting situation.
Ad finem: I keep thinking that living art emerges above all through difference. Sometimes through tensions that not everyone finds comfortable. Through the cracks between methods and temperaments.
Because if we were all “from the same school,” all we would be left with is a conservative, lifeless form.
So I pay my tribute to nonconformity in performance art.
Because if we were all “from the same school,” all we would be left with is a conservative, lifeless form.
So I pay my tribute to nonconformity in performance art.