It’s just chaos!

The Youth Performative Coalition for the Time of Chaos was founded in June 2023 and is an artistic and social space for teenagers and young adults. The Coalition members, together with the Association of Theatre Educators team, decided to set up a group that would seek to answer questions about how to live in today’s unstable world.

The starting point for their work was Tomasz Stawiszyński’s book Reguły na czas chaosu [Rules for the Time of Chaos]. They took it as an invitation to face the unknown world and the sometimes tricky present together. They work in the field of social art and one of their aims is to identify problems, work out solutions, generate ideas for a better world and encourage reflection.

The Coalition invited young people to read the book together, believing that this could help create a platform for exchanging ideas, the cultivation of social sensitivity, creative experimentation, the acquisition of tools for artistic work, and existential reflection.

Will Stawiszyński’s book be a source of inspiration where rules can be found? Since June 2023, they have been reading it together and subjecting it to imaginative work. It became a pretext for improvisation, physical training, experiments with the voice, writing their texts and exploring the city.

It soon became clear that the rules described in the book aroused many emotions: sometimes curiosity, sometimes disagreement, sometimes anger or impatience, sometimes enthusiasm. The idea of testing these rules and developing our own soon arose, as did the need to name the elements of chaos and how to act or think about them. This is how the various performative actions were born, trying to discuss the different dimensions of chaos.

The exhibition at WOK Lab presents traces of these actions: photographs, installations, videos, video art and performative activities. Its title could be seen as a consolation and a manifestation of a shared belief that although we are living in difficult times, we are ultimately in this together and do not see the crisis as the end of the world. On the contrary, if we join forces and do something about it. Try to talk about it, the chaos and our experience of it, and face it, share our strategies for survival and ways to tame fear. We can come up with rules or share our fears that we have no tried and tested tactics.

The above is an extract from the curatorial materials for the exhibition developed by the team of the Youth Performative Coalition for the Time of Chaos and the Association of Theatre Educators.

Dates:

Opening night: 12.03, time: 18:00–21:00

13.03, time: 16:00–20:00

14.03, time: 16:00–20:00

Project team:

Project idea: Dorota Ogrodzka

Curators and coordinators: Dorota Ogrodzka, Iga Dzięgielewska

Laboratory instructors: Sebastian Świąder, Łukasz Wójcicki, Yuliya Dzichkouskaya, Tomasz Jagusztyn-Krynicki, Dorota Ogrodzka, Karolina Pluta, Dorota Kowalkowska, and Iga Dzięgielewska

Authors of the exhibited works: Julia Król, Łucja Górna, Kinga Stelmach, Agnieszka Guz, Michael Bogacki, Joanna Puchała, Weronika Trus, Jan Lewandowski, Zuzanna Gniadek, Martyna Hernik, Alina Nahorna, Kacper Lejman, Oliwia Ratyńska, Karolina Jagielak, Karol Jagielak, Helena Sobiecka, Lena Borucka, and Julia Michajliuk.

Project supporters and participants: Hanna Przeszłowska, Anastasiya Chvankova, Yara Shangin, Laura Elwartowska, Martyna Mytych, Dawid Konopka, Michał Sosnowski, and Jewhenija Kondratenko.

Photographic documentation: Paweł Ogrodzki

Video materials: Paweł Ogrodzki

Sound: Sebastian Świąder

Exhibition space concept: Kuba Drzastwa

Promotion: Katarzyna Łopata

Administration: Aleksandra Antoniuk

Production: Iga Dzięgielewska

The project Youth Performative Coalition for the Time of Chaos is co-financed by the City of Warsaw. The Warsaw Observatory of Culture is a partner of the exhibition. Gustaw Holoubek Warsaw Drama Theatre is a partner of the project. FACE IT – Fostering active Citizenship Empowerment and Inclusion through Theater is co-funded by the European Union.