The “New Perspectives” Festival operates at the intersection of artistic practice and reflection on the status of the archive and cultural memory. Its point of departure is not the history of performance understood as a linear sequence of events and canonical works, but history conceived as a dynamic field in which meanings are continually negotiated and the past remains an active participant in contemporary artistic practice. We therefore propose a model of “living genealogy,” based not on the reconstruction of historical actions, but on their critical reinterpretation and recontextualisation in relation to contemporary social, political and cultural issues.

Understood in this way, genealogy draws on one of the fundamental characteristics of performance: its ephemerality. Since the 1970s, the medium has been at the centre of debates concerning the possibilities of documenting, archiving and restaging performative actions. The project contributes to this discourse by approaching the archive not as a collection of static artefacts, but as a dynamic space for the production of knowledge, in which documents, records and memory become the raw material for new artistic practices and reinterpretations of the past.

In this sense, performance functions not as an object of art history, but as a process through which connections between the past and the present are continually forged. Contemporary performance research increasingly suggests that the memory of an action resides not only in material documents, but also in the body, in practice and in the transmission of knowledge between successive generations of artists. The project develops this perspective by treating performative actions as a laboratory of cultural memory.

The history of the medium itself remains a significant point of reference. From the avant-garde experiments of the Futurists and Dadaists, through Allan Kaprow’s happenings and the Fluxus movement, to the practices of Joseph Beuys, Jack Smith, Marina Abramović, Chris Burden and Carolee Schneemann, performance has evolved as a form that challenges both the autonomy of the artwork and the stability of the relationships between artist, audience and institution. At the same time, it has served as a tool of social, political and institutional critique, shifting the emphasis from representation towards experience, presence and participation.

The festival builds on this tradition by establishing a dialogue between contemporary artists and the bodies of work of figures who have shaped the history of performance art, including Eileen Myles, Vito Acconci, Liliana Lewicka, Tony Conrad, Chris Burden, Ewa Partum, Zbigniew Warpechowski and Jerzy Bereś. This relationship, however, involves neither reconstruction nor quotation. Instead, historical works become frames of reference through which themes of corporeality, memory, community, relationality and the political nature of performative action can be reinterpreted.

Wrocław holds particular significance for the Festival as a city with a unique place in the history of Polish action art. It was here, in 1957, that what is regarded as the first Polish happening took place: the Sensibilist Theatre’s production Sensybilizm, czyli nie wolno robić z publiczności balona [Sensibilism, or You Must Not Make a Fool of the Audience](1957, Kameralny Theater in Wrocław), which anticipated many of the strategies later developed by the European neo-avant-garde. With the approaching seventieth anniversary of this event in mind, the project provides a platform for research into the local heritage of performance art and its place within international art history.

The Festival’s focus on the art of Central and Eastern Europe will offer an opportunity to initiate international reflection on the shared history of performative practices in the region. In the longer term, the project aims to begin research towards the development and launch of an open-access database devoted to the history of performance art in our region, which will serve as a tool supporting further comparative research and collaboration between institutions and artists. The project will culminate in multilingual academic publications and exhibitions presenting the research findings from a transnational perspective.

The Festival programme encompasses artistic activities, debates, lectures, archive presentations and meetings devoted to performance research methodologies, with particular emphasis on the documentation and archiving of ephemeral practices. In this way, the event moves beyond the conventional festival format to become a laboratory for the exchange of knowledge between artists, researchers, curators and institutions engaged with contemporary art. Practical knowledge is intertwined with theoretical reflection, while the experience of action is accompanied by an analysis of its cultural and social consequences.

From this perspective, performance is not merely an artistic medium, but also a method of cognition. It makes it possible to explore the mechanisms of memory, communal processes and the politics of presence, becoming a tool for critical reflection on the present. The “New Perspectives” Festival thus forms part of a growing body of research that approaches performance as a means of negotiating social and cultural models of coexistence. Instead of proposing a closed historical narrative, it creates an open structure in which the past remains an active partner in contemporary artistic practice, while the history of performance emerges as a process of continual transformation.

Agnieszka Chodysz-Foryś and Igor Wójcik,
curators of the Festival