Monday, May 24, 2021
8:30pm CT
Streaming on YouTube
FREE
Cyprian Bus of Krakow's Front Row Heroes, curator Krzysztof Kowalczyk hailing from Gdansk, and Joanna Rzepka-Dziedzic + Łukasz Dziedzic of Szara Gallery based in Katowice speak about arts, culture, and organizing in Poland today.
Krzysztof Kowalczyk is Polish music curator, music supervisor, booking agent and manager who has worked for more than 10 years with a diverse selection of media and spaces. As a music curator he has collaborated with a wide spectrum of venues, festivals and institutions in Poland, assisting them in hand-picking innovative contexts for music and sound art. Krzysztof has booked live shows focussed on avant-garde, alternative and audio-visual art - from Tim Hecker, Ikue Mori, Keiji Haino and Steven O’Malley through Sarah Neufeld and A Hawk and the Hacksaw to Mouse on Mars, Tycho and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Currently he is working with his business associate Mateusz Mondalski, a Polish journalist and booking agent, on the launch of a new agency. They are in the process of arranging new shows, tours and commissioned work in Europe for artists such as BNNT, Enchanted Hunters, Endgame, Jerusalem In My Heart, Kee Avil, NAKED, Patrick Higgins, T.Gowdy, VIOLENCE and Wojciech Bąkowski. They also provide PR worldwide for artists including Polish pop duo Coals.
In 2009 Cyprian Buś co-founded Front Row Heroes, a promotion collective formed to promote alternative artists who had trouble getting to Poland and integrate them into the local music. Somewhere about 1000 concerts played by artists from all around the world have happened since as implementation of this bold plan. Following that in 2011, he started a Green ZOO Festival, an event in Kraków that spans multiple venues and has become an established part of the city’s music scene. 10 editions later it’s still going on, last year as a jubilee online event: https://greenzoofestival.pl/
Szara Gallery, founded in 2002 in Cieszyn is an independent, non-commercial cultural institution, artist-run space. In 2016 it moved from Cieszyn to Katowice thus opening a new chapter in its history. The main goal of Galeria Szara’s activities is education in the field of contemporary art as well as supporting artists through the organization of exhibitions, workshops, concerts, as well as publishing catalogues and records. In order to broaden the scope of its activities while continuing with its programming and to secure funding that is independent from the state and public grants, in 2018 Szara Gallery has begun representing the artist and operating upon a partially commercial model. The gallery is run by the Foundation Galeria Szara – a non-governmental organization.
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