Breakfast with books, Kiraly, Welnicki and 23rd birthday with Ikarvs live
Saturday’s day begins with quick eye rub and a visit to the Vision Express booth. This is the only day of free tests to determine visual acuity, organized by this year’s festival sponsor. Visit the point next to the ticket offices at Tymienieckiego 3.
Then it’s time for breakfast – as always at Fotofestiwal – with photography books. This year you can nibble at as many as three premieres: Iacopo Pasqui and his Der Engel (published by Fotofestiwal, Witty Books and 19 Rivers), History of Poland vol. 2 by Michał Sita and Works 2012-2021 by Igor Omulecki. In addition, a meeting with Michal Adamski, Sputnik Photos, winners of Photographic Publication of the Year 2024, Olena Morozova and curator of the exhibition Photographic Books from Latin America, Laura Carbonell.
Fed we set off to sip stories from the mouths of the authors and authors of the exhibitions at the festival center. At 12:00 Lukas Hoffmann will give a tour of People and Traces, followed by a meeting with Diego Moreno, Gloria Oyarzabal, Michalina Kacperak, Martin Kollar and Yorgos Yatromanolakis in their exhibition’s space. Finally, a journey through contemporary Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina and “countries that don’t exist,” with the artists and creators of the exhibitions that make up the Open Program.
At 5pm, it’s time to move to the living rooms. In the Poznanski Palace at the Museum of the City of Lodz we are opening Old Memories Are Getting More Persistent. This is the first cross-sectional exhibition in Poland of one of Romania’s most acclaimed visual artists, Iosif Király, organized in cooperation with the Romanian Institute. At the exhibition we will see how the artist translates memories into images and how he understands the way memory mechanisms work.
At 6pm, time return – to Księży Młyn. We will open north-south at the Academic Design Center. This is the third Art School Review presenting the works of student people from nine Polish universities. Moments later, a special moment at the Film School – the culmination of 13 years of work by Grzegorz Wełnicki. The artist has photographed in Poland, India, Russia and Ukraine. He documented the work of dissecting rooms and contemporary ways of storing bodies, the activities of companies engaged in thanatoplasty or cryogenics, and the directions of transhumanism in the struggle to overcome the limitations of the human body. He portrayed those who have temporarily escaped death and people who already know when their end will come. All this to find an answer to the question, what can we learn from death – and illustrate it in beautiful shots.
We will integrate the experiences of the whole day – as we should – surrounded by nature. We return to the unique gardens of the Book Art Museum, where we traditionally celebrate birthdays. We will celebrate with Ikarvs live, or the spiritual children of Grimes and Kora from Maanam, and with Dj sets by Tropical Basses and Mentalcut – the producer and one half of the star duo Lua Preta, who welcomed our audience at last year’s opening.
See you!
