Accepting an invitation from the curator of Krakow Theatrical Reminiscences, Magda Grudzińska, to create a work based on a visit to the six eastern partnership countries (Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), Tim Etchells established a framework for the project, designed to bring him closer to the unfamiliar realities and cityscapes of those countries whilst at the same time keeping his experience of them indirect, mediated through the eyes and narratives of others. In fact Etchells agreed to the project - titled From Afar - only on condition that another person - his brother Mark - make the trip east on his behalf, relaying his experience in the form of emails, stories and photographs.
In a further spin, From Afar established that the artists' brother, re-cast as envoy on an uncertain mission, would meet a selection of strangers in each city he visits whose task would be to introduce Mark to the places in which they lived through a number of stories linked to specific locations. Sharing places and stories - personal and collective, intimate and societal - and seeing how they move and morph in the process of being passed on from the inhabitants of these cities to the artist’s brother, and then from him to Etchells himself, From Afar plays on the creative and defective possibilities involved in the transmission of knowledge and experience. From Minsk to Kiev, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku and Chișinău what arises from the project is a set of remote viewings, second hand images relayed from one person to another in a complex web of collective exchange and collaboration. From Afar works the space between stories and reality, distance and proximity to create a deliberately partial and fragile invocation of places to which the artist has never been and which he has experienced only through experiences of others.
The tension between art and politics, created by the imposed direction of cooperation, becomes the vantage point of Tim Etchells new project, prepared specially for the 36th KRT in Krakow. Etchells' solo works and collaborations as well as his projects with Forced Entertainment, often reflect on language, subtly and pointedly commenting reality. They have been presented across Europe (including Poland, as a part of the international project “Parallel Cities”, Warsaw 2011) and outside (USA, Japan, Korea, Cambodia, Argentina). The present project is an artistic commentary on the ambivalent relationship between art and politics, while being an in-depth description of “partnership” as a tightening of bonds between people.
An exhibition, to be opened on the first day of the 36th KRT in Bunkier Sztuki, will be the crowning of the several month-long work. The project will also reflects on the situation in which the whole festival found itself through the EaP program, one of the priorities of the Polish presidency in the EU Council. The central goal of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) is strengthening of the relations between the six countries involved in the program (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine) and European Union.
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