MEMORIES OF WATER, MEMORIES OF AIR
• FREE ADMISSION • RSVP REQUIRED
Artists: Monika Błaszczak, felicita, Karolina Łebek, Paweł Sakowicz, Konrad Smoleński, and Rafał Zajko/Zoee
& Fugaz Collective, Gaetano di Gregorio
Curated by Kasia Sobucka
Friday 27th and Saturday 28th June 2025
Palazzo Contarini Polignac
Dorsoduro 874, 30123 Venice
PROGRAMME
Day 1
6.00 pm - 9.00 pm
Karolina Łebek, sanare – 18 min, video on the loop
Monika Błaszczak, Clay – dance performance, 35 min
felicita – live music
Gaetano di Gregorio - ceramics
Day 1 opens with sanare by Karolina Łebek—an 18-minute moving image work exploring healing, memory, and belonging through a poetic revisiting of a Lemko village ritual. This is followed by the world premiere of Clay, a 35-minute solo dance performance by Monika Błaszczak, drawing on the tactile qualities of clay to reflect on crisis, kinship, and transformation. The evening culminates in with felicita—a hallucinatory live set fusing Polish folk, diasporic memory, and surrealist pop in a format that merges concert, ritual, and dream and finishes with performative aperitivo, featuring Gaetano di Gregorio.
Day 2
6.00 pm - 9.00 pm
Paweł Sakowicz, Storm – dance performance, 30 min
Rafał Zajko / Zoee, Denim III – performance and music
Fugaz Collective, Volumen 2 – performative banquet
Day 2 begins with Paweł Sakowicz’s Storm, a 30-minute solo performance tracing the architecture of desire and self-perception. This is followed by Denim III by Rafał Zajko and Zoee—a new live collaboration merging sculptural performance, video, and sound. Echoing Polish funeral song traditions, the work evokes queer mourning, transformation, and ritual in a charged, multi-sensory score. The evening closes with Volumen 2 a performative Banquet by Fugaz Collective—a communal gesture of gathering, and sensory ritual.
FLOATING:
Konrad Smoleński, Waiting Room (video) will be screened on the boat during scheduled times.
Memories of Water, Memories of Air brings together some of the most pioneering artists to explore ephemerality as a vessel for ritual, memory, and transformation. Through movement, sound, video, and performance, the programme navigates themes of cultural erasure, displacement, ancestral healing, and corporeal presence—shaped by the shifting forces of water and air.
Framed as a space where transience is not understood as loss, but as a source of meaning, the programme invites reflection on how fleeting gestures—sound, movement, touch, taste—can become vessels for memory and connection. Rooted in the language of impermanence, it honours the intangible: textures, rhythms, and flavours as portals to presence and shared remembrance. By gathering around these ephemeral acts, the project offers a meditation on how momentary experiences shape our sense of belonging and continuity.
At its core lies a question: can ephemeral arts—a language of the body, movement, and sound—create spaces of remembrance and resilience in times of ecological instability? Reflecting on threatened natural elements—clean air, clean water—the programme considers how temporary experiences can nurture collective memory, offer space for grief, and illuminate our shifting relationship with an environment in flux.
Anchored in the folk traditions of Eastern Europe and shaped by voices often absent from dominant climate discourse—such as the Polish Łemko community, whose water rituals evoke themes of ecological memory, displacement, and adaptation—the project unfolds as both a lament and a call to action. It becomes a space where the ephemeral and elemental entwine, transforming artistic practices into vessels of embodied, ancestral, and ecological knowledge.
Held at Venice’s iconic Palazzo Contarini Polignac, this two-day immersive event features artists Monika Błaszczak, felicita, Karolina Łebek, Paweł Sakowicz, Konrad Smoleński, and Rafał Zajko & Zoee, whose works explore the body and impermanence as sites of memory and transformation. Their practices respond to the vanishing of essential natural elements, rendering air and water nearly mythical in today's world. The programme also spotlights local voices, including Venice-based ceramicist Gaetano di Gregorio and the Fugaz Collective.
Memories of Water, Memories of Air unfolds as a living laboratory—a dynamic space where art responds to environmental urgency. Through performances, installations, and public interventions, it invites reflection on what has been lost and what may still be reclaimed. It asks: how can ephemeral art foster resilience, remembrance, and care in a time when the very elements that sustain us are under threat?
For Press Inquiries:
Dobromiła Błaszczyk: dobromila@artsterritory.org
Memories of Water, Memories of Air is supported by: Voelkel Foundation, Polish Institute in Rome and Palazzo Contarini Poligniac.
This project is co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland from the Culture Promotion Fund
Cultural event of the Polish presidency of the Council of the EU
Credits:
Monika Błaszczak's performance Clay is supported by: Estrada Poznańska, Voelkel Foundation, the City of Poznań, and Theaterhaus Berlin.
Paweł Sakowicz's performance Storm is co-organized by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the international cultural program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025.
Production: Sapieha Palace, Vilnus
Co-produced by Pavilion of Dance and other Performing Arts - new branch of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
