Premiere screening of the film Languages from Water and meeting with the creative team

The installation Languages from Water by Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski is presented until 22 November in the Polish Pavilion at the 61st Biennale of Art in Venice. In order to bring the project closer to the Polish public, we invite you to a series of meetings in Warsaw in autumn. The premiere screening of the film in the Iluzjon cinema will be the first opportunity to see in Poland one of the two screens of the installation, which is its main narrative axis.

The film will be introduced by Yolanta Voshchenko, one of the curators of the project. After the screening, we invite you to a conversation in which the authors — Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski, the cinematographer Magda Mosiewicz and the creator of the choreography Alicja Czyczel will take part. The conversation will be led by co-curator, Ewa Chomicka.

Languages from Water is a project that seeks alternative ways of communication inspired by a more-than-human life. The social Choir in Movement featured in the film is made up of hearing people and Deaf people. Phonic and Sign Languages (International Sign Language) provide a starting point for experiments with interpretations of whale songs and calls, as well as extended communication through body, gesture and movement.

For centuries, the underwater world was considered silent, and therefore devoid of subjectivity and subordinate to man. Similarly, in phonocentric culture, sign language was denied the status of a full-fledged language, and in many places it is still denied to this day. Languages from the water refer to these experiences and, referring to the concept of Deaf Gain, among others, they try to break the ideas about the limits of communication. The project evokes stories of loss, but also the reconstruction of cultures and contemporary work on the recovery of languages marginalized by dominant narratives. The boundary between air and water becomes a space for communication experiments, a kind of mirror in which different languages, bodies and ways of feeling will meet.

Read more about the project: https://labiennale.art.pl/en/wystawy/jezyki-z-wody/

The organizer of exhibitions in the Polish Pavilion at the Biennale of Art and Architecture in Venice is Zachęta — National Gallery of Art. The premiere of the film is organized in cooperation with the National Film Archive — Audiovisual Institute.

The programme of events accompanying the exhibition “Languages from Water” was financed by the PKO Bank Polski Foundation.

Poland's participation in the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia is funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland:

Patron of the Polish Pavilion:

main partner of the exhibition:

partners of the exhibition:

supporting:

Media patrons: