Mandala Performance Festival

A performance artist is still associated with a provoking figure, a shaman, or a self-appointed therapeutist, who is ready to show us things we would not like to see again, and on times to see at all.
(RoseLee Goldberg)


Mandala Performance Festival is an annual international festival of performance art, taking place in Wrocław since 2005 on the initiative of Towarzystwo Kultury Czynnej (Active Culture Society) and Galeria Miejska (The City Gallery) in Wrocław which has been an independent organiser of the project since 2008. Eighty artists from eleven countries: Great Britain, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, France, Belarus, the USA, Portugal, Sweden and Canada, have taken part in five editions of the Festival.
The idea of the Festival is to introduce trends present in performance art, to extend the space of artistic search, to promote a formula of performing events which make a direct contact with the audience easy and build up a forum for various acts of creation applying the techniques based on movement, space and sound.
The Festival has an interdisciplinary character, and its title refers to the symbolics of mandala as a reflection of a present moment. It is a place of presenting varied interesting artistic tendencies, of exchanging experiences and of confronting artistic attitudes. Performance opens itself to other kinds of art, it allows them to enter its territory to co-create a new reality. It often combines poetry, dance and new media. It still evolves and opens new layers of perception, it makes direct communication and confrontation possible. The characteristic features of performance art are: vagueness, multitude of applied means and form openness.
The art of performance erases repetitiveness of theatre and fine arts, it often shows the ability of being art which enables aiming the people who are not related to culture or even the people excluded from it. It serves to create and lead any social projects. It is a live form of art, it articulates one’s attitude towards the world, it is the space of expression where an artist communicates with others.
Performance artists still search for new possibilities of sending a message, they benefit from choreography, narration. They notice our primary will to communicate, both with each other and the world surrounding us. There is no need to wait long for an inspiration to come – a thorough look at the reality is often enough. Each sound and movement, image and word, co-operate with each other to create a new kind of art. Performers verbalise emotional states and personal visions in their actions. In a short comment, it is hard to enumerate all sources of inspiration for authors of action art; it is both Jackson Pollock’s action painting, conceptual art, and Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer’s innovative dance.
The fifth edition of the Festival focuses on the area of meeting between performing arts and choreography, on questions about identity and alienation in the contemporary world, on presentation of Joanna Leśnierowska’s ‘Solo Project’, performed in Stary Browar in Poznań.
The programme includes the artist who influence greatly the image of European contemporary art. The Festival is accompanied by meetings with the artists and panel discussions entitled ‘Body – Sex – Identity in Art’ .



Curator of the Festival
Adam Kamiński