The exhibition Krzysztof Niemczyk: Situationist, Writer, Painter is accompanied by the multimedia theater I, Krzysztof with Monika Niemczyk directed by Natalia Korczakowska. Welcome!

When: 1, 8, 15, 22 i and 29 July, 5, 12 August, 2 September at 5.30 pm

Capacity: 20 viewers
Tickets available at the Museum ticket office at 10 PLN

The theater takes place at MOCAK, the exhibition hall representing for the purposes of this project all the penitentiary institutions in which Krzysztof Niemczyk was detained for the crime of supposedly disseminating pornographic material (the evidence against him was a series of his nude self-portraits which had been found in his flat during one of the raids). In the ‘suffocating nightmare’, as Niemczyk called his imprisonment, he had recurring memories of his life before prison. Excerpts from his diaries were used to create two scenes, used as script for the video installation. The resultant medley of images is a spectre of impressions on records of memories that cannot be forgotten. Monika Niemczyk’s own memories have also been used as material in the actress personating her brother.

I, Krzysztof, rather than a documentary project, is an attempt to scrutinise the images that linger in our minds, images that are impossible to eradicate and that become distorted due to their intolerable content. And it is these very distortions that are intriguing, since they are more real than the lost events – they can be neither excluded nor evaded. For Monika Niemczyk to personate her brother Krzysztof is the greatest such distortion. However, it is in the very plot line that forces such as unfulfilled desire or a sense of guilty are unleashed that disturb the fragile superficial facts.
The memory space is amplified by re-photographed frames from classical Italian films; they seem to be incidentally thrown up in the process of recollection of memories, apparently ‘littering’ the actress’s memories of her brother.

Playscript and direction: Natalia Korczakowska
Actors: Monika Niemczyk, Tomasz Wygoda
Photography: Adam Uryniak
Music: Marcin Lenarczyk
Costumes: Marek Adamski
Soundtrack: Krzysztof Nowak
Makeup: Magdalena Kij
Production manager: Jagna Strama

Theater will be taking place in Polish.