performans
Patrycja Dołowy i Michelle Levy
directed by: Kathleen Amshoff
PAULINA is a performance that exists between life and death, between the Holocaust and the present time, between the politics of memory of Poland and the United States. The artists Michelle Levy (New York) and Patrycja Dołowy (Warsaw) like detectives set off on a journey through Poland and Ukraine following in the footsteps of an unknown woman from the past, and since then they have been keeping a close eye on the process of their search. They penetrated the surface of the visible, reached out to the unobvious, and discovered what happens when one of the thousands of testimonies is read anew in locations where a story took place.
The emerging story takes its power from absence and from relations between strangers entangled in a story older than each of them. Using archival materials, maps, travel documents, registering reflections, and recording the ever-evolving story, Levy and Dołowy – in two distant places – play a live documentary performance in which stories from here and there intersect in a virtual space built between Poland and the U.S. The artists explore the relationship between those who are uprooted and those who are left alive. They try to answer the question how our identities tie us to the heritage of the past, which resonates to this day.
Ten pages of an account written in Krakow in 1945 describes the fate of Paulina Hirsh, a Polish Jewess fighting for survival in Nazi-occupied Poland. The woman hiding behind the text remains a mystery, the document is impersonal and official. The note in the introduction suggests that when the war started she had a husband and a daughter, but now she is alone.
When Michelle Levy asked Patrycja Dołowy to translate her ancestor’s wartime account, none of them realised what roles they would play in the story’s web, woven from coincidences long before the artists appeared in it. The fascinating testimony of the woman’s survival, of which they became depositories, linked two descendants of Polish Jews from different worlds. In the spring of 2019, following Paulina’s testimony, Levy and Dołowy set off on a journey to recreate the trail that Paulina had followed during the war. This adventure led to an unexpected discovery and an unusual encounter. The crisis and the transformation that resulted from this experience are the heart of that constantly evolving story.
performans
Patrycja Dołowy i Michelle Levy
directed by: Kathleen Amshoff
PAULINA is a performance that exists between life and death, between the Holocaust and the present time, between the politics of memory of Poland and the United States. The artists Michelle Levy (New York) and Patrycja Dołowy (Warsaw) like detectives set off on a journey through Poland and Ukraine following in the footsteps of an unknown woman from the past, and since then they have been keeping a close eye on the process of their search. They penetrated the surface of the visible, reached out to the unobvious, and discovered what happens when one of the thousands of testimonies is read anew in locations where a story took place.
The emerging story takes its power from absence and from relations between strangers entangled in a story older than each of them. Using archival materials, maps, travel documents, registering reflections, and recording the ever-evolving story, Levy and Dołowy – in two distant places – play a live documentary performance in which stories from here and there intersect in a virtual space built between Poland and the U.S. The artists explore the relationship between those who are uprooted and those who are left alive. They try to answer the question how our identities tie us to the heritage of the past, which resonates to this day.
Ten pages of an account written in Krakow in 1945 describes the fate of Paulina Hirsh, a Polish Jewess fighting for survival in Nazi-occupied Poland. The woman hiding behind the text remains a mystery, the document is impersonal and official. The note in the introduction suggests that when the war started she had a husband and a daughter, but now she is alone.
When Michelle Levy asked Patrycja Dołowy to translate her ancestor’s wartime account, none of them realised what roles they would play in the story’s web, woven from coincidences long before the artists appeared in it. The fascinating testimony of the woman’s survival, of which they became depositories, linked two descendants of Polish Jews from different worlds. In the spring of 2019, following Paulina’s testimony, Levy and Dołowy set off on a journey to recreate the trail that Paulina had followed during the war. This adventure led to an unexpected discovery and an unusual encounter. The crisis and the transformation that resulted from this experience are the heart of that constantly evolving story.