OKNO – CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: THE VOICES OF KANA - HOSPITALITY
As part of the next edition of OKNO – CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, we would like to invite you to the meeting with Marina Hulia about the book “Dzieci z Dworca Brześć” [Children from the Brest Station] describing the stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station. The meeting will be followed by the performance "Popytka", directed by Weronika Fibich. After the performance, we are planning a meeting with artists led by Dorota Kowalewska.
... a stranger is often the one who questions" – as if his/her mere appearance may disturb the peace of domination of ‘homeliness, undermine the order of feeling-at-home, and challenged a blissful state in which everyone and everything rest in their places. As a non-fellow, a Stranger is frequently recognized as a problem. Referring to the concept of "hostipitality" formulated by Jaques Derrida, for many years we have been discussing about the difference between an enemy and a guest, the relationship between a guest and a host. We have been asking about the conditions of hospitality and its limits, as well as about the situation of "being a guest" in culturally foreign spaces. Meeting with women from Chechnya is an important comment to this subject.
Meeting with Marina Hulia about the book "Dzieci z Dwirca Brześć” [Children from the Brest Station]
describing stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station.
Journalistic pictures describing stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station. They were waiting for a trip to Poland because they could not return to Chechnya. Young children who were so hungry that they ate paper so that it swells in their stomachs. And their mothers who packed all their belongings into one bag. They escaped from the regime, but also from violence – to save their children and themselves. This story also tells you that you can try to set your life in a new country. This is a story about Poland, on the one hand – still maintaining “ghettoesque” mentality (centers for refugees), on the other hand: open-minded, friendly, with people who help mothers and children to live on the foreign land. These are stories of Polish families, known and unknown - friends and guides of Polish reality. The book touches the readers but offers them some hope, because it shows how you can enter the podium at the Nowy Tatr, or step onto the real stage of the Poznań-based Malta International Festival – straight from the waiting room of the railway station: to present clothes from a famous designer, and at the same time beautiful motherly love, share yourself and your feminine strength. The stories were told by a social activist and teacher Marina Hulia, a laureate of The Irena Sendlerowa Award "For repairing the world." She filled the sad waiting room in the railway station in Brest with joy, laughter, dance, life and organized a Democratic School. Interviews with people of pure hearts and minds who helping in a wise way, were conducted by Monika Głuska-Durenkamp – a journalist who has mastered the art of listening to both the men from the first pages of newspapers and to those “invisible”. The book includes also photographs by Marta Rybicka, Jędrek Nowicki, Jacek Taran and Tomasz Sikora.
The book is published by Kosmos Kosmos Publishing House.
OKNO – CLOSE ENCOUNTERS: THE VOICES OF KANA - HOSPITALITY
As part of the next edition of OKNO – CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, we would like to invite you to the meeting with Marina Hulia about the book “Dzieci z Dworca Brześć” [Children from the Brest Station] describing the stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station. The meeting will be followed by the performance "Popytka", directed by Weronika Fibich. After the performance, we are planning a meeting with artists led by Dorota Kowalewska.
... a stranger is often the one who questions" – as if his/her mere appearance may disturb the peace of domination of ‘homeliness, undermine the order of feeling-at-home, and challenged a blissful state in which everyone and everything rest in their places. As a non-fellow, a Stranger is frequently recognized as a problem. Referring to the concept of "hostipitality" formulated by Jaques Derrida, for many years we have been discussing about the difference between an enemy and a guest, the relationship between a guest and a host. We have been asking about the conditions of hospitality and its limits, as well as about the situation of "being a guest" in culturally foreign spaces. Meeting with women from Chechnya is an important comment to this subject.
Meeting with Marina Hulia about the book "Dzieci z Dwirca Brześć” [Children from the Brest Station]
describing stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station.
Journalistic pictures describing stories of children and mothers who spent months at the Belorussian railway station. They were waiting for a trip to Poland because they could not return to Chechnya. Young children who were so hungry that they ate paper so that it swells in their stomachs. And their mothers who packed all their belongings into one bag. They escaped from the regime, but also from violence – to save their children and themselves. This story also tells you that you can try to set your life in a new country. This is a story about Poland, on the one hand – still maintaining “ghettoesque” mentality (centers for refugees), on the other hand: open-minded, friendly, with people who help mothers and children to live on the foreign land. These are stories of Polish families, known and unknown - friends and guides of Polish reality. The book touches the readers but offers them some hope, because it shows how you can enter the podium at the Nowy Tatr, or step onto the real stage of the Poznań-based Malta International Festival – straight from the waiting room of the railway station: to present clothes from a famous designer, and at the same time beautiful motherly love, share yourself and your feminine strength. The stories were told by a social activist and teacher Marina Hulia, a laureate of The Irena Sendlerowa Award "For repairing the world." She filled the sad waiting room in the railway station in Brest with joy, laughter, dance, life and organized a Democratic School. Interviews with people of pure hearts and minds who helping in a wise way, were conducted by Monika Głuska-Durenkamp – a journalist who has mastered the art of listening to both the men from the first pages of newspapers and to those “invisible”. The book includes also photographs by Marta Rybicka, Jędrek Nowicki, Jacek Taran and Tomasz Sikora.
The book is published by Kosmos Kosmos Publishing House.