On the first weekend of September 2025, the SARP garden at the Foksal Gallery will become a space for performances created in response to an open call organized by the Gallery. This event is the culmination of the project "No One Writes Manifestos Here Anymore." Instead of traditional manifestos, selected artists attempt performative responses – ephemeral, physical actions open to interpretation. Together with curator Martyna Stołpiec and visual artist Ania Płonka, creators worked on forms that will not only be presented live but also preserved as video art, creating a new link in the Foksal Gallery archive. This event is not only a presentation of performances but also a reflection on what a manifesto can be today – do we still need it in art, or have other forms of expression and resistance taken its place? 📅 5.09, 6:00 PM | Elwira Sztetner, "All Bodies Should Be Free" "In a gesture of radically inclusive empathy, on behalf of those whose lives have been subjected to control, I oppose the (anthropo)patriarchal power that appropriates the bodies of others. I reject enslavement, exploitation, discrimination, and objectification. I demand the right to freedom for all – regardless of gender, social position, intelligence, ethnic, national, racial, species affiliation, skin color, hair, or feathers. On behalf of those no one wants to listen to, I say NO MORE HUMAN DOMINATION! ALL BODIES SHOULD BE FREE!" 📅 6.09, 7:00 PM | Wojciech Rybicki, "F***ball" "Let’s go back to Poland in 2012. I was terribly hyperactive back then. Together, we’ll spy on my less hyperactive, older neighbor. Let’s dive into the absurdities of everyday life, where ordinary tenement squabbles turn into micro-conflicts with political ambitions. Simulating pirouettes and arabesques in the Foksal graveyard, we’ll project the sources of social conflicts in Poland. Poland then and now seems sad. Let’s kick the ball together and see if we really need to get so ‘p***ed off’ – after all, all Poles are one family, young or old, boy or girl." 📅 7.09, 6:00 PM | Barbara Gryka and Maciej Kryński, "rex venationis" The performance "rex venationis" by Barbara Gryka and Maciej Kryński develops the artists' previous explorations of power, ritual, and grotesque. This time, the reference point becomes hunting – one of the central practices of Polish nobility, which functioned not only as a form of entertainment but primarily as a staging of hierarchy and domination. The action reveals mechanisms of power based on the repetition of empty gestures: ceremonial opening, drive, triumph, feast. However, this order turns out to be illusory – instead of trophies and glory, there is chaos, disappointment, and a desperate attempt to revive a dead ritual. It’s a critical look at historical noble fantasies, which – though rooted in 17th-century hunting treatises and court etiquette – still disturbingly resonate in contemporary Poland.
