\u201cCRYING\/TRYING\u201d is a project created specifically for the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a Multicultural Festival by Daniel Kotowski\u2014one of the most distinctive contemporary Polish artists, working at the intersection of performance, video, and installation. His work stems from his experience as a Deaf person and consistently challenges the notion of deafness as a lack or a disability. In his works, Deaf culture emerges as a distinct perspective shaped by language, communication, identity, and unique ways of producing knowledge. In 2026, Kotowski, together with Bogna Burska, represented Poland at the 61st Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition. <\/p>\n\n
The starting point for this new work is the figure of Stefan Napierski (1899\u20131940), born Stefan Marek Eiger\u2014a poet, essayist, translator, and literary critic of Jewish descent. His biography is intertwined with \u0141\u00f3d\u017a in several ways\u2014he was married to the poet and translator Irena Tuwim, and his mother, Diana Eiger (n\u00e9e Silberstein), came from a well-known family of industrialists in \u0141\u00f3d\u017a. An important aspect of Napierski\u2019s life that was long kept silent was his homosexuality\u2014an experience he could not openly and fully embrace under the social conditions of the time. <\/p>\n\n
Kotowski finds in Napierski\u2019s poetry a \u201cromantic excess\u201d\u2014despair, loneliness, unfulfillment, and a sense of being stigmatized. However, he is interested not only in suffering but also in the communicative potential it holds\u2014a cry directed at the world, an attempt to assert one\u2019s presence, and the tension between the need to be oneself and the necessity of hiding one\u2019s own truth. <\/p>\n\n
Crying becomes the central gesture of \u201cCRYING\/TRYING.\u201d Kotowski views it as the space between powerlessness and action, between surrendering to reality and attempting to change it. Here, strong emotions cease to be something that must be masked by irony, detachment, or \u201celegant complaining.\u201d Crying can reveal what usually remains hidden\u2014and that is precisely why it can become the beginning of action. <\/p>\n\n
The location where the work is performed is of particular significance. The performance was created in the disused swimming pool of the \u0141\u00f3d\u017a YMCA on Moniuszki Street\u2014a space designed for water that lost its original function once the water was gone. The empty pool thus becomes not only a setting but also part of a narrative about absence, traces, and the possibility of giving new meaning to an existing space. <\/p>\n\n
Daniel Kotowski<\/strong>\u2014artist and performer. His practice centers on the experiences of Deaf people, language and communication, as well as biopower and biopolitics. In his work, he explores the boundaries of corporeality and the possibilities of expression beyond the dominant order of speech. <\/p>\n\n \u201cCRYING\/TRYING\u201d is aimed at people interested in contemporary art, performance art, the history of \u0141\u00f3d\u017a, Deaf culture, and the often-overlooked and long-marginalized life stories of the city\u2019s residents. It is also an invitation for those interested in issues of identity, communication, emotional expression, and the social norms that determine which forms of self-expression we consider appropriate and which we deem \u201cexcessive.\u201d The work may particularly resonate with the experiences of people living in the tension between the need for self-expression and the pressure to hide, control, or normalize their own emotions and identities. <\/p>\n\n\n
For Whom?<\/h2>\n\n