Janek Turkowski is a creator of projects combining theatre, performance art and unusual forms of narration. Member of the Szczecin-based Kana Theatre, graduate in Polish philology, curator and culture manager.

Since 2013 he has been collaborating with Iwona Nowacka. He uses archival film materials in his works and focuses on the process of narrating. The artist also believes in the power of the place, which has got its own story, waiting to be uncovered. Turkowski’s performances, created in a duo with Nowacka are, as they put it, «distinguished by detective methods, self-irony and humour». Using the discovered films and traces, Turkowski and Nowacka (re)construct biographies and problematise the documentary genres. Their “videotales” have been presented all over the world.

Their works include It’s Happening in Norwich (2015 – 2016), in which Iwona and Janek collaborated with a small community of neighbours at Elm Hill in Norwich, UK, to create a portrait of the city. The starting point of the performance is the work of Charles Scott, an amateur film-maker who documented the life of the British city between 1933 and 1974. Turkowski and Nowacka decided to carry on with the disrupted work using Scott’s archival materials. A similar practice was employed by Turkowski in the making of the project Smalfilm in Gröningen (premiere in 2016), inspired by the story of a local club of amateur film-makers which had been active since the 1930s. The preserved film reels were the foundation of the videoperformance, along with the documents concerning the members of the group.

At FIT 2018 Turkowski presented Margarete, a project created from a set of 64 reels of 8mm film found in a flea market in northern Germany. A fascinating performance, video storytelling show inspired by the images he found and the life of the woman they featured.

< photo Piotr Nykowski

@ FIT

Margarete
2018 Edition
26.09 – 07.10