About Festival
Transformations Art Festival by the Vistula
Transformations Art Festival by the Vistula – a cycle of cultural events on the Vistula inspiring a general debate on the development of the Vistula embankment in Warsaw, carried out as part of the preparations of Warsaw to gain the title of European Capital of Culture 2016.
During TRANSFORMATIONS, from June till October, many inspiring cultural activities will take place. The events will be organized by thirteen organizations: foundations – ART, Ave, Bęc Zmiana, Impact, InfoPraga, Ja Wisła, Makata, Monte Video Foto, NOK, Proscenium – GO Theatre, and associations: Makata, STEP, and the British Council. The programme has been adjusted to the needs of diverse members of the audience of all ages.
Transformations Art Festival by the Vistula
During the last 40 years the waters of the Vistula river in Warsaw were associated with
empty concrete banks and dangerous thickets. Artists and culture animators selected in the
contest of the Warsaw Culture Office and interested in changing this state of affairs
entered the scene on 9 June 2009. Ten non-governmental organisations decided to make use of
Vistula’s artistic potential, too long forgotten and neglected. Over 500 events and cyclic
artistic projects by the river over the period of 4 months as part of a joint initiative
called Transformations Art Festival by the Vistula. As a result, over 150 thousand people
participated in concerts, exhibitions, workshops, performersí actions, film screenings, city
games, dance shows, canoeing rallies and excursions. It was the first action of this scope
and duration to take place in Warsaw in order to improve the image of the riverbank and make
it more friendly for Warsaw inhabitants.
Warsaw foundations and associations worked in various parts of the riverbank, each of them
engaged in actions characteristic of their individual social projects ñ from sports events,
through high culture to social actions animation – which made the whole undertaking
extremely interesting and diverse.
Transformations Art Festival by the Vistula was accompanied by the media day after day to
show and comment on the subsequent stages of the project. Over 500 articles and interviews
related to the event appeared in all kinds of media, from newspapers to electronic sources.
The project was described in trade and art magazines, as well as newspapers and local media.
Selected events were also filmed.
The Transformations atmosphere
During the period of four months the space between the Świętokrzyski and the Średnicowy
bridges was an area of artistic activity called transFORM and created by Stowarzyszenie
Edukacji i Postępu STEP. The programme was constantly developing and expanding thanks to new
artists joining the project. transFORM was to revitalise the river area and promote
contemporary art, concentrating on environmental art focused on eco-friendly actions. A
barge, which played the role of the stage during concerts and performances, as well as the
place of artistic, photographic and dance workshops, became the central part of the project.
This artistic lab significantly changed the riverbank public space, integrating city
inhabitants around new installations, such as a multi-colour sandpit, a luminous horse
running through the river or a huge tent hiding an art gallery inside.
Artistic nights organised at weekends by Ja Wisła Foundation in the Czerniakowski Port were
extremely popular. The same with the Friday Dechy events during which people of all ages
could dance on an open air dance floor. Saturday concerts on the Herbatnik barge hidden in
the thicket of the Czerniakowski Port allowed people to feel like on a vacation, somewhere
in the most remote parts of Poland, while listening to the music which is very rarely heard
on Warsaw stages.
Vistula, as a calm, green oasis in the heart of the city, constituted the main axis of the
Wisłostrada festival organised by Makata Art Association. Several music stages located at
Cypel Czerniakowski, hosted the performances of a few dozen artists during three days. They
were accompanied by open-air theatre performances, workshops and other artistic events.
The Street Art Doping Festival resulted in the creation of several new murals which may
become the flagship of the city. Concerts organised at the end of the festival on the
boulevards near the Śląsko-Dąbrowski bridge saw an audience of a few thousand people.
Bęc Zmiana Foundation organised an event entitled Vanish by the Vistula and invited Paweł
Althamer and Joanna Rajkowska, among others, to participate. A neon designed and placed at
Kępa Potocka by a Warsaw artist Maurycy Gomulicki is a permanent effect of its activities.
Family encounters with history called Royal Walks by the Vistula organised in the Kubicki
Arcades by ART Foundation and water tram trips with Warsaw music bands – a project by NOK
Foundation – were among the most popular events.
There were also attempts at uniting the two sides of the river. Canoeing rallies organised
by Ave Foundation (Vistula Art Kayak project), which has been trying to encourage Warsaw
inhabitants to spend summer weekends by the river for years, united the two sides of the
river from Wawer in the south to Tarchomin in the north. Warsaw inhabitants of both sides of
the city had a chance to meet also on the Świętokrzyski bridge during the Granica-most
(Bridge-border) action organised by Monte Video Foto Foundation.
Various actions initiated via the Internet were also aimed at encouraging people to visit
the riverbank. An online game and a live game Wisła na linii (Vistula on-line) was organised
as part of this initiative. It was preceded by a quiz which was to provide people with an
answer to the question: What type of Vistula personality are you? Both projects were
implemented by the Praga district tourist information centre InfoPraga invited to contribute
to festival events by the festival coordinator, Impact Foundation.
British Council also contributed to actions aimed at reviving the riverbank in Warsaw.
Together with Impact Foundation, it organised the Future City Game during which a few dozen
active Warsaw inhabitants presented several innovative ideas concerning the revival of
Warsaw riverbanks.
Proscenium/Teatr Go Foundation took care of video documentation during the Transformations
Art Festival by the Vistula – From the Vistula’s perspective.
The main task of Impact Foundation, as the festival coordinator, was to combine the actions
of all non-governmental organisations. During six months it tried to incite social interest
in the Transformations, invited various organisations to cooperate and engaged in
promotional actions related to the festival.
Ten organisations initially engaged in the works on the Transformations Art Festival by the
Vistula, while by the end of the festival over 100 organisations and institutions were
taking part in the revival of the Vistula river. The biggest success of Transformations was
the gathering of a large group of people, organisations and institutions to share their
passions and combine their efforts in a joint action aimed at giving the riverbank back to
Warsaw.
Vistula Support Meter – an atypical photographic action consisting in collecting
“signatures” (votes) in the form of portraits of Warsaw inhabitants.
During 4 months hundreds of Warsaw inhabitants invited to participate in the Support Meter
action told what their ideas for developing the Vistula riverbank and the river itself are.
In several different places in the districts of Praga, City Centre and Mokotów, participants
provided their signatures in the form of their portraits. As a result, we jointly created a
common vision of the river and its revival as a river that unites people. A 300-metre
photographic collage was created to become our joint support portrait. This four-month
action showed how many Warsaw inhabitants WANT THE VISTULA! It also appears that each one
of the inhabitants has a concept in mind for the development of the Warsaw riverbank and
really cares about the future of the Vistula.
What Warsaw inhabitants dream about the Vistula?
- WHAT IS MISSING HERE? BOULEVARDS, CANOEING AND BETTER ACCESS TO THE RIVER.
- WE WANT CLEAN WATER AND A SAFE, WELL ORGANISED RIVERBANK: OF COURSE EVERYTHING
ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AND WITH RESPECT TOWARDS THE NATURAL FAUNA. WE ALSO WANT SOME
ACCESS PATHS FROM THE SIDE OF PRAGA AND AVENUES WITH BENCHES AND DUSTBINS SO THAT THE
NUMEROUS PARKS BECOME AN ORDERLY PLACE.
- WE NEED BOULEVARDS WITH OPEN