practice of seeing

The participatory project involving people with visual impairments enters into a dialogue with the canonical work in the history of art, "Theory of Seeing" by Władysław Strzemiński, whose 70th anniversary of death falls this year.

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Strzemiński devotes his book to the history of art understood as the development of visual awareness, which is characteristic of societies of subsequent eras. He bases his story about what is most important in art on sight, vision and the way of interpreting what is seen, also analyzing the operation of the sense of sight itself. The topic had personal significance for him, because the artist himself had to deal with the disability of one eye and a serious visual impairment in the other.

For creators, Strzemiński's work is a starting point for creating a theater performance, one of the most important layers of which - visuality - may be questioned due to the participation of people with visual impairments in the project.

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In both visual arts and theater, sight is the basic sense of reception. Exploring other possibilities, other perspectives, and at the same time exchanging experiences by meeting two different eyes - one who sees and one who sees completely differently - may lead creators to build a story that Strzemiński may not have fully considered. It will not be one, but numerous theories of seeing, depending on who tells what he sees or wants to see.

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Since Strzemiński claimed that each era looks at the world differently, and this perspective is constantly changing, how should we - people of the 21st century - look at the world? The world is incredibly complex, heterogeneous, complicated, multidimensional, but also increasingly surprising and disturbing. A world flooded with an unimaginable amount of images surrounding us on every side. What kind of sensitive look do we need today? How to look at another person in an empathetic and non-harmful way? What can we learn about today's world by looking at it through the eyes of people with visual impairments? As sighted people, what do we not see and what do we miss? Finally: how to create visual art and theater today so that they are not exclusive?