Margarete

Janek Turkowski (PL)

English | For 20 persons each

Performance

In 2008, the Polish artist Janek Turkowski discovered a box of 64 Superachtfilm rolls on a northern German market near the Polish border. Each showed the picture of the same woman, Margarete Ruhbe. Turkowski artistically reconstructed her life, which he didn’t know, he couldn’t even know. Margarete’s story unfolds in contrast to the powerful images from the communist era: starting from the artist’s curiosity to the search for the identity of a woman who has left behind a short but indelible trace. An intimate solo performance with the question: What remains and how can we read the past?

Janek Turkowski is the creator of projects that combine theatre, performance art and unusual forms of narration. He is a member of the Kana Theatre in Szczecin, has studied philology and is a curator and cultural manager. In his work he uses archived film material and concentrates on the process of narration. “Margarete” was shown at the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Festival Under the Radar in New York.