Promoting the Polish culture abroad

‘Probably no other presidency has capitalised on culture to such extent,’ remarked Paweł Potoroczyn, Director of Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
 
Pl2011.eu: The cultural programme of the Polish Presidency comprised over 400 events staged in ten world capitals. It constituted a project promoting Poland on an unprecedented scale. How did Adam Mickiewicz Institute manage to coordinate everything logistic-wise?

Paweł Potoroczyn:In terms of statistics, considering the number of projects, some of them should have ended in failure. Meanwhile, everything went according to plan. It was a kind of statistical oddity, as many of those projects were extremely complex. Take I, Culture Orchestra as an example – musicians from seven countries, travelling across Europe for several months, visas, hundreds of instruments, a genuine logistic challenge. I think we managed to put in place a mega-challenging plan. We were building our Institute for three years exactly to make it capable of implementing such tasks. The unquestionable success of the cultural programme of the Polish Presidency is the best proof that reforms of the Institute were successful, and today we are an innovative, creative organisation managed in a modern way and capable of undertaking massive projects.
 
The cultural programme was founded on six pillars: works of Stanisław Lem, Karol Szymanowski and Czesław Miłosz, Guide to the Poles, I, Culture Orchestra and I, Culture Puzzle. How were its individual components received internationally?

We are currently gathering data and drafting summaries. Szymanowski’s concerts met with enthusiastic reception everywhere we went. I want to stress that we opened the Polish Presidency in Brussels and Warsaw with Karol Szymanowski’s opera ‘King Roger’. After the concert in La Monnaie in Brussels we heard from the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, that this is the way to inaugurate presidencies. It was truly a unique performance, the best I have ever heard, and I’ve heard this opera live at least twenty times. ‘Planet Lem’ attracted audiences numbering in the tens of thousands, and some 150,000 copies of Miłosz’s audiobook were issued. To answer this question, I think it suffices to peruse the press from the countries where those events were held. Of several thousand reviews, we have perhaps twenty moderately positive and only a handful of negative ones. Positive or even enthusiastic comments and accounts make up the remainder. If we applied those relatively objective measures, we could say that the ‘cultural presidency’ has enjoyed massive success. We hear from opinion-leading journalists and influential European policy-makers that the face of the Polish Presidency was cultured.
 
What are the differences in reception of the Polish culture in various countries? What was the feedback to individual projects from audiences in Beijing and Minsk?

Speaking of ‘Planet Lem’, which is clearly an anti-totalitarian parable, we have not managed to stage it in Beijing, but surprisingly, we have produced it in Minsk for a several-thousand-strong audience. Yet, it was also in Minsk, where the modern music festival was cancelled as local authorities rightly suspected that rock’n’roll is the music of resistance and rebellion.  We have built the cultural programme of the presidency round such iconic Polish cultural figures as Lem, Miłosz and Szymanowski around whom we’ve built the cultural programme of the presidency. There are also works which are equally appreciated everywhere. For this reason, I am unable to tell you whether Miłosz is more acclaimed in Madrid or Tokyo.
 
And which of the several hundred cultural events that achieved success were particularly close to your heart?

It will be extremely difficult to answer that question, as I have a very personal approach to each and every event. Things I will certainly remember include the production of ‘King Roger’ in Brussels, the ‘Power of Fantasy’ exhibition in Brussels, Szapocznikow in Wiels, Sasnal in London’s Whitechapel, and naturally, the colossal Berlin exhibition ‘Side by Side: Poland-Germany — One Thousand Years of Art and History’. These were all massive events, milestones of Polish visibility in Europe and worldwide.
 
As a part of the I, Culture Puzzle project, fragments of a giant puzzle were sewn in several world capitals. When will we see the final results of the project and how will they be showcased?

The final part was made in Copenhagen. Local volunteers crafted their fragment out of embroidered fish, an extremely important symbol in Japanese culture, and later presented them to the Japanese ambassador in a gesture of solidarity with the victims of Fukushima. We know from our volunteers in Tokyo that this gesture was very well received. We will show deliverables of the project in Warsaw at the turn of January and February. More information about it will be soon published on our website — culture.pl. It should be stressed that this project has initiated a quasi-social movement – we see volunteers from ten world capitals communicating directly with each other, and our initiative is widely commented on and supported in social networks. A value has been generated whose scale has taken me and Monika Jakubiak aback — she is the artist animating the project.
 
And how did you feel during the tour of the I, Culture Orchestra?

It was an extremely complex and costly project whose cultural impact generated extensive media coverage. The orchestra consisted of young musicians from all Eastern Partnership states: Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Moldova. It performed in the most prestigious European concert halls for the most discerning audiences, and everywhere it received standing ovations. The tour had a symbolic value as it kicked off in Gdańsk at the ‘Solidarity of Arts’ Festival and ended on 11^th November with a concert at the National Philharmonics in Warsaw. The Polish President assumed auspices over the entire tour. This project has clearly demonstrated that European culture does not stop at the borders of the Schengen zone. Can there be a better metaphor for the concept of cooperation, solidarity and ultimately — the concept of Europe than creating a cultural value together?
 
Another exciting project rolled out by the Institute was a presentation of poems by Polish poets in the tubes of several world capitals. How did people rushing to work in the morning react to Polish poetry?

When is art most powerful? When it ‘attacks’ us when we least expect it, in the least expected context. We have intentionally put together public transport and such sublime discipline of art as poetry to achieve such results.
 
And what are the conclusions from the past six months of your experience? Was the foreign cultural programme a good investment in the future?

The presidency gave Poland a face. Thanks to the cultural programme and the global reach of Chopin’s anniversary, celebrated a year earlier, most of this face has been purely cultural. And we are not merely boasting – that has been testified to by reviews in the international media. That is what we are being told by our partners - that only the Polish presidency has capitalised on its culture on such an extent to create the image of a society which is open, modern, creative and smiling at the world.
 
And what will happen after the end of the Presidency? What are the plans of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute for 2012?

The year 2012 will be marked by the ‘Polish season’ in North Rhine-Westphalia, a culturally influential German land, which is the hotbed of new trends and new talents on the European scene. 2012 will also bring the Olympic Games in London, but the ‘cultural Olympics’ will be staged in Edinburgh, where we will strive to earnestly mark our presence. There will also be numerous encounters with contemporary Polish culture in Korea – a pioneer project in that country. In addition, we will launch preparations for our seasons at campuses on the Eastern Coast in the US, Italy, Turkey and Russia. And, on a reciprocal basis, we are working on a presentation of the Golden Mask Moscow Theatre Festival in Warsaw, as last year Polish theatres were on a tour in Moscow.
 
Thank you very much for the interview and we wish you many successes next year.