So Much Is Happening This Summer!

We cannot complain of a shortage of news. Płock may be a less than obvious destination for a short trip, but one worth considering. Apart from the delightful, almost Romanesque doors of the collegiate church and a river said to be older still, quietly nibbling away at the high escarpment, a good reason for the journey may be the small exhibition The Transitional Period between a Pillow and a Knife. 

Revealing great dexterity in arranging meanings and letters, the title could successfully serve generations of political scientists as an apt name for this summer of 2023: in history, somewhere between the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom, ostensibly on the Vistula yet simultaneously in an otherworldly unreality straight from ancient Egypt. 

Even if it seems to you that our Old Kingdom will be followed immediately by a New Kingdom, do go to the exhibition. 

It hangs in a tiny gallery that forms a nook within a larger gallery, an institution of culture housed in a former ritual mikveh. Surprisingly often, exhibitions there wash layers of stereotypes and firm convictions about ‘how things certainly are’ from one’s head. Perhaps it is the spirit of the place? 

The exhibition by a young artist from Chorzów may prove a minor ‘Copernican revolution’ as soon as you invest a moment in carefully scanning its precisely cut and still more sharply formulated meanings. It is time for change, and as we recall—perhaps from school?—Copernicus was a Woman too.