Po Prostu Miłosz is an interactive, web-based project that looks at the legacy of Czesław Miłosz through the lens of re-appropriation.

In 1936, a short article by the young Czesław Miłosz appeared in the “po prostu”: A Letter to the Defenders of Culture.  In the article, Miłosz wonders if his generation would be able to create viable art that would be relevant and inspirational to future generations, given their political reality. Miłosz himself is the best proof of why he need not have worried.

Poles on Poles: Po Prostu Miłosz looks at the legacy of Czesław Miłosz – the person and the poet – through the lens of re-appropriation and remixing, and explores our tendency to use media to bridge genres, to create collaborations were none existed before, and to democratize art making. The project is an interactive web game were players cycle through recordings of leading American poets and are prompted to create original work in response.

vvitalny was honored to work once again with Jane Hirshfield, Bob Holman & Robert Pinsky to create a series of video postcards to Miłosz that serve as original source material for this game. Music for these videos was composed by Warsaw Philharmonic’s Tomek Januchta.

It is the final in the Poles on Poles series.

 

premiere:

Sen Pszczoły (Warsaw, Poland)
December 17, 2011
9pm

 

NYC premiere:

Moviehouse at 3rd Ward (Brooklyn, NY)
March 11, 2012
doors 7pm; show 8pm

 

po prostu miłosz in the news || po prostu miłosz w mediach

 

 

 

photos from the premiere:

vvitalny collaborated with Isabel Cadenas Cañón, Dan Edinberg, Paul Festa, Wiktor Freifeld, Tomek Januchta, Iza Kilianska, Weronika Majewska,  Krzysztof Maksymiuk, Judyta Nekanda-Trepka, Nidia Schuhmacher and Marta Zbikowska on this project.

Po Prostu Milosz is sponsored in part by the Ministerstwo Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego as part of the 2011 „Year of Miłosz.”