MargareteJanek Turkowski

In 2008 Janek Turkowski found a cardboard box full of 8mm film reels on a market in North Germany, 64 reels altogether. They all consisted of images of the same woman, Margarete Ruhbe.

Some of the reels were still in their envelope from the AGFA factory where they had been developed, and the name of the receiver was of course on them. From there on Turkowski started an artistic (re)construction of a life of a woman he didn’t know. By his deep interest and compassion, her existence is kept for the future. Reconciliation with the past is an important theme in all of Turkowski’s works.

Turkowski writes:
In 2005 I became fascinated by a phenomenon of mass publishing of “intimate” statements and diaries in the Internet. Sudden appearance of great amount of blogs resembled past popularity of silva rerum – Latin for “forest of things” – a literary genre popular in Poland in the sixteenth century. Silvae were commonly kept by weathly noblemen who created collections of texts on variety of subjects, written “live”. They documented unique everyday life of their authors.

In July 2008 I accidentally became an owner of several amateur films of a German woman living close to the Polish border. Immediately, I got captivated by the matter of these celluloid reels. In May 2010 I started to present it to the audience. The films will be displayed from multimedia and 8mm projectors. I will also tell the story of finding these film reels.

«What I just saw is a touch of the unattainable, yet important and significant.»
teatrblog.pl

«Margarete domesticates and invites us to a place where we can experience deep emotions because of an intimate encounter with a person who is close to us, or with ourselves.»
Teatralia Szczecin

CREDITS
Concept, text, direction: Janek Turkowski Set design: Wieslawa Turkowska, Martyna Glowacka Video: Margarete Ruhbe, Martyna Glowacka, Adam Ataszynski, Marcin Piatkowski, Janek Turkowski Music: Roger Anklam, Przemek Radar Olszewski
Sound, light: Janek Turkowski Producer: Janek Turkowski Co-producer: Kana Theatrical Centre Photo: Weronika Piszczek