Halka - Haiti : 18°48'05"N 72°23'01"W : C.T. Jasper, Joanna Malinowska ; [the Polish Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition, la Biennale di Venezia, May 9 - November 22, 2015

Artists C.T. Jasper and Joanna Malinowska and curator Magdalena Moskalewicz, decided to stage the opera in Haiti inspired by the mad plan of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, who wanted to build an opera house in the Amazon. Fascinated by Fitzcarraldo’s faith in the universal power of opera, but not uncritical of the colonizing aspect of his actions, they decided to reveal and undercut its romanticism by confronting a set of very specific geographic, historical, and sociopolitical realities. Inspired and provoked by the title character in Werner Herzog’ ; s film 'Fitzcarraldo', two artists and a curator decide to revisit his mad plan of bringing opera to the tropics. In an attempt to undercut 'Fitzcarraldo'’ ; s colonial romanticism, they decide to confront a set of particular historical and sociopolitical realities by staging 'Halka', considered to be Poland’ ; s “ ; national opera,” ; in the seemingly unlikely locale of Cazale, Haiti, a village inhabited by the descendants of Polish soldiers who fought for the Haitian Revolution in the early 1800s. 0On February 7, 2015, a one-time-only performance of 'Halka' was presented to a rapt local audience on a winding dirt road. A collaboration between Polish and Haitian performers, the event was filmed in one take to be presented later as a large-scale projected panorama in the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. 0This volume provides both a multifaceted conceptual framework for the project and a detailed record of this remarkable endeavor.00Exhibition: Polish Pavilion, Biennale di Venezia, Italy (09.05. - 22.11.2015)