Thinking of καιρός, I go back to first feelings, first emotions, the world of dreams, all tied together into a Gordian knot in which everything is contained and so everything is possible. There is no separation between night and day, earth and sky, white and black, rich and poor, strong and weak, between what is allowed and what is bad form. The line between land and ocean vanishes.

Kairos is a place where things touch each other on many levels without infringing on any of the coexisting parts. It is like the Anchiskhati Basilica in Tbilisi where the flutter of wings and tears falling from the sky can be heard and where everything is real because I believe in what comes from inside me. When I think of this place, I touch the air with my fingertips, I draw the words now always with my breath.

My heart has been stabbed with a dagger and split into the four sides of the world there καιρός is born:

καιρός, woven from sounds that form an aviary of feelings

καιρός, where the Hymn of Love will be heard for the first time

καιρός, the sounds of the Japanese drum replacing the heartbeat

καιρός, everything is always falling like the cloud of tears in O, Let Me Weep

καιρός, I breathe, I run ‘to rise above the waves of lost time’

I want καιρός the rite of falling to become a rite of freedom.

Monika Wachowicz

The performance/installation Kairos was born out of a fascination with the work of three poets of cinema, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Sergei Parajanov and Andrei Tarkovsky.

Performer Monika Wachowicz
Cooperation: Jarosław Fret

With Hanna Nowicka-Rożeń (alto), Agnieszka Sanocka (cello), Lexo Gremelashvili (Georgian chants), Jakub Karpoluk (Japanese kotsuzumi drum), Amelia Helena Mazur (girl)
Photos on fabric Joanna Nowicka
Music arranger Leszek Kwaśniewicz

In the performance a recording of Ever Homeward by Frank Sinatra and a poem by Paul Celan read by himself are used.

I would like to thank you Marcin „Cozer” Markiewicz for his help in editing the soundtrack of speeches by world leaders of freedom.

Space arranger Jarosław Fret

Stage design made by technical department of the Grotowski Institute directed by Piotr Jacyk.

Premier: 3–4.12.2022, Katowice (Ateneum Silesian Puppet and Actor Theatre in Katowice) and 7.12. 2022, Wrocław. Laboratory Theatre Space, the Grotowski Institute.
Running time 50 minutes