
Medicinal Plants of Płaszów

Join FestivALT and MEK Director Antoni Bartosz for a candid conversation about the museum’s collection of objects related to Jews and the museum’s responsibility to represent Poland’s multiethnic history in general. What should be expected of an institution that uses the slogan “My museum, a museum about me”? On this day you can visit the Museum for free - just say “FestivALT” at the counter.
Cultural anthropologist Erica Lehrer will lead a tour of the permanent exhibition of the Ethnographic Museum, focusing on the artefacts (as well as the absences) related to Jews and Jewish culture. What do these objects say about non-Jewish Polish conceptions of Jews and Jewishness? How should “folk” culture about and by Jews be displayed in this kind of museum?
The debate about the origins of hummus is a long and controversial one: nearly every country and ethnic group in the Middle East has made a claim to be its primary inventors, and buying or selling the food can quickly become a political statement. This debate has not left Kraków unscathed: while in much of the city, hummus is primarily sold as a product of the Arab world, in Kazimierz, it’s typically treated as a Jewish Israeli foodstuff. For this inaugural event of FestivALT Nights, join Bart and Kasia, owners of Hummus Amamamusi and makers of self-described “Polish hummus,” for an evening that will change everything you think you know about a little legume called the chickpea.
Confronting challenges of identity, memory, translation, and place, Michelle Levy and Patrycja Dołowy will perform their experience in conversation, between passionate search and profound discovery. Having followed Paulina’s story across Poland and Ukraine, the two women will summon archives, personal travel footage, maps, oral histories, foliage, pieces of the earth, speculation, and reflections, as tangible means to share what is truly ungraspable.
Composer/guitarist Alex Roth relocated from London to Kraków last year, reversing a migratory path traced by his great-great-grandfather in 1890. Weaving improvisations around his own field recordings, this multi-part promenade performance explores tensions between documented and experienced memory, unfolding across four sites of special significance to Kraków’s Jewish community.