S E V E N

Performance installation

About performance

I am
I breathe
I look
I feel
I touch
I speak
S E V E N

I am a fibrous plant
Pendulum above my head and within me
Deep as a seed in the ground
I count a rosary down my spine
I spin myself from past and future, maybe someone else’s….
But I will not die from the prick of the spindle
S E V E N

Not yet today
Not yet
I dress femininity in leather
I dress leather in femininity
From the torn fabrics of the past
I unfold the matrix
S E V E N

I unfold the heart
I embrace all the tears of the world
I set the sacred tablecloth
I stretch the bow
I hunt the moth with infinite wings
I do not cry out for help for I have become light
S E V E N

I tap
I spit
I drip
I swish
I swim
I drown
S E V E N

First
Second
Third
One more
Five
Six Unfinished, Infinite (how to count it). Count it
S E V E N

I am a fibrous plant
I remember
I am a memory
I sink my feet into the earth
I gush
Whiteness pours over me
S E V E N

Krzysztof Kieślowski has permeated my life since the moment I realised I wanted to do art. His films have influenced me with a particular kind of looking, listening, existing somewhere in the world in between, suspended where words end their journey and images and emotions last.

The direct inspiration for the S E V E N project is a short documentary film by K. Kieślowski from 1978. ‘Seven Women of Different Ages’, as well as the unique one-page typescript of the idea for the film ‘Stairs’, still preserved in the director’s archive, dating from 1970, in which the basic idea for this future documentary masterpiece can be found.

“For a long time xxxxxxxxxxxx I have been looking for a way to make a film about the inevitability of time passing. Problems and things grow old, views and fashions pass – I found it difficult to find an abstract or symbolic solution to this problem in a documentary film. Scripted attempts failed miserably, all mental puzzles ended up illustrating the thesis. In this subject – to be alive – you have to find the drama. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The passing of time for a person. The most beautiful xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx thing would be xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to film someone – probably a woman – for several decades […]”:
Document link: ‘Seven Women of Different Ages’ by K. Kieślowski.

S E V E N represents a complete stage brought to an end, unto itself. Its completion is followed by a new stage, which is a consequence of the previous one. I wonder about my place among the seven generations of women (as long as Life still and invariably comes through an unbroken chain of birth from the female body). Am I a single body, or do I carry within me past and future generations that remember each other, meet each other, see each other in my body?

In Egyptian, ‘seven’ (sfḫ) is related to ‘to forgive – to forget’.

I shudder when I try to understand it . . .

Monika Wachowicz

Concept
Jarosław Fret and Monika Wachowicz
Stage movement, costume designer and performer
Monika Wachowicz
Written by
Jakub Korpoluk on Japanese kotsuzumi drum
Jan Skopowski, cello arrangement of Messiaen’s ‘Quartet for the End of Time‘
Featuring the exceptional artistry of
Jakub Karpoluk, japoński bęben ko-tsuzumi
Jan Skopowski, wiolonczela: "Kwartet na koniec czasu” Oliviera Messiaena.
Technology and video editing
Jarosław Siejkowski
Running time
49 minutes
Production
the Grotowski Institute, Monika Wachowicz Studio of Body and Emotions

Gallery

Trailer

S E V E N

Presentation

The performance was performed at theatres and festivals in Poland and abroad, and was enthusiastically received by audiences.
Première: 25 August 2023 at the 12th edition of the Hommage á Kieślowski Movie Festival in Sokołowsko
25.08.2023
VI Congress of Polish Studies Didactics. „Dissent – resistance – rebellion in the educational space”. Centre for Performing Arts of the Grotowski Institute
24.09.2024
Chengdu-Chongqing International Theatre Festival in Sichuan/China
3-4.10.2025
BABEL International Festival of Performing Arts, Târgoviște, Romania
6.06.2026
32. The International Performing Arts Festival A Part
15.06.2026

Reviews

International Festival of Performing Arts BABEL 2026 in Targoviste, about performances that transformed time into experience.

Memory as ritual, time as wound: Grotowski Institute at the BABEL 2026 International Festival of Performing Arts

In Târgoviște, Grotowski’s spirit burned again: about two performances that transformed time into experience

“…At a festival whose central theme was time, productions by Jarosław Fret and Monika Wachowicz explored time in its most profound forms: the time of history, the time of the body, the time of memory, and the time passed down from generation to generation. Not time measured by clocks, but time that accumulates in the body, gestures, and objects…

In counterpoint, SEVEN concentrates the same force in a different formula. Alone on stage, Monika Wachowicz creates a performance that seems to exist somewhere between dance, performance, ritual, and meditation. Inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski’s film “Seven Women of Different Ages,” the performance explores the idea of ​​seven generations of women coexisting in one body. Past and future meet in the present of a being who carries within herself the memory of all who have been and the promise of all who will come.

Candles become a fragile measure of time. Each flame slowly consumes matter, just as time consumes life. The ballerina’s shoes and dress evoke discipline, childhood, ideals, and the sacrifice hidden behind perfection. The white puffs floating in space have the consistency of memories: light, fragile, impossible to grasp. The performance speaks of forgetting and forgiveness, of transmission and continuity, of the traces each generation leaves on the next.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of both productions is the way in which matter becomes dramaturgy. In Freta and Wachowicz’s theater, objects don’t illustrate ideas, but generate them. A sugar cube dissolving first in coffee and then in water can say more about disappearance than an entire monologue. A flame consuming white powder speaks to the fragility of existence. A sewing machine evokes work, memory, and the repair of cracks that cannot be completely healed. A man’s jacket becomes both presence and absence…”

cotidianul.ro

Lavinia Lazar

PRODUCTION

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