Alicja Rogalska invites the NARRACJE audience to a symbolic feast. Next to the banks of the Dead Vistula, we will meet at a common table that Przeróbka residents normally use to play table tennis, meet and celebrate their “private everyday holidays”.

The lightbox placed flatly on the tabletop illuminates a photograph of a table laden with various dishes. Closer observation reveals the true nature of these meals, composed mostly of industrial waste and domestic leftovers. The still, “dead” image of the table evokes speculative future scenarios and post-anthropocentric visions of the world. The photograph, with its Baroque sci-fi aesthetics, is a memento mori of sorts, alluding to the poisoned ecosystems and environmental catastrophe.

A common meal, a common table, a common cause – this image also expresses the need for radical hope and far-reaching societal transformation. The time of excess is drawing to a close. This is the end of the Carnival and the beginning of Lent: Mardi Gras. Like the last supper composed of civilizational waste, the meal becomes a bloodless sacrifice for a better tomorrow. Against all odds.

Alicja Rogalska is an interdisciplinary artist and author of situations, video works, installations, and performances based on research, collaboration, and participation. She graduated in Knowledge of Culture from the University of Warsaw (2006) and in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College (2011), where she is currently working on a PhD about collective representations of the future in social arts. Her practice spans subjects such as the political nature of everyday life and narratives about social alternatives in the context of the climate crisis, particularly concerning labour, economy, class, migration, and gender.