With anticipation, pride, and excitement, we invite you to celebrate a small milestone. This is already the fifth edition of the AżTak Festival – a celebration of contemporary music hosted by Hashtag Ensemble.
Five years is a commitment. We want the festival to grow, open up, and become richer with every edition. We want to hear and see what music sounds like today. We want to provoke unexpected encounters, celebrate both local and international perspectives, and bring together sound, image, movement, and meaning – in metaphor and in direct expression.
This year, we take you into the loop of OBSESSION. As both observers and participants, we will experience a process that affects all of us in today’s world, whether consciously or unconsciously: we become fascinated, addicted, overstimulated, and driven to exert excessive control over ourselves and others. The vicious circle of TRIGGER – COMPULSION – BURNOUT forms the framework of this year’s festival.
We will experience the literal obsessiveness of Ricardo Eizirik’s Obsessive Compulsive Music, examine paranoid mechanisms of power and control in the work of Michel Daugherty, and discover the cost of musical obsession in Stéphanie Argerich’s documentary film Bloody Daughter (about the daughter of the legendary pianist Martha Argerich).
If we think obsession is solely an affliction of contemporary life, two festival projects will challenge that assumption: Moths and Us by Ania Szawiel and Przemek Pacek (after all, obsessive moths have existed for 200 million years, while humans have been around a hundred times less!) and the music theatre work of the festival’s composer-in-residence, Tomasz Prasqual.
In only Love can break your Heart, the obsession of love and the obsession of poetry transcend eras and countries, travelling between the Renaissance Italy of Gaspara Stampa and the contemporary world of Nigerian poet Logan February. It is a meeting beyond time, in a space where the most important questions can be asked.
Festival Programme
TRIGGER
25 June
- 17:30 — Opening of the exhibition Rooms of Obsession | Mat Kubaj | Pączkowska | B383 | Hashtag Lab
- 18:15 — Performance | Mat Kubaj | Prasqual | B383 – Hashtag Lab
- 19:00 — Demons: Hashtag Ensemble Concert | Hashtag Lab
26 June
- 19:30 — Opening Reception: White Noise for Burnout | Exhibition | Aleksandra Ołdak | Piotr Bednarczyk (LOUFR) | Karolina Kraczkowska | Oskar Malinowski | Stroboskop
COMPULSION
27 June
- 11:00 — Moths and Us: Concert and Creative Science Workshop with Poznaj Motyle
- 12:00–19:00 — Exhibition | Mat Kubaj | B383 | Hashtag Lab
- 12:00–19:00 — White Noise for Burnout | Exhibition | Aleksandra Ołdak | Stroboskop
- 19:00 — Frenzy: Hashtag Ensemble Concert | Hashtag Lab
- 21:00 — Bloody Daughter | Film Screening and Discussion
BURNOUT
3 July
- 12:00–19:00 — Exhibition | Mat Kubaj | B383 | Hashtag Lab
- 20:00 — only Love can break your Heart | World Premiere | Prasqual | TR Warszawa
4 July
- 12:00–19:00 — Exhibition | Mat Kubaj | B383 | Hashtag Lab
- 12:00–19:00 — White Noise for Burnout | Installation | Aleksandra Ołdak | Hashtag Lab
- 20:00 — only Love can break your Heart | Prasqual | TR Warszawa
- 22:00 — Electro Ambient Night | Janicki | Magnetic Memory Ensemble | Hashtag Lab
Festival Venues
- Hashtag Lab, Barska 29
- TR Warszawa, Marszałkowska 6
- B383, Barska 38, Unit 3
- Stroboskop, Siewierska 6
Credits
Organizer: Sfera Harmonii Foundation
Host: Hashtag Ensemble
AzTak Festival Curators: Wojciech Błażejczyk, Aleksandra Demowska-Madejska, Lilianna Krych, Marta Piórkowska
Partners: Warszawskie Towarzystwo Sceniczne, TR Warszawa, B383, Stroboskop Gallery, Innovshop
Media Partners: Polish Radio Programme 2, Wyborcza.pl, Ruch Muzyczny, POLMIC
Patrons and Supporters: City of Warsaw, ZAiKS, STOART, NIMiT, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
The Hashtag Lab Contemporary Music Space is co-financed by the City of Warsaw.
Co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund under the “Music” programme implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance.
Admission
Free admission. Registration or free entry passes may be required.
Capacity is limited.
Events at TR Warszawa require tickets priced at PLN 60.