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Pandem Carnava You waited an entire year for this event. It’s not an exaggeration or excessive coquetry to admit it. After all, this several-day-long world-class event is a recognisable regional brand both in Poland and abroad. Lublin ingeniously captures the spirit of Carnaval, when festival events animate the city’s squares, streets, districts and unobvious places. Every year brings incredible energy, a boom of ideas positively contributing to the development of this initiative. The world no longer imagines life without Carnaval Sztukmistrzów, it’s our alter ego that provides a relief from everyday life, it’s our joy of life rediscovered over and over again every year. Because of the pandemic, this year’s edition was on the ropes, which is all the more reason why the Organisers deserve praise and applause for coming up with a way to outplay the restrictions and thereby prevent breaking the continuity of Carnaval, a key event for a group of people associated with broadly defined topics of contemporary circus, theatre, dance or performing arts as well as for the yearning audience. This machine can no longer be stopped; at Carnaval, Lublin is swept into a frenzy of fun, laughter, admiration, emotions and delight. As spectators, consumers of events we want to be bombarded with impressions, we want to lose ourselves in joy and fun. Imagine a place in the world filled with uninhibited joy, where our hidden “I” rules and demands the existence of such an island of happiness, a space that invites us to a won-
derful fairy tale. Carnaval Sztukmistrzów is our most beautiful micro-homeland, a habitat of artists, freaks, clowns, misfits, that has been drifting on its ocean of happiness without interruption for the last 11 years. This year’s edition had to suppress a little of its artistic lust, to roll up and put away the repository of ideas threatened with the Damocles sword by the spectre of the epidemic and the many restrictions that followed it. This year’s edition did not change how the city vibrates, but it planted the seed of a new idea that combines art with safety requirements. “The Polish Incident” is a nod towards domestic Artists. Initially, the Incident was meant to be just a small part of Carnaval, hence a contest for the production and realisation of a show was announced. This is a treat for those who have nowhere to go with their ideas, hide the things they write in their drawers, have ready projects but don’t have the space to fulfill them or are wonderful talents that only need a small spark to emerge with their artistic products. “The Polish Incident” turned out to be a double bull’s eye! Firstly, the programme of this year’s Festival was possible to compose from Polish productions and secondly, this year’s edition revealed the enormous potential of domestic artists. The festival’s events were focused at several points around the city and instead of buskers in the streets, they performed on stage. There was no shortage of Carnaval’s “usual suspects” (Pan Ząbek,
