Alt. Consumer

Since we have the Bunkier, which houses the Lower Gallery and the Upper Gallery in Krakow, we are used to some sort of variety event in the City Gallery of Contemporary Art.

"Parzybroda," the traditional Silesian soup prepared mainly in and around Czestochowa, has been added to the "Traditional Products List" of the Department of Agriculture.

Last Tuesday, Swieta Krowa played host to a complex and emotionally charged but ultimately beguiling performance of Butoh dance by Seattle-based expert and instructor, Joan Laage. She was joined by regular collaborator, Tomek Choloniewski, on an unconventional percussion kit, partially composed of upside-down pots and pans and Krzysztof Trzewiczek, on electronics. Laage lived in Krakow for a couple of years before returning recently to the States, and the audience contained many ex-students and acquaintances, lending the whole event a bizarre homecoming aura.

A typical problem when faced with contemporary art: half an hour into the first (of five) installments of Matthew Barney's "Cremaster" film series, which is "on tour" in Poland this month and played at Krakow's Pod Baranami Cinemas Oct. 29-31, the university professor sitting next to me whispers in my ear: "Do you think they're trying to make fools of us?" This anxiety of the modern art viewer ? afraid to be delighted in case the artist is playing a joke on their lack of sophistication, afraid to boo in case lurking under all the glitzy nonsense is something brilliant that they haven't perceived ? this is a situation, I believe, that is fairly unique to the history of art, and which has reached pathological proportions of late.

When a Pole asks a foreigner what he associates with Poland, he almost always hears the same answer: strong vodka.

Many tourists visit the architectural and cultural wonders that are Krakow's churches.

It's difficult to know what to expect when world-class musicians from different backgrounds get together as part of a project.

When I tell you that the Spanish film "Antenna" is a black-and-white faux-expressionist silent film produced in the year 2007 AD, you will nod your head sagely and say that you know what you are in for, thank-you very much: a sassy post-modern screwball comedy that romps sacrilegiously through all the cinema conventions of the 1920s, pausing neither to reflect upon, nor to add to the filmic vocabulary developed in said time-period.

"Red Bull Box Gallery" is a collection of unique projects of boxes designed and made by well-known artists representing various styles and genres of contemporary art. In one year at the gallery more than 100 patterns of boxes were created, every of which has only few copies.

This year's news that Poland and Ukraine will co-host the 2012 European soccer championships brought euphoria to the two countries.