The project Far Too Many Stories to Fit into so Small a Box by the Dutch duo Bik Van der Pol is based on the collection and archives of Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. The exhibition addresses complex mechanisms of memory and forgetting to introduce a critical, outsider’s point of view on the word-of-mouth history of the place.

Works of art by such artists as Nan Goldin, Oleg Kulig, Jenny Holzer, Yoko Ono and Alina Szapocznikow are contextualised anew and become props in live performances choreographed by Ania Nowak in collaboration with four performers aged 12 to 60 with different cultural and professional backgrounds.

Performance scripts combine input from CCA’s employees, artists, curators and other enthusiasts who have participated in creating the institution since 1980s with performers’ personal experiences and interests relating to the collection. Each time the performers are present a new map of relations is activated in the exhibition space proposing personal queer, feminist and immigrant readings of the collection rooted in the context of today’s Poland.

In This Is an Exhibition and I’m an Exhibitionist, Ania Nowak’s performance made for the exhibition, she asks who owns history? How do we conceive of the contemporary? How does memory become a tool of emancipation or control? How can we built a community around a collection of artworks?