JaWa

JaWa began as a fight to save a patch of meadow behind artists Janek Turkowski and Iwona Nowacka‘s home in Poland. Years later, that same meadow became the seed of a social enterprise, employing Jan, who had been living in the meadow, and Waldemar, just out of prison. What followed was an 18-month archiving project turned documentary performance, built from an assemblage of footage the artists gathered during their time with Jan, Waldemar and others, filled with arguments, relapses and small resolutions. Along the way, they formed improbable bonds, navigated crises, and asked the question: what does trust actually require, and is real change even possible? A small trailer on stage, built and rebuilt over the course of the project, holds all of this together, morphing between a shelter, a screen, and a container for these intimate stories of addiction, home and trust. JaWa asks what it means to document someone’s life while trying to change it and whether success and failure hold any stable meaning when they’re not yours to define.