Festiwal Conrada
The Conrad Festival is a large-scale project by the City of Krakow, “Tygodnik Powszechny” foundation, Krakow Festival Office and a number of institutions and supporters.
The motto of this year's edition of the Festival, Think: Literature!, has many meanings. One refers us back to the experience we have persistently sought to associate with literature since the very first edition of the Festival: the experience of literature as an encouraging reflection on the world, its problems, and on ourselves; literature is not just light entertainment, but also an invitation to distance ourselves from the charging world, from opaque reality, from trivialities and clichés that surround us on all sides. The motto's other meaning is equally important: it is difficult not to marvel at the fact that in a world dominated by haste and superficial information, literature – the art of fiction and hope – still exists and continues to provoke conversation. Literature gives us multiple pleasures, including the pleasure of thinking and discussing, which is attested to by the long hours our guests spend talking to large audiences in Krakow every year. This year, we have invited personalities from different areas of culture, each known for their explicit views not just on art, but also on contemporary reality. Zygmunt Bauman, Orhan Pamuk, Jeanette Winterson, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Peter Eszterhazy, Robert D. Kaplan, Dubravka Ugrešić are all artists whose voices are heard all around the world. They will be accompanied by the best and the most influential among contemporary Polish writers, including: Marek Bieńczyk, Eustachy Rylski, Krzysztof Varga, Andrzej Stasiuk, Dorota Masłowska, Wojciech Jagielski, Magdalena Tulli, and Michał Witkowski. Think: literature still exists, still provokes reflection, still serves as an alternative to the world in which we would rather not live, and still opens broader horizons than those we have come to know.