Come to Rozrywki 3 on Wednesday, 18 January (from 20.00 until 4.00, they say!!!) for the “No-Step” party / concert.

The NO STEP party invites you to imaginate the times when tribal and minimal beats did not yet rule the dancefloors of Kraków. Let us listen instead to the nostalgic and romantic sounds of the eighties and yes even earlier. Gird yourself up for a decent dose of guitar noise.

Several bands will be playing, and you’ll sit at home incessantly trawling Facebook, and you will be making a terrible mistake by missing:

• Kaseciarz – Surf rock straight from and to the heart (like a syringe full of epinephrin) of Małopolska. Everything they’ve recorded, they’ve recorded for free. No-budget is the new low-budget. Check them out  and hear their stuff here and here.
• The Pleasure Is Mine – The band formed in 2008 when they met at a party in the long-departed (and their bio says LENDARY – I didn’t know it was LEGENDARY) B-Side Club. Cold wave, they say, Shoegazer, so wear nice shoes. Their first record will appear on the scene in the spring. Know them, love them through all orafices here and here before you go.
• By Proxy – A two-person group which sprouted and spread four long years ago right here in Kraków. Presently they’re developing new material live, so that’s what you’ll hear here and here.
• Cat’s Whiskers – Two musical members (what’s a musical member?) and one in charge of visuals. Does that make the third a visual member? All three members share in a love of cats and of The Smiths.

All this costs 10 PLN to add to your life, which is less than the price of 1/4 of an onion in most countries. Put on your snowboots and dance yourself silly.

Due to activity of some dark power few popular entertaining places has collapsed. Perhaps it’s a sign we should turn our yeas into different source of fun.

Maybe gigantic bookshelf on the facade of the building at Traugutta 3a (on the way to Schindler’s Factory and MOCAK ) will encourage you to read more. Typomural is a part of a project Free Reading Zone. More about the project you can read on the website of ArtBoom Festival.

DagaDana, creators of playfully sensuous jazz-something music will be doing what they do at Rozrywki 3 on Mikołajska street on Wednesday night (16 November) at 21:00. This is part of their tour to promote their latest album, which is called Dlaczego Nie (which means “Why Not”). Tickets are 25 PLN the day before (that’s today!) or 35 PLN the day of the concert. Sample their music here, and then go. It’s a Polish / Ukranian band, and they’re a lot of fun live (I saw them last year at Drukarnia). They’re really good. And the concert costs less than it takes to purchase a piece of toast (or to pee, for that matter) in Venice. Just to put things in perspective.

The four clubs located at Wielopole 13 have all closed, it seems, due to some structural collapse which has condemned the whole building. For around 9 years this behemoth, this stinking monument to fun, has been the first choice and the last resort on all days of the week for late night revelry and craziness. Without it, where will people go at night? There are claims (horrible, disturbing claims) that the venerable Krzysztofory club and also Łódź Kaliska have both recently folded. This means that a serious and thorough search for new sources of fun in the city is now necessary. Vital. So, if you find fun, let us know immediately. It has to exist somewhere.

If you are hanging out around the river (near the footbridge @ Mostowa street) you can see a new addition to Kraków’s skyline. Across the bridge in Podgórze, the Blu guy (Italian street artist) has blessed us with a new mural. Well, okay, it’s new for me because I just got back, but it actually appeared some months ago in the summer.

The megaphone-bell looks a lot like Zygmunt, or at least it’s supposed to be, says Kamila. Look at all the bald guys leaning up to take in his message.

Turner and the Elements  in an exhibition presented in National Museum until 8th of January 2011. First time in Poland we can see works of Joseph Mallord William Turner, one of the greatest English Romantics, precursor of impressionisim and symbolism.

For those lazy which don’t want to poke out their noses you can play the game based on fragments of canvas.

National Museum

Main Building

al. 3 Maja 1, 30-062 Kraków

Openned:

• Tuesday – Saturday 10.00 – 18.00

• Sunday 10.00 – 16.00 (free entrance)

• Monday – closed

Tickets:

• 10 zł – regular
• 5 zł – students

If you’re going out in the evening you should really take the time to visit Cementarz Rakowicki, Kraków’s largest cemetary, to experience a little of the unique atmosphere of All Saints’ Day in Poland. Traditionally, when they’re not devouring vast assortments of meats at home with their families, people use this day to pay respects to the dead. In Rakowicki, you get the impression that no grave is lonely (votive candles cover every surface) and there’s a sense of peace and comfort that one might not usually associate with graveyards after dark. On the way to the cemetery you’ll have lots of opportunities to buy votive candles (in case you’ve neglected to pack them on your travels) and also interesting baked and sugary treats. Take Tram no. 11 from the Starowiślna stop.

Every year edition brings to the day light stories from across the world captured by photographers and comments present issues.

World Press Photo was founded in 1955 and an independent non-profit organization  based in Amsterdam to support and increase standards in photojournalism and documentary photography among the photographers from whole the world.

“We believe in the power of visual journalism to inspire and shape us”.

Exhibition can be seen in Bunkier Sztuki (Bunker of Art) till 28th of October from 10am till 8pm.

Tickets:

Regular: 12pln

Students:  6pln

If you don’t have a chance to go check this website where you can see winning photos and hear the stories hidden behind them.

From introduction: “This year’s theme of the festiwal is borrowed from the prophetic and best-selling 1970 book by Alvin Toffler, which described the disorienting effects of accelerated technological and social change. Confronted with an unprecedented sense of iformation overload, many artists reach bockward, side-ways and forward to re-imagine the future from the vantage point of the past , filtered through the present via outmoded technologies or disjointed contexts”

During one week (8.10- 16.10) you have a chance attend concerts, workshops, installations and movies. Let’s experience and try to ask ourselves about the future.

Full program you can find here and other useful info as locations and tickets.

Flood of design in Kazimierz district, right on the corner of Plac Nowy in Finka – recently opened cafe bar with fair trade coffee, selfmade infused vodkas, eco-recycle furniture.

Illustrations, graphics, fashion, books & others.

Check the list to have a closer view what the guys does:

nina gregier & piotr wojtaszek, mateusz kołek, marcin kubiak (graphics & illustrations)

kaamhandmade (jewelery)

lokator, atropos (books)

wyglądasz jak chłopak, naked monster, bosque (clothes)

Full list of participants with more links you can find here

Below Tennis Players by Nina Gregier

“When space transformed for the first time, it was night.
On that night mountains began to breathe. (…)”

A short nocturnal story by Lena Hensel in images and texts

an opening of the drawings’ exhibition and an art-book presentation

October 6th 2011, 6.00 p.m.
House of Albums, 17 Zwierzyniecka St., Kraków, Poland

come and join us! during the opening Lena Hensel will recite her texts!

NOCTURNE by Lena Hensel is an art-book published in a limited edition of 50 exemplars for Polish and German language version (translation: Artur Kożuch)

exhibition organizer: House of Albums
curator of the Speciality of the House project: Karolina Harazim

NOCTURNE exhibition by Lena Hensel will be presented at House of Albums until December 2011

Lena Hensel (1980, Berlin). Graduated from Akademie der bildenden Künste in Nürnberg (Department of Sculture), then the Fine Arts Academy in Kraków (also the Department of Sculture). Since 2007 Lena Hensel is intensely artistically active in Kraków and Berlin, she ogranised the Fe.kontakt International Sculpture Symposium (Schindler’s Factory, Kraków). She took part in collective exhibitions in Germany and Poland (i.e. in Poznań, Zielona Góra, Tarnów, Hamburg, Essen). In 2009 the first solo exhibition by Lena Hensel, ‘materia in somnis’, was presented at Kolory gallery in Kraków. Ministry of Culture and National Heritage scholar in 2010.
Lena Hensel creates in an author’s techniques. She combines materials, the delicate with the coarse, the soft with the hard. Objects and drawings created by the artist construct relations and as such – installations- going much further than the classical frames of sculpture or graphics.

“Speciality of the House”* – composition of the most carefully chosen ingredients – Spécialité de la Maison. “Speciality of the House” is a cycle of contemporary art presentations in the House of Albums interiors.

House of Albums

ul. Zwierzyniecka 17

FORTIFIED is a new cycle of concerts organized by Krakow music collective Loose Wire. it presents the newest independent alternative and experimental rock bands. During every edition new bands will be presented, from Krakow, Europe and around the world.

Loose Wire Presents:

Father Issues (PL) – folk music
Peter J. Birch (PL) – songwriter and singer
New Century Classics (US/IT/UK/PL) – international post-rock group
Teddy Jr. (NL/UK/PL) – amazing folk/grunge/balkan mix
Eluktrick (US/PL) – eclectic, energetic, electric

F O R T I F I E D
V o l u m e 1

October 7, 2011
Forty Kleparz (check on the map how to get there)
ul. Kamienna 2-4, Kraków
Start: 20:00
FREE Entrance!!!!

Each Sunday morning is your chance to check out two of Kraków’s best flea markets, just a few minutes’ walk from the hostel. Visit the stalls around Plac Nowy for clothes, mostly, and go to Hala Targowa for an unclassifyable assortment of objects ranging from baffling crap to actual antiques. Spread out on tables, or on old sheets or blankets on the pavement you might be able to find:

• stacks of old magazines, postcards, and assorted forgotten documents
• vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, DVDs — all of mysterious origin, all old, all well-used
• cute little cups, plates and dishes a grandma would love
• communist and pre-communist memorabilia
• furniture
• religious portraiture
• German porn, slightly used
• cameras, from famed plastic Russian Lomos (cheap and plentiful!) to Zenit (you can hammer in a nail with them they are so solid) to older and more exotic ones
• a set of used false teeth or assorted dental tools
• a bag of rabbits

Good places to bargain, and an a place where you can see things (and people) you will not find anywhere else. If you are looking for one specific thing, you may not find it. But if you are just looking for nothing in particular you will not be disappointed. During the week these places sell fruit and veretables and some other things (underwear, meat, spices, flowers, frozen pierogi, kitchen items, etc.) but the flea markets are only on Sunday morning.

A bit late because it’s the last day of the Festival but you still have a chance to get the ticekts and enjoy:

Steve Reich

Aphex Twin

Adrian Utley (Portishead)

Will Gregory (Goldfrapp)

Leszek Mozdżer

Envee

Pianohooligan

Full programme and more info you can find here

Tickets:

ZONE 1 (flat, standing):
99 PLN – regular ticket
66 PLN – discount ticket

ZONE 2 (grandstand, numbered seats):
149 PLN – regular ticket
99 PLN – discount ticket

Where? Nowa Huta, Hala ocynkowni Arcelor Mittal

Starts 9pm.

Who doesn’t like stories about resistance. If so check the exhibition in International Cultural Centre. For full description click here, location of the place you can find here (Rynek Główny 25).

Open:  Tuesday – Sunday 11 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.

Tickets : Regular – 8 PLN
Discounted – 5 PLN
Family – 10 PLN

Exhibition  Happening Against Communism by the Orange Alternative open till 2 of October  2011

Maps from the previous post are part of the alternative guide without limits

Bunch of friends decided to use their skills and create an alternative guide of our beautiful city to show you Krakow with their eyes.

Little cute book with good pictures, nice drawings, of course good recommendations and full of space for your own notes is available to get in our Hostel for 35pln.

Ask at the reception, so they will let you touch it;)

Those alternative maps are  part of alternative project Krakow without limits.

Instead of getting wet in Krakow city you can hide in one of the Krakow’s cinemas or even make a cinema tour and live somebody else life for few hours…

Kino pod Baranami, how to get to the cinema?

11:45 and 19:50  – Au voleur

12:00 and 15:00  – Beginners

15:00 – The Fighter, 6pln

16:00 – The Reader, 6pln

17:00 – Des hommes et des dieux

18:10 – The American

20:00 – Grindhouse: Death Proof

21:00 – The Deer Hunter

22:00 – The Hurt Locker

Tickets on Monday – 10,90 pln

Krakowskie centrum kinowe ARS, how to get to the cinema?

11:45 – The Next Three Days

12:30 and 21:00 – The Tree of Life

14:00 and 20:45 – Incendies

14:10, 16:30, 18:50 and 21:10 – Bridesmaids

14:30 and 21:15 – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II

17:00 and 19:00 – Rien a declarer

Tickets on Monday – 12 pln

For those who are interested in food and nutrition surroundings check Galeria Pauza on Floriańska 18/5 (second floor) today at 7pm

“FOODJECTS is an exhibition presenting new patterns in kitchen utensils created by Spanish industrial designers and chefs. The purpose of their creation was to emphasise the texture, flavours, differences and aromas in new Spanish cuisine – one of the most creative and surprising in the world. Nearly 100 objects are a proof that consumption can also provide us with intelectuall and sensual experiences and an original exhibition installation created by Martín Azúy is an excellent creativity.”