KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI

Krzysztof Czyzewski, founder and president of the Borderland Foundation in Sejny, social activist, poet, essayist, publisher. After graduating from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan with a degree in Polish literature, he co-created in 1977 the now world-renowned Gardzienice Theater company in Lublin, which collects ethnographic materials from around the world to create what they call an “ethno-oratorial song theater.”

After spending years under Communism as an underground theater director and performer with an interest in Poland's cultural traditions…, he went through a personal crisis after 1989: Suddenly there was no Communist state to oppose. ''Overnight, the underground disappeared,'' he said. ''Overnight, 'alternative' disappeared. Alternative to what? Suddenly you had to take some responsibility.''
                                                                                                – Ian Fisher, The New York Times

In 1990 Czyzewski founded the innovative Borderland Foundation and in 1991 its Borderland Center of Arts, Cultures, and Nations, which encompasses a school, several studios, an archive, and a café. They foster and coordinate a variety of projects related to the multicultural regions of Central and Eastern Europe, working to memorialize, rebuild, and sustain the rich cultural diversity that was nearly destroyed by the two world wars; projects that regularly cross the boundaries between social activism, theater, museum work, and education.

Since 1993 Czyzewski has also run the Borderland Publishing House and is editor-in-chief of its periodical Krasnogruda. Czyzewski’s own manifesto, The Path of the Borderland, was published in 2001.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, Czyzewski has traveled around the world extensively to promote his distinctive and effective techniques of bridging cultural divides and cultivating harmony in heterogeneous communities.

Since 2003 he has been an active member of the European Culture Parliament, bringing the moral authority of his voice to its 2004 session on the role of culture and the arts in Europe, and in Lisbon the next year introducing Borderland's New Agora program of intercultural dialogue.