Iwo Kondefer
Artist in Residence
Iwo is a director and screenwriter of award-winning short fiction and documentary films (e.g., Best Short Fiction at the FIKE International Short Film Festival in Évora). A graduate of Film Directing at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, University of Silesia in Katowice. He is currently working on his feature-length debut, Echo, a mix of horror and coming-of-age, exploring mourning, adolescence, and a love for bats in the Anthropocene.
Iwo is also a climate activist, educator, independent researcher, and curator of the educational project Telling Worlds (Opowiadanie światów), which explores hopeful yet realistic visions of the future. In 2024, the initiative was awarded the Warsaw Cultural Education Award. He is currently preparing the second edition of the project and a publication with recommendations for integrating planetary crisis awareness into cultural education.
Over the years, he has collaborated with numerous non-governmental organizations and is currently affiliated with the Wielozmysły Foundation. A graduate of the School of Ecopoetics at the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw. He is also the author of numerous soundwalks that encourage deep listening as a way of engaging with the more-than-human world.
Lack of darkness is fear, 2025
As a part of artistic residency at Turnign The Tide, Iwo Kondefer created a multimedia project about the history of Orunia (a district of Gdańsk) from the perspective of the bats that inhabit the area.
He selected four moments in time:
– 1978, when the Stara Orunia Water Reservoir was decommissioned. Its uselessness to human animals became an opportunity for bats. Today, it is the largest winter colony of these mammals in northern Poland. Iwo created a short audio play to tell this story.
– 2015, when Orunia Park underwent revitalization, including the installation of additional streetlights. Through an audio play and a photography series, Iwo portrayed how this decision negatively affected the lives of local bats.
– 2025, through a series of photographs and a sound collage, Iwo depicted the summer nightlife of Orunia Park.
– 2040, Iwo created a short experimental science fiction film about the experience of the climate crisis in Orunia, as lived by both bats and humans.
The starting point for the artistic project was an intimate relationship with the animals inhabiting Oruński Park and the Stara Orunia Water Reservoir. The guiding idea present throughout the project’s development was the notion of “being present without disturbing the lives of the creatures that animate the project,” to quote Donna Haraway. The practice of approaching non-humans without disrupting their natural environment enabled a deeper analysis of their connection with the surrounding world.
For the project “Lack of darkness is fear,” he collaborated with:
– Anna Jurkiewicz – singer and sound artist;
– Martyna Jankowska-Jarek – chiropterologist.
Iwo also used music composed by Patricia Taxxon.
An accompanying event to the exhibition “Lack of Darkness is Fear” was an open night walk through Orunia Park, led by the artist himself. During this walk, participants could listen to the sounds of bats living in the park using a special device connected to a phone. Iwo also presented fragments of his favourite literary works that tell stories from non-human perspectives.
