On September 4, we will launch the 3rd edition of PERCEPTIONS. New Forms of Art, organized by the The Centre for Intercultural Creative Initiatives CROSSROADS. The event will run until October 3 and, once again, will bring together the performing arts with new technologies, digital practices, and contemporary ways of experiencing art.
This year’s edition will open with the premiere of “LUMO: Tower of Babel”, directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski (September 4 at 7:00 p.m. at the Lubelskie Zakłady Tytoniowe). The performance is the first installment of an international theatre project inspired by the figure of Ludwik Zamenhof and the idea of Esperanto — a language capable of connecting people across borders.
Together with an artistic team and partners from Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, Greece, and the USA, Krzysztof Garbaczewski is creating a hybrid performance in which theatre meets digital technologies, 3D visualizations, music, and networked performance. Its starting point is the symbolic meaning of Esperanto — not as a project for a single universal language, but as an idea of communication, solidarity, and a shared space for diverse experiences. “LUMO: Tower of Babel” explores the possibility of communication in a world divided by languages, conflicts, and technologies, proposing theatre as a laboratory for a new, multidimensional system of communication.
In cooperation with Dream Adoption Society, a special application has been developed that also enables audiences to take part in the performance via live streaming. The stream will be available on September 4 and 5 at: https://dreamadoptionsociety.com/live
No account is required to watch the broadcast, which will be available in any web browser or on a mobile phone. To enable English subtitles, select the “CC EN” option.
We would also like to share an invitation from director Krzysztof Garbaczewski:
“I would like to invite you to see something we have been working on for the past year. ‘LUMO: Tower of Babel’ is a performance played simultaneously by actors located in Lublin, Belgrade, Montpellier, and New York — on one shared virtual stage, together with AI performers who improvise with them live.
The actors put on VR headsets in their respective cities, and their bodies, hands, and faces meet inside a digital theatre built around the Tower of Babel. Two ‘AI sisters’ listen and respond in six languages — Polish, Ukrainian, Serbian, Greek, French, and English — moving, touching, and singing. Nothing is scripted word for word: each evening, the performance is improvised based on what the system has remembered from previous performances. The subject is suggested by the tower itself: Zamenhof, Esperanto, and machine translation as a prosthesis for communication — presented through the technological apparatus explored by the performance.
The tool is our own original solution: we created the VR headset application from scratch, and for now it remains exclusively in the hands of the team. In the future, a version designed for remote audiences will also be developed. Until then, people watching the performance from outside can participate via the live stream: they will see footage guided by a virtual camera operator moving within the scene, hear the sound from the venue, and be able to use English subtitles translated live from whichever language the actors are speaking at a given moment.”
Krzysztof Garbaczewski
And here is the information once again:
“LUMO: Tower of Babel”
Directed by Krzysztof Garbaczewski
Duration: 90 minutes
Venue: Lubelskie Zakłady Tytoniowe, 4 M. Smoluchowskiego St., Lublin
Dates:
- September 4, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
- September 5, 2026, 7:00 p.m.
(An artist talk with the director and the creators of the performance will take place after the September 5 show.)
Direction, music, DPN software: Krzysztof Garbaczewski
Dramaturgy: Rébecca Pierrot
Multimedia: Krzysztof Garbaczewski, Radomir Majewski
Set design: Jan Strumiłło
Costumes: Sławomir Blaszewski
Lighting design: Marek Kozakiewicz
Performers: hempelBaum, Andrzej Szeremeta, Rébecca Pierrot
Digital Perform Network: Predrag Terzić (Pedja, FMK Belgrade / Serbia), Kostadis Mizaras, Chrysanthi Badeka, Anastasios Theodoropoulos (GR Hub / Greece), Billy Clark (CultureHub / USA), Max Nowotarski (Ukraine)
Production: Barbara Żarinow / The Centre for Intercultural Creative Initiatives CROSSROADS
PERCEPTIONS. New Forms of Art
PERCEPTIONS. New Forms of Art is organized by the The Centre for Intercultural Creative Initiatives CROSSROADS. The curator is Barbara Żarinow. The event is held under the Honorary Patronage of the Mayor of Lublin. Co-financed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund.
