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= Instytut B61 = Instytut B61 (B61 Institute) - an art and science ensemble founded in Poland in 2009 by art curator and science promoter Jan Świerkowski. The group creates multimedia shows, pop-up exhibitions, produces films and innovative digital projects combining contemporary art and science. The team consists of renowned Polish artists and scientists (Jan Świerkowski, Stefan Kornacki, Dominik Smużny, musicians like Organek, L.U.C, Kortez, Maja Kleszcz and a music band Domowe Melodie) as well as foreign artists. Multidisciplinary activities of the Instytut B61, maintained in a mysterious, top secret convention, have been repeatedly presented in Poland and abroad, including Portugal, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and India.

The general idea
All projects of the Instytut B61 are based on innovative audiovisual solutions. They illustrate contemporary scientific and social phenomena using art installations developed as multimodal cognitive metaphors, that allow to understand abstract concepts which cannot be conceptualized through direct cognition i.e. electrons or stars. The projects of the Institute include both large-scale multimedia performances, as well as films, pop-up exhibitions and innovative educational and artistic tools such as interactive chatbots.

Multimedia shows
Performances of the ensemble are part of the site-specific art trend. Each time the performance is held in a space such a factory, fortification, empty tenement house, abandoned hospital or castle. The audience usually does not know where the show will be presented until the very last moment. The spectators meet in one place, from where, together with the artists, they head to the headquarters of the Instytut. On-site they undergo a security training. Later on they visit various rooms in which artists and scientists, using accessible yet spectacular visual and musical metaphors, depict complex scientific phenomena.

Cosmic Underground
So far the biggest project of the Instytut B61, completed in 2012. It was an artistic railway journey from Estonia to Portugal with the participation of nearly 40 artists from Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Portugal. For over two months, the participants traveled by an adapted freight train composed of 10 wagons, in which the artistic and multimedia installations were located. The train stopped in various European cities and smaller towns. During the stopover, the wagons served as a scenery of an interdisciplinary spectacle about the adventures of a brilliant fictional scientist, Professor Joseph Brewster, who studied issues related to the passage of time and the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein.

The project was co-financed by the EACEA, operating by the European Commission, as one of the only three Polish cultural projects in 2012.

1st Polish Culture Festival in Portugal "Re:volucao das Estrelas"
The multimedia performance of the Instytut B61 produced in June 2014 was the highlight of the 1st Festival of Polish Culture in Lisbon, organized by Fundacja Platon, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship and the Polish Embassy in Lisbon. The performance, in which over 20 artists and scientists participated, took place in the center of Lisbon, in the deserted Restelo hospital. The leader of the Instytut B61 Jan Świerkowski was the director of the entire festival.

The Story of Space Festival in India
In November 2017, the Instytut B61 performed as during the festival "The Story of Space" which took place in Goa, India. An interdisciplinary performance "The Evolution of the Stars" this time took place in a post-colonial hospital. During the ten festival days, several thousand people watched the show.

The leader of the Instytut B61
Jan Świerkowski (born 1984) is a Polish astronomer, science promoter and curator of projects combining science and art. In 2018, Świerkowski was awarded with the title of the Popularizer of Science 2017 in the category Activity Leader by the Polish Press Agency and the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education. Świerkowski is also the CEO of a creative cluster Kujawsko-Pomorski Klaster Brewstera constituted by several institutions and entrepreneurs from creative industries based in Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship.