ALIENS

In indigenous cultures inhabiting Asia or South America, strangers/visitors are treated with suspicion. However, in the accounts of cultural researchers and anthropologists, there is always an Indian or a group that approaches the newcomer differently and perhaps convinces the tribe to accept the guest. The distrust towards the newcomer may stem from the fact that if they have arrived while we stay put, then at least in mobility, they are better than us. Therefore, they pose a threat.

The contemporary Western world has transformed the fear of the unknown visitor into curiosity about getting to know them and benefiting from their experience. The visitor is seen as hope for development. But for those already settled, this is not the case. In their view, fear, which might be regarded as backwardness or provincialism, should be replaced with terror. A concrete feeling focusing on crimes, thefts, rapes, and riots. Only then will it be OK.

It is clear that if aliens from space arrive on Earth, they must know or be able to do more than us. But why did they come? Maybe things are bad at their home, maybe there is a terrible cosmic war, or maybe they just like our women because they are not green and don’t have antennae. They will surely cause a war here and take over our planet. And who sent them to us?

So a question should be asked to Earthlings:

Do you support the acceptance of thousands of aliens according to the forced relocation mechanism imposed by galactic bureaucracy?

We must protect our Earth, our culture, our faith, and our women!

Below are stories presented in the exhibition:

Poland 2023

13% (every sixth respondent) of Poles used words like: dirty, liar, fraud, idler, savage, lazy, parasite, leech, smelly, ignorant, loudmouth, "ciapaty" (a derogatory term for people of color), rude, slacker, reject, baby-maker, schemer to describe immigrants first.

12% of Poles described problems with refugees using words such as: crime, thief, danger, lack of rules, burden, lack of education; their negative attitude includes entitlement, ingratitude, evil, chaos.

Every 20th Pole, when describing a foreigner, refugee, or man in Poland, used words like: betrayal, traitor, coward, does not want to fight for his country, does not want to fight for freedom, bad patriot.

Maxymilian Kropiński, Karolina Hansen "What associations do Poles have with the word ‘refugee’?" for the Center for Research on Prejudice (http://cbu.psychologia.pl/wp-content)

Azim from Myanmar (30 years old)

Azim fled Myanmar because they would have killed him. They killed his mother, father, and brother. Azim fled for 8 years. He reached Poland. The countries he passed through did not allow him to stay because Azim does not exist. He has no documents, no citizenship. A stateless person is nobody. Azim says:

"In Myanmar, everyone calls us 'kela' – foreigners. We have no citizenship, no rights. Once every Rohingya got a document with their name and surname. Today, we don't even get that. In Bangladesh, where we fled, we also have no chance of citizenship."

Azim studied illegally in Malaysia. He got a diploma under a friend's name. But what good is that if today he does not exist. Neither there nor here. So he continues:

"If you are stateless, you are a foreigner everywhere. I was a foreigner in Myanmar, though I was born and raised there. I was a foreigner in Bangladesh, though at least I felt safe there. I was a foreigner in Malaysia, where I went to school. In Poland, I also feel foreign. Because I don't exist."

True story. Source: The UN Refugee Agency Poland (https://www.unhcr.org/pl/3203-ludzie-z-prozni-niewidzialni-obcy.html)

Oleg from Russia (48 years old)

Oleg came to Poland in 1992 as a citizen of the collapsing Soviet Union.

"I fled military service. I didn’t want to participate in human rights violations. I was tortured by the police for that. I knew I wouldn’t return to my country because I would be imprisoned immediately. First, my visa expired, then my passport. Then it turned out Russia would not recognize me."

Two years later, his mother wrote to him that he officially does not exist, and if he returns, they will kill his whole family. He loves his mother and would like to see her but knows it is impossible. Oleg says:

"In almost 30 years, one can learn to speak Polish fluently (although with a still noticeable Russian accent), get to know the city, bond with neighbors, make acquaintances and friends. But all this loses meaning when you live in a vacuum. In this vacuum, you cannot legally work, travel abroad, open a bank account or get a library card."

He tried four times to apply for citizenship… but he simply does not exist.

During a conversation with a UNHCR representative in Warsaw, Oleg drank coffee in a café for the first time in his life.

True story. Source: The UN Refugee Agency Poland (https://www.unhcr.org/pl/3203-ludzie-z-prozni-niewidzialni-obcy.html)

Olesa from Ukraine (37 years old)

Her husband is on the front near Kherson. His parents are Russians living only ten kilometers across the border in Russia. That’s how it turned out. They do not understand why he fights for Ukraine. They have not spoken to us since the war started. When I fled, I was a chemistry teacher. Now I am a cleaning assistant in a hospital. Poles welcomed me into their homes. It was good. I try to work honestly, my daughter goes to kindergarten. I also helped at the home where I was accepted. But after half a year, something went wrong. Maybe I helped too much. Maybe I tried to be kind. Mrs. Kasia came and said I was trying to seduce her husband. That is what people say now, that Ukrainian women steal Polish husbands. I am not stealing anything.*

(She cries as she says this. In the conversation, it is always “she” and “Mrs. Kasia”, always “Olesa” and “Mrs.”)

Own conversation, M. Śmietański, June 2023

Wiera, third generation Pole, Kazakhstan (28 years old)

Wiera was raised in the Polish tradition. Her grandparents read Mickiewicz and Słowacki to her. They were exiles from the interwar period. They are faithful to the tradition of independent Poland. Wiera returns to Poland. But it is hard here; she cannot find a good job even though she studied in Kazakhstan. She speaks with a strange Polish/Russian accent. Generally, Poles consider her a “Russian.” Wiera was traumatized in Poland because she is treated as a refugee and thus as a potential sex worker (she is "pretty"). Few Poles understand her. But her exile is recognized by a colleague. He also works at a Żabka store cashier. He is Ukrainian, fled Mariupol. He knows he should return and fight for his homeland, but he has no strength, he is scared, he has seen too much death. His friends rejected him; to them, he is a coward, no point in returning. They fall in love. Wiera’s family rejects her for betrayal. She had an affair with a Ukrainian, and they killed Poles.

Based on the play "Ruscy" by Radosław Paczocha, Teatr Wybrzeże (premiere 2018)

Anna, Pole (45 years old)

Anna was born in a small town in Warmia. She graduated in medicine, specialized, worked at the Medical Academy in Gdańsk. She married. Her husband was also a doctor, born in Poland but his father was from Mali. So her husband was “black,” as were their two children. She herself has never been to Mali, maybe once a week in her thoughts. He was not proud of it either; he didn’t even know the language, was born and raised in Poland. Once in school and kindergarten, nobody cared that he was “black,” but now things have changed.

In Gdańsk, they could not go to the cinema, could not walk home at night holding hands. “Do you like big dicks?” some partly bald men asked on Mariacka street. “Did you let a dirty guy in for money so he could get a passport?” others added.

A few years ago, they moved to France with the family.

Personal contact. M. Śmietański

Szarma Bintu, Ivory Coast (42 years old)

A scar on the left arm is from barbed wire. Bintou was injured escaping slavery in Libya. She is 42, from Ivory Coast.

"In Libya, since there is no government, everyone is a policeman. If they catch you, you don’t know who is real police… They caught us and put men and women together in a small hut. It was very hard," recalls Bintou.

Bintou fled the country because after her husband died, her in-laws wanted to force her eldest daughter into marriage.

"When I was a child, I experienced many bad things. My mother was blind. She had 15 children but only three survived. I was the only girl. I was forced into marriage. I did not go to school. (…) I do not want my daughters to have the life I had." "They beat us but kept us alive only to extort money from us."

Szarma Bintu has been in a refugee camp on Lampedusa for 38 months. She has no documents and no chance of asylum in Europe.

Source: Médecins Sans Frontières report (https://lekarze-bez-granic.pl/historie-kobiet-na-szlakach-migracyjnych)

Photos: Dominik Kulaszewicz