Seeing stones and the new paradigm of the Silicon Valley

Seeing stones, or palantíri, are opaque, indestructible spheres which enable long-distance communication, as well as a glance into the future and the past. To use a modern dictionary – they let their holder make predictions and classify data. These objects appear on the pages of John R. R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings. Supposedly, they were created in the First Age by the elves of Valinor. The most renowned of Tolkien’s palantíri belonged to the white wizard Saruman.

Palantir Technologies is the name of a data analysis technological corporation based in Denver, Colorado. It was created by Peter Thiel – an American lawyer and investor, a graduate of Stanford University, the creator of PayPal and the first external investor in Facebook. After the attacks on World Trade Center, Thiel used his experience in data management and founded a company which offered the American government and American security agencies the possibility of analysing data. Even though Palantir Technologies’ activity was, and still is, mostly confidential, according to Max Chafkin, the author of Thiel’s most recent biography[1], the data analysis was performed by a system known as Gotham. The analysis was performed on foreign citizens and companies, as well as on Americans, whose privacy it often violated though the interception of telephone and digital data, surveillance and tracking. In addition to performing tasks for the government, Palantir Technologies even allowed itself to fulfill the private wishes of the personnel of American security agencies. They tracked cheating fiancés and unfaithful spouses and analysed their behaviour. All one had to do was ask[2] .

Peter Thiel and his permanent coworkers are also the force behind the development of other enterprises with names deriving from the Tolkien universe. One of them is Mithril Capital Management, which specialises in activity within the financial sector (mithril is the name of a resistant metal, as well as the light, silver shirt made from it, woven by the elves and worn by the hobbit Frodo, among others). Lembass Capital, a company with a name deriving from the incredibly satiating elven bread, is one of two corporations founded in order to invest in Facebook. There is little information about Rivendell One (Rivendell is the dwelling place of the elves). Valar Ventures (the Valar is a group of fifteen ancient ghosts or deities, who have decided to descend to earth) is a venture capital company.

Thiel also supports new technological projects developed by the youngest generation of programmers and entrepreneurs. Some of them were a part of the scholarship programme called Thiel Fellowship. One of the ventures founded thanks to his support is Anduril Industries. The name is a reference to the sword that Aragorn inherited from his ancestors, which Tolkien refers to as the Flame of the West in his novel. The corporation founded by Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm and Joseph Chen develops and sells defence technology, including boarder defence technology purchased by the US government during Donald Trump’s tenure and used, for example, on the US-Mexico boarder. The goals of Anduril Industries are in line with Thiel’s business objectives, whose intention is to combine the technological and military sectors under the guise of defending Western interests. To quote the 8VC fund – one of the investors in Anduril Industries: “American military supremacy remains foundational to human freedom on planet Earth. Our duty as patriots is to assemble world-class technologists to defend Western ideals”[3]. Palantir Technologies phrases it in a similar, albeit perhaps more metaphorical manner. In the entrance hall of its headquarters there is a slogan: Save the Shire, which also appears on the company’s t-shirts and caps. The Shire – the green land of the hobbits, simultaneously idyllic and conservative, which has remained unchanging for centuries – is the West. According to the company’s founders, Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, it should be defended against external threats which come from countries and regions competing with the West, such as China, Iran, Russia or the Middle East.

Peter Thiel is not your typical creator or investor in the new technology sector. His primary objective is a permanent connection between the Silicon Valley and the American security structures, government an military, assuming, that it is the Thiel-controlled enterprises that will play a major role in establishing these connections and conducting strategic business.

In the past, the US state played a quite active role in various nuclear and space technology projects. However, the digital technology sector was founded in the 70’s and 80’s, largely outside of the state. It was – as Richard Barbrook posed it multiple times[4] – a bundle of various elements: neoliberal economy, Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy and technological determinism. The sector functioned according to market needs, within the framework of neoliberal economy, creating products and innovations which could be sold to individual consumers. The situation changed radically after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The US government began to develop systems for gathering digital information. In order to work, they needed sophisticated IT systems, capable of analysing large amounts of data, initially collected from telecom companies and later also from internet providers. The task of connecting the Silicon Valley with the military and security services was not particularly challenging. The American state needed data analyses, and the analysts wanted access to unlimited resources from the defence budget. Thus, at the cusp of security policy and military technology, a quasi-authoritarian sector governed by the big capital and the state came to life. At the same time, a new paradigm of the Silicon Valley appeared – one which contains militarisation of technology, a belief in the Western exceptionalism, libertarianism, Ayn Rand’s philosophy, as well as elements of Tolkien’s fantastic mythology.

The doctrine of war on terror and authoritarian technologies

The factor which influenced the relationship between the US and the technological sector were the attacks on the World Trade Center. The image disaster of the state that allowed the attack to happen and its security services that failed to monitor the threats caused a change in government priorities. New solutions were implemented to allow for mass surveillance. The Patriot Act, passed by the US Congress right after the attacks, introduced the possibility of citizen surveillance through telecommunications systems. Tapping domestic and international calls became legal. Moreover, by the order of George W. Bush, The NSA (National Security Agency) gained the right to tap phone calls with no court order or external control.

The first American mass surveillance technologies used as the result of the attacks on the World Trade Center, including the Echelon system, were based on analysing data gathered from telecommunications networks, as well as the Internet by communications satellites. Telecom companies became US allies – especially AT&T, which was the first to allow for a special “government room” in their headquarters. An important element of the surveillance system in the United States was the Stellar Wind programme, which was based on a network of eavesdropping devices tapped to central American cellular network. Verizon was involved in these activities. 2007 saw the introduction of PRISM, a secret spying programme administered by the NSA that allowed the intelligence to access and collect data stored on the servers of major internet providers for their own use. The latest technological solution developed with the US state is the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing, ultimately created by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle.

Another element created within the doctrine of war on terror, thanks to the organisational and financial support of the US, was an infrastructure constructed from satellite systems, transmission cables, data centres and analytical centres, informally known as the “NSA Octopus”. The state financed the development of advanced analytical tools, also in a military context. Both true and alleged fight against terrorist threats facilitated a justification of increased spending on security systems, frequent violations of civil rights, and even repressions against people accused of terrorism. War on terror permanently changed the approach, both of the governing and the governed, to the state’s violence against its citizens, including in the technological aspect.

A large part of American technological solutions was inspired by Israeli programmes created to surveil the Palestinian population living in the Palestinian Autonomy and occupied territories. The technological sector in Israel has always been connected with the military and intelligence. Corporations such as Mer Group and Narus have produced camera, number plate and facial recognition systems, technologies capable of collecting web data and emails, as well as data analysis platforms using language analysis tools. Nowadays, the Israeli companies responsible for surveillance are headed by veterans of Unit 8200, the Israeli military intelligence cyber-agency dedicated to programming codes and creating digital spying tools. Israel is also developing its offensive IT technologies. In order to halt the Iranian nuclear programme, the Israeli created worms used to spy and reprogram industrial installations in the Iranian nuclear sector.

Halfway through 2021, Amnesty International published a report on Pegasus – a spying software created by NSO Group, which is an Israeli technological company. Over eighty journalists from seventeen different organisations were a part of the research presented in that document. The project was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab. One of the subjects of this study were devices which, according to their users, had been hacked or infected by the malware. As Amnesty International informs on its website, “[…] Security Lab has performed in-depth forensic analysis of numerous mobile devices from human rights defenders (HRDs) and journalists around the world. This research has uncovered widespread, persistent and ongoing unlawful surveillance and human rights abuses perpetrated using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.”[5].

NSO Group was founded in 2010. Due to the confidential nature of its activities, there isn’t much publicly accessible information about it. Most likely two of its founders – Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio – are veterans of Unit 8200. It’s the soldiers who used to serve in this unit that supposedly donated 1,6 million dollars towards the development of Pegasus.

NSO Group provides software to governments and government agencies. A few years ago, Zamir Dahbash who was, at the time, the spokesman of the group, answered a question asked by an American independent news organisation #The Intercept about who was the company’s contractor by saying that “the company sells only to authorized governmental agencies, and fully complies with strict export control laws and regulations. … The agreements signed with the company’s customers require that the company’s products only be used in a lawful manner”[6]. The sales of NSO Group’s products, which are considered digital weapons, is only conducted with the permission of the Israeli government. The list of the company’s contractors includes the governments of Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and UAE – state which does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. Pegasus has been sold to European countries, including France, United Kingdom, Spain, Poland and Hungary, as well as the United States and Mexico. It has recipients in Asia and Africa as well. 6

An analysis of the software’s distribution shows two new phenomena, which are not exclusive to Israel. Firstly, the NSO Group’s product is sold through a “public-private partnership”. The state of Israel allows a part of its military and intelligence technology to be sold by companies founded by ex-(?)officers, and therefore it creates a close relationship with a private corporation. Secondly, the list of contractors is created according to new criteria. Both Israel’s allies and its potential enemies are treated equally. The deciding factor is alliance in the war on terror, which has long ceased to be an actual clash with armed terrorist groups, and has instead become a campaign that pacifies pro-democratic movements and initiatives. The doctrine of the war on terror not only introduced a new geopolitical paradigm that challenged the post-Cold War order, but also legitimised military interventions beyond national borders and tightening security policies within individual countries. The argument about the war on terror has become a propaganda smoke-screen for the actions of authoritarian states as well as, unfortunately, the many states passing as democracies. According to Amnesty International experts, in the case of most countries with access to Pegasus the software was used to track and target opposition politicians, activists, journalists and human rights defenders. New Israeli technologies, including Pegasus, are therefore – against the declarations of Israeli representatives – strictly authoritarian, they are used for surveillance, they result in repressions, and at times – like in the case of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi or Cecilio Pineda Birto[7]– death.

A separate phenomenon in the technological space is the Russian state’s efforts to build a global system of cyberbullying, directed against both Russian citizens and the wider international community. Although Russia, unlike many Asian countries, did not limit internet access before its aggression against Ukraine, it conducts constant surveillance through a system called SORM, just like other countries. Telecommunications companies are obliged to install software which monitors information from the telecoms networks, the Internet and social media. It is collected by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). Moreover, the Camerton system allows for the surveillance of car traffic as well. Wi-Fi hotspot operators can legally collect their clients’ data and store it, while encrypting messages requires an approval from FSB.

For many years, Russia has also been financing activities of a cyberterrorist nature. The first attacks on American servers, the so-called Moonlight Maze, happened in 1996 and caused a data leak in government institutions, such as NASA and the Pentagon. Another attempt took place in 2008. The Trula group attacked American military servers. In 2014, Cozy Bear – also referred to as APT29; a group connected to the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and created by ex-agents – seized data from US government agencies, including the White House and the Democratic Party’s election committee, and revealed the contents of some email inboxes. It is also suspected to have influenced both the 2016 and the 2020 presidential elections.

Russia also uses digital tools to strengthen propaganda messages and influence the international public opinion. The effect of the infamous troll farms is both a representation of the Russian perspective on geopolitical matters and the introduction of chaos and the destabilisation of societies which Russia considers to be hostile. Within this narrative, cyberviolence and cyberterrorism are justified by the necessity to oppose Western supremacy and build a different world order. By presenting as the victim of Western universalism, Russia perversely[8] uses the dependency and post-colonial theories in order to create its own imperial project. The results of this policy are also visible in the narrative that justifies the aggression against Ukraine, reproachful towards the West, but at the same time filled with orientalising, even racist references to the Ukrainians and their country. Cyberterrorism is therefore a tool for strengthening Russia’s authoritarian actions towards its citizens, as well as for creating a background for Russian imperialism.

The Russian aggression against Ukraine has lead to an international isolation of the former, but it also revealed its geopolitical ambitions. Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes[9]9 describe the Russian strategy as an ironic imitation of the imperial actions of the West. In a nutshell, it is as follows: as the geopolitical system changes, and the post-Cold War order ceases to exist (its place being taken by the doctrine of the so-called war on terror), Russia claims the right (as does the West) to redefine its relations with other countries. If war on terror allowed the West to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, it should also allow Russia to invade Chechnya, Georgia and Ukraine. If America can use surveillance on its citizens in fear of a terrorist threat, then so can Russia.

It was China that found its own path of authoritarian governance with the use of technology. The Ministry of Public safety announced the implementation of the Golden Shield programme as early as in the year 2000. It is the result of the Chinese government’s cooperation with western corporations such as Cisco, Nokia and Nortel Networks. They helped create a national database of adults and a system to control the flow of information on the Internet which was called The Great Firewall of China. Based on the collected data, a social trust system has been developed that relies on citizens’ evaluation and refers to the traditional Chinese value of personal reliability (xinyong). In China, it’s considered a virtue. In the social trust system, the category of personal reliability has been extended to all aspects of life.

In the pilot programme of the social trust system, each citizen was given 1,000 points, which were continuously reviewed by algorithms based on an assessment of a person’s individual behaviour. Rewards such as faster promotion at work, tax cuts and easier access to certain schools for children or to bank and consumer loans awaited individuals who gave blood, engaged in charitable work, praised the government on social media or helped the poor. Similarly, penalties were to be expected for failing to visit elderly parents, cheating at online games, insincere apologies for transgressions or spreading rumours on the internet, such as being banned from booking plane and train tickets, restricted access to public services, being publicly insulted or humiliated on television or the Internet. The social trust system could be described as a digital dang!an – a personal archive collecting photographs as well as medical, employment and education data. In 2018, 17.5 million people were prevented from buying airline tickets and 5.5 million – stopped from boarding a train, 128 could not leave the country because of unpaid taxes, 290 thousand were denied a promotion, 1.4 thousand had their points reducted or their dogs confiscated for not cleaning up after the animal[10]10.

Another major component of the Chinese state surveillance system is CloudWalk, a facial recognition system. It was created in 2015 by Zhou Xi, a graduate Of the University of Science and Technology of China. It was tested o the Uyghur community – a muslim, ethnically Kazach people living in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The Uyghurs, forced to register their faces in the system, ultimately helped perfect CloudWalk’s machine learning process. A sophisticated surveillance system enabled the mass detentions, control of forced labour and other violations of humanitarian norms committed against this minority. In December 2021, the US Treasury Department banned American investment in CloudWalk Technology, accusing the corporation of aiding the Uyghur genocide.

Kai Strittmatter, the author of We have been harmonised: Life in China’s Surveillance State[11], claims that the concept which rules the messages sent by China can be referred to as social harmonisation. According to this concept, the Chinese government seeks to match its citizens to a set of rules created by the state, but also match individuals to other individuals. It thus involves not only the internalisation of authoritarian rules, but also individuals adjusting their needs to those of the collective. However, we must not forget that the Chinese are waging their own “war on terror” – against the Uyghur community, which has been striving for autonomy and independence for years.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and George W. Bush’s introduction of war on terror gave the Beijing government a justification for mass repressions against the Uyghur. When the United States was creating a list of terrorist organisations, it put one of the Uyghur separatist groups, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), on said list. China has taked advantage of this to impose draconian penalties on the entire community. It is believed that around one million Uyghurs have been placed in an internment camp of undisclosed location. The community is also forced into labor and displaced from Xinjiang.

New reactionary geopolitics

Max Chafkin, the author of Thiel’s biography, characterises his ideology and Silicon Valley’s technological paradigm shift as follows:

This shift was part and parcel with Thiel’s other project: an attempt to impose a brand of extreme libertarianism that shifts power from traditional institutions toward startup companies and the billionaires who control them. The Thiel ideology is complicated and, in parts, self-contradictory, and will take many of the pages that follow to explore, but it combines an obsession with technological progress with nationalist politics—a politics that at times has seemingly flirted with white supremacy. Sweetening what might otherwise be a rather sour concoction is Thiel’s personal story— a journey from washout corporate lawyer to dot-com billionaire that he has recounted many times in college lectures, speeches, and in his book, Zero to One. The libertarian success manual also argues that monopolies are good, that monarchies are the most efficient form of government, and that tech founders are godlike. It has sold more than 1.25 million copies worldwide[12].

There are many reasons why Thiel’s story is interesting. He comes from a family of fundamentalist German Catholics who left Europe in 1968 and moved to the United States. His father was an engineer involved in resource extraction. He used to work in California, and then in South Africa, where Thiel grew up. After returning to America, Peter became a member of the Young Republicans, helping with Ronald Reagan’s campaign, and then he went on to study law at Stanford University. He was already editing a conservative university newspaper and writing a book attacking the LGBT community, so he revealed himself to be as a radical right-wing activist. After graduation, he became involved in start-ups involving technology. His work includes PayPal, the cashless transaction system. A few years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, in 2004, he created Palantir Technologies with money invested by one of the CIA-controlled funds. In the upcoming years, he funded new enterprises with names referring to Tolkien’s fantasy world, and since 2005 he has been continuously supporting right-wing candidates in the US local and national elections. In 2012, he began his activity in education and community outreach through the Thiel Fellowship programme, funding scholarships for young developers and entrepreneurs. When he spoke at the Republican convention in 2015, he supported Donald Trump in the presidential election and subsequently became one of his closest allies. He promotes Trump-supported candidates in local elections to this day.

Today’s ideology of Silicon Valley is reactionary. The founder of Palantir Technologies supports the radical right and his ideological project could be described as reactionary modernism. If he lived in Poland, he would probably consider himself a katechon, a force of resistance for social, political and cultural change. In the case on the United States, the point is to not only put limits on the emancipatory aspirations of many minorities, or on the demands for eliminating enormous social inequalities, but also to stop the collapse of the American global hegemony in view of the steady rise of the geopolitical position of China and other Asian countries, as well as the development of alternative technologies there. In that sense, Palantir Technologies, Anduril Industries, Mithril Capital Management, Rivendell One and other technology companies created after the attacks on the World Trade Center are also defensive weapons meant to secure the existing geopolitical and economic position of the United States.

Yuk Hui, recalling Thiel’s earlier public appearances and the arguments he used at the time, sees the issue even more broadly:

In his contribution to the 2004 conference “Politics and Apocalypse,” dedicated to the French theorist and anthropologist Réne Girard, Peter Thiel wrote that 9/11 marked the failure of the Enlightenment heritage. The West needed a new political theory to save itself from a new world configuration open to a “global terrorism” that “operated outside of all the norms of the liberal West.”1 Granting in advance that the West had embodied the doctrines and values of democracy and equality, Thiel moved immediately to argue that these had made the West vulnerable[13].

According to the philosopher, Thiel’s objective is not only reacting to current geopolitical threats, but also a complete change of ideological and political vectors, rejecting the heritage of Enlightenment, questioning the ideals of equality and democracy, which our protagonist considers to be a sign of weakness. What is at stake, however, is, to refer to one of the books in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a “Return of the King”. A new technological paradigm created by right-wing American investors must therefore be seen as it deserves to be – as a tool for introducing an ultra-conservative political ideals, reactionary ideologies and authoritarian models of governance. Whether these phenomena are the result of a fear-based strategy of the West, the elite’s response to the societies’ aspirations for emancipation and equality, or a new imperial project, is of little consequence.

These issues appear to be very similar in other countries which are technologically active. If there is an ideology behind the decisions of Russia and Vladimir Putin, it is, according to the prominent Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, the poisoned fruit of the thought of Ivan Ilyin, monarchist, nationalist, anti-Semite and ideologist of the White. Sorokin writes, that “In his articles, Ilyin hoped that, after the fall of Bolshevism, Russia would have its own great führer, who would bring the country up from its knees”[14]. The writer optimistically assumes that Putin is “[d]oomed because what he wants is a new Middle Ages, corruption, lies and trampling on human freedoms. Because he is the past. And we must do everything in our power to make this monster remain there – in the past – for all time, together with his Pyramid of Power”[15]15. Digital surveillance, cyberterrorism and digital propaganda used by the Russian state services, including in the context of the very real war in Ukraine, serve the geopolitical calculations of the authorities, which are based on reactionary and retrograde ideologies. Whatever the latitude or the cultural context, the slogans of “getting up from our knees” or “defending Númenor” will always have a similar imperial and neo-fascist tone. Behind these metaphors lies the simple need to dominate, the desire to gain unlimited power and the pleasure of naked violence.

In her essay Excepción y contrarrevolución global (The Exception and the Global Counter-revolution) [16] Marina Garcés, a Spanish philosopher, points out that the ultra-right-wing counter-revolution taking place in many countries around the world is a reaction to complex revolutionary emancipatory processes. Demands for economic, social, cultural and sexual equality pose a mortal threat to a world built on hierarchy and authority. One of the aims of the second edition of Biennale Warszawa is to capture and show this counter-revolutionary turn that has arisen from the combination of an ultra-liberal socio-economic vision and political authoritarianism. In this case, technology acts as one of the methods of producing inequality, and simultaneously as a reactionary political weapon meant to restore traditionalist foundations in the emancipating world.

Translated from Polish by ​​Malwina Szymczak

  1. M. Chafkin, The Contrarian. Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power, Bloomsbury Publishing, London–Dublin 2021, p. 116. ↑
  2. Ibidem, p. 117. ↑
  3. „Anduril”, https://www.anduril.com [DOA: 30.01.2022]. ↑
  4. See R. Barbrook, A. Cameron, The Californian Ideology, „Science as Culture” 1996, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 44–72. ↑
  5. Forensic Methodology Report: How to catch NSO Group’s Pegasus, „Amnesty International”, 18.07.2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ [DOA: 31.01.2022]. ↑
  6. A. Kane, How Israel Became a Hub for Surveillance Technology, „The Intercept”, 17.10.2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/10/17/how-israel-became-a-hub-for-surveillance-technology/ [DOA: 30.01.2022]. ↑
  7. Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi was a Saudi journalist in opposition to the authorities in Riyadh. He had to leave the country for his criticism of the heir to the throne. He died on October 2 2018 in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul. It is known that his phone was under surveillance using the Pegasus software. Cecilio Pineda Birto was an independent Mexican journalist. He studied the connections between cartels, security service and the corrupt state officials. His phone number was also on the list of Pegasus’ targets. ↑
  8. See Perverse Decolonization?, ed. E. Degot, D. Riff, J. Sowa, Archive Book, Akademie der Künste der Welt, Berlin– Köln 2021. ↑
  9. S. Holmes, I. Krastev, The Light that Failed: Why the West is Loosing the Fight for Democracy, Pegasus Books, Berkeley 2020. ↑
  10. The Game of Life: Visualizing China’s Social Credit System, „Visual Capitalist”, 18.08.2019, https:// www.visualcapitalist.com/the-game-of-life-visualizing-chinas-social-credit-system/, [DOA 31.01.2022] ↑
  11. K. Strittmatter, Chiny 5.0. Jak powstaje cyfrowa dyktatura, tłum. A. Gadzała, Wydawnictwo WAB, Warszawa 2020. ↑
  12. M. Chafkin, opus citatum, p. XIV. ↑
  13. Y. Hui, On the Unhappy Consciousness of Neoreactionaries, „e-flux Journal” 2017, Issue #81, https:// www.e-flux.com/journal/81/125815/on-the-unhappy-consciousness-of-neoreactionaries/ [DOA: 31.01.2022]. ↑
  14. V. Sorokin, Vladimir Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power, „The Guardian”, 27.02.2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/27/vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine-power [DOA: 27.02.2022] ↑
  15. Ibidem. ↑
  16. M. Garcés, Wyjątek i globalna kontrrewolucja, transl. S. Królak, „Biennale Warszawa”, 5.05.2020, https:// biennalewarszawa.pl/wyjatek-i-kontrrewolucja/ [DOA: 24.04.2022]. ↑

Paweł Wodziński, director, curator, director of the Biennale Warszawa. Founder and head of Towarzystwo Teatralne, an association formed to promote contemporary dramaturgy and socially engaged theatre. In 2000–2003 he was the Managing and Artistic Director of Teatr Polski in Poznań. In 2010 he became the programming director of the 5th International Festival of Polish Contemporary Drama R@PORT in Gdynia. In 2014-2017 he was the Director of the Hieronim Konieczka Teatr Polski in Bydgoszcz and the curator of the International Festival of New Dramaturgies. Author of dozens of performances, including “Solidarity. Re-enactment” (2017), “Solidarity. The New Project” (2017), “Global Civil War” (2018) and texts published in “Dwutygodnik,” “Dialog,” “Teatr” and the Polish edition of “Le Monde diplomatique”. Lecturer at the SWPS University in Warsaw, co-curator of the 1st and 2nd editions of the Biennale Warszawa.