The Lublin-based “Open City” Festival is one of the most important showcases of modern art in Poland and the biggest exhibition of this kind in Eastern Poland. The rationale behind the 8th iteration of the Festival is to emphasise the symbolic dimension of the space of Lublin by introducing to it commissioned artworks. The artistic interventions of the participants of the Festival are construed as “alien bodies” growing inside the very tissue of Lublin, moments of an unexpected change in the (physical and symbolic) space, which we have so far regarded as well-known and thoroughly critiqued. As a result, art is exposed both to fleeting emotions of passers-by and to fickle weather conditions. Artists usually play the role of performers of ideological programmes formulated by the funders of monuments. For the duration of the Open City Festival we will reverse this division of labour and bestow upon the participating artists a much needed sense of agency. Full documentation of all artists’ realisations (in the form of a catalogue of temporary art) and permanent artworks constitute the added value of the Festival.