Cześć, dear subscriber...
I'm writing to you from wintery Warsaw, where I've been since early January after three months in Belgrade. If you've been following along, you'll know I left Warsaw in September to conduct urban investigations in Belgrade - OS:Belgrade and What The Water Sees. I returned here in late December expecting to launch OS:Warszawa, the winter sequel to Travels in Hyperreality.
That's not quite what happened.
Instead, I spent January navigating Polish bureaucracy to establish temporary residency and register a limited liability company. Like you do! This newsletter is about that transition - what it actually looks like when artistic investigation meets administrative reality, and why I'm not particularly upset about the detour.
What I Thought Would Happen
The plan was clean: three months Belgrade (complete), brief Christmas break, then twelve weeks in Warsaw conducting OS:Warszawa - a regression test asking what happens when you return to a city you've already documented. Same investigative frameworks, different seasonal conditions, systematic documentation of what changes.
I had the methodology ready. The theoretical frameworks tested. The walking protocols designed. OS:Warszawa was supposed to be the natural continuation of The Warsaw Winter Theatre Company's work.
Then the realities of my residency application kicked in.
The Administrative Investigation
Establishing legal residency and founding a Polish company turns out to be its own kind of urban investigation - just one where the city performs through bureaucratic infrastructure rather than architectural staging.
Here's what that actually involved:
PESEL Registration - Poland's national identification number, required for basically everything. This meant navigating the Urząd Dzielnicy (district office), understanding which documents prove what and learning that "temporary residency application in progress" counts as valid status.
Company Registration (sp. z o.o.) - Founding a limited liability company in Poland. Articles of association, KRS number (0001220561, if you're curious), notarised documents, minimum share capital, understanding what a "management board" means in Polish corporate law.
Bank Account (Without Residency) - Getting a business bank account before having permanent residency requires a specific sequence of applications, the right legal structure, and considerable patience with systems that don't expect foreigners to be doing this.
Profil Zaufany - Poland's "Trusted Profile" for accessing government digital services. This is the key that unlocks everything else - tax systems, ZUS (social insurance), online bureaucracy. Getting it without permanent residency required creative interpretation of eligibility rules.
NIP and REGON - Tax identification number and business registry number. These seem redundant until you realise they're used by different systems that don't talk to each other properly.
Residency Application - The actual application for temporary residency (karta pobytu), submitted through yet another office, requiring proof of accommodation, health insurance, financial means, and the reason you're staying. In my case: running a Polish company from Warsaw.
None of this is conceptually difficult. It's just administratively dense - each step depends on previous steps, nothing is quite where you expect it to be, and the system assumes you already understand Polish bureaucratic logic.
I finished the last major piece of the puzzle yesterday. Whoop whoop... The residency application is submitted and processing. The company is registered and operational.
Why This Matters (And Why It Doesn't)
The obvious reading: I got distracted from the real work (creative investigation) by administrative necessities (bureaucracy).
But here's what actually happened: I made a deliberate choice that Warsaw isn't just an investigation site - it's home base. Sequential residency (three months per city) works when you're documenting performances as an outsider. It breaks down when you want to build something sustainable from one location.
Phenomenal Sobriety - my sobriety coaching program - launched January 31st. That business needed proper infrastructure, not just temporary residency and foreign bank accounts. The Warsaw Winter Theatre Company methodology travels, but the administrative anchor needed to be here.
So I spent January installing myself into Poland's operating system properly. Not as a temporary user running diagnostic tests, but as someone who needs root access.
The creative work paused. OS:Warszawa didn't happen on schedule. What The Water Sees remains incomplete (I never got to phases 3 and 4 - Belgrade's interior and the confluence documentation).
Am I frustrated? Not particularly. This is what it looks like when investigation becomes integration - when you stop performing residency and start actually living somewhere. The administrative work was necessary infrastructure, not distraction from "real" work.
Belgrade: What Actually Got Done
Let me be honest about the Belgrade period, since I was fairly optimistic in November's newsletter.
OS:Belgrade - Documented through phase one. The operating system metaphor held up, the Mintlify infrastructure worked, I wrote poetry-as-code, built an AI assistant (Zora) with mixed results. The investigation was sound. I just didn't complete all the protocols I'd planned.
What The Water Sees - Completed phase one (Sava Performance), started phase two (Danube Performance), never fully documented the interior or confluence investigations. I have extensive documentation of what the rivers witness, but not the complete dataset I'd envisioned.
The honest assessment: Belgrade was creatively draining in ways Warsaw never was. The city's energy didn't fuel investigation the way Warsaw's does. I produced good work, but I was fighting the environment rather than working with it. By December I was ready to leave.
What I Learned (And What I'm Keeping)
The WWTC methodology still works. Extended residency, theoretical frameworks, systematic documentation, multi-format outputs - this remains valid as an investigative approach.
But I've learned something about the relationship between investigation and integration:
You can investigate a city as a temporary resident applying diagnostic frameworks (OS:Belgrade, Travels in Hyperreality). That produces one kind of knowledge - systematic, comparative, structured.
Or you can integrate into a city as a permanent resident learning its actual operating system (Warsaw, January 2026). That produces different knowledge - embedded, practical, infrastructural.
Both are valid. They're just different protocols.
Warsaw: What's Actually Happening
So what am I actually doing now that the administrative infrastructure is built?
Phenomenal Sobriety launched January 31st. Nearly twelve months of hard graft is complete. The THRIVE System is complete, Solly (the AI assistant) is debugged and functional, the community guidelines are written, the platform is ready. This is happening. I've even committed to posting regularly on social media which is mildly terrifying.
Creative work is resuming slowly. Not OS:Warszawa as originally planned - that investigation needs a clear twelve-week window I don't currently have. But smaller protocols: sequential walks, urban documentation, testing whether Warsaw still functions as creative base after the Belgrade comparison.
Administrative maintenance continues. ZUS registration, health insurance sorted properly, understanding Polish tax obligations, learning what running a sp. z o.o. actually means operationally. This is now just background infrastructure, not active investigation.
The shift: I'm no longer investigating Warsaw as performance. I'm living here while building a business that requires this specific location. The city performs differently when you're integrated rather than observing.
What's Next (Realistically)
I'm not going to promise OS:Warszawa in its original form. That twelve-week investigation needs space I don't have while launching Phenomenal Sobriety and managing a new company.
But I am going to:
- Continue documenting Warsaw through whatever protocols fit around business operations
- Potentially develop new WWTC investigations for future three-month residencies in other cities (the methodology travels, even if I'm based here)
- Complete the Belgrade work retrospectively when I have distance from it
- Keep writing, photographing, and thinking about how cities perform themselves - just without the artificial pressure of completing investigations on arbitrary timelines
The Belgrade-to-Warsaw transition taught me this: You can't simultaneously investigate a city as an outsider AND integrate into it as a resident. Those are different protocols requiring different approaches.
I'm choosing integration in Warsaw. That means the creative investigations adapt around that reality, not the other way around.
Why I'm Telling You This
Because the November newsletter was optimistic about creative momentum, and this one is... realistic about administrative necessity.
I haven't abandoned The Warsaw Winter Theatre Company methodology. Not at all. I've just learned that investigation requires specific conditions - and sometimes those conditions don't align with building sustainable infrastructure in a new country.
This isn't failure. It's adaptation. The work continues, just not on the timeline I'd projected.
If you've stuck around this long, you presumably care about the actual process rather than just the polished outputs. So here it is: January 2026 was bureaucracy, not creativity. February is transition back toward creative work, but with realistic expectations about what's possible while launching a business.
More updates when there's something substantial to share. Otherwise: thank you for following along, even through the boring administrative bits.
Warsaw still feels like home. That hasn't changed.
David
Warsaw, February 2026
P.S. - The rivers in Belgrade are still watching. I didn't document them completely, but they're patient. Maybe I'll return to finish What The Water Sees someday. Maybe not. Either way, the Sava and Danube will still be there, witnessing whatever performances the city stages next.
P.P.S. - If you're interested in Phenomenal Sobriety, you can find details at my new website. It's the work I've been building for years, finally ready to launch from proper infrastructure in Poland. That part, at least, went according to plan.
