25.09
The author of relation is Marta Ryczkowska.
The next day of „Interaction” is a meeting of the PRL boys with a new wave, a young generation of performance artists. Clashes came to the fore: cool historical reflection versus intuition, fantasy about the future and post-apocalypse, history about Poland and stories from the district. The finale belonged to the sharp and mesmerizing Siksa.
Jan Rylke invited spectators to a noble-vaudeville spectacle on contemporary Polishness. The flags of the three former powers appeared that determined our identity: Germany, Russia and Austria. The artist, with the help of three volunteers, performed a dance with the flag of each of the former partitioners to the Polish national anthem, during the breaks he read a poem in which the chorus resounded: „Let’s give up appearances, let’s return to partitions”. The action was completed by a balcony made by him – a fairy-tale toy with eagles flapping wings and a new flag.
Grzegorz Bożek told a story that happened on a hot day in Poznań. The story emerged from simple, repetitive sentences, reminiscent of recording on an old cassette tape with all the jumps and repetitions. Small gestures gave her drama. Cardiac drop on the Black Sea – a small sign that the artist taught on the door, gave it a human dimension and directed the thought to wider, existential waters.
Sta_h Bałdyga created a tense sound and visual situation with the virtual participation of Piach, who composed music for performance. The basis of operation was an old internal door with an empty frame inside – the artist kept it upright with his own body. In the upper part he fixed the phone, connected to Piach by means of a video call, thanks to which the action took place in two places at the same time. Dark, overwhelming sound waves, muscle tension, holding the door, stopped escape, escape route – all these elements created the atmosphere of the oncoming apocalypse.
Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski referred to his theoretical and artistic practice in life. The performance was realized in the form of a mini-lecture, an academic story about their areas of interest. The artist talked about the search for mathematical schemes to explain the rules that govern the world, expressed through compulsive notes over the years. The brass bust polished by him – a self-portrait and the words written on a flip chart: „I have to Polish” referred to the problem of their own identity, included in the national framework.
The Siksa duo engaged viewers in an energetic situation under the slogan „Murmurs in the Heart”. The sharp bass and hypnotic melorecitation of the singer built an atmosphere full of tension and excitement, although this time the genre weight of the songs was slightly different (the artists even referred to them as songs). There were motives related to settling in already established structures, rooting in relationships, summarizing profits and losses in the process called life. The artist talked about being a war veteran and not getting a refund for lost libido. She moved between viewers in a blond wig wrapped in a reservist’s scarf. Somewhere in all this there was the problem of Polishness, an attempt to assimilate it under new rules. The day ended with a screening of the movie 'Sabbat Mater Dolorosa’, which the band describes as 'a musical about death and a girl’, prepared in cooperation with the Poznań artist Tomasz Macha and a group of friendly artists. The film, which, following the example of Beyonce, was created as an illustration of the album is a visual tale, uncompromising, honest, exciting and painfully penetrating.