The event was initiated by a work around the self-portraits of paintings displayed on chairs, leading to video pictures, which mainly consisted of two images of a naked artist with a chair: standing on her head and looking for the right position to find a balance on the edge of the seat. According to the artist, a self-portrait is not a representation of one's externality, but an image of the soul. In his works, he emphasizes the outline of his own body, which he then fills with meanings. The characteristic motif is the horse's head appearing everywhere? which animal Seagrave identifies with. The artist invited the audience to share themselves and make their own works based on the contours of their hands or feet, then drawing what can best describe each of them. In the introduction, Seagrave, speaking of the multimedia and transmediality of her art, emphasized the thread of continuous self-expression, the continuous process of processing oneself and the interior, thus looking for answers to the questions:? How much of personal identity should be recognized for a work to be a self-portrait?

texts: Student Research Group of the Faculty of Visual Education (Katarzyna Gwoździk, Karina Madej, Alicja Pertkiewicz, Urszula Skrok? Wolska, tutor - Maciej H. Zdanowicz, MA)

The second day of the festival: May 11, 2010 at 6.00 p.m.
Artistic Activities Center, ul. Dąbrowskiego 5

The absence of Martin Molinaro, the artist who is to appear at the festival today, was in itself a kind of performance. The Argentinian, due to the receipt of a creative grant for another project, had to resign from coming to Poland. However, he sent a detailed text instruction with a complementary animation of the action and its object? a 28 × 28 cm cube named? F28? . The cube is a wooden block composed of two elements: a rectangle with a side of a 7 × 28 rectangle named "F7", and what is left after it? something like two miniature steps. In Molinaro's assumption, the action is to include the performer's approach to the object, without taking his feet off the ground, excluding? F28? item "F7", set it aside, then climb up both steps and stop to "think blue". After that, the performer can jump down and repeat the action if necessary. A simple and inconspicuous object becomes an excuse to enable the experience of a different state, seemingly the experience of something absurd, rising only 28 cm above the ground. The directed message of the action to the audience allows each festival participant to experience this state of detachment in blue, even for a moment. For me, is this terse activity, relating to a large extent to conceptual practices, confined to the poetic frame of haiku? subtly lets you get rid of your own? self? leaving you to feel something elusive and elusive.

Maciej H. Zdanowicz

The next performer was John Boeme from Canada? an artist carrying out? trans-disciplinary? containing performance, video and audio elements. In them, he takes up the subject of gender behavior, in particular analyzing the concept of masculinity. An unannounced artist, wearing work clothes with the print? WORKING ARTIST ?, brought boards, a fibreboard, tools and a chair to the stage. With the sounds of rapidly changing, loud music, he started building something like a platform. The work was accompanied by stereotypical male behaviors and gestures; Boeme played the role of a typical professional, while pushing his presence in the room. After finishing his work, he changed his sweat from his work clothes into a suit, a white unpressed shirt, professionally tying his tie, sprinkling himself profusely with deodorant and toilet water. After placing the chair on the platform, he proudly sat down on it facing the audience and looked at her from the left side. In his gaze there was something like pride and complex, certainty and uncertainty, a desire to reassure himself in self-confidence and looking for confirmation of this fact on the faces of the audience. In a fit of sudden aggression, the performer completely smashed the landing and the chair, and finally displayed the recorded video image of the chair on the landing? the result of his work? now only virtual.

Karina Madej

The action by Marcio Shimbakuro (Brazil) introduced us to the mystical dimension of light, silence and darkness, to a space full of symbols and meanings, extremely subtle and mysterious, inaccessible to our interpretive keys. ?Mom? - a performance with such a title seems to be a spell evoking an important person for the artist. The audience led into the space beyond the light surrounded the center of the hall, the perimeter of which was marked by spilled water. Chair and table. In the gloom from the end of the room, an artist in a suit, holding in one hand the strange structure of two glasses and two plates filled with clear liquid. His whole form is wet, dripping with water. He was moving slowly, with unusual concentration, and the props held in one hand made a specific trembling sound. The artist entered the circle, sat down in front of the table and regularly placed the aforementioned plates and glasses, and two packages of matches. He drank water from one glass, and on the other he poured the liquid into a plate, where match by matchstick in incredible silence and calmness was building something like a tower with his right hand. Turning his left hand on repeatedly, he illuminated his work. He arranged the fired matches in a regular row at the top of the table: two burned, one whole, three burned, one whole, four burned, one whole. After using all the elements to build the structure, he lit the liquid in the plate along with the tower, quickly covering it with a glass, thus extinguishing the fire. He repeated this operation for the remaining matchbox. With a match in his mouth and a second lit one in his hand, he left the scene.

Katarzyna Gwoździk

As part of this year's INTERACTIONS, a debutant scene has been planned? Off Interaction. This year, a group of students from the Intermedia Department of the Academy of Fine Arts is presented. Jan Matejko in Krakow, studying performance under Artur Tajber and Arti Grabowski. On that day, the first performer was Jakub Falkowski, who has already completed acting studies at the Krakow State Drama School, and is also studying directing. The performer arranged a situation in which, locking himself in a smaller gallery room, he invited the participants of the event inside, provided that he would mutilate himself with a razor blade for each person, and the participant himself would sign a full legible signature at the freshly formed wound. Two charts placed on the wall of the main hall of the Center for Creative Activities informed about it. The reaction turned out to be spontaneous? There was a long line to the performer. The moment of the incision was recorded by a camera. Disappointment was noticeable on the participants' faces: the wounds were not deep, the sight was not bloody, and Falkowski himself carefully disinfected the body and the razor with hydrogen peroxide each time. There was no drama in it. After all, Falkowski left the room with his head bowed to the audience. His abdomen and left arm were covered with thin cuts with the signatures of those entering. As he said: he did not expect such a reaction from the audience, he did not believe that someone would get in and contribute to his self-mutilation.

Urszula Skrok - Wolska

Joan Casellas from Brazil was the fifth one that evening. It says about itself: OZIM: Visitors, Collectors, Minimedies. He is a permanent photographer who uses the medium as a document of the surrounding reality and himself. The performer started his performance by placing a notebook and two orange briefcases on the floor. Then, approaching the crowded viewers, he invited them to take pictures of him, expressing his love for photography and being photographed. The participants could not only photograph the artist, but also position him for pictures, pose with him, and order him to reveal his body. Each Casellas obediently performed. After the end of the first part of the speech, the performer approached the wall and stuck a contact e-mail address to it, to which the audience can send photographs for the artist's documentation. In the second part, the performer, walking with a notebook, showed selected audience photos of a time-lapse movie showing the artist shaving. Then he stood in the middle of the gallery holding the previously mentioned folders in his hands. Moving away from the chest, he lifted it up and, standing on his toes, he circled around his axis repeating aloud the sequence of numbers from 1-10. The last part of Casellas's action caused the most emotions, as the artist managed to persuade two men to undress with him and pose for photos of the audience.

Alicja Pertkiewicz

The last one of the evening was Robert Alda (Poland / Norway) dealing with performance, photography, installation and painting. The action began in silence, we saw an artist in a dog mask lying on a blanket in front of the TV set. Suddenly news began illustrating the current situation in the country. As the number of tragic or outrageous messages increased, the performer began to react to them with his whole body. His nervous movements combined characteristics of a dog and a human. Every now and then he commented on the messages:? Leave my house ?,? It's for my money ?. In the information society paradox, Alda reveals an important aspect of bombarding us with news, mental and moral devastation, anesthesia to pain and harm. In his opinion, the media attack our psyche, personality, sense of value and security, they are aggressive and total.

KNSWEW