Workshop at the Liceum Plastyczne im. Constantina Brancusi art high school, Szczecin, 2017
Participants: Marta Jędrzejewska, Wiktor Krajcer, Szymon Tkaczuk, Aleksandra Eidorowicz, Maja Turkowska, Julia Mosara, Paweł Janicki, Zuza Wojakowska, Emilia Mołodecka, Monika Kowalska, Ewa Burda, Aleksandra Brejwo, Natalia Modrzewska, Patrycja Redlarska*
fot. Beata Marchlik- -Hulbój
When designing a workshop for the teenage students of an art high school in Szczecin, with performance art as its point of departure, I proposed the text, Performance: A Few Elemen-tary Remarks. I deliberately used “elemenElemen-tary” despite the would-be participants’ young (but not so young) age. The idea was to refer playfully to the elementary book, or primer, as well as to early experiences and elementary, basic concepts. Performance art is a discipline that we classify as belonging to the category of action arts, in reference to the concept of live art. It consists in performing a specific activity or series of activities in the presence of an audience. Any kind of subject matter can be tackled, but very often artists refer to their personal experiences as well as to various aspects of everyday life. A performance artist may use the means of dance, music, or theater, as well as those of the classic disciplines of the visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpture). Performance doesn’t have to be presented in a gallery or auditorium; any kind of site can be used: street, public square, train station, even a private home. Performance is open-ended: every piece can be modified, extended or ab-breviated depending on the situation and audience reaction. Performance is a personal creative act.
Addressed at high school students, the project’s aim was to construct and use a visual language based on presence and participation. We assumed that the result would be a public presentation, as an element of confrontation with the viewers’ notions and expec-tations. The tasks prepared and questions asked were to serve as means of delimiting the boundaries of the space within which we would operate, and focusing the group around certain themes. At the second stage, we would try to solve problems suggested by the participants. The key term turned out to be “identity,” in the course of further discussion contextualized as “liquid” (after Sławomir Brzoska), “lost,” “sought,” or “found.” The discussion defined the essential areas, pointing to the basic problem of building a visual language and to the sign as its key element. This involves the effectiveness of visual communication and the character of a language integrated with a particular message and often useless in other areas of signification. The workshop participants – art high school students – have all had a range of experiences related to the construction of visual-language signs in sculpture, painting, drawing, or photography. The new situation was that now the communication process would involve their own body, the presence related to it, and their own image in an uncommon semantic function. We sought to interpret the information encoded in the man-ner of behavior, dress, gesticulation, or the meanings of the object assigned to us. I would like to start my reflections on the Szczecin workshop with student Ewa Burda’s mature and interesting work, Complex Object.
A self-assembly object, a kind of overscale puzzle, forces us to perform the time-consuming
work of assembling the elements in the right sequence and position. The work however doesn’t offer a satisfying outcome because the key piece containing the characteristic facial features of the portrayed person is missing; lacking individual identifying characteristics, the latter becomes absent. In this case lack is associated with the element that concludes the process, so we can speak of final-element deficit. A similar mechanism is encountered in the spectacular lack of the last page, last sequence, or last word. This is related to the importance of the closing element, whose situation may determine the reception of the message. What was also important in Burda’s work was time; as its protraction caused the viewers to grow impatient, the author did her best to stick to her adopted procedure and resist their pressure. The question arises whether we are dealing here with an unfinished process, a suspended result, or quite the contrary, a finite object as a result of an unfinished process. The second answer hits the mark, elevating the rank of the missing element. We approach the question of the decision to celebrate the significance of the empty place. An analogy with the face and hands of a portrayed, sought-after, or adored person suggests itself. The semantic function of the face and hands plays a crucial role in personal identifi-cation; compare the traditional icon rizas, or revetments, which cover the entire represen-tation except two signs: the face and the hands. Through the use of a painted portrait, its deconstruction, and apparent return, Burda’s puzzle references a very rich tradition of meanings encoded in the various details of the portrayed person. The work can be consid-ered as an incomplete portrait or a portrait of an absent or lost person, though what mattconsid-ered for us, the witnesses of the event, was the dramaturgy of the process and the surprising – and perhaps irrevocable – suspension of its expected result.
Another work by Aleksandra Eidorowicz and Julia Mosara, Towards/Away, is a result of discussions about the specificity of the “in-between” area and the distance connecting or separating two people. It consists in claiming and activating the the space between two persons. The point of departure is the popular gesture of greeting by handshake. Multiple repetitions rhythmize it, stripping it of its cultural function while emphasizing the formal values of an abstract activity. At the second stage of the workshop, its participants build an instrument of greeting – an instrument of contact – by hanging a three-meter lightweight aluminum rod on headphone-cable loops into which two persons insert their hands. As they move towards each other, the rod acts as a guide that faultlessly connects their outstretched hands. In oppressive conditions, e.g., darkness, when cognitive functions change, effective contact relies on touch and the guide rail’s perfect programming of the direction of movement.
The way the works were presented – in the peripheries, one sequence after another – was originally conceived by two of the participants Natalia Modrzewska and Zuzanna Wojakow-ska. To assume responsibility for the communication effectiveness of all the presentations was an important gesture on their part with respect to both the group and their own ego. While their role was auxiliary towards the others’ works, it also constituted a creative en-deavor, a kind of installation comprised of the works of the other participants. Perhaps a discussion of the curator’s role, her influence on the reception of the work, and the char-acter of the shared space would be premature in the case of such young people, but I still initiate it on the level of distinguishing between private space and common space as a field of social activity, negotiation, and compromise to work out an outcome that satisfies all. The elements of common space constituted an important context for the closed individual presentations, opening them up to the modifying influence of the context and its meaning. Responsibility for the quality of that space and the need to effectively demonstrate one’s own presence in it gave rise to an incredibly important space of negotiation, fuelling a pressure to achieve.