1933
On the initiative of Józef Jarema, the avant-garde Cricot theater was established in Krakow. Its name was an acronym of the following words: “C” for “Culture”, “R” for “Movement” (Ruch), “I” for “Differently” (Inaczej), “C” for “Comedy”, “O” for “Eye” (Oko), “T” for “Theater”. From 1935 to 1938 its stage was located in the House of Artists at ul. Łobzowska 3.
1942
Tadeusz Kantor founded the Underground Independent Theater in Krakow, where he staged Juliusz Słowacki’s Balladyna (1943) and Stanisław Wyspiański’s Powrót Odysa (Return of Odysseus, 1944).
1955
Kantor and Maria Jarema launched the Cricot 2 theater in Krakow, which inaugurated its functioning with the premiere of Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s Mątwa (Cuttlefish, 1956). From the very beginning, the performances and events at Cricot 2 were open, experimental and performative, characterized by randomness and improvisation.
1957
On May 7, 1957, a performance of the Sensibilist Theater, which can be considered the first Polish performance group, took place in the hall of the Kameralny Theater in Wrocław. Its founders – Kazimierz Głaz, Michał Jędrzejewski and Wiesław Zajączkowski – decided not to use the curtain and to rely on improvisation. The performances had a discontinuous plot and absurd form, often involving the audience as co-creators. The Sensibilists were active until 1967.
The Zamek group, initially known as the Circle of Young Visual Artists, was founded in Lublin. Its most important members were the critic Jerzy Ludwiński and artists Włodzimierz Borowski, Tytus Dzieduszycki, Jan Ziemski and Ryszard Kiwerski. The group published the magazine Struktury, edited by Ludwiński. The group dissolved in 1960.
At the end of 1957, Bogusław Litwiniec established the Kalambur Theater in Wrocław – its first performance, Konfiskata Gwiazd (Confiscation of Stars), premiered a year later. At the time, the theatre did not yet have its own seat – the play was staged in the Youth House of Culture.
1959
Jerzy Grotowski took over the artistic direction of the Theatre of 13 Rows in Opole, while literary and theater critic Ludwik Flaszen became its dramaturge (he had previously held an analogous position at the Juliusz Słowacki Theater in Krakow). Their collaboration quickly resulted in the creation of an avant-garde theater, which also became a thriving artistic research center. After the Opole stage was closed down in 1965, Grotowski and his company moved to Wrocław. At the new location, the first premiere of his theater, renamed the Laboratory Theater of 13 Rows, was the fourth version of Akropolis based on Stanisław Wyspiański’s dramatic epic poem, prepared in collaboration with Józef Szajna. In the 1960s and 1970s, Grotowski’s company toured abroad more than a dozen times and participated in all the major theater festivals around the world. In the latter of these decades, its leader slowly began to move away from theater, abandoning the production of performances in favor of deepening his studies of Central Asian culture and spirituality. He became involved in teaching, giving classes and organizing paratheatrical internships for actors.
1961
Jerzy Krechowicz began his efforts to create the Gallery Theater in Gdańsk, which existed until 1967. It was a kind of artistic theater (the actors were painters), which combined theatrical activities with a painting gallery.
1962–1964
Liliana Lewicka, a Wrocław-based artist, carried out impressive ephemeral happenings in the city space, in which she involved groups of people moving through the streets according to a script prepared by the initiator of the action.
1963
In September, the first open-air festival was held in Osieki on Lake Jamno (full name: International Meetings of Artists, Scientists and Art Theorists), organized annually until 1981. The event was initiated by Jerzy Fedorowicz, Ludmiła Popiel and Marian Bogusz, who were supported by artists from Koszalin. The festivals gathered Polish avant-garde artists, who manifested new trends in national art, including in the field of performance.
In October, on the initiative of Marian Szpakowski, an event called “Golden Grape” (also known as ” Golden Grape Exhibition and Symposium” or “Golden Grape Review”) was organized in Zielona Góra for the first time. It would be held every two years until 1981. Subsequent editions of this event included the following participants: Jan Berdyszak, Stefan Gierowski, Irena Jakimowicz, Krystyn Jarnuszkiewicz, Grzegorz Kowalski, Stanisław Lorentz, Stefan Papp, Piotr Perepłyś, Julian Przyboś, Anka Ptaszkowska, Artur Sandauer, Ryszard Stanisławski, Maciej Szańkowski and Magdalena Więcek.
1964–1966
The Turoń Theater from Wrocław produced a series of performances-collages of a paratheatrical and paraliterary nature. They took place outdoors, often involving the audience and surprising them with a radical form.
1965
Jerzy Grotowski published his manifesto Toward a Poor Theater, in which he concluded that the only essential components of a theatrical performance were the actor and the spectator. He rejected all ornamentation (decorations and props) as well as the division between stage and audience. He analyzed the relationship between the audience and the actors during a performance, aiming to unite them and requiring the former to take an active part in the creative process.
1966
In July 1966, Włodzimierz Borowski’s Pokaz Synkretyczny II (Syncretic Show II) – an important event for this artist’s work, which signaled his turn to environment, happening and conceptualism – took place at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw.
In the summer of 1966, on the initiative of three actors of the Cricot 2 Theater – Jacek Maria Stokłosa and Lesław and Wacław Janicki – Grupa Druga was formed. Its conceptual activities drew on the artistic tradition in which these artists had been formed: the pre-war Cricot theater and Kantor’s early performances. The group’s debut was held at the Krzysztofory Gallery with an action entitled Jod (Iodine).
In August, the First Symposium of Artists and Scientists was held on the premises of the Nitrogen Plant in Puławy under the slogan “Art in a Changing World.” Its originator and main organizer was Jerzy Ludwiński. The concept and name of the event referred to the then popular idea of bringing art, technology, science and industry closer together. During the Symposium, Foksal Gallery critics Mariusz Tchorek, Anka Ptaszkowska and Wiesław Borowski presented their General Theory of Place, while Włodzimierz Borowski performed his Fourth Syncretic Show, titled Furnace Offering. The action was accompanied by a song composed by the artist, in which the words “urea, urea” gradually turned into the national anthem
In the same year, the Trumna and Turoń theaters in Wrocław were disbanded. The latter, which was particularly active in 1964–1966, underwent an evolution from a student theater to a theater of poetry to performance-collages prepared by visual artists, musicians and actors. The shows were open-ended, accompanied by dialogue with the audience and concerts. The Turoń members also carried out open-air actions – for example, on the beach of Lake Wolsztyn, where Antoni Kostyło, dressed in a tuxedo, immersed himself in the water for a long time, causing consternation among the audience.
1967
On 23 August, during the open-air festival in Osieki (August 5–27), Tadeusz Kantor carried out his Panoramiczny Happening Morski (Panoramic Sea Happening) on the beach in Łazy – it was the most spectacular and complex of all his happenings. The orchestration of a dozen participants (mostly members of the Foksal Gallery community) attracted a huge audience. The happening consisted of four parts: Koncert Morski (Sea Concert), Barbujaż Erotyczny (The Erotic Barbouillage), Kultura Agrarna na Piasku (Agrarian Culture on Sand) and Tratwa Meduzy (The Raft of Medusa). It was no coincidence that the performance was called “panoramic” – a section of the beach became the stage for this event directed by Kantor, who ran on the sand and shouted instructions through a megaphone. The essence of the happening was to juxtapose several incompatible “ready-made elements” borrowed from different high and low registers of reality: distant historical events, artistic clichés, and the banal everyday life of a seaside resort.
During Kantor’s happening, Maria Pinińska-Bereś carried out one of her first performative actions – she walked along the beach in a long raincoat with suitcases in her hands, which was associated with the then-common practice of escaping across the Baltic Sea to Sweden. This annoyed Kantor, who disliked political literalism, so he ignored the artist and her action was largely unnoticed. Her subsequent performances had an intimate nature, often – as in the case of List-Latawiec (Letter-Kite, 1976), on whose pink tail she wrote the words “sorry I was, I am” – autobiographical, referring to the current condition of women. Pinińska-Bereś also referred to the cult of nature, addressing the dualistic understanding of the world and its division into antagonistic poles: culture-nature, woman-man, active-passive, as in Modlitwa o Deszcz (Prayer for Rain, 1977) or Aneksja Krajobrazu (Annexation of the Landscape, 1980). She was also interested in the role of art in public space, critiquing art institutions and the role of the artist, as in Punkt Obserwacyjny Zmian w Sztuce (Observation Point of Changes in Art, 1978) and (most powerfully) in Bańki Mydlane (Soap Bubbles, 1979). These themes would return in her feminist works (e.g. Pranie I and Pranie II [Laundry I and Laundry II], 1980, 1981), in which she performed the titular action on pink sheets of cloth with the word “feminism” written in red, and in Działanie na Przyrządy Kuchenne (Action on Kitchen Instruments, 1996), when she decorated her hat with pink cream, which she had whipped in front of the audience. Other important actions by Pinińska Bereś are those that commented directly on the political situation immediately after martial law: Tylko Miotła (Only a Broomstick, 1984), in which she dressed as a witch to symbolically “cleanse” the space of a gallery that had been boycotted in 1981–1983, and Umycie Rąk (Washing Hands, 1986), in which she dissociated herself from politics in art through the symbolic gesture of washing her hands.
Zbigniew Warpechowski’s first performance, Kwadrans Poetycki (Poetic Quarter), took place at the Rynek 13 café in Krakow. During it, the artist recited poems, which were destroyed after the recitation – they were chewed up and spat out by an actor sitting on Warpechowski’s back. The happening was accompanied by Tomasz Stańko on the trumpet. Warpechowski was one of the first artists in the world to engage in performance art and a pioneer of this type of activity in Poland.
At Lake Baikal in Siberia, Barbara Kozłowska initiated an activity called Linia Graniczna (Border Line) – a conceptual idea that involved drawing a line across the globe. The successive points on the line would be the places visited by her. Over the years, they would include Malta, Edinburgh, and California, among other places. On many beaches around the world, the artist piled up small cones of sand colored with environmentally-friendly dyes. The creation of the line was a manifestation of freedom that defies the existence of state borders. Kozłowska admitted the possibility that anybody who wanted could add points on the line. Such an open, democratic and inclusive formula of work was not often seen in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s.
The odNowa Gallery in Poznań was the venue for Jarosław Kozłowski’s artistic debut, the action Aranżacja (Arrangement): the floor of the gallery was littered with white styrofoam, the walls were painted white, various white objects were placed inside, and the viewers were blinded by white light. The gallery also showed a torn reproduction of a Vincent van Gogh portrait, which angered one of the viewers. He hit the display case with his fist, which prompted other viewers to begin vandalizing the exhibition. As a result, almost all the objects in the gallery were destroyed.
In the apartment of Urszula Broll and Andrzej Urbanowicz at Piastowska Street in Katowice, the esoteric art group Oneiron was formed, whose members, alongside the hosts, included Henryk Waniek, Antoni Halor, and Zygmunt Stuchlik. Apart from creating their own paintings, the artists also staged “Dadaist happenings” such as Wernisaż Dynamiczny (Dynamic Vernissage), Męczeństwo i Śmierć Joanny D’Arc (Martyrdom and Death of Joan of Arc), Salvador Dali, mystery plays, and the curious project Czarne Karty (Black Cards). The group continued to operate informally until Urbanowicz left for the United States in 1978.
1968
On January 6, Jerzy Bereś presented his first artistic manifestation Przepowiednia I (Akt Twórczy (Prophecy I (Creative Act)) at Warsaw’s Foksal Gallery. As in most of his future actions, the artist’s naked body became both material and tool. Two months later, on March 1, Przepowiednia II (Prophecy II) was shown at the Krzysztofory Gallery in Krakow. From this point on, the artist in his actions addressed social problems, referring to public life in a ceremonial way.
On March 15, the first of the performances inspired by Tadeusz Różewicz’s poem Spadanie (Falling), which combined theater, the visual arts, architecture and sound, took place at the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław. It was produced by a group of local young artists: Barbara Kozłowska, Zbigniew Makarewicz, Ernest Niemczyk, Wiesław Rembelinski and Ryszard Zamorski. Over the next few days, each of them took turns arranging the event, which consisted of form, sound, light and text.
On December 18, at Jerzy Ludwiński’s Mona Lisa Gallery in Wrocław, Włodzimierz Borowski carried out the Fubka Tarb (Pube of Faints) action. The artist did not personally participate in the happening – he asked Ludwiński to read out a text he had prepared, while he himself went for a walk through the streets of the city. A 1:1 photo of the audience was placed on the gallery wall.
1969
On May 6, the odNowa gallery in Poznań hosted Andrzej Matuszewski’s happening entitled Postępowanie (The Procedure), which began with the invited guests observing scenes from everyday life (ironing, packing, combing, sleeping, whittling, eating, preparing food, photographing, washing, clipping) through holes drilled in nine boxes. They were all performed mechanically and without engagement, so that a paradox could be clearly felt: the lack of eroticism in erotic situations or the lack of appetite when eating. Observation was made more difficult because of ping-pong balls scattered on the floor, which the audience finally started to throw at each other. This was followed by a strange feast in the company of mannequins, and the show culminated in the opening of a box containing a white substance that began to fill the room. The sounds produced during the consumption of the meal and the opening of the box were recorded and then played back. Matuszewski himself remained invisible throughout, controlling the event by giving radio instructions to his assistants.
In the fall, during the Fourth Golden Grape Symposium and Exhibition in Zielona Góra (September 25–October 25), the action My Nie Śpimy (We Are Not Asleep) was organized. It involved three of Tadeusz Kantor’s students – Mieczysław Dymny, Stanisław Szczepański and Tomasz Wawak, who occupied the exhibition hall while the jury deliberated over the awarding of the main prize. The artists set up camp beds and hung banners reading “We are not asleep,” while the accompanying “Permanent Jury” – composed of Wiesław Borowski, Anka Ptaszkowska, Zbigniew Gostomski (associated with the Foksal Gallery) and Krzysztof Niemczyk (a writer and dissident, known for his provocative behavior) – debated on the evaluation of the happening.
1970
Kazimierz Bendkowski began his performance Obraz Relatywny (Relative Image), which he continues to this day. It consists of a series of self-portraits addressing the mutual relations between, and transposition of, different orders of reality, systems of representation, fixing and communication; for example, in Obraz Picia (Picture of Drinking), single frames showed a horizontally divided monitor screen, on which – thanks to the use of a mixer – the image of the artist drinking Coca-Cola from a bottle was juxtaposed with an image obtained by processing the recording of the sound of drinking into a visual message.
On April 20, Poland’s first environmental happening took place in Lublin – Ból Tomka Kawiaka (Tomek Kawiak’s Pain), during which Kawiak wrapped bandage on trees damaged by city services along one of the city’s main thoroughfares – Narutowicza Street.
The Workshop of the Film Form (originally called the “Content” Workshop of Film Forms) was established in Łódź as a section of a student club at the Leon Schiller National Higher School of Film, Theater and Television. Its founders were: Wojciech Bruszewski, Tadeusz Junak, Andrzej Różycki, Zbigniew Rybczyński, Józef Robakowski and Paweł Kwiek. Criticizing the Łódź school and the entire institution of cinematography, they positioned themselves between cinema and the visual arts. As part of the initiative, numerous performative activities, both recorded and non-recorded, were carried out. The Warsztat (Workshop) action in 1972 – a series of daily happenings at the Łódź Museum of Art – became the manifesto of the artistic attitudes of the group’s members and the culmination of their collaboration. It included actions such as Różycki’s Identyfikacja Pozorna (Apparent Identification), Kwiek’s Kwiekołem and Łomokwiek and Robakowski’s Teatr Świetlny (Light Theater). The WFF existed until 1977.
After the Wrocław ’70 Visual Arts Symposium, on the initiative of Andrzej Lachowicz, Natalia Lach-Lachowicz and Zbigniew Dłubak, the PERMAFO (“permanent photography”) gallery was established at the Creative Unions Club in Wrocław. It was one of the first venues at the time to promote new media, i.e. photography, film and performance. Works by Polish and foreign artists associated with conceptualism and post-conceptualism were shown there. The name PERMAFO was also used by a collective set up by the same artists and a magazine published by them. The gallery ceased its activities with the imposition of martial law in 1981.
1971
In March, the Repassage Gallery (later also known as Repassage 2 and Re’Repassage) was established in Warsaw by Elżbieta and Emil Cieślar – former students of Oskar Hansen and Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. Over the years, its members included also Wiktor Gutt, Paweł Freisler, Krzysztof Jung, Zofia Kulik, Paweł Kwiek, Grzegorz Kowalski, Jerzy Słomiński and Roman Woźniak. The artists gathered around the gallery built an alternative community, interested in finding new ways for art and artists to function in society, as well as attempts to confront art with life. The event that inaugurated the gallery’s activity in the public space was Czyszczenie Sztuki (Cleaning of Art, 1972) – an action that lasted for two days non-stop in the gallery in Krakowskie Przedmieście and in the adjacent courtyard. The overall idea of the event was “to show art without pollution.”
In Wrocław, Jolanta Marcolla and Zdzisław Sosnowski, students of the State Higher School of Fine Arts, formed a group called Galeria Sztuki Aktualnej (Current Art Gallery). Its activities questioned traditional art forms such as painting and sculpture, opting instead for new media, which became a catalyst for performative actions.
Józef Szajna inaugurated his Teatr-Galeria (Theater-Gallery) at the Studio Art Center in Warsaw (formerly the Classical Theater), where he pursued the idea of education through the popularization of various art genres – primarily theater with strong visual expression, sophisticated stage design, and the important role of props. His starting point for creating performances was drawing.
In June, the Festival of Art School Students took place in Nowa Ruda. Its general program was created at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts by Przemysław Kwiek, Zofia Kulik, Jan Stanisław Wojciechowski and Zygmunt Piotrowski, among others. The event, which was organized annually until 1974, became an opportunity for meetings of performance artists from different centers.
In September, the Fourth Biennial of Spatial Forms was held in Elbląg, organized under the slogan “Congregation of Dreamers.” Its formula emphasized works and ideas that eluded traditional artistic classifications, such as actions of a performative nature. Twenty-seven people took part in the event: Włodzimierz Borowski, Bogdan Sękowski, Andrzej and Ewa Partum, Janusz M. Ogiński, Jan Wojciechowski, Przemysław Kwiek and Zofia Kulik, Stanisław Dróżdż, Jerzy Ludwiński, Zbigniew Makarewicz, Barbara Kozłowska, Jan Chwałczyk, Wanda Gołkowska, Krystyna Sokołowska and Antoni Dzieduszycki, Krystyn Zieliński, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Ireneusz Pierzgalski, Andrzej Matuszewski and Jarosław Kozłowski, Leon Romanów and Marceli Bacciarelli, Czesław Tumielewicz and Michał Gąsienica-Szostak, Anastazy Wiśniewski and Leszek Przyjemski.
In November, Krzysztof Zarębski’s first performative action entitled Kwiaty (Flowers) was held at the Women’s League Club in Warsaw. The artist used chrysanthemums to cover the floor, on which he arranged a half-naked model, and then sprinkled her body with pigments in different colors and magnesia. He then vacuumed them off the woman’s body, creating patterns that made up a “living painting.” In the second room, there was a box of soil with plants and white porcelain tap knobs – the audience could arrange them as their own “flowers.” In this way, one of the most characteristic features of Zarębski’s art came to the fore – a bold approach to issues of the body, eroticism and sexuality. Over time, his actions became increasingly provocative, combined with theatrical and aesthetic celebration of sublime perversion and lust and the use of various props-fetishes.
Andrzej Partum set up his Biuro Poezji (The Poetry Bureau) in Warsaw, which was located in a small room in the attic. It fulfilled the role of a gallery (later called the Pro/La gallery) and a venue for presentations, meetings and performances as well as a contact point in the international mail art movement. In 1971–1984, Partum amassed an archive by collecting documentation connected to the activities of the Poetry Bureau, his own work and that of numerous artists from around the world with whom he kept in touch.
1972
In spring, in one of the bathrooms in the Dziekanka dormitory in Warsaw, Teresa Murak made her first “sowing” of cress, which would later become a hallmark of her work. The “sowings,” in which the artist used the plant in various ways, dominated her practice until the end of the 1970s. Originally, they were an element of interventions (Procesja [Procession], Warsaw, 1974) or actions of a sacred and ritual nature (Wielkanocny Dywan [Easter Carpet] and other actions in her hometown of Kiełczewice conducted after 1974). An evocative variant of “sowing” were Murak’s vigils over the sprouting cress, whose essential final stage was the artist’s physical contact with the plant, as in Przyjście Zieleni (The Arrival of Greenery) at the Repassage Gallery in Warsaw and Lady’s Smock in Lublin (both 1975). The purely performative potential of using cress appeared again in an original way in the late 1980s, when the artist stayed in a bathtub filled with pulverized grain until the sprouts appeared (Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, 1989; PS 1 Gallery, New York, 1991).
In February, during Przemysław Kwiek’s intervention at the Repassage Gallery in Warsaw, Leszek Przyjemski and Anastazy Wiśniewski organized Rozmowy Indywidualne (Individual Conversations). The two artists, dressed in black sweaters, sat at a table covered with a red cloth and asked visitors absurd questions, all the more incomprehensible because their words were drowned out by the Internationale coming from the tape recorder. These conversations could trigger associations with both interviews with candidates for party members and militia interrogation.
In August, a series of performances by Zbigniew Warpechowski was organized at the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh. They were shown for several days, both in the gallery itself and in public space. Some of the actions were a repetition or elaboration of the artist’s earlier actions, e.g. Drawing on the Wall, in which he involved Marina Vaizey, a Financial Times journalist, fastening her hand to the wall and ordering her to draw. The theme of “nothing”, frequently present in the artist’s work, appeared this time in the form of sheets of paper with the words “NOTHING” scattered on the street. Finally, there was the Aukcja Talerzy (Plate Auction) – for a price of between £1 and £2, one of 60 plates with a slogan chosen by the artist could be purchased. Those that were not sold were to serve as inspiration for new works.
At ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 56 in Warsaw, the Dziekanka Student Center for Artistic Communists was set up. It was an interdisciplinary artistic and educational institution managed jointly by the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Music. In 1976, Pracownia Dziekanka (Dziekanka Workshop) was established as a studio-gallery run by students of the Academy of Fine Arts: Janusz Bałdyga, Jerzy Onuch and Łukasz Szajna. In 1979, when Sikorski and Onuch took over the management, the name was changed to Galeria Dziekanka. The venue was intended to be a center for activities alternative to official fashions and currents, where visual arts coexisted with music and theater; painting, sculpture, drawing and installations were presented on an equal footing with photography, performance and video art.
After the failure of the performance Pomyśl Komunizm (Think Communism), Zygmunt Piotrowski, its main creator, became discouraged from political action and formed Studio Artystyczno-Badawcze Studentów Uczelni Artystycznych (Art and Research Studio of Art Schools Students) in Warsaw, also known as Studio A-B. It was a self-education group, conducting interdisciplinary studies on the issue of collaboration in the creative process. The venue for implementing the idea was the clubhouse of the Dziekanka student house on Krakowskie Przedmieście street. The first collective work, which was an attempt by Studio A-B in cooperation with people from outside the group to put into practice the principles of alternative education, was a workshop in Nowa Ruda during the Second Festival of Art Schools (June 1973). In 1973 Piotrowski and his group carried out the action Hejnał (Bugle Call) – the artists spent one hour outlining the shadows of random people in the capital’s Old Town Square. The changing angle of light meant that the angle of the drawings on the cobblestones differed due to the passage of time. The Studio later split into two independent groups with the same name, but written in different ways: Piotrwowski’s Studio A-B and Ryszard Kryska’s S-A-B.
1973
In March 1973, the Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement) Theater was founded in Warsaw (the group had been operating unofficially since 1972, when it held its first workshops). Its founder and artistic director was Wojciech Krukowski, who collaborated on this project with Janusz Bałdyga, Jolanta Krukowska, Zbigniew Olkiewicz, Jarosław and Krzysztof Żwirblis, Cezary Marczak and Jan Pieniążek. The first performance of the ensemble was Collage (1973), followed by the following productions: Lektorat (Lecture, 1973), Głód (Hunger, 1974), Autobus (Bus), Wieża (Tower, both 1975), Lekcje (Lessons, 1976) and Życie codzienne po Wielkiej Rewolucji Francuskiej (Everyday Life after the Great French Revolution, 1980). The group’s official debut took place at the National Amateur Pantomime Review in Szczecin (April 1–3, 1973), during which the performances Collage and Lektorat received the first prize. The group’s work, combining theater, the visual arts, performance and film, focused on the common elements of movement, space and social communication. The activities of Akademia Ruchu in public space, carried out continuously since 1974 (about 600 performances, events and street actions), are the first example in Poland of systematic creative practice presented outside the official institutional framework – on the streets, in private homes or industrial facilities. Their common denominator was the use of ordinary situations and elements of everyday life, which acquired strangeness through the artists’ actions, being transformed from ordinary to extraordinary. Akademia Ruchu has presented its works in almost all European countries, as well as in the Americas and Japan as part of tours and major theater festivals.
Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek (the KwieKulik artistic duo) began running an independent institution called Pracownia Działania, Dokumentacji i Upowszechniania (Action, Documentation and Popularization Studio) in their apartment, where they organized exhibitions and hosted artists from abroad, as well as archived and presented documentation of their own activities. The artists worked together until 1987, when they started to work individually.
In April, during the Fifth Biennial of Spatial Forms (organized by Gerard Kwiatkowski under the slogan “Cinema-Laboratory”) at the El Gallery in Elbląg, Andrzej Partum showed two performances: Akupunktura (Acupuncture) and Film Nie Potrzebuje Ekranu (Film Doesn’t Need a Screen). During the screening of Józef Robakowski’s film, Partum, sitting on a ladder, punctured the screen with pins, which he called “acupuncture,” while his assistant held a mirror in front of the projector and transferred the image onto the vault and gallery walls. The artist’s intervention hinted at the physicality of film projection and the possibilities of expanding the field of influence of the film medium.
1974
In May 1974, during a live broadcast on Channel Two of Polish Television, Paweł Kwiek showed a performance entitled Sytuacja Studio (Video A) (Situation of the Studio (Video A)) in front of a multi-thousand audience. Standing in front of the cameras, he gave instructions to the cameramen and directed a televised message about himself. In this way, he wanted to show the viewers that any attempt to report a phenomenon by means of mass communication is necessarily distorted by the medium, as it always involves interpretation, i.e. the construction of new information, by the person who controls the medium. This was the first artistic work in Poland to use the medium of television.
In September, Jerzy Kalina carried out the action Biały Most (White Bridge) during the scientific conference “Intuition and Intellect” in Wrocław. It consisted in building a bridge over a canal and placing the inscription “intuition” on one bank and “intellect” on the other. The audience was told to take sides, and once they chose their preferred bank, the artist stepped onto the bridge, which collapsed, and people began to fall into the water. The action was intended to show the artificiality of such a division.
Marek Konieczny began to implement his idea of Think Crazy – an artistic strategy of exploring non-standard behaviors, feelings, intuitive reactions, carnality and eroticism hidden under the guise of rationalism. A horn glued to the artist’s forehead became an integral part of his performances and installations during this period. This idea marked a breakthrough in his art – a return to the object, evident in a series of elaborate paintings and items such as pyramids, gold, sickles, frames, furs or animal figures, which appeared in Konieczny’s performances and films.
1974/1975
In Wrocław, an artist collective called Galeria Sztuki Najnowszej (Recent Art Gallery) was established, composed at various times by Anna and Romuald Kutera, Lech Mrożek, Piotr Olszański, the duo Antosz & Andzia (Katarzyna Chierowska and Stanisław Antosz) and Witold Liszkowski. It operated in the so-called Pałacyk on Kościuszki Street and focused on the latest developments in experimental photography and film, conceptual and contextual art, functioning as an important link in the network of domestic and foreign galleries. A number of interesting performative activities were carried out as part of the gallery’s activities, such as Anna Kutera’s series Sytuacje stymulowane (Stimulated Situations)and Dialog (1975), Romuald Kutera’s Tu (HERE) (1975), Witold Liszkowski’s Współczesność (Contemporaneity, 1980) or the Murder series (1975) by Antosz & Andzia.
1975
Jolanta Marcolla, as the first woman artist in Poland, carried out a tape-recorded video performance. In a TV studio in Łódź, she performed a series of activities under the title Dimension, in which she attempted to analyze the television medium itself. In Dimension I she arranged a situation of conversation conducted through television: the artist and another participant were separated by a wall, but they could speak directly to each other thanks to cameras and monitors placed on both sides. The whole situation was recorded by an additional camera, connected to a reel-to-reel video recorder. The same year also saw the artist’s most well-known work, the film Kiss. It featured Marcolla herself, who repeatedly made the simple gesture of blowing a kiss to the camera, making it possible to observe how the perception of the situation changes as a result of its repetition.
1975–1979
Krzysztof Zarębski produced a series of actions for the camera lens called Strefy Kontaktu (Contact Zones), consisting of recordings of erotic games in the artist’s private space (an apartment shared with his partner) interspersed with images of Warsaw under First Secretary Edward Gierek. The rhythm was set by alternating scenes of the private and the public – a suggestion that in parallel to the gray everyday life, there were inaccessible places where desire, eroticism and sexuality came to the fore and existed despite the communist censorship.
1977
At the Documenta 6 exhibition in Kassel, Wojciech Bruszewski showed the film-performance Struktura Czasu – Punkty (Time Structure – Points). During the screening, he made black dots on a white screen and filmed the action for several minutes in one take. He then re-filmed the screened film, stepping into the projector light and adding more black dots on the screen. After that, he recorded the second film on the reproduction table, adding new black dots. Screening the third film, he again stepped into the projector light and made some real black dots on the surface of the screen. This created four layers of film within film – four layers of time fused into one projection of very similar black dots.
1978
In March 1978, Natalia LL began her series Dreaming, in which she explored the meaning of falling asleep and dreaming as simple manifestations of everyday life that turn out to be crucial to understand the essence of intuitive cognition. The artist carried out her tests in various situations: she fell asleep under the influence of sleeping pills in front of an audience gathered in the gallery space, conducted individual séances in front of a camera and photographed sleeping people.
In April, Henryk Gajewski – an artist, filmmaker and founder of the Remont Gallery – organized the “I AM – International Artists Meeting” in Warsaw, which was the first festival of intermedia art in Eastern Europe. The several-day event, to which about 50 people from Europe, the Americas and Japan were invited, became a venue for presentations, lectures and exchange of artistic experiences. The name of the festival – “I AM” – emphasized the essence of performance (the presence of the artist) and the value of the human being, rather than the unified crowd. This was the first instance of such a large-scale collaboration between Eastern and Western artists, resulting in the emergence of a platform of understanding. Participants in the event included: Alberta van der Weide, Servie Janssen, Alison Knowles, Marga van Mechelen, Tibor Hajas, Hendrick Have, Fred Licht, Franco Vaccari, Peter Bartoš, Joel Marechal, TP Laboratory, Hans Koens, Titus Muizelaar, Klaas Gubbels, Akademia Ruchu, Krzysztof Zarębski, Gérald Minkoff, Petr Štembera, Ulises Carrión, Marten Hendricks, Raul Marroquin, Harrie de Kroon and Hans Eijkelboom, among others.
In October, one of the first international meetings of performance artists in Poland, the “Performance and Body Festival,” was held at the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin, run by Andrzej Mroczek. Over the course of three days, there were more than a dozen performances by around twenty people from eight European countries, including some from behind the Iron Curtain. The Polish artists included the doyens of performance art, such as Jerzy Bereś and Zbigniew Warpechowski, as well as the KwieKulik duo with their famous Działanie na Głowę (Head Action). Foreign visitors included Tibor Hajas, Albert van der Weiden, Kees Mol and Harry de Kroon, Action Space, Roland Miller, Shirley Cameron and Dragoljub Raša Todosijević. The festival introduced the English term “performance” into the language of Polish art, which replaced previously used terms such as “action,” “activity” or “event.” It was also the first time when the word “performance” was officially used in the title of a work.
1978–1979
Natalia LL carried out the performance Punkty Podparcia (Points of Support), conceived as a response to art activities of the 1970s that focused on media analyses. In contrast to them, the artist emphasized the role of the subject in art, understood as “conscious activity.” According to her, the person of the artist is not only the creator of art, but also its subject and object. Treating her body as a medium, Natalia LL recreated the shape of 18 constellations on the grass of the Pieniny National Park – in this way, the human body became a microcosm and a reflection of the Cosmos, a link between the Earth and the rest of the Universe.
1979
On April 24, Krzysztof Zarębski gave a performance at the Stodoła Club in Warsaw as part of the program of the P.O. Box 17 Gallery, to which he invited the violinist Elektra Kurtis. The gallery, run by Tomasz Sikorski and Tomasz Konart, was conceived as a continuation of the Mospan Gallery (closed in 1978). As it had no permanent premises, only a post office box number 17 at Post Office No. 65 in Warsaw, it organized guest events in the premises of other institutions. It also distributed art prints as mail art.
On the initiative of Michał Bieganowski, Zakład nad Fosą (ZnF, Studio on the Moat) was established in the student dormitory of Wrocław Polytechnic at ul. Podwale 27. In 1980, the initiator of the idea invited Wojciech Stefanik, who had already run student galleries Simplex and Katakumby, to co-create the program of the venue. In this way, Stefanik established his Ośrodek Działań Plastycznych (ODP, Center for Artistic Activities), with its own program, but functioning in the same place and in cooperation with Bieganowski’s Studio (it functioned from 1981). The venue showed exhibition of Alojzy Gryt, Ewa Zarzycka, Barbara Kozłowska, Jarosław Kozłowski, Hanna Łuczak, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Zbigniew Makarewicz and others. Stefanik himself also presented his own performances and shows. One of the most important events organized by ZnF and ODP was the “Week of the Studio on the Moat” (April 26–29, 1984), which consisted of many speeches, lectures and presentations of documentation. Among the participants were Stanisław Dróżdż, Jerzy Ludwiński, Zbigniew Makarewicz and performers Piotr Grzybowski, Władysław Kaźmierczak, Wojciech Stefanik, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Artur Tajber and Barbara Kozłowska. There was also a presentation of the film documentation of Studio Kompozycji EMocjonalnej (Emotional Composition Studio: Zbigniew Jeż, Grzegorz Kolasiński, Jerzy Ryba, Wojciech Sztukowski), the documentation of Waldemar Petryk’s Kalypso gallery from Warsaw, and the documentation of the previous activities of ZnF and ODP. On the last day there was also a collective performance by the Konger group.
The Łódź Kaliska group was founded by Marek Janiak, Andrzej Kwietniewski, Adam Rzepecki, Andrzej Świetlik and Andrzej Wielogórski (pseud. “Makary”). The artists’ goal was to explore human vision and mechanical recording through the creation of photographs, experimental films and performances inspired by Conceptualism. In 1980–1981, its artistic program became decidedly more Dadaist-Surrealist, with a focus on happenings and anarchist expression; it attacked and ridiculed the Polish neo-avant-garde formation and highlighted the absurdities of life in communist Poland. The group’s first street action, successfully carried out in Darłowo, was entitled Dividing the Street With a Black Ribbon to Make a Fuss and Divert Attention in Order to Put a White Sheet on a Group of People, Tie Them up and Whack Them on the Ass.
1980
In December, Krzysztof Jung held a performance called Rozmowa (Conversation) at the Re’Repassage gallery. It involved three people: the artist and two of his friends, Dorota Krawczyk-Janisch and Wojciech Piotrowski. Jung and Piotrowski, dressed in black, sat in a dark room with the audience, stitching their shirts and pants together – in this way, they became connected with each other. Finally, they stripped naked and walked away, leaving their stitched clothes behind. Meanwhile, Krawczyk-Janisch, separated from them by a black curtain, cut it into strips, got out and exposed her nakedness. As a result of this performance, Jung, who died in 1998, became a forerunner of queer art in Poland.
1981
In May, the meeting “Manifestations, Performance” took place in Krakow. Its formal organizer was the Youth Circle at the Union of Polish Visual Artists in Krakow, and the organizing committee included Władysław Kaźmierczak, Artur Tajber and Piotr Borowicki. It was the first presentation of such a wide range of action art in this city. As part of the event, at Jaszczurowa Galeria Fotografii, Ewa Partum showed her version of Głupia Kobieta (Stupid Woman) while Jan Świdziński presented Wolność i Ograniczenie (Freedom and Restriction).
The AWACS group was formed in Krakow by Piotr Grzybowski and Maciej Toporowicz. Its name came from the acronym for the American early warning system. Both artists were interested in pushing boundaries and taking risks, which is why they often used drastic means (such as letting blood, breaking glass, killing animals on stage, using live wires or smoke candles), in a spirit related to Vienna Actionism. One of the most spectacular AWACS actions was an intervention just before martial law was declared, during the opening of an exhibition of documentation of the first part of the 9th Krakow Meetings (November 25, 1981) at the BWA Gallery in Krakow, curated by Maria Pinińska-Bereś. The artists, whose application for the event was rejected, marched through the streets of the city, wrapped in black bandages, accompanied by Jarosław Godfrejow and Łukasz Jogałła wearing US army uniforms. During the official opening of the exhibition, the artists presented Pinińska-Bereś with a black (lacquered) rose.
On November 18, during the 9th Krakow Meetings (November 13–December 13, 1981) at the Bureau of Art Exhibitions in Krakow, Jerzy Bereś performed the action Manifestacja Romantyczna (Romantic Manifestation) for the first time. In it, he used Wózek Romantyczny (Romantic Cart), which he took to the streets of Krakow, where he lit bonfires and painted symbolic slogans next to them.
Six days before the imposition of martial law in Poland, Janusz Bałdyga carried out his first performance, titled Generał Center, at the Dziekanka Studio in Warsaw. Like all of the artist’s works before 1985, it reflected the current political tensions and problems in Poland, addressing the broader issues of dictatorship and uniformity. Bałdyga’s performance was conceived as a lecture enriched with various “training materials” – a drawing portrait of a general, a barrier painted in diagonal stripes, and two other objects. The artist invited Jacek Kryszkowski (artist, performer, creator of objects, author of texts, associated with the Kultura Zrzuty environment), who came to the hall in an outfit resembling a general’s uniform. A year later Bałdyga presented the performance Tatry Polskie – Projekt Normalizacji (The Polish Tatras – A Normalization Project), which he continued showing until the end of martial law in 1983 and which conceptualized the “normalization of the situation in the country.” In 1983, as part of the “Inscriptions” Festival, together with Zygmunt Piotrowski (artist, performer, also known as Noah Warsaw), he showed the performance Użycie Siły (Use of Force), for which he used his photographs “unsuitable for identification documents,” having previously enlarged them. In each photograph, Bałdyga was covering a different part of his face. During the performance, he strolled among the photos and read out warning texts: “Force may be used,” “Attention, force is about to be used.”
1982
Ewa Partum carried out the performance Hommage à Solidarność, which she first presented in a private underground gallery in Łódź on the anniversary of the founding of Solidarity. The artist repeated it a year later at the Wewerka gallery in West Berlin, where her retrospective exhibition was taking place. Standing naked in front of a hanging sheet of paper with the word “Solidarity” written on it, she left lipstick marks on the successive letters, thus commemorating the social movement, which, according to Partum, was largely an artistic activity. She was one of the first Polish artists to take up conceptual art, creating many actions, performances, films, photographs, as well as visual poetry; her work played a precursory role in the fields of body art, feminist art and critical art in Poland.
1983/1984
The KONGER group was set up in Krakow to protest against the political situation of the time and the opinions of critics who considered performance to be an obsolete medium. The group did not have a permanent makeup – its founders were Władysław Kaźmierczak, Artur Tajber, Marian Figiel and Marcin Krzyżanowski; Kazimierz Madej and Piotr Grzybowski were also actively involved. KONGER’s activities led to a series of reprisals by the authorities, including a ban on public performances for Tajber issued by the provincial communist authorities.
1984
In April, during the “Week of the Studio on the Moat” in Wroclaw, the KONGER Group carried out Poland’s first collective performance transmitted videophonically in real time through CCTV. The performance took place in a closed room, without an audience, who could watch it as a real-time video transmission on monitors in front of the entrance door.
1985
The Orange Alternative began organizing street actions and happenings based on absurdity and caricature, ridiculing the communist regime through its subversive affirmation (e.g. by celebrating communist holidays). This artistic and social movement was created in Wrocław in the 1980s by Waldemar “Major” Fydrych. Its main goal was to come up with an alternative form of opposition to authoritarian power, based on methods of peaceful protest using absurd and nonsensical elements. The Orange Alternative is considered part of the broader “Solidarity” movement, although one of its main themes was the parody of the trade union. Initially, members of the group painted graffiti of dwarfs on paint covering anti-government slogans on the walls of buildings. Between 1985 and 1990, more than 60 actions were organized in several Polish cities. The movement’s activities were suspended in 1989 and reactivated eleven years later, but on a much smaller scale.
Jan Świdziński conducted the performance Rozmywanie (Myśląc o Heideggerze) (Blurring (Thinking of Heidegger)). The artist symbolically painted over quotes from Martin Heidegger on the wall, thus showing the difference between being and existence and visualizing the basis of the German philosopher’s theory. With his action, Świdziński also emphasized the cyclical nature of events, the transformation of entities into beings.
Jacek Kryszkowski carried out an action called Podróż do Rosji po Witkacego (Trip to Russia for Witkacy). To mark the 100th anniversary of Witkacy’s birth, it was planned to bring his ashes to Poland from the village of Jeziory in present-day Ukraine, where he committed suicide and was buried in 1939. Kryszkowski, along with his then-wife Elżbieta Kacprzak and friend Mikołaj “Miken” Malinowski, made a long journey to Jeziory (by train, rented car, and finally by bicycle), planning to dig up Witkacy’s grave at night, take out a few bones, grind them to dust in a meat grinder and transport the remains across the border as mustard. The event was to be documented not only by the accounts of the other participants in the expedition, but also by photographs. The authenticity of the expedition was doubted by those who knew Kryszkowski, but the artist managed to build the myth so successfully that over the years it began to be treated as fact by art historians.
At the turn of November and December, the First Biennial of New Art took place in Zielona Góra, organized on the initiative of Zenon Polus and Zbigniew Szymaniak. Approximately 80 artists participated, including authorities with an established position in Polish art, such as Jan Berdyszak, Jarosław Kozłowski or Ryszard Winiarski, who established an informal organizing committee. The event was also attended by Andrzej Mitan, who (together with Cezary Staniszewski) gave an improvised concert-performance. It was accompanied by objects – small carts with vertical metal rods on which carp were impaled, so the stench of the dead fish filled in the gallery, thus involving all the senses of the audience. The title of the event – Psalm I – evoked musical and religious connotations.
1986
Artur Tajber and Barbara Maroń founded the gt (gallery-theater) gallery, which mainly presented performances and was actively participated in international art exchange. It also initiated the first international performance art festival after martial law called “4 Days” (1988).
1987
In Kassel, during dokumenta 8, an international review of performance art curated by Elisabeth Jappe and held from June 12 to September 20, Poland was represented by Zbigniew Warpechowski and Akademia Ruchu. Other participants in the event included Wojciech Bruszewski, Krzysztof Wodiczko and Zygmunt Piotrowski (as a member of the international group Black Market).
1988
In Krakow, the QQ Gallery was established on the initiative of three students: Łukasz Guzek, Cezary Woźniak and Krzysztof Klimek. Initially located in the basement of the building at ul. Rakowicka 21, where Woźniak lived, in 1994 it was moved to the attic of Guzek’s private flat at ul. Mehoffea 2. The gallery’s program included mainly performative actions and the presentation of installations, focusing on art that was time-based or site-specific. The gallery included a publishing house, QQ Press, which published an annual collection of theoretical texts summarizing events and exhibitions. The gallery hosted, among others, Marcin Berdyszak, Brian Connolly, Oskar Dawicki, Władysław Kaźmierczak, Paweł Kwaśniewski, Alastair MacLennan, Maria Anna Potocka, Józef Robakowski, Jan Rylke, Łukasz Skąpski, Jan Świdziński, Artur Tajber, Piotr Wyrzykowski.
1989
In the summer, during a meeting of Ruch Wolność i Pokój (Freedom and Peace Movement) and Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego (Alternative Society Movement) in Lubieszewo, the Leeeżeć Community was founded. This intermedia art group, whose members came mainly from the cultural studies milieu of the University of Łódź, uses installation, graffiti, photography, happenings and video art. The main driving force of the group is Egon Fietke (Andrzej Miastkowski) and cooperating artists: experimental music creator Jerzy Korzeń (Michał Pietrzak), cinematographers: KAM (Kamil Chrapowicki) and Barnaba (Tomasz Wieczorek) and, to a lesser extent, Marek Jahoda (Michał Gralak), who has lived in New York since the early 1990s, and Stanisława Gołąb (Adrianna Rajch). One of the first actions of the Leeeżeć Community was a spectacular event that challenged the socialist state and the Solidarity opposition – Obżartówka Protestacyjna (Protest Stowaway, Faculty of Philology, University of Łódź, 1989). A year later, the artists staged a more provocative action, Zamknąć Mandelę (Lock Up Mandela), in front of the Łódź City Hall. In a broader context, the intermedial activities of its members, often based on nihilism, hark back to the attitude of the ludic-anarchist group Łódź Kaliska.
From September 16 to October 15, the Polish Sculpture Center in Oronsko hosted the Performance Art Festival, curated by Zbigniew Wieczorek. The festival was divided into cycles and the participants included: Grupa Terapeutyczna Performer, Paweł Kwaśniewski, Zygmunt Piotrowski, Janusz Bałdyga, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Teresa Murak and Jerzy Bereś.
In December, the first review of media art and interdisciplinary activities was held in Wrocław under the name “Wro Sound Basis Visual Art Festival.” Organized on the initiative of Violetta Kutlubasis-Krajewska, Piotr Krajewski, Zbigniew Kupisz and Lech Janerka, the event promoted art combining sound, image and performative activities using electronics. It was the first large-scale festival in Poland to present electronic art in its various interdisciplinary and experimental forms. In 1993, the festival was transformed into a biennial, and the subtitle “New Media Art Biennial” was added. Since 1995 it has been held regularly as the WRO International Media Art Biennial.
1990
In one of the rooms of a former theater studio in Lublin, Waldemar Tatarczuk held a performance called Pomiędzy (Between). In it, the artist paid tribute to the work of Marina Abramović, Ulay or Zbigniew Warpechowski, who in their actions often test the limits of the human body. Tatarczuk, who lives in Lublin, used mirrors that were initially facing each other. By stepping between them, the performer disrupted this ideal arrangement, showing that a person cannot maintain it and that his presence has a destructive effect.
1991
During his studies at the Faculty of Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Paweł Althamer created his first performance, Woda, Czas, Przestrzeń (Water, Time, Space), in which he enclosed himself in a plastic bag slowly filled with cold water. It was followed by the work Kardynał (Cardinal) – in the presence of colleagues and to the sound of religious music, he smoked marijuana while sitting in a bathtub filled with water and a purple solution.
From 24 to 28 September, the International Performance Festival “Real Time, Story Telling” took place at the Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in Sopot. More than 80 people participated, including: Akademia Ruchu, Janusz Bałdyga, Witosław Czerwonka, Andrzej Dudek-Dürer, Leszek Golec, Jan Gryka, Marek Janiak, Barbara Konopka, Alina Anka Kowalska, Barbara Kozłowska, Anna and Romuald Kutera, Paweł Kwiek, Przemysław Kwiek, Natalia LL, Andrzej Lachowicz, Ryszard Lugowski, Zbigniew Makarewicz, Fredo Ojda, Andrzej Partum, Ryszard Piegza, Małgorzata Potocka, Józef Robakowski, Jan Świdziński, Anna Tyczyńska, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Anastazy B. Wiśniewski and Ewa Zarzycka.
1993
At the Center for Polish Sculpture in Orońsko, Alicja Żebrowska gave a performance called Przemiana w Kamień (Transformation into Stone), documented in the video Kamienienie (Petrification), in which she enclosed herself in a stone sarcophagus warmed up to human body temperature. Over time, the stone cooled, and when its temperature dropped below 36.6 degrees Celsius, the artist left the sarcophagus, which separated her from the stimuli of the outside world for about half an hour. The situation was marked by a paradoxical inversion – the warm stone took on the properties of the human body, and it was the stone that cooled, while the living human body enclosed within it maintained its temperature. Kamienienie evoked liminal states associated with leaving one’s own body and the experience of death. This is a characteristic feature of Żebrowska’s practice, whose works intensely explore taboo areas.
1994
On August 23, Zbigniew Warpechowski carried out his Performance Troski, Performance Zobowiązania (Performance of Concern, Performance of Commitment). Lasting less than four minutes, the action was staged by Warpechowski in front of his house in the company of three young artists – Małgorzata Żarczyńska, Wojciech Jaruszewski and Oskar Dawicki. It evoked a tribal rite in which the master-disciple relationship is clearly visible; the latter received a symbolic message from the performer in the form of blowing air – breath and bells. According to Warpechowski, the blowing-breathing had the symbolic dimension of a rite of passage. It was the breath of an experienced artist who, after careful observation (using a magnifying glass), becomes convinced of the great potential and sincerity of the souls of the young artists and offers them “a breath of artistic goodness.”
1997
Janusz Bałdyga first presented the performance Kroki (Steps), which he repeated several times in the following years. He used coils of rope, broken boards, or water jugs as props to create enclosed spaces in which he inscribed his body. In the course of the action, the artist moved in a space defined by simple physical attributes, exploring their tangible properties and durability, as well as testing the limits of his own body. These actions were usually characterized by the anticipation of a critical moment, a kind of resolution or reevaluation, in which a catastrophe might occur: the jug of water would shatter under the artist’s weight, the boards would break, something would collapse or fall.
1999
Waldemar Tatarczuk founded Ośrodek Sztuki Performance (Performance Art Center) in Lublin, which functioned for ten years at the local Cultural Center. It was devoted to the presentation, popularization and research of this form of art. Tatarczuk also organized international festivals of performance art.
In Piotrkow Trybunalski, the “Interaactions” International Action Art Festival was created on the initiative of Ryszard Piegza (a Polish artist living in Paris), Stanislaw Piotr Gajda and Gordian Piec. The initiative was inspired by the transfer of Salvador Dali’s “center of the world” from the train station in Perpignan, France, to the Europa Restaurant in Piotrkow on August 22, 1998.
