INTERACTIONS 4
ArtActionMeeting

I think the festival was real cool at every point durin the six days. The place was brilliant, where it was held at the former restaurant "Europa". It was empty, devastated, dirty, but ideal. Excellent list of names of performers. Good and young public. And there was not a conflict with regular art, which always has depreciated the live art.

Festival did not become dominated by the manners of super star performers. These artists, which have this fatal susceptibility, were not invited or happily they never arrive at the festival. So, the atmosphere was very creative. We have only a question: did the artists undertake the essential problems? And what kind? What problems were discussed?

Zygmunt Piotrowski, Boris Nieslony, Richard Martel, Natalie Perreault, Sakiko Yamaoka concentrated on ecological issues in different forms and configurations. Do they communicate something new to us? Do they change our way of thinking of ecology? Does "GROUNWORK" suggest that we continue to be powerless in the face of all actions of the preservation of nature? Or that the protection of nature with participation of governments and international organization does not create a hope for us to keep nature clean. Do we have to begin everything again?

Jan Swidzinski, Nonko Ono, Ryo Maruyama, Pekka Luhta, Inari Virmakoski, Kees Mol, Jacques van Poppel were concentrating on autobiographical, personal experiences. They linked their own life, art and sometimes religion and philosophy. Each performance was extremely fascinating.

Victor Petrov focused attention on the form of coming into his own being in his own body in space. In the context of other matters, seeking some common forms.

Denis Romanowski additionally included the public with the element of humor.

Krzysztof Zarebski paid attention to one of the most important figure in show business - "The DJ", of course in a perfidious and ironical manner.

Anti - cool (Tomoko Takahashi) told about the hedonistic attitudes in societies, questioning what is in general called "cool". The hero of the performance was chewing-gum. She chewed in big quantities and made a large ball that also included the audiences' gum . Once again Tomoko chewed the gum.

Kinga Araya did a kind of transformation: at one time she was a Pole and later she became a Canadian. She wore a white and red dress, which was visually similar to the Canadian flag, and after a change to the Polish flag and she put on red boots making it difficult to walk. Only the hymns of both countries were not symmetrical.

Jan Piekarczyk spoke about the creation of the world by God.

Adina Bar-on almost in silence performed movements that represented photographs from the front pages of newspapers, showing the suffering of people after the death of family members in Israel and Palestine. But she could also have been miming other people from around the world.

Chumpon Apisuk spoke about globalization and correctly about our dependence on ubiquitous pop art, and the depreciation of culture.

Ewa Rybska & Wladyslaw Kazmierczak in a very expressive performance told about the degradation of culture by mass-media and about the frivolous treatment of language and signs by media-workers.

Ryszard Piegza constructed his own performance with two columns (or towers), a chair and a table and the often used circles - targets. We felt the memory of 11 September 2001. Memory about the gigantic destruction and our helplessness.

Another performance - with a geometrical elements - was presented by Janusz Baldyga. He presented surely the most intriguing trick of the festival, when he turned many jars of water upside-down without the water spilling. It was a small optimistic image from the whole festival. But all of us knew that he poured a little salt in the jars.

Waldemar Tatarczuk in fact also spoke about geometry, about Szpakowski's drawings. He transformed the geometry of drawings into the monotonous and minimal sound activity, which demanded the total concentration of the audience.

Jozsef Juhasz realized a lovely performance on an island of the main city crossing. He went under the earth, leaving out only hands and legs, riding on bicycle for a moment. Anyway, this performance was one of many he has performed using a bicycle in strange places.

Massimo Zanasi showed a film about heavy and hard work (surely on Sardinia) while playing on a trombone.

Anna Kuczynska drank vodka (but a little), with the intention to express her own relation to the arts. She exposed her disbeliefs in art.

Dariusz Fodczuk realized his next "Game" with a remarkably brave public, which overcame any shame and appeared nakedly together with the artist.

Przemyslaw Kwiek in his appearance, he drove critical dialogue among Polish reality and perspective of polish access to United Europe. The dialogue were sounds of procession of Corpus-Christi Day, with his own comments while he was watching television programs. His appearance ended with the hymn of United Europe.