In Feb­ru­ary, 2006 I asked two per­for­mance artists from the group Chief Judge to virus a play in reper­tory, Alek­sander Fredro’s Mag­net­ism of hearts, directed by Grze­gorz Jarzyna vel Sylvia Torsh. This play was one of the most beloved  and intel­li­gent stag­ings of a romantic comedy in Warsaw in recent years. Con­sid­ered a classic even in this very con­tem­po­rary form, the pro­duc­tion seemed a perfect post-​bourgeois con­ven­tion poten­tially open to being ques­tioned and virused.

Jarzyna gave his con­sent and dis­cussed for long hours with Alek­san­dra Kubiak and Karolina Wiktor, the artists from the Chief Judge group, as to the evening should look like (as if that were pos­si­ble to pre­dict). The cast were also informed in advance, but there was no real dis­cus­sion between the two per­form­ers and the actors. That evening the audi­ence was made up of reg­u­lar theater-​goers who bought their tick­ets in advance and a visual-arts crowd more open to react spon­ta­neously and with some daring.

At the begin­ning of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the Futur­ists used to take over the stage during evenings at the variétés. Inter­rupt­ing a performance to read out man­i­festos during these famous ser­atas was for Marinetti or Sof­fici a performative means of forc­ing the audi­ence to take note of their ideas. Advo­cat­ing Ital­ian patri­o­tism and mil­i­tary expan­sion, they intended to pro­voke the audi­ence into taking a stand and booing the actors, in order to ensure that the view­ers were alive and not blinded by ‘intellectual intoxication.’ Ide­ally the evening would break up in a riot and depicted in the press the next day as a scandal.  

In the case of the Warsaw virus, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the ideas and par­tic­i­pa­tion was given over to the audi­ence. After approx­i­mately 20 min­utes of the reg­u­lar play, two young women in black dresses and blond wigs climbed onto the stage to be advo­cates for the will of the public. There then began an intru­sion of the real into the the­ater. The two agents enacted a Futurist aes­thet­ics of dynamism or zealotry. But they weren’t there to insult, but rather to ful­fill the wishes and orders they had been given.

The per­for­mance artists were the invis­i­ble guests at the table, or acted as a third person in the love scene. One of the spe­cial orders was to bring the audi­ence on stage, in order to shat­ter the illu­sion and chase away the actors. Once the audi­ence got on stage, the action was sus­pended for 15 min­utes. The play has been killed. An extra­or­di­nary clash was pro­duced, some­where between the­ater and per­for­mance art, echo­ing those Futur­ist evenings. They also some­how made clear that in the dom­i­nant form of mimetic the­atre, the inva­sion of real­ity is still a nightmare of which leg­ends are recounted. Today the doc­u­men­ta­tion of this virus has been acquired for the col­lec­tion of the Zachęta National Gallery, whereas the the­ater world seems to be unwill­ing to remem­ber that winter evening, bizarre and beyond logic.

Feb­ru­ary 11 2006, TR WARSZAWA

Sędzia Główny/Chief Judge – a female per­for­mance group. Activists, teases, some­times rad­i­cal fem­i­nists, some­times cor­po­rate hacks, some­times fans of New Roman­tic. Karolina Wiktor (b. 1979) and Alek­san­dra Kubiak (b. 1978) stage them­selves and their images in count­less ways. Their politi­cized actions make up a long story about how much we can change and how rarely we real­ize our abil­ity to do so. For one of their actions they lay scat­ter­ing let­tuce leaves and squirt­ing ketchup inside a giant ham­burger placed on a Polish and Amer­i­can flag. Their diploma piece, acted out on a rug in the office of the Rector of The Uni­ver­sity of Zielona Góra, was an unusual break with aca­d­e­mic tra­di­tion. The girls stood in large card­board boxes like the ones dolls are sold in, which said "Sample a future Master of the Arts." By doing so they inverted the logic of the exam: the out­come of the diploma piece depended on the courage and imag­i­na­tion of their pro­fes­sors. The two like to inter­vene in estab­lished envi­ron­ments, and always stress that they are a single organ­ism. They have per­formed wrapped in plas­tic foil, linked by a breathing appa­ra­tus, and lying naked on ice cubes. The pair sub­verts the gender roles imposed by soci­ety, and nor­ma­tive sex­u­al­ity, chal­lenge obvi­ous and socially sanc­tioned behav­iors, and under­mine the dom­i­nant idiom. They have take part in i.a. a performance art fes­ti­val at the Centre for Con­tem­po­rary Art in Warsaw, the Rybie Oko young artists' fes­ti­val at the Baltic Gallery of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Women's Rites in Krakow, the Bazart.fr Inter­me­dia The­atre Forum, the Warsaw Art Activists, the Ter­rapol­ska fes­ti­val in Berlin, and per­formed in Gale­ria XXI and the Warsaw clubs Le Madame and M25.

 

Chosen arti­cles and reviews:

  
Łukasz Ron­duda, Ein Virus im The­ater,  Museum Junge Kunst, 14.02.2006