VII. 1991/92 SUPPER (1-50/91)

Seventh implementation of the Common Area, Own Area, entitled „The Supper”, was not typical, for it took place in the presence of the audience at the Warsaw Dziekanka Gallery. It was at the same time one of the first public presentations of students outside of the Academy. The topic referred to the Biblical Last Supper and its famous representation on the painting of Leonardo da Vinci.

The gallery space was divided into two parts by a wire screen: on one side of it, participants of the task were sitting at the serve table, while the audience was on the other side. There was no previously provided script; as in earlier task editions, the participants had to perform their own tasks and respond to the gestures of their predecessors. Hieratic composition and separation with a screen limited the possibility of movement, and the confrontation of both groups, expectations of the audience and frustration related with their non-fulfillment, created growing tension. Apart from psychological discomfort, caused by this situation, no one has tried to put the imposed separation or taken roles under question.


Upon the end of the action Kowalski asked the students to provide brief written feedback, summing up their experience. Majority of the participants was writing about embarrassment caused by the presence of the audience and its sensed expectations that something will happen. A group of students of the history of art, sitting at the audience’ side, was also asked for comments. Grzegorz Kowalski has created a collage made of fragments of feedbacks and photo documentation, which was shown in the form of a cage-object.


Reflection was continued on the pages of "Czereja" magazine, comprising selected comments of the participants and an attempt of interpretation of what has happened. Artur Żmijewski wrote that such disturbance of performance convention (the viewer has nothing to watch, nothing happens), psychological discomfort, frustration of expectations of other people expels from a collective dream, which is functioning in society. It also reveals artificially made divisions and unwritten agreements, making the base for social life. He saw a gesture of defense in establishment of clearly dedicated and composed common area. "The Supper – he wrote – is a symptom of nostalgia, longing for the world with precise, transparent structure, with clear division lines visible as a stretched metal grid”. He also pointed out to a utopic and problematic character of a „common area”, the indication of which is related with an attempt to exclude chaos and artificial separation from something, which does not fit into the common area.

[Artur Żmijewski, Circulation of sacrum, "Czereja" No. 2, 1993].
 


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