Description by Filmoteka Muzeum
1981 saw the realisation of the second assembling film initiated by Tomasz Sikorski (after Film Communication) – entitled Déjà Vu. Sikorski chose three people for the work. He invited each of them separately to spend together an evening of conversations, and then to go to sleep at the same venue. Right after waking up, artists chosen by Sikorski were to report their dreams, focusing on the description of the most vivid images.
Sikorski assumed that the dreams would to some degree come as a result (effect) of the time spent together the previous evening. Then, the initiator and each of the artists jointly made a film based on the dreams, trying to escape their rational interpretation. Finally, Sikorski supplemented the resulting 2-3 minute film (which he hadn’t had a chance to see yet) with his own (spontaneous and intuitive) short film work as his response (commentary).
Thus arranged, the creative process generated an extremely dialogical structure of a quasi-conversation by means of “film statements” of the resulting assembling film (embracing three pairs of films: Asia Ciba/Sikorski, Marysia Lewandowska/Sikorski, Krzysztof Zarębski/Sikorski).
Déjà vu provides an interesting example of the evolution of assembling techniques, invented at the time when rational tendencies prevailed in art. It manifests their redefinition and adaptation to the “irrational” qualities of the art of the 1980s. Like Activities with One–Minute Films of Others by KwieKulik, this work displays a dialogical structure where one short film emerges spontaneously as a response to the previous film made by someone else.
(ŁR)