UNTITLED PERFORMANCE, 1986 (1-2/2)

In 1986 during international artistic meetings in Poznań Zbyszko Trzeciakowski has implemented a radical performance with himself as its object and subject. Guests of the meetings have received a written instruction to go to an indicated address in the Kiekrz district of Poznań. A fenced-in construction site was situated there, with a stack of bricks and stones near the fence.

According to the instruction, participants of the event took stones and threw them over the fence, where naked Zbyszko Trzeciakowski – present for himself, but not present for unaware publicity – was lying face down on the ground, blindfolded, with spread arms. Isolation, expectation, sense of danger, uncertainty, pain and potential risk of death, experiences individually by Trzeciakowski at the moment, were a certain projection of states commonly experienced in Poland during the martial law (1981-1989).

It was for this performance, in particular, that Zbyszko Trzeciakowski has received from Jerzy Truszkowski the AWARD named after ANDRZEJ PARTUM for 1986. Truszkowski has written in justification of his decision:

„(...) for the action documented by video, causing probable dangers for life of the artist in a non-banal form, entailed by manipulation of people, putting the state of their freedom into question; and for the action also documented by video, in a highly synthetic form, showing purity of the search for extremes of psycho-physical condition of the artist”.

Trzeciakowski has recorded his action with two video cameras, and photographed selected video shots.One of these photos with accompanying text was published in the catalogue of the AWARD named after ANDRZEJ PARTUM, December 1986.

The artist has written in a signed typescript dated by the „spring of 1986”: „These videos are the traces of reflections and attempts of keeping the balance between paralyzed vegetation and strength of the fight with one’s own mental and intellectual annihilation”.