ZBIGNIEW WARPECHOWSKI – DIALOGUE WITH DEATH, 1976 (1-1/1)
THE OFFER Labyrinth Gallery, Lublin 1976
Venue – basement of the Labyrinth in the Old Town of Lublin. I have prepared a table covered with white paper with two crossing circles drawn on it, marked with letters „a”( a small) and „A” (A capital). They are to signify two realities. Our everyday, „true” reality „a” and transcendental, afterlife reality „A”. At both sides of the table there are glasses with living fishes.
Two reflectors, standing on the opposite sides of the hall, emit streams of light, creating one circle. I am holding a skull in front of me, moving it so as the shadow of my head overlaps with the shadow of the skull – a shadow of a skull-head appears, the face is mine, but the back of the head belongs to the skull. Two realities: the living (head) and the dead (skull) unite in a third reality of a shadow. Then I sit at the table and put the skull in front of me in the „A” area. I turn on the tape recorder under the table, and now the duration time is defined by the record. I have recorded on the tape a sort of jabber, moaning and other throat sounds – until the moment when phonetic articulation of the vowel „a” starts. All the time I am staring at the eye pits of the skull. My eyes start to water, the skull begins to acquire features of the face, eye pits start to blink, as if I saw someone living through the fog. I initiate acceptance. I drink the water with the living fish from the glass standing in front of the skull. Death occurs in my stomach. Throughout all the time a dead fish bought in a fish store lies on the floor in front of the audience. Jiri Valoch and Helena Pospisilova were sitting in the front row among the guests.
(Zbigniew Warpechowski, THE CONTAINER. An author’s description of thirty years of a life path through the art of performance. Gdańsk 1998)
