Tadeusz Kantor, Cricotage, 1965 (1-50/103)

Tadeusz Kantor's first happening entitled "Cricotage" took place on December 10, 1965 at Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Sztuk Pięknych on Chmielna Street in Warsaw. Its name came from Cricot 2, a theatre created by Kantor in 1955 that referred to the prewar Cricot threater. The happening consisted of a number of simultaneous and unrelated actions.

Several people, independently of each other, performed everyday activities such as lathering, shaving, eating, carrying objects, sitting and standing up, etc.. These clearly pointless actions were repeated in a compulsive manner. From time to time a woman (Anka Ptaszkowska) declared "I'm sitting" as she was getting up from a chair; a critic (Mariusz Tchorek) recited an excerpt of a text which, due to the cacophony of sounds and surrounding him chaos, was completely incomprehensible; a man (Alfred Lenica) pelted a woman in a bikini (Agnieszka Żółkiewska) with coal; two men immersed their heads in a suitcase full of pasta (e.g., Krystyn Jarnuszkiewicz); a man (Tadeusz Kantor) was wrapping a woman (Maria Stangret, his wife) with paper, and three men (Zbigniew Gostomski, Edward Krasiński, Wiesław Borowski) were shaving at the table. The audience's sole role was that of viewers, since there was no place for their participation in the happening. Lack of any narration, the omnipresent chaos and the repetitiveness of motions were supposed to cause in the viewer a state of daze.


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