Description by Filmoteka Muzeum
A Brief Occurrence with Axes and Apples (Krótkie zdarzenie z siekierami i jabłkami) took place in 2010 during the opening of the exhibition Stable (Stajnia) by Wspólnota Leeeżeć (The Lyyying Community) at the Kredens Gallery in Łódź. The action was set in the courtyard in front of the gallery entrance, which was adorned for the exhibition running time with murals created by Wspólnota. The images depicted visions of new animals that were yet to appear in the universe, such as “kinetic dog” and “hyacinth capybara” (from the cycle Nature Design for New Life-Hosting Planets [Projekt przyrody dla nowych planet przyjmujących życie]).
The structure created by the artists during the action undergoes numerous modifications and suffers destruction wrought with such “drastic” tools as hammers, chainsaws, drills, and axes. The destruction of geometrical representations of figures and apples provides a metaphor for a new order that supersedes the old one and a transformation of the valid models of general knowledge.
Andrzej Miastkowski vel Egon Fietke explains A Brief Occurrence as follows – “Squares [of canvas] were cut out that featured basic figures of Euclidean geometry, which generated a matrix of virtual reality. Therefore, following that trope, the act of cutting appears as a disturbance of the primeval order and an introduction of a new paradigm, while the revolutions with swinging axes, canvasses and trunks appear as an act that anchors the new paradigm in reality and grants it a valid status (circle of history); in turn, the act of knocking things off with a hammer appears as a farewell bid to that paradigm of three-dimensional reality, superseded by a new order. What order? The sash that eventually fastens everything together stands for a period of repose before a new phase determined by choices made by each of us. The above perspective pertains to the version of the Earth’s history that sees the existence of spheres of density, the yugas, and an intervention of extraterrestrial races in the human DNA (disturbance of the original harmony, expulsion from paradise). Perception of the world from the position of two helices is the very Euclidean geometry and life on the modern-day farm. The apples were used, among other functions, as balls in bowling with axes used as pins, thus grasping reality as a game of two polarities – knowledge protects the apple, while ignorance exposes it to danger; and may cutting apples stand for an opening to “new” knowledge, to the discovery of yet another echelon and realising that the ladder does exist at all. Destruction therefore serves to abolish the old, and it is not an act in and of itself, but it exists within a broader order of things and contributes to the birth of the new. The temperature of scorching fire in the Australian bush makes the seed capsules of a certain shrub warm up and burst. What wreaks destruction generates conditions for the emergence of new life”.
Wspólnota Leeeżeć comprising: Andrzej Miastkowski vel Egon Fietke, Rafał Grochowski, Jerzy Korzeń (sound)
(ND)