Zbigniew Libera archive

Description by Filmoteka Muzeum

“I am a famous destroyer. Actually, I destroyed most things but I never made them for anybody else’s but only for my own experience.” – stated Libera when interviewed by Artur Żmijewski and Łukasz Gorczyca. The film was made when Libera left prison, found refuge at his home in Pabianice and produced his first works using an NTSC camera. The video features Libera destroying vinyl record and an electric guitar, which results in a curious assemblage on the floor – evoking decomposition, waste, etc.

At the time when the film was shot, Libera remained member of the Łodź-based informal “Kultura Zrzuty” [Chip-in Culture], gathered around the venue Strych. Later, in ca. 1985 he set up an alternative artistic commune alongside Jerzy Truszkowski and other artists. With Jacek Rydecki, Anna “Mirosawa” Nowak, Barbara Konopka and Jerzy Truszkowski, they formed the band called Sternenhoch, with Libera on guitar and other instruments. They were somewhat of a commune with highly anarchic attitudes and libertine outlook on life. The video pivots around a gesture that is absurd and quite characteristic of the punk anarchic spirit of Kultura Zrzuty. The assemblage references neo-Dada traditions informed by nonsense and provocation.

Libera has often mentioned that he’s prone to self-destruction, understood also as destruction of his personal belongings like the electric guitar he used for artistic performances., or the VCR he’s said to have thrown out of the window in a high-rise building in Warsaw’s Żelazna Street in 1988. It should be noted that in the realm of the Polish 1980s, getting rid of such valuable objects could not be considered as the artist’s manifestation of contempt for material possessions, but only as a tragic expression of real protest. Other self-destructive behaviours included simulated suicidal attempts, one of which was captured in the work Home Performance (1984). Domowy performans (1984).



 

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