Collection

On 27 October and 3 November 1982, Andrzej and Emilia Dłużniewski in their flat, Galeria Piwna 20/26, carried out the “Impossible Theatre” action, which in a dramatic way referred to the brutal realities of martial law in Poland. The artists presented a room where the audience could see traces of a recent presence of someone who suddenly went out and disappeared, leaving behind scattered personal items, such as shoes, socks, a radio left on, and a lit cigarette. The Dłużniewskis captured the atmosphere of the arrests of 13 December 1981, when people disappeared without a trace, and the places from which they were taken looked just like that. The photographs evoke the atmosphere of martial law and present further bits and pieces of the “absence”, stirring the imagination of viewers. The venue of the “Impossible Theatre” action was Galeria Piwna 20/26, which did not succumb to the oppression of the communist regime and was part of the independent cultural life in the 1980s.