IV Syncretic Show "Furnace Offering", Puławy 1966 (1-8/8)

"Venue: Municipal Nitrogen Plant - furnaces producing urea (ingredient of fertilizers). Time 10.00 p.m.
Coaches with participants of the Symposium and invited guests enter the Plant. Everyone stands in front of furnaces, in the defined space with the loudspeakers. The scene is dark except for massive gas burners, which roared loudly illuminating the furnaces from below. After a while I ascend a small gallery through a flight of stairs. I am wearing a tuxedo [...]

Spotlights directed at the furnaces are illuminated. They light up and dim down to the pace of a heartbeat. I am left alone in a small gallery, over a dozen meters above the groud. I begin speaking into the microphone. I say that, delighted with the beauty of the industrial landscape, I feel I can do little except treat the object from which I am speaking as a work of art and, as such, return it to the management of Nitrogen Plant. A the same time I ask that the object be treated with extraordinary care, as plates saying explosive area hang around it. In order to commemorate the moment I begin to sing a song of my own composition with the lyrics 'Urea, urea', pausing every now and then time to remind of the warning signs. At a certain moment my enthusiasm reaches its peak and the melody segues into the national anthem. I stop singing and descend the stairs [...]
I feel my and their embarrassment, their outrage, and contempt for such a failed performance. The management of the Plant is outraged"

(Włodzimierz Borowski)