Performans

Description by Filmoteka Muzeum

Structural films. In Record I and II, carried out on the occasion of performing a self-referential exercise manifesting the technical parameters of the medium, Sikorski exposed the same film stock twice. While during the first record of the graphic sign of the cross the camera stands still and is fixed to a tripod, the second record of the same motif features hand-held shooting.

The dynamics of the film is determined by the tension between the first shot – static and produced as if without human agency – and the second, where the artist attempts to re-enact as precisely as possible the mode of machine’s operation. The impossibility of complete synchronisation of the crosses from each record is an attempt at visualising the conflict, emblematic of Sikorski’s practice, between objectivity and subjectivity, between collective, social, cultural structures and human singularity. In the light of the above discussed qualities, the film comes across as a combination of both existential and structural threads.

Subsequent Records also proceeded according to the rule of double exposition. E.g. Record III features a film record of a written description of the creative structure of the entire film, which brings to the fore its self-referential dimension.

In turn, Record V, VI and VII are somewhat similar in nature to “biological-mechanical records”, providing an interesting reference to Józef Robakowski’s works from the early 1970s, like: I’m Going, Exercise for Two Hands, Disturbed Space. By capturing different parts of his body on camera, Sikorski aims to manifest the limitations of the employed technology as well as solipsism of the filming individual.

Record X is another, after Record II, Sikorski’s film which remains close to the idea of “biological-mechanical records”. Here, the structure of the work acquires a much more dynamic character. The solipsism of the self-filming artist is broken by a gaze from the outside (camera: Tomasz Konart).

It merits a mention here that this work, similarly to a range of other Sikorski’s works from the period, marks an attempt at a revitalisation of the paradigm of the structural cinema, which retained a strong presence in Poland in the early 1970s, with most widely recognised achievements originating from the circle of the Workshop of the Film Form. Apart from Sikorski, structural cinema and analytical video was dealt with in Poland by, among others, Tomasz Konart, Andrzej Paruzel, Janusz Szczerek (all: Zespół T [Team T]), Jadwiga Singer, Jacek Singer, Grzegorz Zgraja (all: Laboratorium Technik Prezentacyjnych [Presentation Techniques Laboratory]).
 

(ŁR)