Wojciech Puś: Endless
Residency at the Department of Presence

  • Wojciech Puś: Endless

    "Endless", courtesy of Wojciech Puś

Since 2016, Wojciech Puś has been developing Endless, a sensual architecture of images, light, and sound that serves as a base structure for a poetic essay, a dream about identities in process. Although it has taken many forms — from feature film, to cinematographic performances and spontaneous situations — its true essence is based on the informal community of performers of different social backgrounds, gender identities, nationalities and migration status (Chile, France, Mexico, Poland, Ukraine). The combination of their personal stories, alongside fragments of literary works, films, memoirs, and dream notes creates a mosaic structure, situated in the genre of queer abstraction. This aesthetic utopia results in a different way of thinking about gender transformation, extending the experience of metamorphosis to the most general, existential experiences of an individual.

In this way, Puś goes beyond the identification of a ‘queer artist’ or an activist affirmation in the spirit of Pride, inviting the audience to join the Endless community, where one finds references to Alain Resnais’ new wave film, Last Year in Marienbad, the French writer Michel Leiris’ record of dreams and scenes from his waking life, Nights as Day, Days as Night, or the experimental novel Testo Junkie by Paul B. Preciado.



And yet, the kaleidoscope of figures co-creating the work is what constitutes the beating heart of Endless: Magdalena Wawrzyńczak — transsexual performer, hairdresser by day; Szymon Czacki, — actor at the National Stary Theatre in Krakow; Jorge Benavides — queer activist and sexual therapist; Anton Tsyhulskyi — graphic designer and MMA fighter; Pierre Emö — film and theatre actor fulfilling pornographic and mainstream cinema projects; Pat Dudek — androgynous model, director and musician; Lina Bembe — porn actress and performer. However, these simple codes of identification and character descriptions break away from the common patterns of identity politics. The characters blur into, and permeate one another, feeding off the shards of broken mirrors, creating the abstraction.

The staging of Endless will take place in several instalments over three days, 28-30.09. On Friday evening, visitors can participate in the Night as Nights performance with our special guest, the experimental musician Thomas Köner. On Saturday, you are invited to “вітер з'єднує нас” + Kinky Kino, featuring the testimonies of the performance’s participants and a film screening with the performers and live music by Wojciech Puś and Anton Tschulskyi. The Sunday's performance of Day as Days will conclude the Endless residence and the entire “Pride and Prejudice: New Practices of Dignity” programme of the Department of Presence. However, Endless is not a journey that seeks a final destination. Paradoxically, if this is a journey at all, it is a journey towards the ‘here and now’. Because, as Maggie Nelson notes, in this culture favouring rational solutions and resolutions: ‘sometimes the shit stays messy’.
 

Saturday night screenings and sunday performance contains adult content. 

28.09 (FRI) 19:00, Wojciech Puś and Endless, Performance “Night as Nights” + live act: Thomas Köner

29.09 (SAT) 17:00, Wojciech Puś and Endless, “вітер з'єднує нас” + Kinky Kino: Testimonies of performance participants and film screening with perforomers, live music Wojciech Puś and Anton Tschulskyi

30.09 (SUN) 14:00, Wojciech Puś and Endless, Performance “Day as Days”

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