Akademia Ruchu's "The Battleship Potyomkin and Other Stories" action, 1999, Warsaw. Photo by Katarzyna Gorna
The series presents a special review of works by the legendary action-theatre from 1975 to 2011
Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement) is a one-of-a-kind artistic collective started up in 1973 by a group of university students from Warsaw. Often described as a theatre of gesture and visual narration, Akademia Ruchu began with anonymous protest-interventions and actions in a communist Poland. Their pioneer partisan "hit and run" actions circumvented censorship and left their traces in urban spaces in major and small Polish cities alike.
What distinguishes AR’s work from other politically-minded public space interventions is the fact that their original performance-actions addressed chance passers-by, passengers of public transport and the artists' neighbours. As a rule, a hidden camera or a photographer had no place within the community-minded framework of these actions which touched directly on the living tissue of a social sphere. Formed by Wojciech Krukowski, Janusz Bałdyga, Jolanta Krukowska, Cezary Marczak, Zbigniew Olkiewicz, Krzysztof Żwirblis, Jarosław Żwirblis and Jan Pieniążek, Akademia Ruchu realised over 100 performative events during the 1970s and 1980s.
The co-founder of Akademia Ruchu and former CSW director, Wojciech Krukowski explains that
From the end of the 1970s to date, our practice is consequently enriched and broadened by intiatives which invite the viewer to become a participant, and even a co-creator of the event. Innovative actions aim at animating social bonds and conjuring up original forms of social expression in the everyday.
These banal signs of banal activities always bear a mark of oddity - they transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. They force the viewers, participants and passers-by to suddenly cast a new gaze on bits of the everyday they live in. Looking at these things as if for the first time, they must ponder awhile over the reason why they seem funny and meaningless - or, quite the contrary: poetically beautiful. The activites of Akademia Ruchu thus constantly create different effects of estrangement. This is precisely what they are (...)
- in Konstanty Puzyna, Dialog quarterly nr.7, 1980.
Akademia Ruchu continued their work in the changing socio-political circumstances of the Polish 1990s. Simultaneously to their contestating urban-space actions, the artists began to pursue an original form of visual theatre. They performed in the underground artisitic environments as well as official museum and gallery spaces across Europe, North and South America and Japan.
Presently, Akademia Ruchu is active first and foremost as a multidisciplinary centre for contemporary art. Its members organise their own showings and occasionally come together for joint projects. The documentation presented as part of the current exhibition concentrates on the early, less publicised activites of the group from the 1970s and 1980s. Unique and rare footage of their "hit and run" actions, recorded on 16mm film, was specially restored and transferred onto contemporary video media to allow repeated screenings during the long period of this exhibition. More than 200 historic photographs presented alongside this footage are original, "raw" prints which have not undergone any beautifying touch-ups. The experience of walking through the video gallery is like re-entering that time of the past, walking amid the crowds dressed in the style of the times and going about their business - all captured in the atmosphere of the Martial Law period.
With five additional events including performances, film screenings, and an international debate on the social context of artistic actions, the "Self-presentation" series promise to paint the big picture of Akademia Ruchu’s literally living history.
The series opens on the 17th of February and is on until the 29th of April, 2012.
Curator: Wojciech Krukowski.
Scientific commitee: Anda Rottenberg, Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Łukasz Ronduda.
Schedule of special events accompanying the exhibition:
- Chińska lekcja / Chinese Lesson, a performance by Akademia Ruchu.
18th of February and 21st of April, 2012, 7 pm. CSW Laboratorium building - Flagi po-rzucone / Re-jected flags, a performance-action by Janusz Bałdyga.
27th of February, 2012, 7 pm. CSW Laboratorium building - Wykład II / Lecture II, a performance-action by Akademia Ruchu.
10th of March, 2012, 7 pm. CSW Laboratorium building - Z drogi / Out of the Way, a performance-action by Jolanta Krukowska.
24th of March, 7 pm. CSW Laboratorium building - Akademia Ruchu, screening of a film by Andrzej Sapija.
20th of February, 2012, 6;30 pm. KINO.Lab cinema of CSW
Exhibition venue:
Centre for Conteporary Art - Ujazdowski Castle
ul. Jazdów 2
00-467 Warsaw
Tel: (+48 22) 628 76 83, 628 12 71-3, 628 64 08
Fax: (+48 22) 628 95 50
www.csw.art.pl
Source: press release, culture.pl