Somewhere Felt March 7-22, 2008 Space Other, Boston, MA

Stephan's Fruition

On Friday September 25th, 2007 Gordian Piec of Pitrków Trybanalski, Poland, and co-director of Galleria Off in Piotrków, phoned me to ask if I were still interested in performing in front of a Polish audience at the Galleria on Friday October 12th, 2007. I instantly answered a bold “yes”, already having in mind performance I was planning for that day.

As you may know, I had been growing a beard since my first trip to Kraków in June. I originally intended to shave the beard as soon as it fully grew in and briefly document my life with a mustache…

Not that I can even grow a full beard without it looking patchy or stringy. Growing up, I have always had dark hair, almost black, but as soon as my beard gets as full as it will ever get, one can see highlights of red and blonde. After letting it grow for a while, the highlights of color converge and manifest in little patches, mimicking the clumps of hair that I shall refer to as a beard. One clump of hair, resting over my upper lip, sadly excuses itself as a mustache, growing longer on the left side as well as fuller right under my nose. This hair is much thicker than the rest of my beard. It is a commune of straight and curled hairs and even if it grew in a semi-symmetrical manner, my asymmetric nose tricks the viewer into thinking my mustache has been hacked by a barber whose tool of choice is probably a scythe. But I grew the beard… regardless of its stunted growth. In fact, I grew it for four months straight, trimming the mustache a few times and slightly grooming the lengths of beard below my jaw line only once.On October 12, 2007, I went to Piotrków with Agata, Mama, and Majster. I brought a new pair of shoes, a new shirt, a vest and a tie that were acquired in a second hand store, and a pair of red, yellow, and brown plaid plants that I borrowed from Majster. I packed these items along with Mama’s late father’s electric hair clippers with a copy of “Boys” version of the famous discopolo song Jestes Szalona (you’re crazy) in a red, white, and blue-plaid-nylon-plastic-bag that I bought at the ‘Chinsky’ Supermarket on Ul. Piotrkowska in Lodz.


I had conceived of this performance in my fantasies the night I rode back on the train from Minsk with Gordian and Piotr. Gordian Piec and Piotr Gaida had just asked me if I might be interested in performing in Piotrków. In my excitement, I indulgently came up with a simple and silly performance that had slightly changed the day it came to fruition. On that day, I brought a 1-liter bottle of Wybrowa Wódka to share with my audience. This was not originally what I had planned. Not that my work ever goes as planned or is even truly planned out. But for the first time, I felt like I knew what my actions would be. Even when I introduced the 1-liter bottle of vodka as a variable, I still knew what I was going to do. Of course, after I had Agata shave my beard, leave the mustache, and powder my cheeks, and after I changed my clothes in front of the audience, and after we poured 30 cups of vodka and lined them up for the audience to come and have a drink with me, I still knew what I was going to do. But when the audience didn’t really want vodka…


Not even a third of the audience came up for a drink. Amongst those, one member came up a few times, actually. I had a couple drinks, Majster had a couple drinks, Mama and Agata had one, Piotr had one, and the lot of us consumed half of the drinks that were poured. I mean we were at a formal opening. Being an American and all, I figured we would at least have one drink at this opening. Being interested in happenings, I figured my plans would bust when everyone came up for a drink and began to socialize. My plans busted when the opposite happened and not until my work was finished did the rest of the members come up and ask if they could have a drink. I even stated my intentions, having Agata translate them for me so they all knew there would not be any repercussions. I didn’t plan on doing that at all. I didn’t know that the audience would start to walk out of the performance as soon as I personally offered them a drink. I told them ‘it would be really great if we could all share a drink and then, perhaps, share a dance’.
Then I realized they came to see me perform as if I were trapped behind a television screen or standing up on a stage with a pit between us, I felt as if I should have been dancing behind a piece of glass at freak show arcade…


I turned to Agata, Mama, and Majster and asked them if they would come up and dance with me. Originally, I was going to perform as if I were the only one in the room, aside from having my beard cut off. I would get up after the grooming, change my clothes, drink a beer, turn on the music, and dance to Jestes Szalona. Not that I can even really dance. I mean my feet move and it feels like my body is grooving to the music…

When I impulsively introduced the vodka variable, I thought about how great it would be to share a drink, possibly a toast, with the audience, make merry, and then coerce them all into dancing with me to one of the most silly and famous discopolo songs in Poland. I didn’t think I would have to coerce the audience into taking free alcohol. And when I attempted to convince them that we should all share a drink, a number of them walked out. So, I invited Agata and her family to join me on the dance floor, and the four of us danced like fools for the last 3 minutes and 58 seconds of the performance in Piotrków at Gallery Off. Me and my mustache and my nasty break-dance moves.

This particular performance has extended itself, or possibly, even segued into another performance that I am currently in the midst of. I have kept the mustache for almost a week. Anyone who can grow facial hair should try letting it grow out. Try styling it as you would a head of hair, if you have hair. Give yourself side-burns, grow a soul patch, mutton chops, a mustache, or even a goatee. Let your beard get long like Captain Cave Man’s then chop it off, leaving only the mustache. Then you can move right into having a handlebars or even a Fu Man Xu! Who knows, maybe you’ll end up like my dad, a man who hasn’t seen the epidermis over his upper lip for well over thirty years. I wonder how long his mustache would be if he never trimmed it…?

At any rate, I am keeping the mustache for now. The case being that my father is having surgery on October 19, 2007. And since we’re both baldies with similar shaped heads, I am reminded of him when I look in the mirror. And since I haven’t seen him for five months and his operation is a pretty major one, I am comforted that I can walk around the village or Lodz looking like my father did when he was my age. I mean, he’s not having a cancerous tumor removed from the center of his brain… but he’s not having an in-grown toe nail removed either. It’s serious enough, that he is taking time off of work and my mother will take time off as well, and it’s serious enough (to me) that he has been working out all summer to get in shape before he goes under the knife. So, I figure, what ever it is that is happening to his body, is serious enough that he prefers to have an operation to fix it. And I prefer to hide the epidermis above my upper lip for a little while.

Well, I will be back in the states very soon. Please remember, I will be giving a lunchtime talk on November 14th at the SMFA room B209, regarding my experience with performance in Europe over the past five months. It will start at 12:15pm and will not go longer than 1:45pm. Hope to see you there.

Sincerely,
Richard Spartos

Richard's 'lion heart'

Dear friends, family, colleagues, professors, and thesis committees,
This is the second of four reports pertaining to my experience in Poland over the course of 5 months. Although this report is primarily about Minsk, Belarus, it is integral to my experience in Poland, not that I make a clear connection or stretch to outlines its integration. However, I can briefly tell you that I acquired my Byelorussian Visa in Gdansk, Poland at the Byelorussian Consulate in Oliwa, Gdansk. This process would have been nearly impossible if Agata had not been there, as my interpreter/as the evil- woman-behind-the-glass-window-from-belarus’s interpreter (man, she gave Agata a hard time). For the most part, aside from all the hard time giving, I walked in, I filled out an application for a visa, I handed it to the disgruntled woman behind the glass, I commented on why I thought she must be disgruntled -because she works for an oppressed country, on that country’s property, which is smack dab in the middle of a nice area of a ‘free’ country, in a city known for being a location of the solidarity movement that helped to tear down part of the iron curtain in 1989, and that she might not like really cute and young Polish women interpreting between balding/hairy American guys and herself- I went to a Kantor and exchanged 511 pl for 180 usd, I went back to the consulate, paid the disgruntled woman behind the glass, and received my business visa to Belarus. All I can say is that it would not have been that easy if I were a citizen of Poland. Polish citizens were getting numbers that indicated that they were, for example, the 3,546th person in line to get a visa to Belarus.
Also, having been to the former East Germany, Czech Republic, and Poland, all former communist countries, I figured visiting Minsk, Belarus, currently a “communist” country, would be like going back in time, like going to Cuba or something. For the most part, it’s like going to Poland after the EU has a painting party all over the Bloch Complexes. For real, there is little to no graffiti in Minsk. It is so clean it is almost bright. The other places seem to hold onto a bit of their dreary pasts (I have my opinions about this but will keep them to myself). Really though, the major differences for me were the Soviet Stars and the massive monuments celebrating ‘soviet sovereignty’ in Minsk…

Every one should take a trip to Minsk via the Moscow Express from Warszawa, Poland. Maybe you’ll be the only American passenger. Maybe you’ll be the only native English speaker. Maybe you’ll be the only passenger with an American Passport and a Visa acquired at the Polish consulate in Gdansk… You could share a bunk with a 20-year-old Belrausian who likes good beer (dobre piwo), sandwiches, and Dunhill cigarettes. The both of you could share a bunk with a Belarusian business man who chain smokes, drinks tea, and is fluent in Polish, Russian, German, and English. All three of you might even share that same bunk with a guy named Igor. Igor’s a cultural planner “of sorts” he likes interesting music, hip TV, cheap cigarettes, Hugo Chavez, and giving the middle finger to the powers that be in Poland and Belarus by promoting the advancement of culture through rock and roll and free speech. Maybe you’ll be paranoid that one of these guys was planted in your bunk to snoop around and find out why you’re the only American traveling by train from Warszawa to Minsk. Maybe you’ll think Igor’s cocked eye makes him a likely candidate; that he acquired the extra range of vision in some special KGB training camp that was designed to train its cadets on how to sniff out materials and messages, of foreign passengers on the Moscow express, that may alter or disrupt the obedient thought processes of every diligent citizen of Belarus. Then you might find out how wrong you were and how very silly; that Igor’s interest in you is merely because you’re a silly American on the way to Minsk, on a train from Warszawa, to participate at Navinki 2007. And if your anything like me, Igor will just ask if that is why you are on your way to Minsk while the train is undergoing a wheel change at the boarder of Poland and Belarus. He’ll tell you that the tracks are bigger on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain in a dirty joke about the insecurities of Russian men. Three hours later you’ll be back in the bunk listening to his opinion on foreign affairs in Poland, the US, Iran, Belarus, and Venezuela. You’ll take a very quick nap and wake up to the train arriving in Minsk. You’ll notice the barbed wire surrounding the depot and wonder if there is a lot of that sort of wire around the city. And when the train stops and everyone gets onto the platform, Igor might even give you a hand when your contact isn’t sitting right there waiting for you with a sign that says, “Over Here! I am your Byelorussian contact, sent by Dennis Romanovski!”

What a great guy… Igor that is. I would have given him a watermelon at the end of my performance if he had stuck around to see the conclusion. He showed up when everyone was still at lunch; my lunch being a half of a 10 lb watermelon. I looked up, thinking everyone was already back, disappointed that my work had not developed any further than opening up one of 14 melons and devouring it. Maybe I had arranged my melons, sub consciously, to look like a barrage of bombs. Maybe I had wanted more melons and more nature to work with. But when I looked up, Igor’s cocked eye caught my attention, and I knew it was him. I should have gone over and had a chat. My work wasn’t about being in the zone and transcending time or space or some shit. For the first half, it was about that. Or maybe even the first 2/3 rds. I tried too hard to get in “the mode”, or something, and I was totally bumbed out that I had not been able to foresee the significance of buying and transporting the first 11 melons 2 days before the “actual performance”.



Chuck Cheney and I went down to the open Market outside of Victory Sq. with Mary Novotny-Jones’s empty suitcase. We walked around looking for the best priced watermelons. A couple of hours before, I had found the shape and size of the honey melons quite intriguing. This is a flesh colored melon, much like the cantaloupe, with a similar colored meat. Its seeds sit inside the melon, just like honeydew and cantaloupe, and will slip right out of the meat, just like these melons, upon cleaning a ripe one. And it smells sooo good when it is ripe. I figured the pull towards these melons, initially, was their shape. Some of the watermelons were round and as big as basketballs, but on this particular day, most of them were an oblong shape that reminded me of an egg or a giant mouse turd, just like the honey melon, weighing in at approximately 6 kg and sizing up at approximately 40 cm long with a peak circumference at about 56 cm. So, when I first picked up the honey melon, I cradled it like a baby and imagined myself sitting on it until it was ready to hatch. Of course, unless I am out of my gourd, the melon would never hatch, and I would have sat on it for 3 hours or more, during the duration of my “performance”. But, as I felt its weight and texture, I imagined having a whole nest of them, or somehow attaching them to my body and traversing the outside space that I had claimed for my performance. I decided I needed to go back for more.

After buying a suitcase full of watermelon, communicating quite well with the melon vendor (she was absolutely ecstatic that we were purchasing so many melons at once, hysterically laughing throughout the whole transaction), I started to think of the significance of this transaction. It was beautiful and wrong at the same time. And of course, I realized, the performance had already begun. Then came the realization of how much melon I had bought in kilos. And how much I spent in Bly (approximately 150,000, which is about 75 USD) It was approximately 65 kg of melon which is around 143 lbs, stuffed inside Mary Novotny-Jones’s suitcase. We might have been able to take a cab back to the hotel, but without a native we would most likely have been ripped off. So, we thought we might try and take the train. Once I started to walk, and tested the weight of the suitcase; getting the melons down the stairs, through the metro gate, onto a subway car, off of a subway car, up the stairs, through the metro gate, and up another flight of stairs, seemed a lot more difficult than dragging them 1 ½ km. A fifth of that walk was up hill, and on that ascent, one of the suitcase’s wheels began to fall apart. Luckily, it was only the rubber lining that covered the actual wheel, and after Chuck ripped it off, we were on our way. Not to miss lead you in any way, but Mary insisted on helping me drag the suitcase for a block or so past the National Monument of Jakub Kolas. This is a huge, larger than life representation of the actual poet, sitting in the thinkers position. Roi Vaara, a participant of Nsvinki 2004, polished the boots of this colossal bronze statue. Of course, I let Mary take the suitcase. It was her suitcase, but it was my performance, and I wanted the melons back.

Two days later, we transported the melons over to the Palac Mastacva by car. We were yelled at, then kicked out by the guard, as we entered the gallery space. Apparently, everything in Minsk needs to be cleared with someone, then signed by someone, then stamped by someone, and then filed by someone before someone else is allowed to do anything… maybe I exaggerate, and maybe when you go, things wills be different… actually, I guarantee they will be different. Alenxander Lukashenko consistently tightens his ‘arm bar’ on the citizens of Belarus, making it more difficult to have privacy, freedom, etc… hence the significance of attending Navinki, a festival that legally(?) contradicts Lukashenko’s ever-evolving constitution.

After my performance, I had a conversation with a woman named Lianna (the red headed woman with the blue skirt). She showed me pictures of her students and praised the outcome of my work that day, by bombarding me with “thank you, Richard Lione’s heart” as in lion’s heart. I am not quite sure where ‘lion’s heart’ came from, but I took it as a compliment. I had asked her if she had been to Navinki before. Apparently, she had been attending as a viewer for the past 3 years. At one point in the conversation, she thanked me again and told me “we have no freedom”. At this point, my stereotype had been confirmed. I had heard about Belarus before and had read about it and had my own suspicions of what they consider freedom, etc… and even the artists we met from Belarus kept a pretty tight lip about their socio-political stance, so naturally I wondered if the US is really any different. I mean, how is the current Bush administration any different than Alexander Lukoschenko’s ‘arm bar’? To some people in this world, they are both considered a military dictatorship who’s greatest accomplishment is confirming the state of fear that we questionably live in.

I’m not sure if this question/comparison was somewhere in my mind while making performance on the 2nd of September, 2007. But, I know I lined up 11 melons in the courtyard, 8 watermelons and 3 honey melons, then Chuck and I went back to the market to buy 2 more watermelons. Then at I went to buy 2 more watermelons right before lunch. I was interested in reliving the experience I had when buying the suitcase full of melon, but I wasn’t sure how to tangibly present this to my audience. Of course, when we went back to the same vendor, she started to understand that she was an integral part of the work. To put it more accurately, the work that I realized, I was “work-shopping”.
I realized, in Minsk, that I had brought my studio to my performance. Before this, it always seemed that my performances followed me to my studio, but since I have been in Europe, my studio practice has followed me into my living/social world; and in Minsk, even though I was slated on a program to be performing at Navinki 2007, I was stuck in the midst of my studio practice there in the market, on the walk back to the hotel after the first transaction, on the walk back to the Palac after the second transaction, on the walk back to the Palac after the third transaction, and throughout the day in the courtyard. I had thought I figured out what I wanted to do with those melons, I had already done what I was capable of doing with them at that moment in the market, on the way back to the gallery, etc… then it was time to really work in the courtyard, but I felt I had lost something. All I could think about was how I might get rid of the melons, besides giving them away, which I did… sort of.


After that trip from the market, I was dying of thirst, out of breath, and experiencing fatigue in both of my arms. I grabbed a butter knife and a spoon, took off my sweatshirt, sat down and split one of the melons in half, lengthwise. And if you are familiar with my work, I put on my kneepads before doing any of this. Then I sat and ate half the melon. This took a bit longer than I had expected, but then again, I hadn’t work-shopped this idea yet. The idea being that I would attempt to eat all 15 melons. I knew, and everyone else knew that this would be impossible to do before the day was out. One half of the most delicious melon I had ever had, almost completely filled me up. It’s a good thing watermelon isn’t very dense. I was able to shove another half and a few more spoonfuls into the depths of my bowels before I gave up the attempt to eat them all.

For me, the significance of eating the melon was based on a bit of knowledge Dennis had shared with me. The night after the first trip to the market, Dennis had claimed, as all the Byelorussians who commented to me while purchasing these melons, that these melons were most exceptional melons according to taste, region, size, weight, (any characteristic that one would grade a melon). They are grown in the south of Russia and are often used to treat certain ailments that may or may not be connected to the cleanliness of a patient’s kidney(s). In fact, according to Dennis, there is a hospital resort that patients attend at two-week intervals. The patients are instructed to lie around in bed and/ in the bathtub and strictly eat the finest watermelon in the world for two weeks straight. I figured, 15 melons would be about the amount that I would eat in two weeks and I would attempt to eat that amount in less than seven hours. That was one idea that I abandoned as soon as I realized the actual size of my stomach and speed of my metabolism (which was very fast that day). As I progressively lost an appetite for watermelon and ironically an appetite to perform, I slowly retreated into the depths of my thoughts, succumbing to the irony of my distractions/actions. What I mean is, I found the audience, the space, and the pressure to perform quite distracting that day. I also found (after completing my performance) that some audience members viewed this work as being a juxtaposition of mass consumption and weapons of mass destruction. Apparently, the aviator glasses, the tank top/hoody, the knee-pads, and my shorts, illuded to an idea that I was presenting these melons as a metaphor for bombs. Of course, I have no objection; I just would never assign that meaning to what is so obviously 15 melons, not 15 bombs. And, of course, in my costuming (resembling Chief “Gestapo” for some fantastical country's ruling political party unbeknownst by my audience) I would have dropped 15 bombs before handing out 15 melons… and I would have eaten 15 melons, my self, before sharing them with “my” people (but this is, of course, all retro-speculative). Now, ironically, as I was working –not aware of this reading- I found my work to be utterly ineffectual and I began to desperately crave an intervention from the audience.

I had abandoned the consumption of melons and had begun to pull out all the seeds. Previously, as I ate, I had been spitting the seeds out and collecting them in a pile until I emptied my first half of melon. Then I started to collect them in the empty shell of that melon. Now, I was tearing into the meat with my dirty fingers, the palms of my hands covered with fingerless weightlifting gloves that I had actually used to lift weights while I was an undergrad, and pulling out all the black seeds I could find. In this process, I had put the half melon facing up for the collection of seeds in front of me. I put another half shell right next to the other one to collect the seedless meat… And I dug into a freshly split melon with my dirty fingers, ripping chunk after chunk out, and pinching all the black seeds I could find. As I did this action, a man came over. He stood fairly close to my right, and asked “is it so important that you separate the stones?” (stones=seeds in Bly-english…I think) I looked up at him, and down at my melon, and then back up at him. “Yes, I would think so.” I answered… And then he walked away. I resumed my work, wishing that he had asked me why it was so important, why I had so many melons, why I was dressed the way I was, etc… And I would not have been able to answer him… Maybe a conversation would have broken out, or an argument, or something that would make my self-consumed actions more accessible by the audience.
After this, I noticed a couple of young women had been slowly approaching my set up. A few minutes after I noticed this they were right next to me on my left, crouched down, trying to get my attention. At this point they had my attention. However, for some reason, I had not acknowledged them. A third woman came over and began to take bits of watermelon that I had previously de-seeded and put on display with the other empty halves. I found this peculiar, she had seen me digging in with my filthy hands. I was digging while she took the bits of melon, and while she ate them.
The other two women asked if they could have some as well, so I took an un-tainted half, put a spoon in it and handed it to the three of them. My wish had come true.
We started talking. They apologized for ruining my performance. I told them that they had just made it what it should have been whole time.
As we acquainted ourselves, more members of the audience came over to see what the three women had discovered. I figured a performance had just ended inside the gallery.


Now they all wanted some melon, and there was definitely more than enough. I began cutting slices for everyone that wanted. And this was the only part of the performance that I had intended. Of course it was a variation of my original intention to hand out melons to seemingly random members of the audience: which, I did as well.

For a moment, there was a real frenzy around the melons as I cut/broke and served. I was only using a butter knife, so I passed out chunks of melon as if I were an Orthodox priest passing out chunks of bread to my dutiful parishioners. No body kissed me on the hand. Then the red-haired women, Lianna, made me aware of her presence by singing a beautiful folk song. She commented about the Catholic Church behind the courtyard (maybe you would have seen its steeple from where we sat). Then I realized we were all equals, no difference between performer and audience. We all came to the festival to commune as individuals and as a group of people interested in art. Lianna asked me to sing a traditional American song. Having been put on the spot, I couldn’t think of anything that should be sung or that I could remember the words to. So she had us all stand up. She proceeded to persuade some other members of the audience to teach me some Byelorussian folk dances. And we danced. I danced as if I had 3 left feet and a coat hanger pointing out of my eye sockets. And we danced some more, and she sang some more, and then she asked me to teach them a traditional American Folk dance…

So, I taught them the “hokey pokey”





And we put our left foot in… and our right foot in… and our left hand in… and our right hand in…
and then I told them we could put a ton of other things in but it gets really silly, and we did the hokey pokey, and we turned our selves around, and that is what it was all about.

After the “hokey pokey” I ran to the bathroom. My bladder was about to burst. In fact, I think I pulled a muscle holding my pee for so long. When I came back, another piece had begun and I decided that my work could be finished. I returned to the courtyard and found a note that Lianna and the other women left for me.At the end of the day, we all went back out and ate more melon. Still not finishing the pile, Chuck and I gave melons away to the staff that ran the Palac Mastacva, I gave one to Lianna, I gave one to a young boy in the audience, Chuck gave one to some random kid who had come in on a long journey, he tried to give one to the evil guard that yelled at us that morning, I gave another one away to someone that I can not remember, and I took 2 with me for later consumption...

Everyone should take a trip back from Minsk via the Warszawa Express. Maybe you’ll be the only American passenger. Maybe you’ll be the only native English speaker. Maybe you’ll be the only passenger with an American Passport and a Visa acquired at the Polish consulate in Gdansk. Maybe you’ll be on the same train and in the same car as Piotr Gajda and Gordian Piec. Maybe Piotr and Gordian will ask the controller, in Russian, if you can switch to their bunk because they are the only two passengers occupying it and there is room for four. Maybe the three of you will have just performed at Navinki 2XXX and know some of the same artists from the USA, UK, Poland, and Sweden. Maybe they’ll ask you if you might be interested in performing with young artists from Poland in Piotrków Trybunalski at the gallery space they run. Maybe you’ll stay up for half the night fantasizing about a possible performance you might do for an audience in Piotrków, while listening to “the Bad Plus” over and over again on your iPod. You would probably recap all the fantastic performances you had seen over the weekend. You might even smile when you think about how nice and welcoming Dennis Romanovski and Victor Petrov are, how fabulous the other participants are as well. You’ll think about the significance of organizing performance events. The importance of Navinki and what it means to have been a part of it. The magnitude of communing with students, educators, artists, and regular-old-real-people from around the world. Maybe you will have just spent three months learning/preparing/traveling/living/performing in Poland and will feel at ease that you accomplish more than you had expected to, that joining your friends and colleagues from back home and performing at Navinki together is a story to tell for a life time. You’ll keep in mind that it should not end here with this unique experience, that there will be more to come because being a performance artist is integral to being part of an international community. You might even fall asleep smiling, after the boarder checks and the wheel changes and not wake up until the controller comes to let you know your stop is coming up. And then upon arrving at Warszawa Centralna, maybe, Gordian and Piotr will help you get back to Lódz, if that is where you are going at 6:30am on a Tuesday morning in early September.

check out the following sites for more pictures and information on Navinki:
navinkifestival.org
http://lidial.livejournal.com/58230.html
http://tatiana-avgust.livejournal.com/11841.html
http://picasaweb.google.ru/tatiana.avgust/PerformanceArt2007

Also, keep an eye out for my third report from Poland. My fifth report will be in person at SMFA, Boston on the 14th of November, 2007. It is a lunch time talk, so it will probably start around Noon. I expect to report a sixth time, via the internet, after participating in the Meeting of International Performance Artists in Hildesheim, Germany, organized by IPAH e.V. I am very excited to have been invited to this event.


Take care everyone.
-Richard Spartos

1st Report

Greetings, friends and family, I have had an exciting 2 months in Central Europe and I look forward to the final 3. Not finally looking forward to it, I am more excited that I still have 3 months left. However, I worry that this time will go much faster than the first 2.

This is probably the first of what should have been 20 blogs. Maybe more. It will be the first of maybe 3 or 4 blogs. I hope you do not misunderstand or misinterpret the flavor of my journaling. I am very fond of these experiences and am very fond of the people I have met along the way. If something appears to be mean or politically incorrect, you probably have mistaken my humor. Also, I expect that this, being a compilation of journaling, has many, many, many grammatical errors. I apologize if it is hard to follow at points. The order of events is a little off. In some sections it reads as if I wrote everything today, and in other sections some of the things I write about haven’t happened yet.

I have integrated some Polish words into this journal as well. Sorry if you don’t understand them. Just a hint: ‘W’ is pronounced as a V. ‘Ch’ is ha (but you kind of spit in the back of you mouth when you say it). ‘ó’ is pronounced ‘ooo’ but shorter. ‘J’ is pronounced as a ‘y’ would be in English. ‘Y’ sounds like a short ‘i’. Also, some of the words I use should have polish characters and my computer does not support these. For example Lódz (google it to see what it should look like) sounds like ‘woodzj’ if you were to spell it phonetically for an English speaker. In Polish, the ‘L’ that I use would be pronounced as an ‘L’ should be. The polish character is a completely different letter altogether. It is obviously pronounced as a ‘w’ in English.

I hope I have completely confused the hell out of you at this point. It’s pretty much how I entered Poland on the 23 of May.

Enjoy,
-Richard Anthony Spartos

PS. You care all invited to view a portion of my photo documentation at
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s26/isethoros/poland/
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s26/isethoros/poland/work
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s26/isethoros/poland/myslenice
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s26/isethoros/poland/majster
http://s148.photobucket.com/albums/s26/isethoros/berlin

I first arrived in Poland on the 23rd of May 2007. The first thing I noticed is that the boarder officer did not smile. She did not greet me in anyway. She smugly looked at my passport, then looked at me, then stamped it and let me through the gate. I was expecting a long conversation with someone about how long I would be staying, who I would be staying with, where I would be staying, and why I was going to be there for 5 months. But, I got nothing. The second thing I noticed were the large men in combat boots conducting interrogations at customs. They actually smiled when I walked right into their country with no questions asked. The third thing I noticed was the shape of all the natives’ heads. The fourth thing was how weird their clothing and hairstyles are, or how out of place Agata and I must look. I don’t have any pictures of these varying hairdos. Right now, extreme variations of lights and darks are in. In most cases, a woman will have bleached a portion of the top of her head and leave the rest a natural color. Sometimes they look like monks of the Franciscan order, and other times they look like they are wearing a snow fox on their head… The fifth thing I noticed was the smell of gas (gaz, or propane) and the sound the engines of Polish cars make. Many of the vehicles in Poland run on gas as well as petroleum. Propane is much cheaper than petroleum. And somewhere amongst these realizations I noticed the weather.

The end of May was uncharacteristically hot for Poland and it had been uncharacteristically cold for the 5 weeks. Not the weather is back and fourth as if the seasons were changing from spring to summer or summer to fall. It has consistently rained approximately once a day every day I have been here, regardless of what city I have visited. Belchatów, Lódz, Kraków, Myslenice, and the village I have spent most of my time in, Wola Mikorska.

I took Agata, or maybe she took me, to meet Angel Pastor, his girlfriend Malgosia (Mao-go-zjia), Kenny McBride, and Arti Grabowski. Arti was just “too fucking busy” as he put in a text message to my Polish cell phone (actually a UK phone with a Polish SIM Card). We met Angel and Malgosia the second night we were in Krakow. They were easy to find. Angel seemed eager to meet or eager to get the favor out of the way. Which is ironic. He is a very slow moving and laidback individual. Kenny McBride described him as being so laidback that he swears he is going backwards half the time. Malgosia and Angel are such sweet individuals and very sweet as a couple. Both are performance artists with extremely insightful opinions regarding the performance art world. Kenny McBride, on the other hand, is a regular “Wódka-man” as Agata would put it. “A total Jebolic!” He’s got a hard exterior with goo for guts. Total trauma-artist with a keen sense of how the way things are run. A total stubborn artist with deep personal issues that he will have to tackle if he ever wants to finish his doctorate on the History of European Performance Art. I found his involvement in the scene a stubborn irony, intriguing, and important. I am curious if he is at all aware of his perpetual involvement in the scene as a dominant male figure and if so, will this awareness be kept in the basement? -Apparently, there is a basement where all the important art movements of Europe have been shoved and important figures of the current art world don’t have the guts to drudge through it (except for Kenny McBride of course)-. Anyway, Kenny is not really a “Wódka-Man” or “Jebolic”. On the contrary, he drinks beer to no avail and has a wholehearted way of loosening his lips for the ears of complete strangers. Agata and I spent nearly 12 hours drinking beer and chatting it up with him in Kraków. Thus, we dubbed him “McBrewsky”. It is a term of endearment. Nothing more, nothing less.

Anyway, I found him humbled and quite eager to humble. The process, in which he researches his doctorate, makes it hard to communicate in simple conversations regarding Agata’s and my own opinions about performance art. Not that I mind, I am merely reporting my experience. I appreciate the unfounded disagreements we may have had and his quick judgments, too. I’m sure his personal life and doctorate struggles, sort of, squashed our abilities to have a normal conversation. Although, something tells me it could have been the beer or my status and lack of experience in this particular circuit. Regardless, I treasure the experience I had, hanging out with Angel, Malgosia, and Kenny. They are all extraordinary characters and their differing engagements in performance are quite important.

Agata and I returned to Wola Mikorska after visiting Krakow. Since her younger brother moved to Lodz the week after we arrived in Poland, I have helped her mother move in to Wola Mikorska, paint her kitchen floor, patch a couple holes in the bathroom wall, install some kitchen cabinets, repair a butter dish, hang a mail box, hang a few things here and there, fill a trash pit full of trash and cover it in sand, use a sickle to cut the grass, chop down a tree, clear out behind the barn, clear out the attic, and make a bon-fire to burn a ton of burnable trash (boxes and scrap wood. The previous owner was a rug maker and we burned a ton or two of his rug making accoutrement, as well as old furniture and shit.) We are currently clearing out the barn and have found more of his rug making crap and other kaka.
This endeavor of clearing behind the barn has been performatively insightful. I have recorded the progress diligently. From digging fire pits to clearing grass and trash and trash and trash and trash. I have come to the conclusion that the former owner was a total slob. I think he started to lose his marbles in his older years (probably from visiting the outhouse on lengthy cold winter nights and not showering regularly). The amount of shit we continue to find in the back and in the barn “is nothing”, mama says “compared to the amount of shit I found in the back yard, in the basement, in the attic, in the house, under the bed, in the outhouse, in the well, in the shed in front of the barn was just 10x10x10 meters of trash plus what reached the ceiling of the shed. There was a hole full of garbage that the shed covered.” And then there is an auxiliary barn behind the main barn that houses wood and trash and trash and trash, I imagine when that got full, he started spreading it out all over the place, a little in the basement, a little in the attic, a little under the bed, a little in the barn over there…over here… up there… down there… behind the barn some more, dig a shallow whole and burry a collection of mini shaving cream canisters…another small hole and bury a collection of sardine cans, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…

Beyond all the trash we have cleared, relocated, burned, buried etc… we found gooseberries and currents, an apple tree, two plum tress, and some cherry trees as well. The apple tree, one plum tree, and the cherry trees are not giving much if any fruit this season because of the abnormal weather. We can thank the largest coalmine in the world, just outside of Belchatów, and the USA’s global warming policies! ;) Regardless of these toxic entities, I have made a mean 2 batches of jam. One from black and red currents and goose berries. The other from red and white currents, some goose berries, two peaches that were about to turn, and plums.

On July 4th, I woke up not realizing what day it really was. I headed out to the back of the barn a resumed clearing trash by the auxiliary barn. I had dug a fire pit a week or so before and was wondering if today would be a good day to start burning all the scrap wood and paper boxes we had collected in the back. Before I knew it, Majster, Agata, and I had begun to build a fire. We built it up so high that the flames reached at least ten feet up. This particular burn would keep the smoldering coals burning until the next morning. The next day I realized that I had completely missed July 4th. Not that I missed the celebrations or being in the states for fire works or whatever, I just completely forgot.

Maybe, somewhere I had an inkling that making a bon-fire was quite appropriate, subconsciously negotiating a familiar state of the summers I had experienced on a consistent basis.

So, while Bush continues to fuck up Iraq and fill up his canteens full of trash for the next Pres to dredge through, I made piles of twigs, tree branches, dirt, grass, sand, ash, scrap wood, and pokczywa, a plant that likes to grow in patches of berry plants such as currents and raspberries. It burns when you touch it. I think there are catalysts in the tiny thorns that cover the stock and leaves and it really itches when you touch it. Then it burns. However, I think the more you touch it the less you can feel it, although it still leaves a mark, and if you scratch this area, it will boil and blister. It lasts for a little while. The begins to fade. One night Agata had to pee really bad and the bathroom was taken, so she went behind the barn and got burned on her butt. I’ve touched pokczywa a number of times since then and the first time it blistered slightly. I didn’t scratch the area. Yesterday as I cleared pile after pile of poczkywa away, I found markings up and down my left forearm, but I hadn’t felt anything. My hand, mostly my thumbs were burned, though. And the piles of trash. I mean, the shit I have gone through, literally and figuratively speaking has been intense, and often senseless. I suspect it is partially the after-shock of being an occupied nation for hundreds of years and having the distinct memory of Nazi-ism and then communism all during the same century and back to back.

Now Poland will be dealing with the EU and I suppose will never know what it is like to be truly independent. I’m hoping I am way off base but, French Super Markets, SIM Cards, Department Stores, Hyper Nova, Nomi, gas prices, Phillip’s electronics and other bullshit… Think about the lack of mom and pop stores in Massachusetts nowadays, the preservatives in juice, pasteurized milk, college loans, and sony just to name a few.

On the other hand, I expect some things to take longer to change. I mean, the lack of showering thing. Agata’s brother has been in Lodz with no gas (he can’t cook or have hot water for bathing) for over a week. Apparently, this kind of thing happens every summer, and will last for the whole summer while 3 dudes argue over a hole in the street, trying to figure out how to replace the pipes and fill it in. These same three dudes will be out there digging holes, clearing out the old dirt, and filling them in with new clean sand for the next few months or so… we expect. Wishfully, the gas would have been back on half a week ago and we wish that the gas comes on in another half of a week.

Agata and I went with mama to get her sink fitted to a counter top 6 weeks ago. We went to a hardware store and waited for a half hour while the “Majster” wood cutter argued with a few other guys about the best way to make a straight cut. Finally, mama is approached by the “Majster”. He appeared to be in the midst chemo-therapy (cancer is very common in Belchatów, probably due to the coal mine and Chernobyl) either that or he suffers from Trichotillomania or Alopecia Universalis, the most extreme form of Alopecia Areata. At any rate he explains that he will not do the counter top. “We only make straight cuts here”.
-By the way, Agata’s brother is nicknamed Majster. A name dubbed for being the complete opposite of a Majster, with a very can do attitude, consistently accompanied by dire results... One of the holes I patched in the bathroom is a result of his “can-do” destructions. He was asked to simply install the toilet paper dispenser, a beautiful bronze cast of a ship-maid, near the bathroom radiator. He grabbed the hammer drill and hammered the drill through the radiator’s water feed pipe, inadvertently installing a bidet right next to the toilet. Now, of course every wall in Poland is concrete and/or brick…..
Just a couple weeks ago, as we drove to Myslenice, we stopped at a gas station to rest. He went in and bought a screwdriver with the goal of dismantling part of the glove compartment so he could have more legroom. Just when he finished, Mama told him to get in back so I could drive and she could sit in front. Brilliant! It has been 3 weeks and he probably will never put it back to the way it was. So, I have been nicknamed Majster as well, for having the know how of repairing holes, installing cabinets, and packing moving vans. Soon after I was given this name, I asked for a distinction. Majster is now “Majster Perfectus”, an even larger parody of the original nickname, Majster. I am now known asMajster Tetrus, usually refered to as Tetrus (derived from the video game “Tetris”); the givers of this nickname like to point out my desire to put things together in an orderly fashion. The irony in this is the seemingly unorganized tendencies of the people in certain areas of Lódzkie. [Unorganized is not what I particularly mean. It’s more like ‘out of place’ or just un-natural (block housing, block shopping galla, block cheese, block everything amongst some real, hardy, ‘mom and pop’ businesses; it’s definitely a result of being a post-communist country on the verge of being fully integrated into the EU.] Anyway, Agata has been dubbed “Majster Rolka” for her ability to roll a perfect cigarette. The three of us, Rolka, Majster, and I, had gone looking for wood the day before and waited a good while for help at Nomi. And we never received it. This was amongst a series of looking for something, needing help, and getting none. For example, it took 3 weeks to find a place that would remove the SIM lock on my phone, and the place that finally did it wouldn’t actually remove the lovk on my phone, but on an older model that Majster used to use in Scottland. For real, this place is generally not much of a “can-do” society. I have seen a number of locals using the same model that I used in the states. Plus, we have been waiting for the internet to be hooked up at Majster’s flat and mama’s house for nearly 2 months. In fact, this blog will be posted from Wola Mikorska or Lódz, one month after the internet was ordered, and 5 days after it arrived at mama’s house… the seemingly disorganized events that I tried to describe earlier
-So, cancer-man sent us to a guy down the road to get the counter cut to size. Now, this guy runs a shop out of his converted farmhouse and he has obviously suffered a stroke. Much to our surprise, he was a ‘can-do’ sort of fellow who was very helpful and amiable. However, his shop didn’t work on real wood. So, our previous day’s dilemma continued. No matter, we only needed real wood for the project Agata, Majster, and I failed to complete, and stroke-man would send us across the street to Majster Carpenter, a regular ‘Stephan’ “who is usually not around, but, if he is in, then he is very good and will cut the wood for you.” said the man with a half paralyzed face and glasses thick enough to see mold on the moon. We arrived across the street, and he was in fact in his shop working hard. Now, most men in Poland shake hands when being greeted (the seventh or eighth thing I noticed). It is usually a very short exchange. They basically just touch their hands together and form the picture of a handshake, but do not even shake. I have yet been able to get a hang of this exchange, and feel very rude and mostly embarrassed when I grasp and shake the hand of some local I’ve been introduced to. So, I didn’t notice when we didn’t shake, or maybe I was just relieved. I usually just make eye contact and say “hi” or “dzien dobry” or not anything at all, because the presence of an American in this part of Poland is most often a digression from the business at hand, and we had a lot to get done on this day. As mama puts in her order I notice why he did not attempt to greet us formally. First I saw the freshly healing cut on his thumb. I nice chunk of flesh and nail will be missing forever. I’m sure one of his table saws took that away. Then I realized a stub or two as we described the type of cut we wanted for the shower curtain. “A half block of wood 8x8 cm cut diagonally, 45 degrees…” And then I realize I am staring at a bone sticking out of his left index finger. I mean, it was completely healed, half way between his 2nd and what used to be the 1st knuckle. The bone beyond the first to the tip, gone, but there was still a good centimeter or even an inch of bone sticking out of his flesh. Just like when you pull the meat off a chicken wing…

Just to recapitulate this string of ordinary Belchatówian events; the Majster with Aprecia Areata sent us to the Majster who’s half his body was partially paralyzed by a stroke, and he sent us to the Majster with stubs where his full fingers would be. So, no, Kenny, your crazy story about why you make performance art is not that out of the ordinary… Every Majster is fucked up, one way or the other.

Now, fuck me for whining about this shit. What else would a white guy from a Boston suburb bitch about? And, what else would a white-American-male-performance artist think about while digging holes and making piles in a small village in southern Poland? I can’t stop thinking about how the fuck I am going to prove this. As in how I will be presenting a portion of my report to an audience consisting of several of my peers and my thesis committee on November 14th 2007. How I won’t have all that much, if any video material because I was more interested in documenting the results of my process than the process itself. How I have not asked any one I am staying with the follow me around with a still camera to document whatever. And, how making performance has become nothing more than what I did when I make sculpture or draw. Its presentation still leaves out the most interesting part of the processes that build up until an action is made. I want the body and I want the actions, but it if no one is there to witness, or be willing to carry a video camera in order to preserve their experience as a witness, then I am left to recall this process in writing, and I am not at all interested in thinking about the best place to place a camera, etc… Pictures are telling but they are also complete lies, and the same goes for videotape and sound recording. I am interested in the shit that can never be picked up by camera or a sound recorder. These are the things that I am thinking, feeling, smelling, hearing, and seeing. The moment when I am not doing any of this and especially the moment when impulse is all that I have left. The only prospect of sharing these experiences with other people, I believe, lie in the possibilities of language i.e. writing and having conversation… about the description of events that I provide, and the imagination of those who wish to read about and/or listen to these descriptions. As Majster McBrewsky says, and no doubt other informed scholars as well “Performance, art, is not just about the moment or the ephemeral. Performance is not ephemeral. It is the process before and it is the memory of the product produced and the process of making it. It is the memory of audience and the performer…”

Ironically, I came to Poland interested in the moment. What I realized, blasting through all the waste in mama’s back yard, attic, whatever, was that I have always been more interested in process, and what I am finding is that process is not locked in a moment. It is durational and requires time, discovery, and a lack of knowing what will happen next.

Back to no showering and the degree of filth I have encountered since being in the village. While we waited for the counter to be cut and the sink to be installed, 3 weeks about, we had been washing dishes in the bathtub or the bathroom sink. No different than certain flats I have visited in Alphabet city. The kitchen sink is a fucking bathtub. Not a problem, not even when I washed greasy pans in cold water from the spicket out in the yard. But as I realize how out of touch with the date I am, the internet not being at my finger-tips, the lack of napkins and baby powder in this country, I realize how easy it is to go several days without showering. Which brings me to the long running project I have indulged in after my first stint of days-with-out-cleaning myself. After using the toilet in one room, wiping my ass, flushing, opening the door, and walking across the hall to wash my hands. After several 500ml cans/bottles (24oz about) of Zywiec, a 1000ml of Wódka or so, 100s of grams of bread, cheese and the best slicing meat I have ever had, a few 100 grams of Golonka, and a few 1000 grams of Kasanka and Keilbasa. It began as a joke. I hadn’t shaved longer than I had not showered and my moustache had started to grow in quite thick. I shaved my head and my face and left the upper lip, partially as a joke. To give a little background, Agata and Majster have nicknamed the Jebolics and Wódka-men, the lack-lusters of any fashion, the total ignorant and complacent oblivious men of the country, “Stephanics”. And, the clothes and other accoutrement, i.e. moustache, sandals, high socks, and tapered pants (amongst a shit ton of other things that may or may not be revealed in this report), are called “stephanki”. So, I went out in my pontefelke and shorts, and a tucked in T with my new moustache and we took pictures by the barn. All in good fun, trying to connect with any possible polish roots I may have, or my Eastern European roots. A lot of moustaches in my family, now that I think about it, and I do have a Polish Godmother who is also Jewish…. Figure that one out McBrewski!

After reviewing my pictures, I thought I would explore Sean Johnson’s beard project and half-ass-like document the growth of my facial hair, for very separate reasons, of course to see at which point I have made a full conversion into a true Stephonic! I have not shaved since June 15th, the day I met Kenny McBride. I have taken at least one picture a day of myself to document this transformation. I think the idea transfers more clearly after having a few shots of Wódka… by the way I am still feeling woosy from a night of partying with a couple of real live middle aged Stephonics (that was on the 30th of June. It is now the 9th of July). One of which took a serious liking to me and asked if he could visit me in Australia. The other took a serious liking to Agata and shamed himself on a number of occasions in front of his girlfriend. “Total Stephonic” as Agata would say, “total Wódka-man… and way too suggestive”. I still can’t speak Polish and I could tell how his tendencies were perverted. However, 8 of us went through 5 bottles of Wódka. One bottle was a liter and the other 4 were…. big enough. After several hundred grams of keilbasa and kasaneska, more Wódka than my stomache would see for the rest of my life, and several good laughs, I tossed as much as I could by the fire pit –another project I have indulged in.- Of course, it took a bit of convincing. As if I were a little kid with an upset stomache. I wanted to barf, it just wouldn’t come out. Then I woke up in bed with a small puddle next to my pillow, and Majster jabbering “It’s OK Rich, everyone gets sick. Whatever, everyone pukes, It’s Ok…” and on and on and on he goes, repeating himself as I literally crawled on my hands and knees to the bathroom, grumbling “not everyone is puking in the bed.” I mean, we actually had an argument about it. Good times! I woke up at sunrise 4:00am to Agata drinking water by the bed. We had a little recap of the night so I could write this story into my report. Nonetheless, my transformation into Stechan has had its ups and downs, and I think was fairly disrupted when trying to explain the project to one of the IPAH participants, from Hilsdesheim, why I am un-shaven.

Tomorrow we leave for Mysclenice. I completely misunderstood how this whole residency was going to work. Apparently, we are only going for a few days. It actually lasts for 2 weeks. We are going for the last 6. I will be there for 5 because I have to catch a train to Berlin on the 14th from Krakow in order to get to the IPAH workshop by the 15th. -That was a fucking disaster from the beginning. For one, bank transfers are sketchy as fuck. For another, I know someone who got in just by saying, “I would like some information…please”. That’s the extent of my shit talking. I won’t knock it until I’m done with Jürgen Fritz’s workshop on “knowing what performance art is… as an actor…” or something whack like that. Not sure why I didn’t get into Alastair’s group; probably something to do with that bullshit bank transfer that everyone had a fucking problem with. Hey, Malte, can we try pay pal or all pay or something that fucking comes with the mother fucking 21st century, you know, for the upcoming years? I don’t know… Anyhow, I will perform in Mysclenice. I am looking forward to it. It is a European audience, and the artists are all traditionally related to classic art styles in one way or the other, from what I understand. That could be an other misunderstanding though. I will have to report on it. Berlin should be an interesting experience. You will have to know, this is my first time in Europe and I am braving the train connections alone to Germany from Krakow, not that a direct connection would be braving. That’s not really what I am worried about. It will be getting back to Lódz or Wola Mikorska. I have a better chance of getting to Lódz than Wola Mikorska. Not many folks speak English in the village and I expect not many folks will speak English in any of the possible areas I will need to make a train connection in.


Well, I made it back from Berlin in one piece, although it was a near disaster. I will report in a moment. First I have to share my experience of Myslenice, then Berlin.

Majster, Agata, Mama and I drove from Wola Mikorska to Myslenice on the 10th of July. I actually did a fair amount of the driving. I have been doing a great deal of driving since I have gotten here, which is nice. Poland does not have many highways and the ones they do have seem to be under construction a lot. I wonder if it is the same three guys working in front of Majster’s flat in Lódz… So, the first thing I notice is that you can drive 100km/hr on certain stretches of the road and that the one is expected to speed up from 90 km/hr to 100km/hr before decelerating to 80, 70, 60, and then 50km/hr in work zones. Most drivers drive as fast as they can in the passing lane. This is nothing new for Americans. The commercial vehicles will stay within the limits in most occasions but tend to be road hogs and passive aggressive drivers. Whatever…

We found our way to Myslenice, just before dinner. I still don’t know how or why Ziminia Myslenice was able to accommodate 4 of use for one week at the Rycliniec outside of town. At any rate, the food was good for the most part, our bedroom smelled of Romanian urinal-cake, and the bathroom smelled of shambo. Whatever.

I spent the first day planning an action. I had no idea what this action would be. I checked out the spaces that were available to us and nothing screamed out to be used. I didn’t want to make work that was so far removed from what these artists experience and from what the mission of the camp is. It was important that I figure out the relevance of my work before I made it happen. I found out that there would be an annual summer ritual headed by the final presentation of the camp on the day I was to leave for Berlin. The peak of the event was the burning of the Wernisaz. Basically, several people would make crowns out of flowers and grass then attach them to some sort of effigy (representing the Wernisaz. The Wernisaz is the the closing reception in which all the artists of Ziemia Myslenice show, at least, one piece of work). The effigy is then lit on fire and a season is turned. I am not exactly sure what season’s end we were to celebrating during this event, but the Wernisaz was to be burned and my action was to involve the burning (I generally think it stems from a Pagan ritual that is used to bid farewell to any event or entity’s passing). So, I revisited the idea I started to develop at Mama Dybalska’s house and started working the Friday evening before the burning of the Wernisaz on Saturday evening.

Majster and I started to work methodically, collecting rocks from the riverside and placing them in the area where the rings would be dug. The rocks smelled of rancid water and fish carcass. I used a saddlebag and Majster used his hands. After collecting a fair amount of rocks we began to dig a circular trench, approximately 2m in diameter. We chose this spot based on a small fire pit that had already been used on this site. It makes digging the center pit easier. Our tools consisted of two shovels and a pickaxe and we traded responsibilities after outlining the ring for the trench. I took the pickaxe and made it one third of the way around before the handle cracked and was rendered useless. This factor made it difficult to complete the trench. We discussed abandoning the project and getting a new handle in the morning. However, I was already heated up and ready to work and I was not interested in giving up so easily. Majster was right though, the soil was littered with small rocks, and it was difficult to manipulate the dirt without the pickaxe. The sun had already gone most of the way down and a lightning storm had begun. Probably better that I was not lifting a metal object over my head at that time. Still, I wanted to work. I explained he could go back to our room and I would stay. He protested, as always, concerned that I would catch a cold, working out in the rain. I was only wearing shorts, sneakers, my Harbinger lifting gloves, and a tank top. In the end, I convinced him to leave me to work in the dark, by the river, and in the lightning and rain. I began to dig out the center pit and worked on it for about 45 minutes before the rain started to really come down. At this point the sun was completely settled for the evening and my proper tool was useless. I packed up my accoutrement and went back to our room.

In the morning, Majster and I went straight to the hardware store and found a brand new handle. The pickaxe was not ours, so replacing the handle was a priority of mine before leaving for Berlin that afternoon. Even if the fire pit could not b finished, I wanted to make sure I didn’t leave without cleaning up my mess. Later that morning, we resumed our actions, digging the trench deeper, widening the center pit, and filling in the outer ring with more stones from the riverside as well as from what we were digging up. Several passersby stopped and asked me, I assume, what we were doing. “No Popolskie” I would say, “I am sorry I don’t speak Polish.”
“Ah, nie Popolskie….” And the passersby would walk off unless Majster was there to answer their questions. According to Majster, a couple people had asked if they could use the fire pit when we were done, and a couple had asked if we were making a movie (I had my video camera set up. One man had asked if we were building a foundation to support a sculpture of the Mayor of Myslenice. These would be the only interactions I witnessed in person.

That after noon, I packed up all my stuff for Berlin. Agata and one of the other artist campers drove me downtown to catch a bus to Kraków. Agata asked a nice couple if they would make sure that I don’t miss my stop in Kraków and if they could point me in the right direction of the train station when I get there. Kraków is a fairly small city, and most roads run towards the square in the center of the city. I was fairly confident I would remember my way to the station, regardless of where I was dropped off, but it was nice to have a second set of eyes pointing me in the right direction.

The train to Berlin was long. It took almost 12 hours from Kraków. Since I did not make a reservation, the only cars left were sleeping cars, which are the most expensive. I had no complaints. To this point of my travels, I have stayed well under my total budget and springing for a sleeping cart was not going to be an issue for me. The only problem would be who I had to share the car with… It turned out to be a middle aged polish man, who brought his own food for the trip to Germany. He had very fragrant sausages and sandwiches, and took no shame in smacking his lips while he ate. The combination of smell and lip smacking gave me a slight stomachache. I am getting a slight one now as I write.

The other two bunk mates were from France, I believe. They seemed to be backpacking across Europe with juggling sticks and a guitar. I think they had spent a lot of time with each other thus far and seemed to be on each other’s nerves. The only real problem I had with this car/bunk, was that there was no room to sit up. We were not aloud to flip the bunks up or open the windows. Settling into the train took about an hour, before the AC kicked in, before the two French kids stopped jumping on and off the upper bunks, and before the sun started to go down. I tried reading in my bottom bunk for a while, but there was no auxiliary light for reading and my fingers started to fall asleep as I read on my back.

As far as I could tell, there was no dining cart on this train. If there was, there was no way for me to get to it from my car. On one end, the door was locked, and on the other… well I just didn’t feel comfortable tredging through other people’s cars. So, I stood in the hallway outside my bunk and read the second half of Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut. I had finished Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore the week before and started Hocus Pocus just before leaving for Myslenice. I wished that I had taken a longer time to read Vonnegut, because I didn’t think I would want/need another book to read after that.

By morning, I had finished Vonnegut, slept about 4 hours, and was paranoid that I would miss my stop and stranded in some foreign land with no way of communicating with anyone. My paranoia was a little off base. I mean I had come from the innards of Poland where most people cannot or refuse to speak English with foreigners. So, I stood at the end of the car near the toilet and watched the stops from there. I didn’t want to go to the bathroom, fearing that I would get stuck on the other side of Berlin or in Frankfurt or some shit (an decision that made the first couple hours in Berlin quite uncomfortable).

I made it to Berlin just fine. I found a bank that is in partnership with Bank of America. I found the train controllers eager to help the stupid foreigner figure out how to use the ticketing machines on the platform. However, the machines were reluctant to receive my fresh Euro bills. No matter, I was not in a rush to get to RAW-Temple for the IPAH workshop. As far as I understood, no one would be there until 12:00 anyways. It was only 7:30 at this point.

After buying 2 pastry, a milk coffee, and not having the correct change to use the city toilet, I went back to the platform to catch a train to Wauchauer Strasse. The controllers were nowhere to be found, so I stood, eves dropping, until I heard someone speaking in English. A couple of backpackers who had gone the wrongway on the metro helped me buy a ticket from the machine. This time I had change. At this point I was pinching my buttocks so hard that I was sure I would give myself a hemorrhoid. Little did I know it would be another hour and a half before I found a bathroom I could relieve myself in. The ride was quick. I asked directions to RAW-Temple from a couple of people. There had been a large party there the night before and a group of 3 college age kids were still drinking from the night before. There are no open container laws in Berlin. They showed me where it was, but did not explain the full lay out. They were obviously still enjoying their buzz from the night before. I figured no one from IPAH had arrived yet, so I went off on a search for a city toilet. An hour later, I was back across the bridge from the Metro station desperately searching for a place to shit. I had stopped by RAW-Temple a couple times to see if there was any sign of IPAH, but, as I later learned, they were all still sleeping, or on their way from Hildesheim. I practically sprinted down Waurchauer until I found a bar. It seemed to be at least a kilometer away from RAW-Temple, but the bar was open and still had customers from the night before? Or they were some early drinkers. I impatiently waited for the bar tender’s attention and when I got it, I ordered a beer. It was 9:30 at this point. I didn’t really want a beer, I just wanted a place to relieve myself, and I did.

The day was extremely hot, I had baught a bottle of water from a kiosk back by the Metro station. The weather had been quite tempermental in Poland and the first hot day I experienced there was the day I left for Berlin. Today was even hotter and humid. I payed no attention to the fact that it was Sunday morning, drank my beer, smoked several cigarettes and carried a conversation with a drunken German. He didn’t care that I could not understand him, and he didn’t care that he could not understand me. He sat and drank a couple rum and cokes and I moved on to a hot toddy. I taught the bartender how to make my bastardized version of a hot toddy. Whiskey, lemon, black tea, and honey. She brought me a double whiskey mixed with black tea and half a lemon. “A real American drink?” she asked. “No just a bastardized version of an Irish one” I exclaimed. I took another shit, finished my toddy, and went back to RAW-Temple to continuously fail to find where these people might be. Maybe it was the wrong day or I misunderstood the itinerary or something? I found an internet café and double checked that I was not completely crazy. I was on the right track, so I went back and walked the length of the wall that surrounded RAW-Temple, diligently looking for a sign that IPAH was being held there for the next week. I found nothing and everything. An older rocker… well not old, just too old to be a rocker… I guess, had told me that the whole area I just traversed was RAW-Temple and that IPAH could be anywhere in this vicinity. At 11:30, I gave up and decided to wait out front for other confused looking backpackers, but after a half hour, no one showed. When I went through the gates for the zillionth time, a tall man with cracked teeth and a ponytail asked me if I was looking for IPAH. He pointed me in the right direction and at 12:10 I found Alastair Maclennan, Monali_____, and Neil ______ having a late breakfast in what would be our “private” kitchen for the week.

To my amazement, Alastair seemed to be familiar with who I was. Neil didn’t seem too surprised that I knew who Andre Stitt (his professor) was. At this point, I realized the beer and the toddy had infiltrated my blood stream and I was instantly reminded of how little sleep I had gotten the night before. I made another bowel movement in 1 of the 3 toilets 24 people would share for the next 6 days. This toilet was next to 1 of 2 showers we would all end up sharing. The other shower would not be available until the 3rd day of the workshop and its location was upstairs in a separate building. No matter, I was used to not showering at this point, but the humidity was getting unbearable and I knew Jürgen Fritz’s workshop was going to be more on the physical side of things. I worked it out, showered when I knew people would not be trying to shower.

The first night there I felt as if I were getting sick. I had left Mama and Agata in Myslenice with bad colds and figured it was inevitable that I would come down with one as well. I’m still working off the last of this virus.

On Monday, the whole camp got together to show each other a 5-minute performance. I saw a lot of crap mixed in with some real action. For the most part, my piece was crap as well. I had planned on falling back on an action or two and then continuously changed my mind until I was ready to go myself. However, I was ready to perform before I had worked something out in my head. As I recapitulated several of the works, I recited the materials I saw being used; Milk, Tea, Tomato, and Nut. All I would need is an empty bottle, a table, and some chairs. This wasn’t hard, due to the fact that we were performing in a nightclub. So, I scavenged four materials that had been previously used in other performances. All were edible. The tomato had been used as the soccer ball in a fuse ball match, then was mashed onto a small picture of Jesus and dropped onto the dirty floor of the nightclub, the tea was actually a tea pot full of a half dozen of eggs (already cracked), the nut came from a piece where the audience was asked to shell a walnut, and the milk came from a work where the audience was asked to spit a mouthful of milk onto the performer (no one, who was given a glass of milk, spit it on the performer… I was not given a glass of milk). The later two materials were the cleanest. Although, the milk had sit out for an hour at this point, but whatever, it was fine. I asked 3 memebers of the audience to take a seat at the table with me, the material was all placed off to the left or right of each participant, and a bottle was layed down in the middle of the table. One of the participants said “NO WAY!” and I explained that I would not let them get hurt. Alastair took the first spin, and it landed on milk. Actually, the next several spins landed on milk. IO could have ended the piece there as if it were some kind of parlor trick, but then after Alastair spilled a glass of milk, on one of the other participants, with a faulty spin, he spun it to land on the tea. I drank the raw egg, straight up. Eventually, I tasted everything on the table. In retrospect, I wish I had taken a second to recognize my action. I could have taken the first participant’s exclamation as a sign to make them all choose, as if we were actually playing Russian roulette. If I do this work again, I will definitely do this.

That afternoon, we split into 2 groups to talk about the performances. Alastair and Jürgen decided to combine their groups for the workshop duration. Their idea to collaborate was a good one in theory, but as they soon found out, it would not feasibly work to have such a large group. I was excited, at first, for this merger. I wanted to work with both Alastair and Jürgen. After the our conversation, I was glad to wake up the next morning to find out that our groups would be split up again. I figured that I would have another chance to meet Alastair in the future.

I just have to say, Jügen Fritz is a mother fucking slave driver! He has a clear idea as to what performance is but does not have the language to translate it. He would not argue otherwise. On Tuesday morning we went to an old abandoned wharehouse adjacent to RAW-Temple. As we found out later, it was illegal for us to work there, but there had been a long tradition of graffiti artists working in there for years and our presence would be much cause for concern. Jürgen had us act as if we were on a horse and the horse would decide what direction our bodies would move. We were like madmen dancing around in a 4 m2 area that he marked off with his foot. He then ordered us to locate our self near the top of our spine and that we were not to want to desire to be within our selves. “I am on a horse and I do not know where it goes, and I do not want to be myself. I do not want to by in myslf anymore…” Then he would thrash about with us as we tried to understand this action. “Rhythm, Impulse, Body Impression –what am I feeling where is Richard, how does his body impress itself on mine….”

We worked so fucking hard for that first hour. Then we did this back to back with a partner. We faced off to a partner, made eye contact and rhythmically clasped hands. Our bodies, pouring in sweat, we went neck to neck, then face to face, experiencing tension, intimacy, and the exchange of bodily fluid. At one point I had his full body weight on my back. I squatted him and coddled his weight with my movement. The whole thing was completely out of whack and extremely physical. During each exercise he made grunting noises and seemed to be in complete ecstasy. That afternoon, he kicked our ass in the midst of each solo performance. During performances he did not want us to use the exercises, but to merely let them influence our work. After the first ass whipping, we understood what he wanted. We were to be able to perform solo performances simultaneously, being attentive to the location and action of each performer as we worked in solitude. Noise would be like the air we breath and it would integrate itself into our attitude. The motion of each performer and audience member would manifest in the same way. On the last day before our final performance, he would say “forget all that I taught you about Rhythm, Impulse, Body Impression, my dears… and work”. And we did. Out final piece was not anything compared to the work we made the afternoon prior, but we did work and we could not forget what he had told us. It was as if we all carried a tape recorder set on a loop of his final lesson to “forget”.

On Wednesday we resumed our physical excersizes but on a less aggressive level. These excersizes continued to test intimate boundaries, but merely by giving eachother massages. In the afternoon, we resumed with solo performances in the nightclub where we performed the first day of the workshop. Each of us were given an assignment to give one other member of our group a material to work with and an action to accompany it. I was given the task of doing an action that can be done over the course of one minute or 12 hours. I was not given a material to work with. I grabbed a stick, but on my kneepads and harbinger work gloves, and started to work. I was trying to build the nerve to take one step forward and whip the stick. I would repeat this action over the course of a ½ hour. However, when I went out there, I could not bring myself to start this action. It felt shallow and un-prepared. As I slowly traversed my performance, I looked up and saw the spot light. Naturally, I repeated the last performance I did in Marilyn Arsem’s performance projects class. But this was much different. I was standing and staring, rather than kneeling, staring and listening. I would slightly shift my weight from each of the balls of my feet and consistently close my eyes after several minutes of staring into the light. No one tried to stop me. In fact no one realized I was staring into the light, following the orbs of light stuck in my path of vision, and watching them from behind my eyelids until I realized I was looking into the dark again. This time it lasted for 45 minutes at least.

The day before, I had found a vacuum tube buried in some rubble in the warehouse. I had used it as I would have used an axe. Obviously the sound and feel was much different, and because of its weight, I was able to swing it down several times more than I would have been able to do an axe. The action was extremely aggressive and very loud. The tube had bounced back in my face and on my upper arms a a couple of occasions, leaving small abrasions and bruises. I was pleased with this act, but when I lost my breath and forced myself to work again and then gave up, I just simply gave up. I was interested to see what would be next if I were given more time.

Later on Wednesday, after talking about our solo performances, I asked Jürgen about durational work. He explained that it is important to have a task and a goal, and that the task would help one achieve the goal. Considering my previous experience as a performance artist, I had never done anything more than 2 hours, and I certainly never came up with a task or goal for any length of time that I had performed in. But, as I contemplated this, I remembered my work at Mama’s house and the tasks and goals that had been laid out for me. Not that I had to do these things, but that I wanted to do these things. Before, I thought of my process as a sculptor. I actually feared that my time in residence in Wola Mikorska would be spent as a sculptor, but as I spoke with Jürgen, I knew that my actions were pure and that the work I had been work shopping in the village was more performance than I had done in Boston. I wasn’t making sculpture for other people to interact with, I was methodically tasking with a goal to clear out behind the barn. The fire pit became a contingent factor. It was a pure action that came when all the piles had been made (or at least I thought had been made). As Jürgen put it, after our final performance when I asked for his honest opinion “materials are a tricky thing, we have an urge to use all our materials, not letting our materials use us, and then we tend to stop when all our materials have been used. However, real performance starts when we have nothing left to work with except for time, space, and body.”
I told him about an action I wanted to repeat over the course of 10-12 hours. I would tie one end of my fishing wire to a tree or fence and un ravel the whole length of the wire. At the end of the wire, I would rewind the whole roll and repeat this action until 12 hours accumulate or I feel over from exhaustion. “Ah!” he said “Sisyphus complex!”
Apparently Sisyphus was punished in the after life by having to roll a large boulder up to the top of a mountain. However, every time he reached the top, the boulder came rolling down, and he was to resume bringing the boulder back up to the top again.

I contemplated this, unraveling and raveling wire hardly seems to be a comparable to what Sisyphus had to endure…

Again, later on Wednesday afternoon, we resumed with solo performances in the nightclub. I strapped on my kneepads, my harbinger fingerless work gloves, and grabbed my roll of fishing wire. I started by kneeling down in front of my audience. I held the roll in my left hand and grabbed an end with my right. My action was as if I were unsheathing a sword. I did this slowly, keeping a tension between my hands. I closed my eyes and held my right arm up. As I did it again, slowly, I realized my action could have resembled the Nazi party’s salute or the 3rd Reich’s March. But this action was slow and I held monofilament in both hands… and I was on my knees. After a little while of repeating this action, I began to wonder if this would suffice as a durational work. If it might be interesting to see how long I could take to unravel the whole roll of monofilament. And, as always, I squashed the idea by holding my right arm still. I tried to keep the tension between my hands, but as I began to loose circulation in my arm and my feet, I could not pull the wire any tighter. I held my arm there, as straight as I could, at an angle, in full solute. As time passed my arm became weary and would begin to shake from fatigue. I meditated on this involuntary action and carried on with this new development. I believe I was done with my material and left only with my body, time, and space. I am sure there is something else I could have done to utilize the material, but at this moment I was finished. But, I kept on, allowing my arm to spasm and ache. To lower as it became weaker, and to persist in holding my arm there for as long as I could.

The discovery of involuntary action was not a novel realization. Jürgen had commented on my work with balance the prior evening. I had been methodically wiping dirt to the left and right as I knelt down on the warehouse floor. I watched my sweat make little spots in the cleaner areas, where I had just wiped. Then I proceeded to balance all my weight onto my hands, as if I were doing a hand stand, but this action would involve my knees to be resting on my elbows, leaving my back exposed to the ceiling. My feet would only come a few inches off the ground, and my head would correspond to my feet –my hand acting as a teetering point. However, the only involuntary action that would come from this task is the fatigue in my hands, wrists, and thighs, from holding my body in such a position. Of course this action came prior to the slamming of the vacuum tube and I was already exhausted from that as well.

On Thursday we were assigned to bring a change of clothes. Our morning excersizes were to be done in clothes that we would perform in. Previously, I performed consistently in a white T and a pair of jeans, black or blue. The past few days, I performed in cargo shorts and a T-shirt of varying colors. On this day I would be in all black. Actually, my pants were charcoal gray and my shirt was black, and there is red and white writing on my kneepads and harbinger gloves, and white writing on my addidas street shoes. We changed our clothes after giving our morning massages and jumped right back on the horse, so to speak. Jürgen had complimented us on our progress as a group and as students of his. He had expected that we would not come this far so quickly. How far that is, I do not have a clue, but apparently we were ready to move on to more intimate contact in our performance excersize. However, “next week we would work on touching the sex.” Next week was figuratively speaking since the workshop ended on Friday. I appreciate his emphasis on changing clothes/appearance. Doing sporty actions in proper clothes is much different than simply emulating an athlete. And working with material, having actions that correspond to a bag of tricks is important to get into our attitudes. After this morning’s excersize I traversed Fredreichstein Berlin in search of a hardware store and a second hand clothing store. I found neither. Instead, I found several discount surplus stores, much like ACME surplus or family dollar in the states. I spent about 60 US dollars on absolute shit. Even the shirt and tie I bought was crap. The shirt was more like a blouse for a fat man with a narrow neck and the tie, when tied properly would hang half-way down my torso. I adjusted as much as I could, but kept Jürgen’s advice about attitude in mind. I think the only failure was not finding a different pair of shoes, or rather, a pair of shoes from a second hand store.

The rest of the shit I got was like the crappiest tools one can find in all of Europe. It would be like stocking up for a construction site at the local dollar store. Which I did. At first, I figured I had just wasted a bunch of money. Then I figured it would be good to have a bunch of useless shit. Each item I bought I had used before, conventionally or otherwise. These items consisted of a hacksaw, measuring tape, a carpenters ruler, chalk, a chalk line, chalk dust, duct tape, an egg-slicer, a pot lid, an umbrella, ear protection, string, and five 20m lengths of clothes line (2 yellow, 2 green, and 1 blue). I wanted black for the sake of completing the colors of the German flag, but this shit was so mundane, colors did not matter. I also equipped myself with fishing wire, a stick, a vacuum tube, my kneepads, and my harbinger gloves.

That afternoon, I put the new items off to the side. I strapped on my kneepads and my harbinger gloves and made a neat little pile of the stick, vacuum tube, fishing wire, pot lid, and egg-slicer. We were working in the warehouse again, so I traversed the space looking for materials that came from the space. I found some scrap metal rods and a fuck load of rubber conduit, some with the wire still in it. Today would be our first set of simultaneous solo performances. Each performer had a routine that none of us knew, or if we did, did not affect our own routine. As always, I squashed my idea as soon as I entered the space, and came up with a new one just as quickly. I would take all the cables I collected and would tie them up to mounted conduits, 15 ft up on 1 side of the room, then stretch the cables, one by one, diagonally, to a pillar on the other side of the space we were working in. We had well over 5,000 square feet to work with for this performance. I started with the fishing wire. It was as if I had the task in mind for days and knew exactly how to execute my plan. Strung up the first cable with the fishing wire, doing my best to secure the end to the mounted conduit. I then began to add pieces of cable to the first piece, one by one, stretching them out. I didn’t even get that far when I started to put my weight into it and snapped the wire connecting the whole apparatus to the conduit. I grabbed a malluble piece of rod I had found earlier and made a hook out of both ends. The first hook attached to the conduit and the second hook to the piece that had been originally wired to the conduit. I resumed my stretching, this time with the ability to truly lean my entire weight against this apparatus. After bablancing for a few minutes, I resumed attaching more cables to the growing apparatus, stretching it across the width of the space. When I reached the pillar diagonally across from the point where the apparaut was originally attached, I tied the end of the apparatus with a sheet not to the pillar. From there, I found a point where some extra cable was hanging down and tied another cable to that point, possibly 2/3rds of the length towards the pillar. I began to pull and lean, flexing all the tension of these cables that I was physically capable of flexing with my weight and my muscles. As I faced the apparatus and leant back, holding onto the newest addition, I concentrated on balance. I concentrated on holding myself in this position for the next ‘would-be’ hour, but at some point it snapped and I feel flat on my back. I assessed that I was not hurt, but absolutely exhausted. As I lay there panting, I cracked a smile and laughed to myself. Then I laughed out loud. Jürgen stood close by and laughed as well. I got up from this position and resumed work on the apparatus I had begun to build. I repaired its weak point and began tying bowline knots to connect each rubber cable. In most cases the cable was hard to manipulate, so each knot looked clumsy and clumped, but for this task it would work fabulously.

We abruptly stopped one hour after we had begun. We were partially interrupted and partially interrupting ourselves to see if it was time to end.

The Group:
-Camilla had been spinning, with her arms spread like wings, for the duration of the performance. She used my earplugs and a sleep mask, conventionally. I had acquired the mask on my flight to Heathrow from JFK. The earplugs I bought in Lódz.
-Neil had laid out several pieces of wood and crawled on his stomach, through the grease, grime, and wood on the warehouse floor, to and from a car battery that he had placed at the opposite of his starting point. His path would extend from one end of the room to the other. Our paths often intersected.
-Tina had filled a sheet/sack with bricks. She got inside the sack and disrobed, then rolled around the space, slowly, for the duration of our performances.

There was no documentation of these performances…

On Friday, we were scheduled to perform from 16:00 to 18:00. However, we were also under the impression that we may take more or less time if an ending to our work would present itself before or after the 2 hours we were scheduled for. On this day we would use a smaller room adjacent to the room we performed in the day before. This room was far more littered from the ceiling to the floor. There were plenty of cables, old conduit, broken glass, rubble, and brick, and well as some other unidentified structures. For this performance I brought the bag of tricks I had stocked up on the day before. I dressed in the button down shirt and tie I had bought in town. I also collected several cables, a pipe, and 2 bricks to add to my pile of material.

That morning we had done some more physical excersizes. We were all drained, probably from our previous days performance. I think our attitudes had been emptied or our expectations had been fulfilled and like, how could we replicate this sort of dynamic 2 days in a row? Camilla would continue to spin. Tina would crawl around in a sack until she sees 2 spiders, and in a fit of panic, jump out topless and in underwear to only climb inbetween the broken windows of a partially demolished control room. Neil would crawl in and out of the rungs of a 10ft ladder, starting at one end of the room (near the demolished control room) and progressing towards the other end (near me) where he had placed half a watermelon that had begun to turn, 2 bottles of beer, and a pot with half of one of the bottles contents in it. I told him that I was going to be working in the area, he replied “eh, whatever, if it’s not there in 2 hours…”

Camilla was the nly one that consistently worked with spinning the whole time. She also lay on her back side and blew a ping pong ball out of her mouth as well as a freezer bag used for making ice cubes. Neil finished long before the 2 hours had passed. His actions were som physically draining he seemed perturbed that the rest of us had not finished our work. He would lay their, periodically, drinking some beer and eyeballing the rest of us. Then his real work began. He used his ladder in other ways and utilized stillness. He broke glass and he explored the space, all with the ladder by his side.

As I said before Tina jumped out of the sack and put us all in an awkward position. Before she would do this, she revisited her performance from the first day of the workshop. This work involved her sitting cross-legged with a water bottle full of powder or flower of cornstarch. She would then take gulps of this substance and experience her bodies involuntary reaction to the powder. Clouds of the substance would then fill the air and clusters of it would cake to her lips as the work progressed. At some point she put the bottle down and began rolling around in the chair she sat cross-legged in. After this action, I lost track of her until after she had jumped out of the sack of bricks. I heard Jürgen say “please, Tina, take care”. He had the conscious dilemma of questioning whether or not he would stop her from crawling in and out of the window frames, which were littered with broken glass. Of course she cut herself and of course she was mostly nude, and of course she had to pull small piece of glass out of her feet. But she kept working and Jürgen would not leave her side until she had finished. In retrospect, he wishes he had just stopped it and I wish he had stopped it because he was diligently documenting us until she decided to put her self at risk. Whatever, her work was beautiful and was important for her to experience this. Later, she would redress and traverse the space with Neil.

My attitude was so empty and bland from the start. I barely remember the order of events. I am very unsure as to what order my personal events took place. What I do remember is how Murphy’s Law had taken up shop amongst my material in order to infiltrate the bulk of my planned actions. However, what surprised me is that I went into the performance with a specific plan that I did not squash before the performance would start. I actually planned on using the rafters to hang objects from. I planned on taping bricks to the bottoms of my feet. I planned on filling an umbrella with blue chalk dust. I planned on brushing a small patch of floor as clean as I could. I planned on using my still camera, with a wide-angle lens, to take self-documentation of the mess I would be making. And, I planned on using each length of clothesline to hang objects from the rafter that I had planned on using.

I did not plan on taping 2 bricks to the bottom of each foot and to continue working with this handy cap. I did not plan on cutting off these bricks with a hacksaw after 1 hour. I did not plan to begin to jump as high as I could towards one of the subjects I had hung from one of the rafters, after cutting the bricks loose from my feet. I did not plan on getting the apparatus I used for hanging these objects stuck behind a lower set of rafters. I did not plan on the hacksaw breaking after 2 strokes of sawing into a steal I-beam jutting 1ft out of the warehouse floor.

As I have said before, pictures lie. And just as a picture may leave out the truth or misrepresent it, this journal has functioned in a similar way. It does not keep a chronical account of my experiences since I have arrived in Poland. It has purposefully left out many details and has inadvertently unearthed others.

I wrote earlier in this journal that I would describe my experience traveling back from Berlin to Wola Mikorska. Well, first of all, Wola Mikorska is a small village outside of Belchatów. Belchatów is a large town 50km outside of Lódz. Lódz is a large city 138km west of Warsaw. Not many people speak English or are willing to speak English to a foreigner in Belchatów or Wola Mikorska or on the train to Piotrków (the closest stop to Wola Mikorska). Now I tried my best to find a direct train to Piotrków because none of my familiar connections would be in Lódz. However, as luck would have it, Murphy insisted that the only direct trains to Poland from Berlin were not going completely in my direction and of course Murphy would insist that the train I take would accumulate 40 minutes tardy, behind schedule. Of course, when I bought my ticket in Berlin, the controllers would tell me that I could not by a ticket all the way to Piotrków and that I would have to by it at the station in Kutno. After a close look at my itinerary, Murphy had already put my train from Berlin to arrive 9 minutes before my train from Kutno to Pitrków would leave. This was before I realized the train from Berlin would accumulate another ½ hour of tardiness after stopping at the boarder crossing in Frankfurt Oder. Whatever, I found out from a very nice couple that like to eves drop in Polish and English and probably German, that I could infact buy a ticket from the controller on the train from Kutno to Piotrków. Of course, after getting off the train a ½ hour later than I had expected, I had figured my train to Piotrków had left and I was stranded in Kutno with no one to translate to the controller that I needed a ride to Wola Mikorska or Belchatów. So, I checked the train schedule and as Murohy would have it, if all trains were on schedule except for the German one, I was in fact stuck in the ass crack of Polish only Poland. After spending to months in Poland, you would think that I might be able to understand a little, and I do, but I can’t speak any more than children’s phrases. I can’t even say “I am lost” or “where is the men’s room?” I was listening to the PA and heard something about Piotrków, but I didn’t know if the train was arriving from that direction or if the train had been cancelled or if it was a train stopping there, what fucking platform it might be on. So, I whipped out my itinerary and waited in line for the ticketer. I showed her the itinerary and she was ready to send me off saying “you’re fucked you stupid Amerikanski.” And then she realized that the PA announcement was for my train that was leaving right away and her fantic yelling and pointing and showing me 3 fingers meant that I needed to run as fast as I could for Peron 3 or I would be stuck in this Polish only ass crack for who knows how long. I think I broke all my sprinting records from high school track, and I had my backpack and a duffel on my person. There was no way that I wanted to know I would miss my train by this close. Thank god a young women and her infant were stuck between the car doors with their stroller while her husband and the ticket controller went looking for a place for them to sit before the train was aloud to start moving. I made it in plenty of time to catch my breath and nervously wait to be kicked off the train for not having a ticket. I actually almost made the full 3 hour trip from Kutno to Piotrków without having to pay. I think the train had been so crowded and understaffed that a lot of folks made it on and off without having to pay. Thankfully the controllers were nice and one of them spoke English well enough to try it out on an American and they were willing to sell me a ticket. And even if I were to get kicked off, I would have gotten kicked off right at my stop. This is when I realized Murphy had come full circle and that everything that was supposed to go wrong over the past few days already had. I had literally sat in my compartment on the train from Berlin wishing and crossing my fingers that the train to Piotrków would be experiencing the same fate as me. Of course, late trains are to be expected in Poland. A five-minute stop will turn into a half hour and so on and so on. I was absolutely ecstatic that this particular train was running just as late as my previous connection.