'reasonably' / rozsądnie'
duo performance art piece Karolina Kubik (PL); Rosalie Schweiker (D); DURATION: 2 hours; DARTINGTON COLLEGE OF ARTS, DEVON, ENGLAND, spring 2008
'Rozsądnie' to performance bardzo nierozsądny, prostą linią z frustracji. Konieczny w tamtym czasie, gdy pieniądze z funduszu Erasmusa się skończyły po 1 miesiącu, a do końca semestru pozostały 3. Znalazłam dwie prace (w kawiarni - skąd pochodzą bagietki, oraz Domu Spokojnej Starości - skąd koszula) i udało się zebrać ECTS. A przy mnie zaprzyjaźniona Niemka z trzema stypendiami i nadmiarem gotówki.
Dwie bagietki suszone w tych samych warunkach, wyschły inaczej. Każda z nas miała inne zadanie. Ja rozbijałam, Rosalie rozcierała. Zmagałyśmy się z nimi dwie godziny wkładając okruchy i resztki do brązowych niewielkich kopert, w identycznych dostawałam nielegalną wypłatę.
We crushed dried bread with our elbows and put crushed bits in brown envelopes. Those envelopes are for you. You can take them.
Artists statement
Elbows are used for metaphors in different ways in different languages. For example in German ‘Die Ellenbogen benutzen’ means to be very competitive. In English there is a saying ‘ Not knowing your ass from your elbows’ which means that the person is very stupid and incompetent. Or another proverb is ‘elbow grease is the best polish’ or a phrase used by Thomas Carlyle ‘a man always has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.’ In Russia there is a proverb ‘you’re elbow is close but you can’t bite it.’ Bread is also a strong metaphor for labour and work. Somehow both sides, the viewers and the performers, could be jealous about each other. Because the viewers could see the whole performance from the outside and see it’s strength of the image and the action. But the performers have the experience that only they share, they have the experience of the bread and the pain and how it feels like to work with the material. In the process of the performance they explored the material in new ways and had different phases of frustration and joy. They explored a new relationship to their body and its physical limits, they learned about the material they had to tackle and they got strength from enduring the whole situation. As a visual artist I think that the image was as important as the action. The whole studio space, the small table and the chairs were both very usual and at the same time very absurd. For this piece it was the first time that I did not directly address the audience. Somehow the performers were in a separate and close own world, but the audience could join us and take the envelopes. The duration of the piece was 2 hours and within this time people left the studio or came back and there were shifts of our behaviour as well, depending on who was with us in the studio. From this performance we received a lot of strength and new knowledge about ourselves and our art. But we also took great pleasure and pain out of it. This piece was mostly about oppositions, about the difference between body and dead material, about emotions and states, about two different personalities, about noise and silence, about absence and presence, about money and not money, about slow and fast, about funny and serious, about order and mess, about seeing things and covering things, about reputation and rejection, about the individual and the group.
