THREE’S A CROWD
The exhibition covers areas ranging from Hong Kong to Slavic vixa parties. It looks at modern-day streets and dance floors, examining how – through their physical presence in the public space – bodies create temporary communities, how they transform the old reality and create new conditions. And how many people does it take to make a crowd. The autonomous, affect-driven and confusing social body is a dynamic 19th-century construct that stands in opposition to the concepts of capitalist productivity, rationalism, and social order. It is more of a manifestation of social disorder: the crowd as a horde, the crowd as a swarm. But it happens that three is already a crowd. The club culture remembers cases of criminalizing the rhythmic movement of at least three people dancing to the music based on repetitive beats. We also remember this pandemic year’s spring and autumn events, when the hearts of the Polish police beat faster at the sight of crowds of three and five people. Bodies always function in relation to other bodies. To have no body is to be nobody. Bodies shape social life in the public space through movement and stillness, gathering and distraction. Also by absence. Regardless of whether it is a grassroots form of bodily (dis)organization, self-choreographed protests, improvised social dances, artistic, activist or artivist actions, bodies become a field of social and political struggle. Together and apart.