Presence/ Absence/ Traces. Contemporary Artists on Jewish Warsaw

Page 75

Katarzyna Słoboda

K ata r z y n a S ł o b o da B o d y/ M e m o r y/ R e p e t i t i o n

1 August 2014. Warsaw. Corner of Andersa and Franciszkańska Streets. On that day Noa Shadur, Konrad Smoleński and their collaborators are shooting a film in the underground chambers that are part of the Warsaw Metro ventilation system. Aneta Jankowska, Magdalena Ptasznik and Łukasz Przytarski, the lead actors/dancers, are re-enacting looped movement sequences for the double takes. Two people simultaneously rush at the third one, symmetrically holding her shoulders and pulling her up by the hair tied in a topknot. One person dynamically presses his foot against the chest of the other, in the next moment the attacked retaliates with the same move, they struggle for a while in that unstable position. Two people charge at each other like wrestlers, in a second they fall to the ground in a clinch. A passing train sets the rhythm of the scenes, defining the dynamics of light, sound, air, and body movement. The shots were also taken at a skatepark, a Metro tunnel, an empty flat, and a railway station. The starting point for the movement sequences were crime scene photos, and photos of the moments of apprehension of the (alleged) perpetrators. Most of the material used by the artists are pictures of individual crimes, crimes committed at home, occasionally pictures showing for example riots being suppressed. I deliberately rely on my faulty memory (I have seen the large set of photos only twice) when mentioning the reference points because it seems to me that covering tracks, messing the traces of memory, and searching for vibrant reference points in the body is essential for the project. � In what way memory recorded in the encoded techniques/methods of the body usage is activated in a performative attempt to reconstruct the image? The body techniques — according to Marcel Mauss (a) — are a set of habits conditioned physically, psychologically, and primarily socially. However, kinetic abilities of the body are capable of transforming the habits and developing forms of resistance against the regimes they impose. (b) Dance is a technique that allows us to realise the motor abilities of the body in a most refined way, potentially infinite. As Randy Martin has written: “Dance bears all the traces of where people have been forced to move and where they have forced movement, of how body has been shackled and what might constitute a See: M. Mauss, Socjologia i antropologia, transl. by M. Król, (Warsaw, PWN, 1973), pp. 538–566. b See: C. Noland, “The ‘Structuring’ Body: Marcel Mauss and Bodily Techniques,” in: Agency and Embodiment. Performing Gestures/ Producing Cultures, (Cambridge, London, Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 18–54. 73


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