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CULTURE
ANIMATION
ISBN 83 - 915675 - 3 - 2
C
ULTURE
ANIMATION
LOOKING BACK
AND FORWARD
CULTURE
ANIMATION
LOOKING BACK AND FORWARD
EDITORS:
Grzegorz Godlewski, Iwona Kurz,
Andrzej Mencwel, Micha∏ Wójtowski
WARSZAWA 2002
Publisher: Instytut Kultury Polskiej
Uniwersytet Warszawski
ul. Krakowskie PrzedmieÊcie 26/28
00-927 Warszawa, Poland
tel/fax (48 22) 828 72 83
e-mail:[email protected]
Translation: Agnieszka ChroÊcicka, Tomasz Jurewicz, Urszula Kallas,
Aleksandra Kopacz, Monika Krupska, Katarzyna Zdrodowska
Editors of the English version: Patrick Trompiz, Grzegorz Godlewski,
Leszek Kolankiewicz
ISBN 83 - 915675 - 3 - 2
Edition financed by the European Commission
from the sources of the ”Leonardo da Vinci” Programme
Type-setting, make-up and print:
Agencja Wydawnicza Makprint, 04-026 Warszawa, Poland
Al. Stanów Zjednoczonych 51, tel. 48 22 813 0536
Graphic editor: Gra˝yna Klechniowska
CONTENTS
EDITOR’S NOTE
3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxx
I. IDEAS
Andrzej Mencwel
A LEISURELY CONTRIBUTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxx
Leszek Kolankiewicz
ACTIVE CULTURE: THE PRIMEVAL TIMES
OF CULTURE ANIMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx
Grzegorz Godlewski
ANIMATION AND ANTHROPOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xx
II. WORKSHOPS
Roch Sulima
ANTHROPOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janusz Marek
MANAGERIAL WORKSHOP: THE VADE-MECUM
OF AN ANIMATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Andrzej Mencwel
LITERARY CRITICISM WORKSHOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Stanis∏aw Siekierski
BOOK HANDLING INSTITUTIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marek Przybylik
JOURNALISTIC WORKSHOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Grzegorz Godlewski
ANTHROPOLOGICAL TRANSLATION CLASS . . . . . . . . . .
Marcel ¸oziƒski
IN AN ATTEMPT TO TEACH DOCUMENTARY . . . . . . . . . .
Juliusz Soko∏owski
PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKSHOP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janusz Byszewski, Maria Parczewska
COMPLETION (DESIGNING CREATIVE SITUATIONS) . . . . .
Leszek Kolankiewicz
THEATRE ANTHROPOLOGY
(A SEMINAR WITH WORKSHOP ELEMENTS) . . . . . . . . .
Erdmute Sobaszek, Wac∏aw Sobaszek
FIELDWORK PROJECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Mariusz Go∏aj
WORKSHOP SESSIONS
OF THE ”GARDZIENICE” CENTRE THEATRICAL PRACTICES
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CONTENTS
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WORKSHOPS ORGANISED WITHIN
THE STUDIES IN ”CULTURE ANIMATION” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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III. PARTNERS
FOUNDATION AND CENTRE “POGRANICZE
- SZTUK, KULTUR, NARODÓW” [“BORDERLAND – OF
ARTS, CULTURES, NATIONS” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Krzysztof Czy˝ewski
ODD-BELIEVERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
INITIATION TRAINING FOR THE STUDENTS
OF ”CULTURE ANIMATION” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ma∏gorzata Sporek-Czy˝ewska
”TRAINING IN THE BORDERLAND” AS AN EXPERIENCE
REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THE BORDERLAND SCHOOL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Micha∏ Wójtowski
AN EXPEDITION AND A TOUR AN ATTEMPT
AT SORTING OUT EXPERIENCES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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NORDISK TEATERLABORATORIUM . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Torgeir Wethal
STONES IN THE RIVER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Roberta Carreri
IMAGINE A WHITE ROOM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Roberta Carreri
LEARNING FROM TEACHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Andrzej Mencwel
BARBA’S UTOPIA IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF HOLSTEBRO
Beata Frankowska
NORDISK TEATERLABORATORIUM
AS A MULTIFUNCTIONAL CULTURAL CENTRE . . . . . . . .
Marta Juszczuk
BARTER AS A METHOD OF CULTURE ANIMATION . . . . .
REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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CONTENTS
5
FACHBEREICH KUNST UND MUSIK/
SOMMERAKADEMIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Marta Pejda
”ARTS AND MUSIC” STUDIES
AT BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Klaus-Ove Kahrmann, Wies(aw Karolak
THE INTERNATIONAL SUMMER ACADEMY ”TRI-ANGEL”
AS A FORUM FOR AESTHETICALLY ORIENTATED
YOUTHWORK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
REPORTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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IV. PROGRAMME
”CULTURE ANIMATION” - FRAMEWORK
OF THE PROGRAMME (Iwona Kurz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CULTURE ORGANISATION (Magdalena Rodak,
Pawe∏ Rodak, Marcin Niemojewski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Bohdan Skrzypczak
CULTURE ORGANISER AS SOCIAL ANIMATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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THE WORD IN CONTEMPORARY
CULTURAL PRACTICES (Roch Sulima) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Zbigniew Gieniewski
RADIO: THE MEDIUM OF INFORMATION, ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
AND A MEANS OF INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATION . . . . . . . . . .
Marcin Wieczorek
THE WORD IN THE INTERNET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Ma(gorzata Litwinowicz
STORYTELLING, STORYTELLER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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THEATRE IN CULTURE (Agata Cha∏upnik,
Mateusz Kanabrodzki, Leszek Kolankiewicz)
Edward Wojtaszek
DIRECTING – ANIMATING PEOPLE:
FROM CONCEPTION TO REALISATION
Jolanta Krukowska
BODY CONSCIOUSNESS WORKSHOP
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FILM AND AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA: CULTURE ANIMATION
BY NEW MEDIA (Seweryn KuÊmierczyk, Iwona Kurz) . . . . . . . . .
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Andrzej Ko∏odyƒski
FOUNDATIONS OF FILM CRITICISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janusz Gazda
INTRODUCTION TO FILM DRAMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Seweryn KuÊmierczyk
CINEMATOGRAPHIC INSTITUTIONS
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EDUCATION THROUGH ART (Micha∏ Wójtowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maria Parczewska
FIELD EXTENSION . . . . . . . . . . . .
Janusz Byszewski
SPACE AND PLACE . . . . . . . . . . . .
Urszula Kochanowska
READING PICTURES . . . . . . . . . . .
Katarzyna Rokosz
TRAINING AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM
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MUSIC IN CULTURE (Ma∏gorzata Litwinowicz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Tomasz Dziedziczak
JACEK OSTASZEWSKI’S ”SOUND AND SILENCE”
WORKSHOPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Maciej Rych∏y
NOMINAL MUSIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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V. INITIATIVES
Agata Cha∏upnik
I PROGRAMME OF COURSES IN ”GENDER THEATRE,
GENDER IN THEATRE” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
II ”MAGDALENA PROJECT” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Agnieszka Sienkiewicz
WORKSHOPS EMPLOYING METHODS
APPLIED BY ODIN TEATRET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Agnieszka Maciejewska, Magdalena Urynowicz, Karolina Plaskaty
ELEMENTS (A OF TRAINING PROJECT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
S∏awomir Piotrowski
THE BEYOND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Franciszek Strzeszewski, Monika Górska
THE ”PONIEKÑD” GROUP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Magdalena Górska
THE ”GRUPA STUDNIA O.” ASSOCIATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Beata Frankowska
THE MYTH OF THE NORTH – AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TALE
(A PROJECT FOR AN EVENT) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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7
EDITOR’S NOTE
„Culture Animation. Looking Back and Forward” – under this name
the Institute of Polish Culture of Warsaw University and the “Borderland – of Arts, Cultures, Nations” Centre organized an international
conference in April 2001 at Sejny. The conference concluded more than
two years of effort to work out a model of academic education in the
field of culture animation as part of the project awarded by the European Commission’s “Leonardo da Vinci” Programme. We had an obligation
to hold such a conference within the terms and conditions of the project. However, we also realized that it was just ten years since we, as
the Polish Culture Department, had established the academic specialization in “Culture Animation” at the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University. Ten years is here both a short and a long period of time.
It is not enough to justify an anniversary festival but is still sufficiently
long to have a closer look at our achievements and think about future
directions.
Following long preparations initiated and carried out by Professor
Andrzej Mencwel, in 1991 we opened a new special line of studies –
“Culture Animation” – for students in Polish philology. At the same
time our initiative was supported by the Vice-Minister Stefan Starczewski and Maciej Klimczak (currently the Vice-Minister of Culture),
the Director of the Cultural Education Department, at the Ministry of
Culture. From the very beginning, as a result of our efforts, the speciazation was, initially fully and then mainly funded from external sources.
We won the grants of the Ministry of Culture, the Batory Foundation
(for innovative approaches in the field of academic education), HESP
(Higher Education Support Programme), and the APPLE Programme
(“Approach and Learn Europe”); we were also subsidized by other sponsors in particular projects (mostly the foreign training trips). In recent
years we have won competitions three times in the “Leonardo da Vinci”
Programme of the European Union.
This specialization is of a practical nature and is based on workshops and trainings conducted by distinguished artists and culture
practitioners, in leading Polish and foreign cultural institutions. We
opened the doors to the university for those who “do culture” and at
the same time we expanded the space of this “doing” and in this way
improved the standards of academic education. The culture activists
and artists who throughout these ten years delivered individual or cyclical workshops for our students make up an extraordinary constella-
8
tion. Similarly, the list of cultural institutions where the students of
“Culture Animation” were trained is both long and significant.
The first year of our specialization consisted of as few as twenty
students, the majority of whom are active now in culture animation in its
broad sense. Since that time about 650 students of Polish Philology and
other humanities have studied with us. Recently, most of the participants come from “Culture Studies”, the special line of studies established by the Institute of Polish Culture in 1998. In 2001, on the various
stages the number of students totaled 250 persons. It is no longer a
homely experiment as it might have seemed to be in the beginning.
Winning the “Leonardo da Vinci” competition was a significant stimulus for our development. The main objective of this competition is to
promote vocational education offering young people better opportunities on the job market in European countries. In 1998 our “Training
programme in culture animation (ANIMA)” won. A year later we received a grant for the “Programme of exchange for trainers in culture
animation (ANIMA-BIS)”. Already when working on this book, in the fall
of 2001, we learnt that our subsequent project was also awarded in
this competition. The awarded project has been developed in order to
create the “International network of institutions training culture animators (ANIMUS)”. This project, drawing upon the results of its predecessors, is supposed to create an information exchange and access
system on the activities of relevant institutions in European countries,
build a network among them, identify their accomplishments in the field
of culture animation and adapt them to our educational programme as
well as to select the Polish and foreign centres which could co-operate
in the implementation of this programme.
The funds we have already managed to collect have enabled us: to
take up the comprehensive and complex work to develop the new, expanded form of our special line of studies; to come up with clear objectives
and goals of education; to build, on the grounds of our experience, the
models of courses that will address most adequately these objectives
and goals; to create a consistent system of teaching process organization; to identify systematically the animation field of action and, consequently, draw up a long-term working plan; to make a list of culture
institutions active in culture animation and initiate co-operation with
them; to develop forms of education which would prepare our students
for work under new, unexpected conditions, considering the multicultural problems and requirements of European co-operation.
This book presents the most important results of this work. Its
opening part, entitled “Ideas”, contains texts outlining the main histo-
9
rical and intellectual sources from which our concept of culture animation stems. The most significant sources include: the Polish “culturalism” on the turn of the 19 th century; the idea of active culture developed by Jerzy Grotowski; anthropological concepts of culture and a human being in the culture. The authors of these texts are also the cofounders of the specialization in “Culture Animation”, and are still involved in its activities.
The second part, entitled “Workshops”, is made up of texts reflecting the authors’ insights from the workshops organized in the framework of the specialization. The texts combine accounts of experiences
with an attempt at defining a formula for such workshops that could
be used as the model or at least inspiration by others who plan similar
enterprises. It was only possible to describe some of the workshops
here – mostly those which have the longest tradition or present some
particularly interesting solutions. Concise information on the subjects
and authors of all the workshops delivered so far has been supplemented in a list which closes this part of the book.
The third part, entitled “Partners”, presents selected institutions
which co-operate with the Institute of Polish Culture in the education
of culture animators: “Borderland – of Arts, Cultures, Nations” Centre
in Sejny (Poland); Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro (Denmark);
Fachbereich Kunst/Musik at the Bielefeld University and Sommerakademie in Scheersberg (Germany). We also closely co-operate with other
institutions, such as the Centre of Theatrical Practices “Gardzienice”
and the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw. Those partner institutions that participated in the ANIMA project, whose experiences and
programmes became the subject of systematic studies and analyses,
were covered more broadly. The collection of different texts – from
programme assumptions, through monographic articles on various problems, personal statements of artists, to reports on workshops and
trainings written by the students – outlines the image of the partners,
their accomplishments in the area of cultural education, especially those which are included in the programme of the “Culture Animation”
specialization.
The fourth part, entitled “Programme”, contains a description of
different culture areas developed under the ANIMA project – the art of
language, visual arts, theatre, music, film and audio-visual techniques
– as the fields of specialization of culture animators. Culture organization, including the animator’s work infrastructure in the local environment, its legal, economic and institutional frameworks and the knowledge and skills needed at different stages and in different spheres of
10
the animator’s work, were covered separately. Thorough identification
of the particular problems corresponds to the “baskets” in which the
optional classes are grouped, and to the plans for the development of
the specialization in the near future. This is supplemented with examples projects and scenarios of particular courses and the list of culture institutions open to accepting students for training and practice
and to co-operate in implementing the specific animation projects.
The final part, “Initiatives”, provides the reader with selected projects created, and often implemented, by the specialization students
and graduates. The projects represent a great variety: individual and
group projects, one-off events and cyclical activities, long-term enterprises, specifically profiled and complex, general ones. This is not a
mirror reflection of student activities and achievements but only a sample
of their recent actions and accomplishments, representing the practical results of our line of education and the special unique climate among
the students.
***
Neither this book, nor the current programme of “Culture Animation” could have come into existence without the good will and imagination of the persons managing the “Leonardo da Vinci” Programme in
Brussels and its Polish office, especially Ms. Ksenia Kempa, who has
been always the first to offer assistance and advice. We would also
thank the authorities of the Warsaw University as well as of our Faculty, including the financial staff, for kindness and support extended to us
and our work.
We also want to express our special thanks to all those who by
delivering the workshops and accepting our students for training and
practice, contributed to the development of the “Culture Animation”
programme and its current shape and operations.
Finally, we would like to thank those who were and still are the most
vital people – our students. Their active participation gives our work a
meaning. They have never stopped – and, we are sure, will not stop in
future – contributing creatively to culture animation, and so to the life
of culture.
I. IDEAS
13
I. IDEAS
Andr
zej M encwel
Andrzej
A LEISURELY CONTRIBUTION
When, over ten years ago, we at the Polish Culture Department
initiated the training programme for those we called due to the
lack of a better expression “culture animators”, we were well aware of the good traditions we have inherited. However, we found the
future to be our major task, and the future does not require the
interpretation and codification of tradition. The future means unprecedented tasks, and even the best traditions can only partly help in
their fulfillment. When those tasks are substituted by disputes
over the faithfulness to tradition, it usually means helplessness in
the face of the future. That helplessness is apparent in current
disputes over the past and present of Polish intelligentsia. In recent days we have lived through the final breakdown and disintegration of the world of “socialist” culture, given that name in a
giant historical mystification. What was pending, accompanied by
the dazzling equipage of modern technologies, was the world of a
culture considered to be a historical necessity and labelled “mass
culture”. Neither phenomenon was a novelty, and for some an announcement of “closing down” or “opening” would suffice to bring
about the change.
Novelty did characterize the historical breakthrough which allowed us to take a glimpse at challenges with unprecedented clarity
and give a practical response. So-called socialist culture had long
been breaking down in Poland and the political and doctrinal unifica-
Andrzej Mencwel: historian of ideas, historian of Polish culture, professor at the
Institute of Polish Culture and its director, initiator and co-author of the special line of
studies in “Culture Animation”, the designer and leader of the literary critic’s workshop (cf. part II Workshops ).
14
I. IDEAS
tion apparent before 1956 never returned. One might thus say
that the older of us matured and the younger ones grew up in the
time of this disintegration. Streams of mass culture had reached
us too so we already knew its dual, tempting, and repulsive taste.
The entire numbness of the social realist (and not only socialist)
model of culture and the entire deceptive attractiveness of the
mass culture model could be seen in that situation as in lightning.
That perception triggered our ideas, intuitions, and projects.
These two negative references deserve closer inspection for
the context to become more understandable. As has been pointed out, we are considering culture models, not theories, doctrines, media techniques, or artistic practices. Though being conceptual creatures, such models contain in nuce the assumptions
and functioning of the entire culture. Apparently the social realist
model, whose material and symbolic commemoration is the Warsaw Palace of Culture, places culture at the centre of the social
life. That reportedly is the case since it subordinates culture to
an essentially political doctrine (its theoretical forms are clearly
politically oriented). Its purpose is clear, the means are defined,
and even particular steps are specified up to and including such
details as the principles of national versification or folk ornamentation. Armed with the doctrine’s principles, artists provide the
receivers with the image of the goal on a step-by-step basis, they
“propagate culture” as recommended. The terminology itsel contains the premises of the model: culture is clear, its carriers are
experts and they propagate culture, i.e. they deliver it to dumb
heathens.
This model has, of course, enlightenment and positivist roots
and was not only imposed from outside. Social realism, not as an
artistic doctrine but as a holistic cultural model, invoked those
roots, thus deluding many. However, both as a doctrine and as a
holistic cultural model it led to an extreme ideologization and politicization of that tradition. Its ideological “valve” was the “Marxist
and Leninist” conception of “scientific socialism”. Therefore those
who inherited the radical intelligentsia ethos had to part with social realism, especially since what was left of it after 1956 were
only occasional instances of ideologization and politicization. In the
late 1970s the increasing cultural numbness had become quite
clear.
I. IDEAS
15
As far as the model of mass culture is concerned, we seem to
know theory better than practice. Since the 1960s it has been
one of the most vividly discussed problems of Polish humanism. The
theoretical contexts of that reflection spread systematically both
across Poland and worldwide. Reflection over the transitions of
modern culture came to include Ludwik Krzywicki, Stanisław Brzozowski, Florian Znaniecki and Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, as well
as Jean Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, Fryderyk Nietzsche, José Ortega y Gasset, through modern thinkers of “Frankfurt school” and essay writers from the circles of “Partisan Review”. In the context of the surrounding reality we were theoretically all too well equipped.
In the 1970s that area also started developing almost dynamically. The deafening sound of “This is Channel One! This is Channel
One!” and mass TV game shows demonstrated the realization of
the phenomena which we had read about in theoretical analyses.
The political system, which was already quite loose, met challenges
to its power in form of modern communication technologies. The
effectiveness of censorship was undermined by as simple a device
as a tape recorder and the attempt at limiting access to satellite
TV by the government was a farce. However, the spectre which
haunted radical critics of mass culture seemed to be coming to life
in the form of a passive mass receiver subject to the almighty and
ubiquitous pressure of electronic media. For the first time not only
political indoctrination but entertainment commercialization started to be perceived as a danger. The warnings were legible and
audible: in publicist allusions, scenic grotesques, cabaret jokes,
and alternative ballads. “Big Brother” and “newspeak” became popular idioms and the word “medium” was distorted and mocked.
In the face of contemporary political supervision and media invasion, the issue of a really creative culture was getting more and
more pressing. It was a question about the culture in its anthropological, not artistic sense – what personality is to be created in
that culture, how is that personality to be realized in the culture,
and how is that culture to unify people? One might say that in the
face of a double crisis, of the social realist culture model and the
mass culture model, we were faced with questions similar to those
asked by intellectuals at the turn of the 19 th century, whose main
figure was Edward Abramowski. Then, a quarter of a century ago,
16
I. IDEAS
we started working on the anthropology of culture. Not on cultural
anthropology as a particular scope of science, but on an anthropological approach to culture as such. It is thus an approach that
locates us within cultural reality and makes us realize how to shape
it.
We reject neither mass culture nor modern communication techniques. Mass culture is undeniably the prevailing type of modern
culture; modern techniques constitute global multimedia communication process. We are in the course of a communication revolution that is ocean-deep and planet-wide. Its possible results are
not yet known and in principle cannot as yet be forecast. However,
it will not spare any dimension of human culture or a single place on
the Earth.
Whatever we call it – electronic, information, multimedia – the
modern communication revolution is accelerating and limitless. Its
media technology changes almost every day and its planet-wide,
indeed cosmic range is obvious. With the application of household
or portable equipment we gain insight into the mysteries of the
universe that lie on the outer limits of human knowledge. Therefore
the challenge of this revolution can neither be ignored nor rejected
just as writing and print could not be ignored or rejected – it penetrates the patterns of cultural personality and types of interpersonal bonds at least as intensely. The challenges we face are not
only a threat but also an opportunity. The incredible communication
technology need not be exploited only for commercial purposes: it
can be used for humanist purposes.
Our idea of culture animation is based on the vision of cultural
personality realized actively in the immediate human environment.
That is a slightly utopian sentence and is thus exposed to the nowcommon condemnation. However, I have nothing against utopia provided it has spontaneous sources and a human dimension. The activities of artists so close to us as Tadeusz Kantor, Jerzy Grotowski, Joseph Beuys, or Eugenio Barba are impossible to imagine without that utopian element. Włodzimierz Staniewski and Krzysztof
Czyżewski in their respective centres in Gardzienice and Sejny have
created entities going beyond received standard, and we remain in
close co-operation with them. The bulky documentation of our experiences and plans was developed by such distinguished artists and
culture animators as Janusz Byszewski and Maja Parczewska,
I. IDEAS
17
Krzysztof and Małgorzata Czyżewscy, Roberta Carreri and Torgeir
Wethal, Mariusz Gołaj, Klaus-Ove Kahrmann, Marcel Łoziński, Janusz Marek, Marek Przybylik, Maciej Rychły, Bohdan Skrzypczak,
Wacław Sobaszek, and many others including alumni and students.
This all demonstrates that utopian element.
It suffices to quote characteristic phrases from various chapters of that documentation in order to confirm the presence of
that element. “Get a word out of the silence”, “the point of departure is the art of listening and conversation”; “first one needs to
get to know persons”; “one needs to enter everyday experience”;
“educate through acting”; “local voluntary practices”; “build valuable social self-organization”; “pursue positive freedom”. I have
sotred out these phrases but have not interpreted them, I have
ordered them from the point of view of such basic components as
the “word” of a meeting through to their culmination in “social
positive freedom”. The way to understand those idioms, their interpretation is not simple at all and may not be perceived directly.
Their obvious expressive, subjective, inter-subjective meaning can
be reinforced with such phrases as: “a photograph is a trace of a
meeting”; “a document is a personal process”; “translation is mediation”. In order to be properly understood that meaning requires
contemporary explanations and a reference to tradition.
Let us begin with contemporary explanations as these are in
our foreground. Why would the students of a basically theoretical
university need a “writing workshop” or a “film workshop”? Why
would they need vocal training or physical exercises? Finally, why
perform door to door in villages or edit peripheral bulletins? No one
here wants to hand out writing, cinematography, singing, or acting
diplomas. Even journalist workshops give no such certificates. What
is the intention of such training and what purpose do they serve?
To put it bluntly – a creative purpose. There are no obstacles to
anyone who, through such workshops, discovers writing or film talent to study and develop further in that direction. This has been
the case and will be the case, but those examples are not the most
important for us. The main reason is that discovering creative potential in oneself teaches you to discover such potential in others.
It does not matter if you become an artist, though we wish such
students all the best; what counts is that you should be able to
discover other artists. That you should be sensitive towards others’
18
I. IDEAS
sensitivity, react to others’ feelings, understand their minds. You
should be able to liven them up, lead them, and thus animate them.
These ventures have thus an educational goal but with a special
kind of education, oriented at individualization, subjectivization, creation. It is not only about going against the current of modern
tendencies that not only standardize education but also quantify
it; we live under the constant pressure of intelligence ratios, knowledge and skills tests where ideal is properties that can be expressed digitally, summarized anonymously with similar abstracts. We
oppose that quantitative calculation with a vision of personality as
an exceptional, subjective value: a unique set of abilities to be isolated, and thus used among people. Although the psychological factor in that conception is important and each personal conversation, group meeting, common work or trip require taking it into
consideration, ours is not a psychological but a cultural conception
of personality. It assumes approaching a person from the point of
view of all their particular ethnic, religious, social, cultural, and all
other numerous references. That is also the reason for the basic
significance of the anthropological approach to culture in its entire
theory and practice. The famous opinion of Ruth Benedict about
the identity of “culture configuration” and “personality configuration” can be criticized endlessly but it can never be rejected if the
anthropology of culture is to exist at all. This opinion is of course
not only about knowledge about culture, it is about the culture
itself, thus simply about the human world.
We live neither in a black nor in a white world. Our world is
paradoxical, and the same forces, mechanisms, and instruments
may create an opportunity and a threat. It is no use referring to
banal examples of nuclear or genetic techniques. That same set of
instruments of the multimedia communication revolution carries
an entire paradoxical duality of possibilities – planetary solidarity in
the service of values and a gigantic illusion of an easy happiness.
Essentially, what it gives us in the technical and global dimension is
also reflected in the personal and local dimension. So fundamental
importance should be given to provoking creativity in face of instruments playing, shaping personality, in face of the spectacle of roles, creating particular bonds in face of an anonymous technology
of globalization. Societies, if they really exist, are a living interpersonal tissue, consisting of multiple and multilateral coils, and con-
I. IDEAS
19
taining all spontaneous focuses, associations, and relations triggered by authentic needs. Modern Poland is covered by an ever
thicker network of such relations and associations, the active animators and amateurs are volunteers for the common good. Not
only are they heirs of the best traditions of Polish intelligentsia but
they are also creators of the future. Because not only the future of
our society but of any other society is impossible to imagine without such a network growing into a lively tissue. We have no other
ambitions but to contribute leisurely to that liveliness.
20
I. IDEAS
L eszek K
olankiewicz
Kolankiewicz
A CTIVE CULTURE:
THE PRIMEVAL TIMES OF CULTURE
ANIMATION
In the 1970s a unique cultural programme was created in Poland; it was one of the more peculiar and, as it turned out later,
more problematic ones. It was created by Jerzy Grotowski and his
Wrocław Laboratory Theatre. The programme of “Culture Animation” is partly rooted in that initiative, which should be understood
both in an objective and in a subjective sense.
The last theatre performance directed by Grotowski was Apocalypsis cum figuris . The closed premiere took place in July 1968
but the performance became known to a wider public only after the
official premiere in February of the following year. At that time Grotowski was reaping laurels abroad: the performances of Acropolis ,
Constant Prince , and, also Apocalypsis in New York, showed from
October through December 1969, were probably the most important in the international career of Laboratory Theatre – critics
immediately compared their crucial significance to the performances by Moscow Art Theatre of Konstantin S. Stanislavski in 1923.
“I watched Grotowski’s imitators and they are almost funny.
They are children compared to Grotowski” – wrote Joseph Papp. –
“Grotowski makes it clear to the public that theatre is not only a
Leszek Kolankiewicz: anthropologist of theatre and performance, professor at the
Institute of Polish Culture, co-author of studies in “Culture Animation”, designer
and leader of the workshop–seminar in theatre anthropology (cf. part II Workshops ),
member of the council of the “Pogranicze” Foundation.
I. IDEAS
21
series of shows that one has to enjoy or ignore, but that it can be
of utmost importance to people”.
“Only during your third performance” – Eric Bentley wrote in an
open letter to Grotowski – “did I begin to recover from the shock. It
was during that performance (and the performance was Apocalypsis ) that I suddenly [...] experienced a particular illumination [...] I
do not remember having ever experienced anything like that in the
theatre [...]. When I saw Apocalypsis I understood why you are so
over-demanding. The excessive demands is what those who have no
need of perfection name striving at perfection” 1.
Theatre critics turned out to be rather helpless in the face of
Apocalypsis cum figuris . It was probably only Konstanty Puzyna,
then already the author of Pisać na scenie (Writing on the stage)
who came to terms with that show – the description and analysis
of Apocalypsis belong to his best pieces:
“it is probably the first tim e Grotowski has touched
som e living nerve of the m odern day [...] It was only
Apocalypsis that I watched fascinated, and m oved,
not only as a professional” – he confessed in his
conclusion. This was his account of the viewers’ reaction after the show: “Slowly, people get up from
their seats. They walk through the wooden floor stained with stearin, through sm all puddles of water,
through scattered lum ps of bread. They do not talk,
they do not debate, they do not joke. They are silent. As if it were no theatre, which will perform
the sam e story the following day. As if this tim e,
here, in this sm all, black room som ething had really
happened” 2.
But Apocalypsis cum figuris also provoked strong resistance. It
was sharply criticized by Andrzej Kijowski (“substitute spiritual life”),
Antoni Słonimski (“elaborate squalor”), Jacek Woźniakowski (“black
mass for those poor in spirit”, “a cluster of more or less disgu-
1
Both statements quoted in: Zbigniew Osiński: Grotowski i jego Laboratorium . PIW,
Warszawa 1980, pp. 172, 173, 174.
2
Konstanty Puzyna: Powrót Chrystusa . In: Konstanty Puzyna: Burzliwa pogoda. Felietony teatralne . PIW, Warszawa 1980, pp. 58, 59.
22
I. IDEAS
sting blasphemies”)3. Jan Błoński and Jan Kott reacted unambiguously, too. Kott found tragedy in the performance, which he did not
want to accept:
“What does the perfection of Grotowski’s theatre
mean? [...] In American programmes «Ciemny» [= the
hero of Apocalypsis ] was translated as «Simpleton»
and some of the critics saw a medieval «Everyman» in
him. That village idiot made into a Savior by drunkards
and a whore [...] is not the Christ of any revolution.
[...] Grotowski returns to the old theatre of purification, only catharsis is to take place by violent means.
The actors [...] offer physical humiliation of their bodies. That is what their «holiness» consists in, as understood by Grotowski. [...] In Grotowski’s theatre the
liberation takes place only through torturing one’s body,
humiliating one’s spirit, and death. Physical suffering
and humiliation are the most important and perhaps
the only human experience here. I do not know if one
has to believe in God to accept Grotowski’s Metaphysics but I do know that one needs to give up rebellion
and all hope” 4.
Błoński, quite on the contrary, found no tragedy in Apocalypsis :
“Making an offering, demonstrating commitment – both
of an actor and of a hero – has been a common denominator of the Institute’s [= Laboratory Theatre’s]
shows for years. That is why it was always capable of
a deep renewal of the experience of tragedy... The subject of an offering nearly always demonstrated Christian origin: it constituted a marking model, which was
transformed freely and perversely, thus allowing for
the practice of theatre... theatre in the proper sense.
Such was the case in Doctor Faustus, Akropolis , Con-
3
These critical opinions were gathered by Zbigniew Osiński in his study: Tradycja Reduty u Grotowskiego i w Teatrze Laboratorium . In: Zbigniew Osiński: Grotowski wytycza
trasy. Studia i szkice . Wyd. Pusty Obłok, Warszawa 1993, pp. 210-211.
4
Jan Kott: „Czemu mam tańczyć w tym tragicznym chórze...” (o Grotowskim). In: Jan
Kott: Kamienny Potok. Eseje. „Aneks”, Londyn 1986, pp. 106, 107, 108, 109-110.
I. IDEAS
23
stant Prince , in all great performances. But in Apocalypsis ? [...] What [...] does Simpleton want? His kindness, subordination, commitment do not aim at redemption or gaining value; these are rather measures
that enable his contact (clinging, understanding?) with
people. Those strivings – partly amorous? – end with a
defeat. Apocalypsis would thus be not the tragedy of
an offering but a communication drama (not a tragedy). [...] After Apocalypsis the obtrusiveness of the
offering disappeared from Grotowski’s utterances, and
took the theatre along with it” 5.
The last performance by Grotowski has not, to my mind, been
analyzed and discussed yet. The discussion could begin for example
with Błoński’s assessment that the show is a “communication drama (not a tragedy)” and that conclusion might be joined with a
remark made by Puzyna that
“in its external, formal structure Apocalypsis cum figuris has been captured in Wedding [by Witold Gombrowicz]. Together with the filthy atmosphere of a «drinking-bout», with the gathered people creating Simpleton as the Savior, with imposing roles, clashes of the
tone and language, mockery and loftiness, blasphemy
and sacrum. What is missing from Apocalypsis is the
dream” 6.
(Therefore physical suffering and humiliation in Apocalypsis , which
were discussed for example by Kott, would probably be impossible
to interpret in Freudian and/or Adlerian categories, what is possible in the case of Wedding ). However, that entire plot of development of a ritual, religion out of people and among people was a
feature common to both works. In Gombrowicz’s play Władzio’s
offering is problematic, so in Grotowski Simpleton’s offering was
problematic. And, in the end, Błoński did find traces of tragedy in
Wedding . Granted, “tragedy” was prefixed by an adjective (“psychoanalytical”) and was thus not deprived of doubts. Paradoxically,
however, in that tragedy without gods, in which, as he wrote, the
5
Jan Błoński: Znaki, teatr, świętość. „Teksty” 1976, no. 4-5, pp. 42, 43.
6
Konstanty Puzyna: Pestka . In: Konstanty Puzyna: Burzliwa pogoda. p. 45.
24
I. IDEAS
tragic decorum was secularized to the point of clumsiness and
immersed in gibberish, he found a not inconsiderable creative ambition – of the kind desiring to turn mud into statues. The crippled
drama by Gombrowicz was, in his perception, saved by the tragic
recognition that took place in the viewers, whom he even named
“witnesses”. So why did he not acknowledge a similar ambition in
Grotowski’s work? Was it because, in contrast to Puzyna, he saw
its impact on the receivers?
That impact was incredible. As if it were not a theatre – Puzyna
wrote. I can sign my name under this statement with both hands
because having been a viewer myself, I perceived the performance
exactly that way. In the early 1970s we used to go to Wrocław
especially to see Apocalypsis cum figuris ; we used to (I have young
people in mind) go many times: not to see a theatre spectacle but
rather to feel its direct, unique impact once again. The more painful
was the defeat that ended the “partly amorous strivings” of the
hero to arrive at an understanding with the other characters, the
stronger the viewers responded to his “kindness, subordination,
commitment”. Thus on the one hand there was a communication
drama, on the other – on the side of the viewer, in their experience
– an overwhelming sense of the need for communication. Communication, or even something in the nature of the “clinging” that Błoński had written about. When leaving the theatre after the performance, which always happened in a slow and silent way, one had
the feeling – as Puzyna rightly commented – that “something had
really happened”. Grotowski polished the pragmatism of his performances. His theatre had the name of Actor’s Research, but in
reality it was oriented towards forming the experiences of the spectator. In Apocalypsis this took the most extreme shape.
No wonder that under the influence of the spectators the performance evolved. That evolution was analyzed meticulously by Ireneusz Guszpit:
“Initially the play was completely deprived of props,
which evoked literal liturgical association, as well as of
theatrical costumes. Subsequently, certain [...] words
were given up, which weakened the identification of
Simpleton with Christ. [...] The fact of giving up benches (for the viewers, who from then on were made to
sit in a much larger number directly on the floor) and
I. IDEAS
25
tearing black plaster off the walls confirm those suggestions. When the actors are surrounded by a tight
circle of viewers, bringing the actors closer to the
viewers, creating a sort of communion, the Laboratory creators consciously and openly manifested the need
to create or to renew the «humanly human» church.
[...] The consequence of the changes to the spectacle
is not only need for different interpretation, but also
the changes of the function it had been performing till
then. The aesthetic function was substituted with the
social. Suspended between the form of a spectacle
and a meeting, Apocalypsis constitutes some sort of
a changing station” 7.
How this happened exactly was described by Richard Schechner
after another visit at the Laboratory Theatre in the United States
in 1973:
“During each of the shows [Apocalypsis cum figuris ]
Grotowski literally «tapped» 5 to 10 persons and asked
them to remain after the performance. These people
were then invited, after the run of Apocalypsis was
over, to go with Grotowski and his company to a retreat in the hills not for from Philadelphia” 8.
In that retreat Grotowski together with the eleven-person team
carried out an eight-day workshop called Special Project . The workshop was of the paratheatre sort.
I see that road taken by Grotowski and his Laboratory Theatre
to so-called participatory theatre as an inevitable consequence of
the development of his art in its social functioning. There were and
are interpretations according to which that development took place as a result of some illumination or an arbitrary decision taken by
Grotowski incidentally – an inexplicable or even crazy decision. It is
true that during the conference at New York University in December 1970, a year after triumphant performances with Akropolis ,
7
8
Ireneusz Guszpit: Ewolucja „Apocalypsis cum figuris” . „Dialog” 1976, no. 3, p. 110.
Richard Schechner: From ritual to theatre and back: the efficacy–entertainment
braid . In: Richard Schechner: Performance Theory . Revised and expanded ed., Routledge, New York–London 1988, p. 145.
26
I. IDEAS
Constant Prince , and Apocalypsis , Grotowski surprised everyone
with his (spectacularly changed) looks and what he was saying.
“Some word are died [...] Among such words are: show,
spectacle, theatre, audience, etc. But what is alive?
Adventure and meeting, not just anyone [...] Holiday”9.
Apocalypsis was to be the changing station leading to that Celebration from then on.
What changed? Grotowski was no more interested in creating
shows that would impact on the viewer, as Artaud had dreamed,
with the power of a ritual that was renewed owing to the artistic
impact of the dynamics based on a tight interconnection of extremes: provocation and suggestion, blasphemy and glorification. He
was not searching for a living experience of sacrum through heretical manipulations of a Christian image of faith any more.
Even during a meticulous preparation of Apocalypsis cum figuris
Grotowski chose for his directing principle the sentence of one of
the Church Fathers, Saint Teophile from Antiochia: “Show me your
man and I will show you my God” 10 – that Christian sentence was,
however, interpreted in the existential spirit. Here he was only a
step away from referring to Christ in the spirit of counterculture
rebels from the sign of Jesus Christ Superstar :
“The men who walked the vicinity of Nazareth two thousand years ago – they were young, which has been
forgotten, and they are traditionelly represented as
old from the start – talked about strange things and
sometimes behaved imprudently, but in the air there
was a need to abandon force, to abandon the prevailing values and search for others values, on which one
could build life without a lie” 11.
9
Jerzy Grotowski: Holiday (Święto). The day that is holy. In: Grotowski Sourcebook. Ed.
by Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford. London and New York: Routledge 1997, p. 215.
10
Saint Teophil of Antiochy: Epistola ad Autolicum . In: Jean Paul Migne: Patrologiae
cursus completus. Series Graeca VI, 1025 B.
11
Jerzy Grotowski: Holiday. The day that is holy. Transl. by Bolesław Taborski. „The
Drama Review. Vol. 17, No.2 (T-58), June, 1973, p. 114. Only this early version of the
text contains the fragment quoted here.
I. IDEAS
27
These paratheatre meetings, which were no longer theatre performances and which gave the opportunity for a life without a lie,
were to become that living Holiday. If the association with Wedding :
“Między nami
Bóg nasz się rodzi i z nas
[…]
i stąd się poczyna
Msza ludzka nasza”;
“Dajcie mi człowieka!
Niech będzie jak ja […]
Abym […]
w nim się kochał, na nim
Stwarzał się wciąż na nowo, nim rósł […]
w kościele ludzkim” 12
[“Among us / our God is being born out of us / […] / and that is the
beginning / of our human Mass”; “Give me a man! Let him be like me
[…] / In order that I […] / might love him, create myself / from him
again and again, grow with him / in the human church”.]
– if that association remained in power, then it was with the exclusion of what was dark in Gombrowicz’s work. “Show me your man”
– that man, who revealed himself in the communion of neighbors,
was to be a “brother”:
“And here is the most essential, central: brother.
This contains «the likeness of God», giving and man
[...]. Man as he is, whole, so that he would not hide
himself [...]. Body and blood – this is brother, that’s
where «God» is, it is the bare foot and the naked skin,
in which there is brother. This, too, is a holiday, to be
in the holiday, to be the holiday. All this is inseperable
from meeting: the real one, full, in which man does not
lie with himself, and is in it whole. Where there is none
of that fear, none of that shame of oneself which gives
12
Witold Gombrowicz: Wedding . In: Witold Gombrowicz: Dzieła . Scientific edition: Jan
Błoński. Text edition: Janina Bahr et al. Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków–Wrocław 1986.
T. 6: Dramaty , pp. 155, 204.
28
I. IDEAS
birth to the lie [...]. In this meeting man does not refuse himself and does not impose himself. [...] He comes
forward and is not afraid of somebody’s eyes, whole. It
is if one spoke with one’s self: you are, so I am” 13.
One can easily detect here a clear inspiration from the work of
Dostoyevski, with what Michaił M. Bachtin called, with reference
to Dostoyevski’s heroes, a voluntary uncovering of oneself in a communion of dialogue with other people, to which the writer’s utopianism gave the dimension of sharing joy and enchantment, which
gives a man an almost religious experience of eternity. (That inspiration must have lasted for a long time since the new “dramatic
event” of Laboratory Theatre, after the period of paratheatre training, was announced by Grotowski in late 1970s under the title In
Dostoyevski Manner ; from January 1981 on it was presented under the title Polish Thanathos – the characteristic change of the
title may have resulted from the radical change of the political situation, including a dangerous pressure from its eastern neighbor
that was experienced in Poland from 1980). But in the early 1970s
Grotowski united the components of the outlook taken from Dostoyevski with the élan then powerful and arising from the counterculture movement.
In September 1970 the newspapers “Słowo Polskie”, “Sztandar Młodych”, “Przekrój”, and a radio broadcast entitled “Afternoon with Youth” published Grotowski’s appeal to the youth A
Proposal of Cooperation . Grotowski invited those aiming to uncover themselves and encounter another man through movement
and in freedom, to join the Laboratory Theatre. About three hundred people applied, seventy of them participated in a meeting of
four days and nights in November which led to the creation of a
ten-person team and for the next year Grotowski and Teo Spychalski worked with that team. Eventually four of those people
were incorporated into the Laboratory Theatre. Later, as the result of individual search – four others (including Włodzimierz Staniewski, a top actor of STU Theatre) joined. The joint work of that
group with old team members, of whom there also were seven,
did not begin until November 1972 and was continued until June
13
Jerzy Grotowski: Holiday. The day that is holy, p. 119.
I. IDEAS
29
the following year in a theatre in Wrocław and in a forest retreat
in Brzezinka near Oleśnica.
It was not until then that the first persons chosen from outside
were invited for a three-day meeting entitled Holiday (one of them
was Jacek Zmysłowski). That was the actual beginning of paratheatre work, which Grotowski later referred to as participation theatre. The first paratheatre workshop for the selected participants,
the eight-day Special Project , took place in October 1973 in the
USA, near Philadephia, as had been announced. That was followed a
month later by two versions: Large Special Project run by Ryszard
Cieślak and Narrow Special Project run by Grotowski in France,
Saint-Maximin and Sainte-Suzanne. At the same time from January 1973 on workshop sessions for foreigners were launched by
Spychalski (later on his workshop was called Song of Myself ) and
Ludwik Flaszen (Meditations Aloud or Group Dialogues ), the latter
soon after the training at Cracow University in late 1974 started
to be run also for Poles. In mid 1974 in Sydney, near Armidale, and
near Dural, Australia, the Laboratory Theatre realized a whole array of paratheatre workshops, the so-called Complex Research Programme .
As can thus be seen, the transition from pure theatre to paratheatre encounters open to participants was not an abrupt one in
the activity of the Laboratory Theatre. It was appropriately slow, it
evolved, first, through the gradual incorporation of new team members, then through a periodical opening to a small number of other
persons from outside. Initially it was not clear what that extended
team was actually working on: there was gossip about a new theatre production, which was not based on a literary screenplay but
on a screenplay as a création collective , where the participants
share their life experience, and which has the form not of a show
but of an arranged meeting with participants from outside.
Afterwards Grotowski said:
“our team, our once purely artistic group had to extend,
open itself. I wanted and we wanted those in need,
tempted, driven by a necessity of the Way to join us
and stay with us. Not the people that search for theatre as an art. [...] Moving towards what I name leaving theatre behind: I initially knew very little, i.e. firstly, no stories, no plot, no account of anything or
30
I. IDEAS
anyone, secondly, the choice of newcomers has to be
a mutual one. One might say to the press that it is a
workshop that requires certain predispositions not
skills. Furthermore, I knew that it should be about the
simplest, most elementary things, what human beings have trust in, I knew that it is based on certain
stages or steps but that it cannot be a rite, it cannot
resemble the composition of a ritual, it must be simpler than a rite. It has to be based on such things as
the fact of recognizing someone, as sharing substances and elements” 14.
In the beginning there was one form of such a paratheatre encounter, and notably only that one (realized with participants from
outside in June 1973) was given the name of Holiday by Grotowski.
All other forms of paratheatre workshop sessions, which gradually
came to from one another, had their own specific names.
At a meeting with the participants of the Third International
Festival of Student Theatres in Wrocław in October 1971 Grotowski said the following about opening oneself:
“Due to the evolution of Apocalypsis , and especially
the next «work of art» (I use the term «work of art» in
inverted commas), the next encounter that we are
preparing for – we are searching for ways not to reject anyone, to avoid situations of people being turned
down. However, if the number of newcomers keeps
growing so rapidly [...] we will face the necessity of
having to organize our meetings in a different way [...]
there are people who are specifically looking for us [...]
And they [...] should be given priority not only in our
hearts but also at our encounter” 15.
The first Polish edition of Special Project practice (in the Large
version run by Cieślak) took place in the forest retreat in Brzezinka
end of November / beginning of December 1974. It lasted for two
weeks and consisted of two phases: ten persons participated in
14
[Rozmowa z ] Grotowski[m ]. In: Andrzej Bonarski: Ziarno . „Czytelnik”, Warszawa 1979,
pp. 42, 43.
15
Spotkanie z Grotowskim . Submitted for print by Ludwik Flaszen. „Teatr” 1972, no. 5.
I. IDEAS
31
both phases 16, a further twenty five only in the second, two-day
phase. Similar fourteen-day practices took place in February and
March the following year, whereby the number of participants from
outside grew gradually to: thirteen and thirty persons, fourteen
and fifty four persons respectively. From then on the number of
participants really started to grow rapidly.
The critical moment and the turning point came in 1975 when
the Laboratory Theatre organized the University of Research of
the Theatre of Nations: the “real” one took place at end of June /
beginning of July in Wrocław and in forest retreats in Brzezinka and
the nearby Ostrowina, and from September to November the socalled Second University of Research within the framework of La
Biennale di Venezia in Italy. The University of Research of the Theatre of Nations took place in Wrocław. It was open to all interested
persons and became almost a mass event, gaining the title of “international Woodstock for the spiritually and artistically inclined”17.
I once tried to sum up the numbers: it turned out that about four
and a half thousand active participants passed through the Laboratory rooms then.
The basic form of a short paratheatre workshop organized in a
city room was the so-called Beehive . Twenty one Beehives were organized (by Staniewski, Zbigniew Cynkutis, Rena Mirecka, Spychalski, Zmysłowski, Cieślak, Stanisław Scierski, Flaszen, as well as the
guests of the University of Research and a total of about two thousand people took part in them 18! It was only after participating in
one of the Beehives that Kazimierz Dąbrowski, a psychiatrist and
psychologist, the author of then famous concept of “positive disin-
16
My personal account of the participant’s experience: Leszek Kolankiewicz: Człowiecza całość i ludzka rodzina . “Odra” 1976, no 5.
17
From the article by Key Carney in ”Alternative Theatre”, Baltimore 1976, no 4,
quoted in: On the Road to Active Culture: The activities of Grotowski’s Theatre Laboratory Institute in the years 1970–1977. Editorial arrangement and press documentation by Leszek Kolankiewicz. Transl. by Bolesław Taborski. Wrocław: Instytut Aktora
– Teatr Laboratorium 1978, p. 82.
18
According to my calculations – 1842 persons (On the Road to Active Culture, p. 46);
Osiński’s statistics – as many as 1982 persons (Prace w okresie po-teatralnym . Annex to: Zbigniew Osiński: Grotowski i jego Laboratorium , p. 375).
32
I. IDEAS
tegration” and the then fashionable (Trud istnienia The Effort of Existence ), formulated his remarks about the participation theatre:
“Unusual powers were manifested and acted there.
Powers of imagination, feelings, intellect, but also animist and irrational ones, [...] thus as if magical ones,
but that was [...] what brought out a mystery component. Note that such a harmony of different kinds of
dynamism can be traced in great literary works, such
as Doctor Faustus or Dziady , which are a mystery...
[...] I participated in a Beehive , where [...] individual personality sublimed and lofty aims appeared, and on the
other hand social joints were broadened and deepened.
[...] I would dare to say that a developmental mystery
that Beehive undoubtedly is gives [...] an opportunity
for creative impact on many domains far beyond the
reach of art. [...] Beehive is a novelty in the sense that
it is a theatre that all the time ceases to be one and
involves passive participants in being the actors of their own fate [...] that is one of the forms of future theatre, a theatre that improves and develops a person.
[...] Beehive is a sort of a sudden insight and an opportunity to look into people during their wordless actions,
during a multidimensional development”19 .
It was the Beehive participants that later took part in many narrower paratheatre workshop sessions. There were twenty five of
those sessions, which hosted about five hundred participants, six of
the sessions were those of Special Project in the forest retreat (in
the Large version, which this time was organized in one phase by
Cieślak, Zmysłowski, or Scierski), and involved the participation of up
to seventy persons from outside at each session. In her impressions on participation in such a Special Project (published in the New
York “Vogue”), full of comparisons to Greek mysteries, Margaret
Croyden labelled it “pure, ritualistic, sacred theatre”20. Refraining
19
Misterium rozwojowe . Andrzej Bonarski talks to Kazimierz Dąbrowski. „Odra” 1975,
no. 11, pp. 40, 41.
20
Margaret Croyden: New theatre rule: no watching allowed, “Vogue”, December,
1975, quoted in: On the Road to Active Culture, p. 68.
I. IDEAS
33
from that sort of expressions Andrzej Bonarski wrote an excellent
description, which fits this paper particularly well:
“a great fire burst out in a meadow in a swamp. It
stinks of kerosene, sparkles. People are standing around. People are moving around the fire. It blazes away,
resounds. Shadows are dancing. A voice begins: «Fire».
Another voice joins it: «Fire». Voices sing: «Fire». Is it
a dance? It begins and the song begins. It spins around. It speeds up. I am standing in the middle of the
circle singing: «Andrzej is on fire!». They repeat: «Andrzej is on fire!» I reply: «Andrzej is on fire!». I have
sung enough, now another one is dancing and singing:
«Fire!». He is burning. It means right now he is burning, lighting us and warming us up, gives us the light
and joy of his flame. And when the singing and dancing
is over, a loose line walks through the nightly meadows
to the forest. The path calls me they follow me. And
then I see the light. I turn towards the light.
A ploughed field. Black. The ground, is captured by torches from three sides. We step on the ground, we
commune with the ground. Wet, cold. It reminds me of
death. I want to get off the ground. I do not want
that. A flame bursts out. Kerosene stinks. Flames along
the entrance to the field. Jump over it. I know I have
to. But a girl, a leader, put her arms around me: cold
ground-death and her warm body. We stand with our
arms around each other. And we let each other go and
I jump through the wall of fire” 21.
According to famous sociologist Jerzy Szacki, Grotowski’s activity in the 1970s was a new form of utopia, the utopia of human
“self-realization” 22. Zygmunt Rymuza, however, perceived the utopia of participation theatre differently – he attacked Grotowski as
a prophet of a false religion:
21
22
Andrzej Bonarski: Staż. In: Andrzej Bonarski: Ziarno. p. 93-95.
Historia dzieje się między dwoma biegunami. Krystyna Nastulanka in conversation
with Jerzy Szacki. “Polityka” 1979, no. 7.
34
I. IDEAS
“One cannot deny the great theatrical achievements
of Grotowski but one should definitely separate his work
until Apocalypsis from what he has been realizing from
then on. Grotowski found himself in a critical point.
Leaving theatre he has to enter reality, thus having to
become a prophet. [...] The atmosphere of a certain
activation of new Myths, Rituals, a New Religion seems very dangerous and seems to be going astray.
[...] All that is [...] artificial, as if sick and pompous. At
times it resembles the games of 18 th century aristocrats. Then, too, people built Arcadias, Lands of Happiness [...] In practice the participants of Holiday are
young people who do not understand Grotowski’s idea.
When talking to the participants, apart from their
natural sensitivity (not always), naivety, expectation
of something unusual, touching an idol, it is hard to
find any deeper reflection or explanation for participation in the Encounter” 23.
Małgorzata Dzieduszycka wrote similarly:
“The paratheatre encounters lead to feeling the pain
of one’s strained muscles, feeling one’s body the way
a football player feels it after the game is over. There
is the joy of letting off steam and the joy of tiredness.
[...] That is accompanied by a view of the world told in
a poetic manner, a beautifully shaped message to the
world. [...] Will those 18-year-olds treat it as a unique
experience, will they not lock themselves up in that
euphoric anaesthesia of the way to understanding the
world, defining one’s own place in it, and making constant choices therein? [...] Will those common activities and experiences make their participants carry the
spirit of human community into the places of their future work, study, and life?” 24.
23
Zygmunt Rymuza: Grotowski między teatrem a rzeczywistością. „Literatura” 1976,
no. 5.
24
Małgorzata Dzieduszycka: Latać? „Kultura” Warszawa 1975, no. 32.
I. IDEAS
35
After those critical publications by two participants of paratheatre workshops more voices arose that questioned the new direction of Grotowski’s artistic initiatives, such as that of Maciej Karpiński, Juliusz Kydryński, Józef Maśliński, Antoni Słonimski. Most
likely by 1975 the issue had become serious and authors and editorial staffs must have found it socially dangerous. The most forcible
expression of that fear was that by Antoni Słonimski, famous poet
and columnist (that was his second attack on Grotowski, after the
one of 1971):
“What is going on in Brzezinka near Wrocław is vain.
[...] The result of that is alienation from the difficult
times we are living in. Creating an enclave, a selected
group tied by the emotional regime and charisma of a
Leader. And all that is happening today, when we need
sharp thinking. [...] The doctrines from decades ago
are vivid and now they are coming back like ghosts.
Fully discredited and unable to face the new conditions, they still have power over us”25.
This time, however, Słonimski’s attack apparently had a different generic weight. Its author was a well-known notorious critic
of the communist government: he initiated (together with Jan Józef Lipski) the famous Letter of 34 in 1964 and participated in the
protest against amendments to constitution, which were passed
by the Seym in February 1976. “Today, when we need sharp thinking” – that sentence must have been more painful than the unambiguous comparison to Hitler. (The tone of the fragments quoted
was clearly political, thus to my opinion comparing Słonimski’s negative opinion about Grotowski with the writer’s inter-war attacks
on Reduta, as Zbigniew Osiński does, will, to my mind, not change a
thing). A more painful attack: during his sermon on Skałka in May
1976 primate Stefan Wyszyński, when speaking of Poles’ heavy
drinking, criticized Apocalypsis cum figuris as an abomination, true
filth that shocks the viewers.
If in Gierek times there was some struggle for control of souls,
then the dispute over the social consequences of Grotowski’s initiatives in the area of participation theatre was one of its major
25
Antoni Słonimski: Gadatliwa kanapa . “Tygodnik Powszechny” 1976, no. 9.
36
I. IDEAS
battles. When in June 1975, according to the sources, two thousand people came to Grotowski’s conference at the Royal Castle
in Warsaw, he may have been perceived as some self-appointed
candidate for a bard, as someone who in worse periods of our history has been equal to kings. A year later there were the Radom
and Ursus events, persecutions, and an open opposition in form of
KOR (Laborers’ Defense Committee) was created. When in October 1977 the Flying University began its activity, the antistructural expression of the University of Research of the Theatre of Nations started losing its character. A year later cardinal Karol Wojtyła was chosen to be the Pope and in July 1979 made a historic
pilgrimage to his motherland as John Paul II. In that period Grotowski became an outsider again: still mistrusted by the government
and resented by the Church. Having to run a public institution after
all, he was operating in the official circulation, though, as Małgorzata Dziewulska rightly stated, deceiving the despot. And in 1979,
just before the Pope’s pilgrimage, he was interviewed by “Trybuna
Ludu”, communist party newspaper.
And in an earlier interview published by “Trybuna Ludu” in October 1976 he had spoken about the active culture:
“Action in the sphere of active culture, such as gives
one feeling of fulfilling one’s life, widening its scope,
happens to be the need of many, but remains the domain of very few. Active culture is cultivated, for instance, by a writer when writing a book. We cultivated
it hile we were preparing performances. Passive culture, which is important and rich in aspects [...], is a
relationship to what is a product of active culture,
that is to say, reading, watching a performance, film,
listening to music. In certain, let us say, laboratory
dimensions, we are working on means to extend the
sphere of active culture. What is the privilege of a few,
can also become the property of others. I am not talking about a mass production of works of art, but of a
kind of personal creative experience, which is not indiferrent for the life of an individual person, or his life
with others. Working in the sphere of theatre, preparing productions for many years, step by step we were
approaching such a concept of active man (actor),
I. IDEAS
37
where the point was not to act someone else, but to
be oneself, to be with someone, to be in relationship
[...]. A step further on our adventure with active culture began. Its elements can be reduced to something very simple, like: action, reacting, spontaneity,
impulse, song, congeniality, music-making, rhythm,
improvisation, sound, movement, truth and dignity of
the body. And also: man in relation to man, man in the
tangible world. [...] What I am speaking about is not a
work of art in the meaning of a creative product. It is
one in another way, as a creative and collective process, which is open to new possibilities, thus different
each time. [...] Indeed, that is situated on the verge of
art (especially theatre), although it is not a performance nor an actor’s creation of a character. The very
material of that work is associated with the active
culture” 26.
In the same interview Grotowski announced yet another paratheatre initiative following the Special Project – Mountain Project
in Grodziec near Legnica, the regular preparation of which were to
be (starting September 1976) Night Vigil held in the Wrocław room.
Those works of participation theatre were run by Zmysłowski27.
After the realization of Mountain Project , when summarizing
the work of the Laboratory Theatre in the sphere of active culture,
the paratheatre work, Grotowski spoke about their further perspectives connected with the necessity of crossing their next threshold:
26
Poszukiwania Teatru Laboratorium. Rozmowa z Jerzym Grotowskim . By Tadeusz Burzyński. „Trybuna Ludu” 1976 no. 252.
27
My engagement in all these works were described in: What’s up at Grotowski’s? “Le
Théâtre en Pologne – The Theatre in Poland” 1977, no. 5-6; Nocne czuwanie w Teatrze
Laboratorium . “Kultura” Warszawa 1977, no. 17; Co w Laboratorium? “Polityka” 1977,
no. 6; Percepcja nieoswojona (Soliloquium z powodu Przedsięwzięcia Góra). “Punkt”1979,
July – September; Wokół doświadczeń w Teatrze Laboratorium. In: Problemy samorealizacji człowieka. Edited by Jerzy Prokopiuk, Warszawa 1979; Doświadczenie nieoswojone. “Dialog” 1980, no. 4. It was the time when also On the Road to Active Culture
was edited by me and published (in Polish and English) by Laboratory Theatre in 1978
(2 nd edition, in English, in 1979).
38
I. IDEAS
“What we were doing between the years 1970 and
1977 has been described in a booklet entitled On the
Road to Active Culture . [...] What [...] these [...] deal
with is our approach to the threshold, which opens
outo unknown space. It is necessary to open the next
door, to break through what stands close to theatre
[...]. In order to grasp what this breakthrough consist
of, you must recognize the difference between a work
meeting, a project or workshop on the one hand, and
what I call «opus-river» on the other. [...] there exists
the possibility – we have known for a long time that it
exists, for we have touched it, for example, in the Mountain Project – the possibility of a work which is created as it is created, which embraces all those present, in which the leaders cease to be leaders and
become midwives or gardeners, work which encircles
a greater number of people and lasts for hours, days,
nights. Work-process, work-flow, «work» in the meaning of «opus». But – work with the self, work of people, in a double sense: that they both call it into being
and are its living tissue. I can repeat, after Borges,
that such a work may be like «a garden with branching
paths».Everything is a stream, a process, flows simultaneously, traverses, branches, lasts a shorter or
longer time, embraces different places. [...] the workflow is fulfilled when there are no such designations of
time. [...] That the most banal activities, the most
everyday activities would all be within the process. To
arrive at this point it is not necessary to perform everyday or banal actions as something incredible or hieratic – to transform, for example, an ordinary meal
into a holy supper. We must bring it about that everything becomes the living substance of the process:
both the commonplace and the extraordinary”28.
28
Jerzy Grotowski: Wandering toward Theatre of Sources . Ed. by Leszek Kolankiewicz.
Transl. by Jenny Kumiega. “Dialectics and Humanism”, vol. 7, No. 2, Spring 1980,
pp. 22-23.
I. IDEAS
39
It is a question of debate whether it was Tree of People , an
initiative realized periodically from January 1979 usually under the
direction of Zbigniew Cynkutis, or rather Polish Thanathos : Incantations , a quasi-show, whose “open rehearsals” were run by Ryszard Cieślak from January 1981, which became the work-flow that
Grotowski spoke about. However, regardless of the result of the
entire discussion here, the concept of an “opus”, which is a “garden with branching paths” presented here, enriches the concept
of the active culture.
The concept of the active culture brought about a serious discussion. It was criticized independently by Jan Kott and Richard
Schechner. (Unfortunately, most probably, neither of them, nor other
critics of paratheatre initiatives, were familiar with the quoted statement by Grotowski of 1978).
In his essay The End of Impossible Theatre from 1980 Kott held
Grotowski responsible for the negative tendency that developed in
the modern world, in his perception, out of attempts to treat theatre as a lab in which the rehearsals themselves were the most
important thing. “Rehearsals are frequently a fascinating theatre” –
he wrote. “I am very well familiar with the fascination of a theatre
rehearsal. But the impossible theatre begins where the aesthetics
of a rehearsal becomes the principle and essence of theatre”. Further on he explained: “The essence of a rehearsal is rehearsing, the
unfinished work is like subsequent sketches for a painting. Identifying theatre with rehearsal leads to public shows of rehearsals as
ready performances”. It is worth pointing out that Grotowski did
not do that. Thus Kott spoke later not about Grotowski himself but
about his followers: “The shows of Grotowski’s followers, especially
in the USA, resemble those Italian restaurants where one can watch
meals being prepared. But in this lab-kitchen the only thing that
takes place are kitchen operations. The plates remain empty”29.
29
Jan Kott: Koniec teatru niemożliwego . In: Jan Kott: Pisma wybrane . Choice and
arrangement by Tadeusz Nyczek. Krąg, Warszawa 1991. T. 3: Fotel recenzenta . p.
339, 340, 341, 342. Later on he explained differences between Grotowski and his
followers (p. 343) in this way: „He [Grotowski] and his actors believed that after
months of rehearsals, which are a trial, they will be able to fly if they want to. American followers of Grotowski were convinced that after a week’s session of body touching they would arrive at theatrical levitation of actors and even viewers”.
40
I. IDEAS
That essay by Kott, who I once disputed with 30, was not the last
word of the author about Grotowski’s work. After seeing the next
part of that laboratory search, which was Objective Drama Project, realized by Grotowski in Irvine, California, in 1989 he wrote
the essay Grotowski or a Border , which had a different tone and
conclusions. In that essay Kott compares Grotowski’s Objective
Drama Project to Craig’s absolute theatre and writes that in Irvine he learnt the borders of theatre. “I asked Grotowski”, he says,
“if he had any documentation of a year’s work: photographs, pictures, records. «Why?» – he seemed surprised. – «The true record is
in the memory». Then he smiled: «You should know it best, Janek. It
was you who wrote about the memory of the body»” 31. The author
of Memory of Body leaves it at that, without comment, we can
suppose, however, that he had finally been convinced.
Things were similar with Richard Schechner. The American theatre director and anthropologist explained his resentment of Grotowski’s paratheatre initiatives and the entire project of active
culture as follows:
“Grotowski’s «road to the active culture» (as one of
the pamphlets desciribing his transcultural work is titled) is a road away from theater of works performed
for an audience, of training meant to develop the skills
of a professional, toward a kind of whole-life training
focused through specific face-to-face encounters. This
road is not fundamentally different than what Grotowski achieved during his «poor theater» phase, but through «active culture» he wants to assist many nonprofessional people in achieving the kind of «holy actor».
Grotowskich paratheatrical work has been often described experientially. This is so because one of its
purposes is to accomplish personal transformations,
and therefore its «results» are not theatrical productions but quasi-religious testimonies
What troubles me about Grotowski’s work in this area
is that it has become very cultish. People are not real-
30
Leszek Kolankiewicz: Koniec teatru – koniec świata . “Dialog” 1987, no. 3.
31
Jan Kott: Grotowski, albo granica . In: Jan Kott: Pisma wybrane . T. 3. p. 369.
I. IDEAS
41
ly being trained in this or that technique; rather, they
are drawn into a kind of cult of personality (or personalities, because some of Grotowski’s longtime associates share his charisma or have developed their own).
People are drawn very deeply into highty personal work
– into the «break-down» phase of workshop, or the
«separation/ordeal» phase of initiation – but they are
not then «reconstructed» either by being integrated
into a society or by being given specific roles to play in
a performance. [...] Training needs to be a fully realized
three-stage process: separation, deconstruction, reconstruction. Grotowski’s paratheatrical work is all
separation and deconstruction” 32.
But even in the next paragraphs of that critique Schechner places his positive review of the Objective Drama project:
“Grotowski’s latest project – objective drama – answers some of these questions in a concrete, constructive way”, he says. “Objective drama is Grotowski’s integration of theater and paratheater”, he explains, “from the perspective of ritual process objective
drama attempts exactly what the paratheatrical experiments avoided: the use of various ritual techniques
in the development of definite «fragments» or «models» or «works». Objective drama supplies the constructive reintegrative phase of the process”33.
Clearly, Kott and Schechner formed similar claims against the
project of the active culture: giving up work aiming at improving
professional skills and giving up the idea of a work as the result of
a creative process – a double resignation leading to a dead end of
more or less superficial rehearsals without a result, but conducted with a growing number of non-professionals. Their criticism
32
Richard Schechner: Between Theater and Anthropology . Foreword by Victor Turner.
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia 1985, p. 255. In the final sentence of
that paragraph he states ironically: “It is a brave vision of human capabilities that
supposes individuals able to reconstruct themselves; or that proposes to individuals
that they live lives of sanyasins or yamabushis: wanderers in the service of truth”.
33
Richard Schechner: Between Theater and Anthropology . pp. 255, 256-257.
42
I. IDEAS
thus touched upon the very core of the active culture concept.
Both critics were, however, still ready to acknowledge the importance of Grotowski’s later work, although he was still not aiming at
creating a work of art (of theatre), nor did he document it in any
way, but because he again placed great emphasis on the workshop,
on technical problems.
The criticism of Kott and Schechner was preceded and, in a way,
exceeded by Lech Raczak. In the Para-ra-ra lampoon published in
“Dialog” in 1980 he raised similar claims against the paratheatre
initiative: in distancing itself from creating works of art it remains
an unfulfilled, clumsy, thus underdeveloped theatre; that it forces
participants towards physical activity but not intellectual activity;
that it encourages joint sensations but not social communication;
that it deludes people with a false vision of egalitarianism in the
creative process but in reality it turns participants into a herd
that blindly follows the leader in the role of a shaman or a prophet.
To those claims, which were consistent with those of Kott and
Schechner, Raczak added another, probably the heaviest one: “paratheatre activity, active culture requires isolation, a momentary
abandonment of one’s own environment; it may even be called a
form of a short escape from social reality that it does not dare to
face, that it does not want and cannot transform” 34. Raczak questioned the vision of a person that was reflected in the paratheatre practices, which he reconstructed, firstly, as naturalistic since it reduced a person to the primeval, to what is understood as
instinctive and in opposition to reason; secondly, as static in that
it glorifies the return to what is everlasting and unchangeable in a
man and is hostile towards culture as the domain of the dynamic
creation of one’s own fate. Discussing the issue in the context of
the social situation in Poland in 1980 he mocked Grotowski as the
famous prophet who at best will end up in the dead end of a big
city’s industrial district, and at worst, in the detested propaganda
broadcasts of the government-controlled TV.
Raczak’s lampoon was a true blow to paratheatre, first of all
because it was the personal, passionate, thoughtful, and sober
voice of a young artist, Grotowski’s young colleague, who in the
34
Lech Raczak: Para-ra-ra . “Dialog” 1980, no 7, p. 134.
I. IDEAS
43
beginning of his artistic work had looked up to the Wrocław master’s method. The publication was the more painful for Grotowski
that its author was the leader of the Eighth Day’s Theatre, an
excellent counterculture team that was politically active and persecuted by the authorities, and because it was published by Konstanty Puzyna, a critic that so far had been in favor of Grotowski,
and the author of the genial analysis of Apocalypsis cum figuris .
True, that when it was published paratheatre was already history
for Grotowski since for several years he had been realizing a different kind of initiative: Theatre of Sources (whose plots were then
developed in Objective Drama Project ), however it surely forced
him to rethink the assumptions of the whole thing. I even dare to
assume that when in 1981 Grotowski and the second team of
Theatre of Sources left the forest retreat of the Laboratory Theatre in Brzezinka and started touring the then tormented Poland,
he voluntarily participated (probably unconsciously and only slightly) not only in the ups and downs of the Eighth Day’s Theatre but
also (and perhaps first and foremost) in the Centre of Theatrical
Practices “Gardzienice”, a team founded by a former colleague,
Włodzimierz Staniewski, who organized truly desperado expeditions
to the most miserable parts of the country and shaped his work in
confrontation with the bitter fate of their inhabitants. The publication of Raczak’s lampoon in 1980 meant that Grotowski had ceased to be the leader of Polish counterculture, or so it seems after
all those years.
In her book on the sociology of student theatre written with the
benefit of hindsight Aldona Jawłowska summarized Grotowski’s role
in the history of counterculture as follows:
“The greatest significance for development of the alternative culture concept, not only in Poland, should
be awarded to the activity of Jerzy Grotowski and his
Laboratory Theatre, especially in the 1970s, in the
period of transition from theatre towards «the active
culture». [...] The impact [...] of the idea of the active
culture [...] was a very broad one. [...] That impact did
not turn out to be beneficial for everyone. One might
say rather that the personality of the «Master» bore
upon the theatre movement. Many of its representatives had participated in training sessions or other
44
I. IDEAS
initiatives of the Laboratory. For the stronger teams
and more mature ones it was a creative inspiration for
searching for their own road, the unique means of
expression corresponding to the needs of young actors expressing their actual needs and emotional states. The weaker ones succumbed to the temptation of
imitation, creating mannerist and insincere performances. In the mid 1970s the «Grotowski fashion» became a plague of student theatre” 35.
Even before the publication of Raczak’s lampoon, in his paper of
1979, which has already been quoted here, Puzyna described Grotowski’s relation to counterculture as a more complex one:
“[Grotowski] followed his own, separate road; he also
was quite deliberate in distancing himself from protest, especially political [...] although it is impossible
to talk about a simple relation between Laboratory
and counterculture, one can and needs to speak about their long-lasting harmony. Moreover, about a constant, very complex, but obvious osmosis between the
Laboratory and almost the entire «new theatre» in the
world. [...] It is not even [...] about theatre but about
much broader issues, the most important of which is
breaking through the culture crisis. And at least about creating points of departure for that process: various mole hills of alternative culture. [...] To put it
very simply: formerly people joined a group in order to
do theatre, today they do theatre in order to be in a
group” 36.
It is probably not surprising in the light of that evaluation that
when in 1980 and 1981 Puzyna participated in the works of the
Solidarity Culture Committee (for the Mazowsze region), he encouraged taking up and developing the concept of active culture. (The
subcommittee of which he was then a part even bore the name of
the active culture committee; in October 1981 “Tygodnik Solidar-
35
36
Aldona Jawłowska: Więcej niż teatr . PIW, Warszawa 1988, pp. 34, 36-37.
Konstanty Puzyna: Jak krety . In: Konstanty Puzyna: Półmrok. Felietony teatralne i
szkice . PIW, Warszawa 1982, pp. 155, 156.
I. IDEAS
45
ność” published the conversation of Puzyna, Elżbieta Matynia, and
Lech Śliwonik under the characteristic title Czyńcie kulturę sami –
Make your own culture ). Having ascertained that the committee
members shared the outlook stemming from Grotowski’s active
culture and from their relations with the student theatre (committee members included among others Wojciech Krukowski, the founder of Akademia Ruchu theatre) Puzyna proposed to develop the
basis as something that could give birth to a lot of things including
thing differing markedly or completely from Grotowski’s art.
Lech Śliwonik recalled this years later, when the active culture
concept started being questioned again:
“All that is alive. I am convinced about that when I look
at the work of Krukowski, the Eighth Day’s Theatre,
Gardzienice, at their contacts with the youth, to whom
they seem to be saying: make your own culture, search for your own approaches. The signs of that same
circle can easily be found also in the activities of the
youth. So it is not only with respect to the past that
it seems appropriate to reflect on culture, its travel
across time, its transformations and consequences”37.
The unfavorable or even terrible reception of the active culture
was probably also determined by Grotowski’s own attitude to it.
As early as 1978, a year after the realization of Mountain Project
(under the direction of Jacek Zmysłowski), Grotowski announced
publicly his own initiative, Theatre of Sources , which, as he emphasized, would be something completely different from the active culture practiced in the Laboratory Theatre since 1970, with further
development perspectives (then opening in the work on Tree of People ). As is known, Grotowski’s auto-commentaries on his own artistic work frequently became a hint for researchers, especially in
view of the rather messy division of his work into “periods”. Looking
back through the prism of his emigration works after 1982, Grotowski distinguished between four stages of his work, whereby that
37
Grotowski – i co jest do zrobienia . Opinions of Janusz Degler, Małgorzata Dziewulska,
Aldona Jawłowska, Leszek Kolankiewicz, Wojciech Krukowski, Andrzej Mencwel, Grzegorz Niziołek, Zbigniew Osiński, Włodzimierz Pawluczuk, Małgorzata Szpakowska, Lech
Śliwonik in the discussion organized by the Institute of Polish Culture of Warsaw University on March 12 th 1999. ”Dialog” 1999, no. 6, p. 112.
46
I. IDEAS
of the active culture was named as the second and placed in the
time frame of 1969-1978, which to my mind shifted things by a
year. (Zbigniew Osiński, the recognized historian of Grotowski’s art
considers the third period to be the work on the Theatre of Sources , which took place mainly in Poland, whereas the American publishers of the basic monograph on Grotowski’s art, Richard Schechner and Lisa Wolford, associate the Theatre of Sources with paratheatre, and they isolate Objective Drama Project , on which Grotowski worked in the United States). Out of those four periods
Grotowski finally isolated the first and the last: when he staged
theatre plays in Opole and Wrocław (until 1969) and when he worked on Ritual Arts near Pontedera in Italy (after 1985).
After several years had passed, Grotowski assessed the active
culture, paratheatre, participatory theatre of 1970-1977 as a
stage that in a way had been necessary for the development of his
works, but as their transitional, temporary stage. He formed that
opinion in a wider context of his negative appraisal of the counterculture rebellion, which he presented at the very beginning of his
work on Ritual Arts in 1985:
“Art is profoundly rebellious. [...] this is both the most
important and the most dangerous point. In following
this path we may end up in a form of rebellion which is
not only verbal but anarchic, which is the refusal of
our responsibilities. In art, this attitude presents itsels under the guise of dilettantism: I am not credible
in my job, I haven’t mastered it; I have no ability; I am
really a dilettante in the worst sense of the word. So
I rebel. [...] If your rebellion isn’t characterized by competence then you will lose everything in your battle.
Even if you’re sincere.
It’s like what happened to the counterculture of ’60s
in the USA. It doesn’t exist any more: it folded up; it’s
not that there weren’t any elements of sincerity or of
great value in it, but there wasn’t enough competence, enough precision, enough consciousness. It’s like
the old film by Bergman [sic!], whose title [...] was She
Danced for Just One Summer . That’s right, it was the
’60s: they danced for just one summer, and then they
gave it all up without wondering whether it had any
I. IDEAS
47
value or not. Great fireworks, dancing, ecstasy, and
afterwards, nothing was left. Real rebellion in art is
something which persists and is competent, and never dilettante. [...] Very often people involved in participatory theatre are simply dilettantes. Then it can’t
work. You need to be extremely competent to carry
out this kind of improvisation. Goodwill alone will never
save your work; it’s mastery and only mastery that
can save it. [...] Without mastery, the heart isn’t worth
a damn” 38.
That is hard talk, pretty much in the style of George I. Gurdjieff,
the spiritual master that Grotowski had started identifying with.
Probably Grotowski himself needed it both as a reply to the criticism of his art of the paratheatre period, as well as, perhaps mainly, to clarify the quality of his new initiative.
Essentially, one has to agree with that appraisal as it is the only
right one from the historical point of view. Today we see even more
clearly that in the social awareness the ratings of the counterculture period, not only the American one, have been steadily going down.
Eventually, people once engaged in the countercultural movement
have had to explain their engagement in the counterculture movement as if it were a sin of youth. Today’s watchword is professionalism, which can be incorporated into existing structures without
conflicts. Training sessions and workshops are important if they end
with the granting of some certificate. Those certificates are to be a
guarantee of professionalism in ridiculously petty areas. That depreciation of the ideas of “competence”, “craft”, “professionalism” led
to the distortion of the image of real mastery, which is currently
perceived as a step one can tread on without engaging one’s entire
self, one’s heart, without any passion. In consequence that cult of a
peculiarly understood professionalism has been accompanied by the
demoralized and demoralizing interest at stake in every initiative,
even those of an artistic nature. Well, in my humble opinion that is
what can really not be worth a damn.
38
Jerzy Grotowski: Tu es le fils de quelqu’un . (You are someone’s son). Transl. by
Jacques Chwat. Translation reviewed and ed. by Ronald Packham. “The Drama Review”,
Vol. 31, No. 3 (T-115), Fall, 1987, pp. 31–32. 33.
48
I. IDEAS
I have elsewhere raised doubts and questions with reference to
Grotowski’s appraisal, which was perhaps too one-sided39. An indirect reply to that appraisal was also Krzysztof Czyżewski’s Amateur’s Ethos read out during II Encounter in Czarna Dąbrówka in
the summer of 1989 40. That did not arise from nostalgia – absolutely not! – but rather from a different appraisal of the cultural
context in which one operates and the need to continue selected
plot lines of the active culture. After all, Grotowski did not create
the active culture by himself: its participants and supporters were
entitled to their own opinions as well as to continuing his work on
their own and at their responsibility. Just the way the members of
the culture committee in the Mazowsze region of Solidarity, who
declared their union with Grotowski’s outlook by using the concept
of active culture, however isolating that culture from his art and
its periodical metamorphoses: “Make your own culture!” – was their
watchword.
It probably was not as powerful as the famous statement “Instead of burning committees set up your own ones!” said by Jacek
Kuroń, the leading Polish dissident, nonetheless it resulted also
from the irresistible antistructural impulse, although without political orientation. Grotowski’s theatre demonstrated that antistructural orientation more or less by the mid 1970s, until the University of Research of the Theatre of Nations, that “international
Woodstock for the spiritually and artistically inclined”, to recall the
American comparison. In the mid 1970s, when antistructural tendencies demonstrating clearly political protest started prevailing
in Poland, the University of Research, putting it briefly, was substituted by the Flying University, an independent educational enterprise of humanists, with participation of, among others, Bohdan
Cywiński, Jerzy Jedlicki, Adam Michnik, Jerzy Strzelecki, which operated in the academic years of 1977/1978 and 1978/1979. The
great antistructural work done in late 1970s by the Laborers’
Defense Committee, the Association of Academic Courses, and
other opposition organizations, which led to creation of Solidarity,
39
Leszek Kolankiewicz: “Dramat obiektywny” Grotowskiego . “Dialog” 1989, no. 5, 6.
40
Published in: “i. Miesięcznik Trochę Inny” 1991, no. 4.
I. IDEAS
49
did not dispute those antistructural impulses, which were expressed through the question: What is the possibility of creation that
does not aim at creating works of art but that is vividly “humanely
human”? For, when the social movement of Solidarity became a
structure itself, the artists and intellectuals engaged in that movement sooner or later had to pose the question of the socially
creative meaning of antistructural activities, the issue of a possible coupling of the antistructural and structure in the operation of
various institutions.
The history of the active culture project presented here allows
us to formulate several important questions. Do antistructural impulses have to be cultivated in the course of the process of gaining
and/or improving professional skills, where that process takes place in a structural framework? Is it possible only at the price of
introducing a dose of dilettantism to that process? Can creative
work in the area of culture be fruitful when it does not bring results
in form of some piece of art? Is it impossible to treat practicing
some particular ethos as the fruit of such creative work?
It is not disconnected fragments that constitute an alternative
to the system – as theorists of postmodernism claim; the alternative to the system is formed by an ethos. If it is true – and it seems
to be – that we have eaten our fill of systems, that does not mean
that we have quenched our thirst for ethos.
50
I. IDEAS
G rrzegor
zegor
z Godlewski
zegorz
A NIMATION AND ANTHROPOLOGY
The transformation period we have been recently witnessing has
been a time of general changes in culture: political, economic and
administrative changes. Some of the changes were desired and
predictable – such as the disappearance of the control and pressure of the autoritarian state. Other changes, though predictable,
evoked anxiety, especially the market mechanisms applied to the
culture. But already during the transformation some unpredicted
circumstances became apparent while the anticipated changes led
to some unexpected results.
The most anticipated and desired change was when the culture
obtained “negative freedom” – it became free of various internal
and external restrictions. The culture was liberated from the censorship, repression and ideological prerogatives of the state as
well as from patriotic and moral obligations; the barriers inhibiting
international contacts also disappeared. We looked forward to the
Big Opening, to dumping all our excess weight, to standing upright,
to setting free all the dormant potential. And so it happened. However, the opening also generated unexpected effects. Having taken off the mantle of national bards artists lost their wide-spread
impact and social charisma. The Polish culture was deprived of the
glory of its uniqueness which was rooted in its suffering and historical mission. The uniqueness of Poland’s fate did not fully fade away
Grzegorz Godlewski: culture theorist, engaged in research in anthropology of language, a lecturer in the Institute of Polish Culture, co-author of the special line of studies in “Culture Animation”, teacher of anthropological translation class (cf. part II
Workshops ), member of the council of the “Pogranicze” Foundation.
I. IDEAS
51
and perish – but it ceased to determine the substance of the culture.
Joining the global culture resulted in new situations, but first
and foremost we have faced the problems and dilemmas which
the West has been tackling for quite some time already. These are
the problems and dilemmas we used to look upon rather forebearlingly, in the manner the “homeless” perceive problems of prosperous citizens. But once we had found ourselves “at home”, we
noticed that the invigorating breath of the outside world brought
challenges and threats we used to consider insignificant or illusory. We discovered that for joining the “global village” we will be
charged the same price as others plus extra expenses spent on
getting rid of the authoritarian corset. At first, the first signs of
the McWorld, the American, but global mass culture, sneaked in.
Initially they did not make many people concerned. These early
signs were dismissed as insignificant gadgets targeted at the
lowest needs previously suppressed by the socialistic pedagogy.
Before we realised the threats posed by the McDonald and Macintosh world, we heard the opinions about the creative crisis in
Western culture, the disintegration of modern world, the disappearance of permanent and universal values, which were quite
attentively and eagerly listened to in Poland. After all, these views
matched perfectly the state of decomposition typical of the domestic culture after we had regained freedom. Having set ourselves free from the oppression and opposition we had been trapped
in for decades, we witnessed the erosion of canons and authorities which became even more difficult to reconstruct since the
driving force of destruction did not become extinct but on the
contrary, gained new and unexpected strength.
The confusion inherent in the process of radical value changes
was supported with a new rationale. We faced a sort of tempting
option to make ourselves comfortable in the chaos, oblivious to the
fact that the chaos of decline (whether real or apparent) is different to the chaos of turning-point. Each calls for different attitudes and offers unique opportunities. Identifying these attitudes
and opportunities conditions the accomplishment of our most basic task: to reconstruct the patterns and values of Polish culture.
This task is both practical and serious, and no manifestos made by
others can relieve us of it.
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I. IDEAS
On the other hand, exorcising undesirable foreign influences and
urging others to focus on the national tradition do not solve the
problems of Polish culture. The historical transformations are irrevocable. One of the features of modernity is the fact that national
cultures have ceased to be self-contained and can not exist in isolation. We are not here concerned with the question of the planned
integration processes but of the increasing mobility of societies
and development of transportation for which state borders have
ceased to be an obstacle.
From this perspective it is obvious that the relevant transformations in the national culture make it necessary for us to go
beyond the traditional ways of defining culture. It is not only the
external state borders which have lost their meaning or changed
function; the internal frames in which we used to position our common identity have also become uncertain and relative. Apart from
the official “patriotism”, imposed by the state ideology and sociotechnical actions of the government in previous decades, the traditional romantic paradigm of nationality – embodied in the early “Solidarity” – has lost much of its integration power, though due to
other reasons. In effect, we have been witnessing the gradual decomposition of systems of basic values, symbols and social attitudes. Even the very concept of the nation, abused in political disputes and affected by economic and cultural integration on the global
and European level, has ceased to be clear.
The problems of societies deprived of a common framework of judgements and prejudices, and forced to come up against relative and
contradictory interpretations of the world, cease to be “someone
else’s problems” which can be safely watched from the perspective of
domestic peace and order. In this world new groups and formations
emerge and build their identity on the basis of qualities closer to
practical ordinariness than any common language, tradition or historical experience. But even these factors, inherent in the national community, have become less and less clear-cut and thus less common:
we start speaking different varieties of Polish language, finding it more
and more difficult to understand one another. At the same time the
tradition and historical experience are subject to increasingly relativistic and diverse interpretations, judgements and choices.
The cultural differentiation of contemporary Polish society is both
obvious and yet poorly recognised. The most profound and signifi-
I. IDEAS
53
cant contrasts do not reveal themselves under the existing political conditions as they do not meet the classical definitions of social
strata. Even though these contrasts are related to traditional sociological categories, they fill them with new meaning or turn their
meanings upside down. People having similar educational background will be differentiated by the reasons for which they studied and
the ways they use their education. A local community will make up
a continuum from a “small motherland” to a group united by the
attitude: “my home is my castle”. The believers of the same religion have become divided with respect to their approach to the
religious creed and institutions of their religion. It is no longer a
question of absent authorities and disputable canonical values, and
their interpretation and implementation. Different groups and formations – especially different generations – though seemingly living
in the same time and space, really do live in different worlds. They
have their own vocabulary and constellations of symbols, cognitive
categories and emotional patterns, myths and future projections.
They not only make for different societies or social strata – they
form different cultures.
We should state explicitly: Polish society, which enjoys such a
rare ethnic unity in comparison with other societies, has become
and is likely to remain for an indefinite period of time a multicultural
society, not to say a “multi-tribal” society. And as such it will present itself in different walks of public life. The chance Polish democracy has will depend on the extent to which distinct social entities
will find the space to fulfil their goals and needs, to practice their
culture. It is not and it will not be a harmonious co-existence – the
interests and aspirations of different cultural groups living in the
same social niche are by their nature competing or even conflicting. Especially in a society losing its dominating cultural force,
each group is or happens to be the minority. And the minorities
rarely share the feeling of safety; the feeling of being threatened
leads to aggression.
In order to prevent evolution of this co-existence of minorities
into an all-out fight, first of all we have to realise and admit that
these minorittes exist. The great national community is still something more than a line in a passport and the solidarity slogans still
have the power to mobilise common effort – especially in the face of
natural calamity or the suffering of the innocent – but slogans do
54
I. IDEAS
not constitude real social entities. And since these entities are
only now being defined, and since they have not found any reference
points either in the established structures of political life or in the
existing network of the public institutions, they are forced to seek
their definition outside the official forms of public life, quite often
questioning them. This how the seeds of anarchy are planted and
we have already witnessed its first symptoms. It is a serious threat – though no democratic institution or official are beyond critique, public order as such requires unconditional protection. In order to ensure this protection or even to activate its full capacity,
its operating forms and modes should be adjusted to the real shape of the community it is supposed to serve. We are all too well
aware what attempts at adjusting society to a system may amont
to.
To protect the basis of the our community life from the treats
posed, we must face up to our new multi-entity nature. Many traditional beliefs concerning ourselves should be rejected or at least
reviewed. This might be a painstaking process but keeping up the
illusion may turn out to be even more painful. We have to make an
effort to see around us, among us or even in ourselves not only
dissimilarities, but also the exoticism or even foreignness. The multicultural nature of modern Poland should not be perceived as mere
diversification of preferences, tastes, entertainment or fashion; it
is something much deeper lying at the very basis of perception and
understanding of the surrounding reality. The principle of relativism
is applicable not only to the rainforest tribes but also to the tribe
members we meet everyday in the street. Therefore we must see
ourselves in others and others in ourselves. This is both extremely
difficult and indispensable if we are to live side by side, not only to
tolerate one another but to create a long-term and sensible platform of coexistence.
Though this is extremely difficult, it is not the end of our difficulties. The Polish multicultural reality offers opportunities, though it
may challenge recived ways of thinking and uncover strange elements in our maternal society. This multiculture is a potential source of abundant culture and vigour, a fertile soil for creativity,
including everyday interpersonal areas. This multiculture may become a school of skills and attitudes essential in the world of open
borders. At the same time, one more dimension of the contempo-
I. IDEAS
55
rary cultural experience has grown posing a huge question mark to
this already restricted opportunity. This is McWorld, the multimedia world of mass cultural consumption, which is proving to be much
more than a stream of cheap gadgets and glittering packages.
Equipped with the instruments of economic and organisational efficiency and productivity it is gradually exercising control over human minds, emotions and bodies. It is not a question of lowering
culture standards and commercialisation – after all high culture
has been thriving on complaining about that for decades. It is not
only an embarrassing zone we all visit secretly from time to time.
This is the new form of culture, a new way of experiencing the
world, which is not threatening in itself but may be dangerous due
to its craving for domination.
To put it briefly, it is a world of group hallucination which is gradually approaching perfection in imitating and substituting the real
world. Different variants – the world of supermarkets and McDonald’s, tabloids and advertisements, TV sequels and virtual space –
collectivelly and individually try to create the delusion of a separate, complete world from which there is no way back to reality. It is
a world which allows one activity – making one’s choice from the
versatile offer, submission to the pleasures of consumption and a
massage for the senses.
The apocalyptic visions of the related threats are not exaggerrated, though we have not witnessed all of them already. This phantom McWorld seems to be exceptionally attractive under our conditions. Inviting us to the cosmos of global pop-culture it apparently lets people make up for their civilizational backwardness and
gives them the impression of instant cultural advancement. It is
not a question of snobbery or easy life preferences but the possibility of getting rid of the burdens of the recent freedom, which turn
out to be no less burdensome than our previous shackles. Freedom
is a challenge: it demands confrontation with reality and responsibility for reality’s shape. It necessitates choices and the ability to
bear the consequences. But no guarantees of success or safety
can be given.
The McWorld overshines and diminishes these problems – it is
the modern version of “escape from freedom”, relying on invisible
authorities which provide us with mass consumption role models.
This version is even more tempting, since it gives the illusion of
56
I. IDEAS
freedom in making individual choices and does not repel us with
fanaticism or aggression. On the contrary, being so much fascinated with violence as a commodity, it transforms all the real conflicts into images so spectacular that they are void of any realism.
In this world of well calculated surprises we only come across problems whit ready made solutions, and only such aspirations which
may be satisfied with the services offered in the catalogue. This is
the world of utopia realised: it makes all dreams come true because it generates them all.
Real life, abandoned by the hypnotised consumers of delusion,
will not of course, disappear. But when overshadowed by the screen of substitute experience, it may become marginal and backward
or distorted in some uncontrolled way. The stratification of society
into separate tribes gives way to a sense of foreignness and conflict, which is not removed by finding an exile in the world of phantoms. United by the seeming community of magic experience, the
tribe members will not be able to take up the challenge of recognising their own and others’ distinct character, and therefore they
will be unable to build real any community.
“The global village” turns out to be tricky metaphor. The community it offers is as fragile and feeble as decorations made of carton.
Any upheaval in the real life may prove destructive for it and then
its participants will wake up in reality they neither know nor understand. They will stand up one another with fists unwilfully closed,
not even knowing why.
The consumers of delusion, spoiled by its mass supply, lose their
ability to cope with the real world, to react to its resistance and
shape it according to their intentions. They are no longer able to
take up this effort and enjoy its fruits. At the same time the multicultural reality of Polish culture is a huge challenge. This culture
should be fully displayed, with all its inherent complications, tensions and antagonisms. It must be expressed through forms which
allow confrontation of different social entities without leading to
their destruction. It must be persistently mastered, with all due
respect for manifest differences, in order to liberate productivity.
We must, step by step, seek space for potential co-operation, common interests and values, identifying the protected areas for exclusion or establish autonomous areas for each participant. This
garden must be duly attended because otherwise the forces of
I. IDEAS
57
nature will dominate the forces of culture. And then, we would
become strangers to ourselves.
Multitribal Poland is neither a blessing nor a scourge. It is our
historical heritage and as such it is a matter of duty. It contains
different, contradictory possibilities and nothing has been finally determined. Therefore, there is a chance to make it our common asset
and wealth, a cultural driving force. In order to capitalise on this
chance we must resist the temptation of immigrating to the “global
village”. Real life is somewhere else. It has proven to be harder and
more complicated than we had initially expected when we were struggling for it. Tackling this situation involves perceiving contemporary
culture not as destiny but as a challenge. The response to this challenge can be seen in numerous local and regional cultural and social
initiatives – foundations, associations, artistic groups, publishing
houses, theatres – which have taken advantage of the new freedom
and assumed responsibility for the culture as a creative activity
carried out in a local and regional environment. They work outside
the governmental structures, quite often outside any established
structures, frequently self-employed. They combine the enthusiasm
for innovative ideas with managerial efficiency. They fulfil in practice
the old mission of the intelligentsia by adjusting to free market conditions, state-of-the-art technologies and media.
So, if we take up the task of building a common world for the
Polish tribes, we will not stand helpless and empty-handed. There
are people who know how to get things started; there are existing
milieux, methods and ideas, the essential knowledge and skills. Nevertheless, all these forces must be activated and provided with
space where they can act.
The common basis for such diverse activities seems to be the
“attitude” – not a method – of animation. Culture animation, meant
as the stimulation of certain spheres or types of cultural human
experience, is a task which has come up through the historical
situation of culture, as a response to its shortcomings, failures
and malfunctions. Therefore, there are no universal recipes or model solutions; what guides animation activities is the value hierarchy and the cultural needs on the one hand, and the historical
stage of their realisation on the other.
The main directions of this situation have been already set. It is
worth mentioning that these directions do not relate to states
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I. IDEAS
but to processes and their power. Contemporary culture is a scene of numerous interrelated forces, which quite often are contradictory and conflicting though they do evolve, frequently in an unexpected way. Therefore any effective action requires more than
proven, standard forms and techniques. Effective performance within contemporary culture must be based on knowledge, skills and
primarily on an approach which identifies and addresses all the chalenges in an innovative way.
In this context, culture animation which faces up to those challenges must first of all create conditions in which people – individually and in groups – can satisfy and fulfil their needs within the
culture they discover or invent themselves. The objective of culture
animation is not to disseminate or promote so called “high culture”
or the most valuable mass culture products, nor to invigorate
amateur artistic efforts in the traditional sense, isolated from the
environmental context of life. The fundamental reference here is
the full cultural potential of a human being, his/her entire cultural
personality, which is addressed selectively by contemporary mass
culture and traditional cultural institutions. So the objective should be to counterbalance the model based on passivity / reproductiveness / reception / sensuality with a model based on activity /
creativity / self-fulfilment / cognitive, aesthetic and moral sensitivity.
The most fundamental perspective for identifying the situation,
needs and human potential as well as the right tools of animation
activities can be found in cultural anthropology – not solely as a scientific discipline but also as a source of a particular imagination and
sensitivity. It allows us to perceive the “animation situation” partner
as an entity with all primary, living, organic and comprehensive factors, not only aspirations and artistic skills, imagination or expression needs but also life attitudes and role models, identify forms,
emotional patterns, etc. The whole spectrum of interpersonal relations of the individual is defined by social background, family patterns
and primary group types, interpersonal orientation, organisational and
co-operation skills. And this is against the whole background of the
individual social original environment, taking into account local cultural
traditions, customs, social needs and problems, groups and movements, formal and informal authorities, geographical and cultural location, local patterns of time and space organisation.
I. IDEAS
59
Culture animation can be therefore perceived as sui generis “applied cultural anthropology”. It has a significant impact on the definition of the “animation attitude”. First of all, it implies the skill of
locating the specific environment–related problems in the space of
anthropological regularities of cultural existence and evolution, with
special emphasis on the primary factors inherent in cultural experience. It necessitates an approach to alien culture as if it were
our own (and conversely). Therefore, it is necessary that the subject (an animator) is able to recognise his/her own identity as an
input in the “animation situation”. The obvious consequence will be
to give up the “paternalistic” (directive, centralised, didactic) orientation in favour of the “participating” (democratic, based on reciprocity and the individuality of partners) orientation.
Such a concept of culture animation sets the model for the
education of culture animators. This model should be based on the
following three planes – it should enable the participants to obtain
reliable and well-grounded knowledge of culture (both theoretical
and practical), to gather rich and fruitful experience and to identify
their own idea of animation.
The essential knowledge of culture should cover culture’s major
areas and dimensions (defined in terms of historical and functional
orders), mutual relations and interdependencies of different components, the principles and mechanisms of cultural processes,
qualities inherent in communication systems and culture media –
from the point of view of cultural anthropology, not as a scientific
discipline, doctrine or methodology but a specific type of imagination and sensitivity for most primary and basic aspects of human
nature.
The source of the necessary experience should be participation
in specific creative processes during workshops and trainings conducted by renowned practitioners able to disclose the secrets of
their craft to participants.
The idea of animation based on the above general principles can
be achieved only with reference to the contemporary cultural situation, which enables the individual to recognise his/her own “calling” as determined by the identified goals, aspirations and individual talents in his/her area of cultural creativity.
Only after combining and harmonising the three factors can a
person perform effective and creative animation work targeted at
60
I. IDEAS
modelling certain culture patterns – within given frameworks of
time, space and environment. Such a goal requires comprehensive
experience and competence as well as the skills of addressing “open
situations” and cultural creativity – where the aspirations and talents of the animator are combined with the needs, resources and
potential of the environment the animator works for and with.
From this perspective the most valuable inspiration for the animator are the cultural actions and institutions organised independently of existing structures but thanks to the initiative of their
authors and founders who addressed the unarticulated needs and
aspirations of the environment, especially in peripheral, underdeveloped areas. Special attention should be paid to different innovative
animation projects, those which go beyond established schemes
and seek new formulas adjusted to their own original goals or needs. These are, for instance, the autonomous creative groups, which
undertake independent artistic activities and explore new forms of
expression, which exchange the products of their work with other
groups, animate their own actions and invite others to participate
in the artistic and cultural experience of the group. Groups of “invisible assistants” constitute another form, especially when they
act in the culturally and socially demanding regions, by offering “good
service” to local communities, helping them discover and develop
their own cultural needs and goals, providing opportunities for inter-group meetings in situations that invigorate the local tradition
and common identity.
Taking into account all the dimensions of the “animation situation” and the make up of the “animation attitude”, we should avoid
direct teaching or training methods with our animators (especially
theoretical, “methodological”) if we expect them in future also to
avoid a paternalistic attitude towards their partners. The forms of
the animators’ education should comply with the principles of animation work as such. The basic educational process should focus
on introducing the learners to the specific culturally creative actions, on arranging conditions for their participation in fruitful and
inspiring activities conducted by distinguished artists and renowned cultural institutions. We should refrain from direct interference in their experience, how they accommodate and use them, except
making them aware that there is nothing worse than imitating.
But we can or even should support the process of growing intellec-
I. IDEAS
61
tual and cultural identity, because consequently they obtain the
means to adapt the experience learned to their own personality,
talents and preferences; practical anthropological knowledge enables them to adapt experiences to the conditions they encounter
in their individual work.
Culture animation can not therefore be delivered through lectures or school lessons. The learners can be offered knowledge and
sources of fruitful experience which facilitate the practical application of the things they have learned in their own manner. Nevertheless, this is a road for those who can find their own self-fulfilment
in assisting the self-fulfilment of others. It seemed that the historically established role of the Polish intelligentsia had already passed, but now it seems to have begun life anew as the role model for
cultural attitudes, and as such it can and should be taken up again.
II. WORKSHOPS
65
II. WORKSHOPS
Roch Sulim a
A NTHROPOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
The aim of the classes “Anthropology of everyday life” is developing anthropological imagination in the students and acquainting them
with the rules of anthropological interpretation. The classes in anthropology of everyday life are different from classes in anthropology of
the modern time (which have already gained academic status at
many colleges of Poland), not only through their workshop form (though that difference may seem the most important) but also through
a different approach to the issues of modern culture. The prevailing
approach is an interpretative one and not a systematising one. The
classes are devoted rather to chosen elements of modern culture
(an analysis of theoretical conceptions) known to the participants
from their our experience, proper social practice, or are learned in a
methodical way during the workshop.
The classes of “Anthropology of everyday life” focus on two separate, but complementary approaches to the present day and
their respective domains of culture. We therefore focus both on
problems of the institutionalisation and spontaneity of cultural behaviour, their systematic and incidental character. It is thus an
anthropology of the “reception” of culture (the behaviour of consumers of mass or popular culture), as well as an anthropology of
“creation”. Both the dominant and alternative cultures come into
question here; both the areas of “majority” and “minority” participation in culture. We focus both on environment based cultures,
subcultures, alternative lifestyles, as well as institutions of official
culture, their formal and systemic impact.
Roch Sulima: literature specialist, folklore expert, historian and anthropologist of culture, professor at the Institute of Polish Culture, member of the council of ”Pogranicze” Foundation.
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Profile 1. Here we prefer to analyse spontaneous behaviour, and
not institutionalised ones. Thus the subject of interpretations characteristic for these classes are e.g. those phenomena of culture
that are commonly held to be “incidental”, situated outside established behaviour patterns e.g. breaking through cultural taboos (like
vandalising cemeteries). The subject of the classes are “non-system” phenomena (their systemic character is sought on a different,
undisclosed level, in “deep” semantic structures of the culture).
Within these classes emphasis is placed on particular phenomena of active culture, not only those aspiring to the status of
artistic activity (thus including non-professional writing forms, amateur theatre or musical activity, participation in pseudo-theatrical
rituals, shows, etc.), but also appearing in the forms of everyday
life, e.g. private hobbies, individual scenarios of everyday behaviour,
individualised ways of arranging living spaces (house, garden, etc.),
individual valuation of the sequences of social time: holidays, recreation (country hooses, summer gardens), time of home rituals (family rituals, forms of social life).
This area of interests includes first and foremost creative initiatives of individual units, thus creating, not consuming the content of the culture. A lot of attention is paid to analysing “cultural
biographies” of non-professional authors, leaders of small cultural
communities, e.g. amateur field artist groups, where the field can
be both a big city and typical rural areas of Poland.
In the workshop described here, where spontaneous creative
behaviour is brought forward, we also try to seek answers to questions about the increasing value of “a new locality”, revival of
regional issues and cultural differences not only in the function of
self-presentation and identity, but also in the communicative fuction (dialogues between cultures). Learners become aware of the
anthropological consequences of cultural, ethnic, or religious diversity in direct contact with the representatives of those communities invited to the workshops or met during field exploration organised especially for that purpose. “The new locality” provides an
opening for important discourses in the culture not only of Central
and Eastern Europe. In Polish cultural circles the “new locality”
causes e.g. the ideological myths of the eastern borderland, paralysing anthropological thinking about cultural diversity, to transform into anthropological content of the category of the “border-
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67
land” of culture and the humanist problem of diversity. The workshop joins the anthropological content of the “new locality” with
forms of local government culture, points to its extra-administrative, extra-institutional validation.
Profile 2. Apart from a strong emphasis placed on the activist
threads of modern culture (homo agens ), culture understood in
terms of categories of participation and creation, the workshop
prepares its participants to interpret the phenomena of mass and
popular culture perceived from the point of view of reception and
participation programmed by the codes of that culture. By using
the directives of microsociololgy, social psychology, ethnology, folkloristic studies, and poetics of texts, the participants of the workshop “Anthropology of everyday life” also learn to interpret the phenomena of culture on a mass scale. The subject of analysis are
both television and press transmissions, with a special focus on
the common forms of life that are expressed there, or the moral
content of newspapers and magazines and the sense of “locality”
expressed there.
Treating a newspaper as a source or even a modern “field” of
anthropological research has significant justifications. Newspapers,
and weekly magazines even more so, have finally lost the monopoly
on information to radio and television. Their main function remains
commenting and interpreting the present day. That can be clearly
seen in the development of “anthropological” forms of press expression, in the growing number of genres of quasi-feature articles; in
articles that are an obtrusive “compilation” of statements made
by experts: sociologists, social psychologists, culture researchers,
etc. Roland Barthes provided an extensive account of the diagnostic role of the so-called “press release” for an anthropologist of
modern times.
The aim of the workshop in that area is preparing the workshop
participants for proper writing (reporting) activity, for the activity
of future media organisers, managers of cultural activity, critics,
commentators of modern times, initiators, and designers of various culture modes in media, an activity enriched by a culture-oriented, anthropological perspective, rather than an “understanding”
or even a hermeneutics of mass transmissions.
During the workshop we also want to decode the “myth-productive” (in the understanding of Barthes) functions of mass trans-
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missions (popular mythologies, mass culture myths), thus the undisclosed motivations of so-called “obvious” behaviour or “deep”
structures of meanings of the social world. Here, the subject of
interpretation are e.g. magical-mythical valorizations of advertising. One can thus say that the workshop involves pursuing the
anthropology of informality, the anthropology of “obviousness”, or,
to put it more bluntly, the “anthropology of the banal”. The object
of our focus are therefore cultural fashions, modern psychoses,
and public ceremonies, mass shows, marches, and demonstrations
that pertain to modern ideological discourses.
Through participatory observation and owing to the analysis of
the testimonies gathered and systematised, the students prepare to diagnose social reality, explaining its spontaneous forms. The
classes realised both within the first and within the second profile
prepare the participants for field activity. The students are acquainted with the forms of field contact, dialogue techniques, ways of
getting to know and break through “alienation” in interpersonal
contacts. The ultimate form of the field presence is not collecting
information (the status of a researcher and a respondent) but
coexistence with others. The anthropological premises and consequences of “coexistence” constitute one of the basic aims of the
workshop “Anthropology of everyday life”. Because a considerable
part of the classes take place in the field and refer to current
events, it is treated as an opportunity to work out new forms of
social diagnostics and practical applications of the knowledge gained.
The workshop takes the form of a bi-semester cycle (a total of
60 hours). The students participate in field and stationary classes.
Recruitment for the workshop takes two phases. Students are
accepted for the workshop on the basis of an individual interview
during the first meeting, when they present their interests and
expectations. So the order of classes is not formally fixed, although their content is pre-established. It is correlated with the interests of the students, who are an active party to the classes.
The classes begin with several hours of field exploration (I shall
describe its aim and scope below), which is concluded with a written report presented by the participants. The results of that report serve as the criterion for the final selection of participants.
The culmination of the workshop is a series of individual interpreta-
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69
tions of chosen phenomena of modern culture, which are presented during classes. That is frequently preceded by an interpretation of the short “press releases” that led to the choice. Obviously,
the classes aiming at developing individual interpretation skills and
their potential application to the description of contemporary culture are the result of the constant attention given to the methods
and principles of anthropological interpretation with the application of the literature available, and opinions of practitioners invited
to the classes – ethnographers, folklore researchers, historians,
but also writers and journalists. One testimony of the skills gained
during the workshop are anthropologically oriented publications of
its former participants in daily newspapers, weekly magazines, scientific magazines, and broadcasts on Polish Radio and Television. It is
not only the publications themselves which are significant but their
anthropological profile. I have frequently experienced a big interest
of the media in the problems discussed at the workshop “Anthropology of everyday life”. A considerable number of the workshop
participants are also teachers, who frequently take up work outside big cities. In their workplaces they become culture animators,
they refer to local traditions and use the skills gained in the area of
ethnographic and folklore exploration. Their understanding of culture refers to the principle of “coexistence”, thus overlapping, differentiating, or comparing many “humanistic coefficients” (term of
Florian Znaniecki).
As I have already mentioned, the initial form of the classes is
several hours of field exploration, whose route is settled in detail
(usually specific districts of Warsaw). The exploration is preceded
by detailed instructions on how to act in the space of a large city
as an observer who is studying without other participants of the
street space becoming aware of that. The participants of exploration then prepare a written report, whose form, size, content, and
stylistics are not defined in advance. A very general instruction for
the report is provided to the students: “write down what you noticed during a walk”. Such a task aims at investigating the observation techniques used by the workshop participants, the most frequent patterns of perception, or, as cognitive psychologists put it,
“cognitive scripts”. A written report also gives a very good opportunity to learn the linguistic styles of expression of the analysed
reality, so it touches the much discussed problem of “writing a
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culture” (James Clifford, Clifford Geertz). It allows to learn about
the axiological, realistic, event and narrative-based models of reality constructed by the students.
The report is an excellent occasion for discussing the ways of
speaking and writing about the phenomena of modern culture. I
shall not elaborate upon other theoretical consequences of preparing such reports (e.g. the opportunity to deliberate over the “eventrelated” or “enumerative” model of reality), but I would like to point
out the consequences of this experiment for university didactics in
the field of cultural studies. The exploration and development of the
report is a sort of awakening of the anthropological imagination. In
this way a common language for the workshop participants is developed, and categories of culture description are settled. A particular emotional community is established as well.
The richness of the forms of the reports submitted reflects the
variability of types of presence “in the field”. These frequently include interviews with “locals”, reports on incidents (experiments)
that were deliberately provoked or unintended. There are plans,
schemes, photos, testimonies gained in the field, and other sources useful for the description of the reality explored. I consider the
preparation of a report as a (usually successful) anthropological
initiation, which, in turn, I treat as a basis for animating skills.
Another key feature is that it provides a “different” experience of
the city in which one lives; its “different”, if ultimately non-instrumental cognition.
An opportunity to deepen and strengthen that anthropological
initiation is a cycle of workshop classes during which the students
develop so-called “cognition maps” and “mental maps” of places of
birth or childhood, which are successfully used by social and ecological psychologists (from the area of cognitive sciences). After the
presentation of preliminary instructions those maps are developed
during the classes and commented on in front of other workshop
participants. One type of class with application of the “mental maps”
involves the interpretation of other persons’ mental maps in presence of their authors. Such classes make the participants sensitive to the other people’s values, other ways of categorising reality, others’ emotive categories, as in reconstruction of the childhood space that these activities aim at. During the discussion of
cognitive maps we deal with various ways and languages of self-
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71
presentation. What takes place here is a curriculum vitae “exchange” motivated by scientific cognition. There occurs a possibility of
discussing cognitive assumptions and the usefulness of the method of personal documents, which can be subjected to interpretation in the presence of their author. The interpretation of cognitive
maps has psychological functions important for the workshop group, it reveals the social sense of privacy, sets deep criteria of shared actions, integrates the group, encourages it to conduct anthropological search. Analysing cognitive maps stresses the issue of
the diverse background of the group members since they usually
come from different regions of Poland. They bring their own points
of view whose significance is confirmed rather than nullified in the
course of the workshop. The workshop creates the opportunity for
rationalising own cultural experience, discovering universal values
of the parent culture, encourages pursuing the “anthropology of
place”, deliberating over the experience of local cultures.
An important feature of the workshop “Anthropology of everyday” life is the fact that it refers to a large extent to current
affairs which are frequently burning issues for society and politics. For example they allow for a culture-related explanation of
the genesis and meaning of the aggressive behaviour of youth
subcultures (football fans, the so-called “blockers”, groups of cemetery vandals, etc.), they also allow for anthropological, social
and cultural interpretations of such lively social behaviours as
protests, street demonstrations, strikes, etc. The students should
interpret those incidents as culture phenomena, and not solely as
political ones. Classes with a similar aim are those involving the
interpretation of texts that were formerly called “utility literature”, e.g. complaints, requests, letters, and denunciations to state offices and institutions. These texts are treated as an important source of recent history in its anthropological dimension.
That is an opportunity for analysing various social languages of
cultural discourse and the multiple consequences arising from the
linguistic character of cultural “expressions” (in the understanding of Mikhail Bachtin).
The workshop allows students to distance themselves from the
narrow, politically conditioned rules of interpreting modern social
life that currently dominate the descriptions of modern times and
its significance in the field of seeking forms of culture animation.
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The workshop “Anthropology of everyday life” would not be possible without the resources useful for the description and interpretation of phenomena of modern culture. When the workshop
participants focus on modern family rituals, they obtain several
hundreds of texts of wedding invitations during the classes. On the
basis of the available resource they construct the basic models of
invitation texts, they analyse their functions in the wedding ritual,
and add copies of invitations from their own collections. Through
the joint efforts of the workshop leader and workshop participants
a representative choice of texts worth publishing was created.
That also is the case with other utility texts, such as “books of
complaints”, requests directed at offices, slogans and posters of
demonstrators, modern wills, as well as tomb engravings and obituaries that constitute a basis for reflection on the Polish way of
dying.
The ten years of the workshop “Anthropology of everyday life”
has confirmed the interest in that type of classes. We have developed trusted organisational forms, and, I might venture to say, a
particular style of thinking about culture, which is firmly linked to
the formula: “anthropology of everyday life”. This has been the joint
heading for many publications in academic works and group papers.
I prepared a book entitled: Anthropology of everyday life published
in 2000. A collection of unique resources useful for studies of modern times has been created.
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Janusz M arek
M ANAGERIAL WORKSHOP:
THE VADE-MECUM OF AN ANIMATOR
The subject matter of the workshop includes the problems of
cultural life, the functioning of artistic institutions and the promotion of culture, as well as an introduction to the methodology of
organising cultural enterprises. The theoretical classes include an
analysis of the foundations and practice of the cultural policy of
national and local government, the legal and economic context of
cultural activities (Acts, copyright law, national and municipal budget) and the analysis of the market of cultural services in Poland as
well as the participation of Poles in culture.
While discussing the above subjects I draw attention to the
influence of the reforms introduced (administrative reform in particular) on cultural life in Poland. I try to present the evolution of
cultural life in Poland as a dynamic process in which different concepts of culture and political or economic options clash. The majority of the classes are devoted to becoming acquainted with the
functioning of different cultural institutions and cultural enterprises. These classes allow the confrontation of theory with the practice of the culture animators who are invited to participate in the
classes. Most of the classes take place on the premises of the
institutions whose activity is being analysed. A part of the workshop consists of classes presenting the methodology of organising
events, selected problems concerning planning, finance, collaboration with artists, advertising and marketing and customer service.
Janusz Marek: organiser and manager of culture connected with the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw, organiser of the annual “Crossroads” Theatre Festival
presenting achievements of international off-stage theatres.
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The practical knowledge essential for organising all kinds of cultural
enterprise is demonstrated by the example of a particular event,
that is, an interdisciplinary art festival organised by the Centre for
Contemporary Arts. The students participate in its organisation
within obligatory “practical duty hours”. During these hours the
students undertake simple organisational tasks whilst observing
the preparation and organisation of the festival. In the first semester the students take part in organising the International Encounters of Art in Action “Rozdroże”. In the second semester they
participate in organising theatrical or modern dance presentations
and learn about the functioning of a few cultural institutions whilst
meeting experienced culture animators.
At the beginning of the workshop students rarely have practical
experience and lack theoretical knowledge. The managerial workshop
introduces them to the problems of organising cultural activity. It
gives them the basic knowledge and a set of practical skills (for example, in estimating costs or applying for financial support). Obtaining a
pass is based on an analysis of student attendance and their work
within their duty hours. An evaluation of the workshop is based on a
questionnaire and a discussion during the final class. The success of
the workshop is dependent on both the quality of the lecturers and
the students’ involvement. The strongest interest of the students is
aroused in meetings with culture animators, whereas theoretical classes (analysis of the Acts and cultural policy of the State) attract less
interest.
T HE
SCHEDULED PROGRAMME OF THE
W ORKSHOP
1) Introduction – the presentation of the programme and the
requirements for participation and obtaining a pass; a questionnaire for the participants. The questionnaire consists of four questions
regarding the participants’ experience in terms of organising cultural events, their professional plans, the topics of classes which
would be of interest to the students and the people and cultural
institutions they would like to become acquainted with. The analysis of the questionnaires serves to modify the programme. As a
result of the questionnaire the programme has been modified twice to increase the number of classes concerning the functioning of
II. WORKSHOPS
75
theatrical institutions and work in the media dealing with cultural
problems.
2) Planning and organising work of a cultural institution and the
realisation of a large artistic project. Preparation of a business
plan and schedule of enterprise. Analysis based on the example of
the Centre for Contemporary Arts and the interdisciplinary festival
International Encounters of Art in Action “Rozdroże” organised by
the Centre for Contemporary Arts.
3) The financial foundations of the functioning of an institution
and the realisation of cultural enterprise. The preparation of estimates. Acquiring sponsors and subsidies from the government.
Accountability for subsidies.
4) The problems concerning co-operation between animators
and artists. Different types of work contracts. Terms of artists’
presentation and their residency. Arranging suitable technical conditions.
5) Marketing and advertising, event service. Defining a target
audience for an event. Outdoor advertising, media advertising, mailing list. Preparing ticket sales, distributing invitations.
6) The legal foundations of cultural activity. An analysis of the
law on the running of cultural activities, organising mass events
and other legislation and its influence on practice.
7) The principles of government cultural policy. The presentation
of the structure and principles of financing cultural institutions in
Poland. The institutions supported by the Ministry of Culture, district authorities, municipalities, commune councils. Independent,
private cultural enterprises. An analysis of newspaper articles and
the public speeches of politicians.
8) Meeting with the staff of the Ministry of Culture. The presentation of Ministry policy, the influence of administrative reform on
cultural life in Poland and the principles of subsidising institutions
and enterprises. Meetings with the heads of the departments that
deal with running artistic institutions and the promotion of culture.
9) Meeting with the representatives of the department of culture of local authorities. The presentation of the policy of local
authorities and the principles of financing institutions and local
cultural enterprises. Meetings with the heads of the departments
of culture of the Provincial Office in Warsaw and the Communal
Council of Warszawa–Centrum.
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10) Participation of Poles in culture – the evolution of the market of cultural services. An analysis of public surveys concerning
recreation and the use of cultural services. An analysis of the publications of the Institute of Culture, Centre for Culture Animation
and of newspaper articles.
11) Warsaw’s cultural offering, programming of weekend recreation. An analysis of specific publications. Programming different
forms of weekend recreation for different demographics. Teamwork,
discussion of the proposals.
12) Copyright law and related legislation – meeting with the
representatives of the artists’ union “ZAIKS”. The presentation of
copyright law and its influence on the practical aspect of organising events.
13) Programming a large cultural project. Teamwork on the preparation of the programme of events for the annual festival for
university students in Warsaw or for some other cultural festival.
Discussion of the proposals presented and the actual programme
for one of the above-mentioned events.
14) Preparation of a small-audience cultural event. The presentation and discussion of the projects realised by the students.
15) The operation of cultural foundations (case study).
16) The conditions for running an independent creative group
(case study).
17) The running of the institution of a private impresario (case
study).
18) The operation of a students’ club or music club (case study).
19) The running of a local institute of culture (case study).
20) Selected problems of running museums – raising funds, educational programmes, events accompanying exhibitions (case study).
21) The problems of distributing artistic films and of the running
of institutions which are responsible for their promotion (case study).
22) Selected problems of running musical institutions – raising
funds, programming and promotion (case study).
23) The functioning of a private art gallery (case study).
24) Problems of book distribution and readership and the institutions that deal with them (case study).
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25) Selected problems of the functioning of repertoire theatres
– selecting a repertoire, organising artistic work, the functioning
of audience services (case study).
26) The functioning of an “impresario’s theatre” – raising funds
and marketing (case study).
27) Cultural life in Poland as seen by journalists dealing with
cultural issues (case study).
28) Final class – summary of the workshop, questionnaire evaluating the workshop, information regarding possible continuation of
studies.
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Andr
zej M encwel
Andrzej
L ITERARY CRITICISM WORKSHOP
Let us make the preliminary assumption that our goal is not to
educate professional literary critics. As in the case of a writer, one
becomes a critic for complex reasons and due to various circumstances, all of which bear the mysterious umbrella name of “vocation” or “calling”. A calling can definitely not be shaped in the way
artisan skills are shaped, though one may create conditions favourable for its awakening. However, the calling itself will not suffice
to make a critic or a writer. A critic needs knowledge of the history
of literature and the theory of literature, just as a writer needs
the humanistic culture, whose scope cannot be defined in advance.
The knowledge of the history of literature and the theory of literature can be gained during university study (especially when studying the philology of one’s own language, Polish philology in our case),
therefore universities are traditionally considered cradles for young
writers and critics.
If one thinks of the enthusiasts of writing gathered at the university, one might say that workshops in writing or criticism already have an audience. The goals of this particular workshop, however, are not simply addressing the ambitions of young authors. Our
goal is not to educate “chartered critics” either, although it happens that the participants pursue that profession. Our point of
departure is conversation, for this constitutes the basis of the art
of criticism. A conversation means a direct, living co-existence in
words. Despite what we might expect, the art of conversation is a
most difficult one and one not frequently pursued today. Even during university seminars discussion substitutes conversation and
discussion usually means exchange of utterances squeezed into
historical and theoretical categories that are frequently so tight
that this exchange cannot live its own life except in those catego-
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79
ries. Or the categories, which are cognitive tools, obscure and
substitute objectives, while the objectives are: understanding a
literary piece, understanding oneself, and mutual understanding
through the piece. The difference between a critical workshop and
a seminar is that understanding is a constantly present goal and it
is conversation that enables it to arise: no tools that we use can
obscure those objectives.
I do know that using expressions alone will not suffice. Arriving
at a conversation – it needs to be arrived at as it does not come
about by itself – requires acquiring a certain simplicity, which is as
difficult or perhaps more difficult than the conversation itself. Achieving that simplicity requires abandoning all esoteric concepts, abandoning the halo of “being in the know” that usually accompanies
artistic criticism. We should convince one another that pursuing
criticism in our own understanding is expressing our own basic
relationship to a literary piece. A relationship as elementary as this
one is seldom expressed yet is present in every experience. The
basis for such criticism is not some esoteric initiation, it is an
everyday disclosure similar to that taking place in a spontaneous
opinion, friendly recommendation, a students’ conversation. One
only needs to reveal that opinion, develop it, and shape it. That
determination can be strengthened and the development can be
supported, and this is the purpose of the critical workshop.
Similarly to the writing workshops, the critical workshop operates in a certain cultural environment and must make references
to it. In the global dimension of that environment, the contemporary ubiquity of audio-visual mass media in the culture is of the
greatest importance. Aside from all “interactive” tools and technological tricks this also means a progressing receptiveness of
that culture, the domination of a passive reception therein. Anyway, we do not intend to discuss general, more or less controversial theses. Creative needs among young persons are at the same
time more widespread and more private, a fact confirmed by the
participants of this and other workshops. More frequently, their
satisfaction is connected with traditional technologies (like speech or writing), rather than with modern ones (like television).
Although advertising schools and festivals enjoy popularity and it
is they that the media are mostly interested in, we still need to
remember about the quiet ones, who use pens for writing, being
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quite numerous, they are important and cannot be left out in the
media turmoil.
This global context is one factor in the critical workshop. I tell
the participants that the workshop is not about making you into
critics, and is especially not about handing you diplomas. We are
not going to hand out diplomas – becoming a critic takes up your
entire life and it is the critic that must mainly take care of this.
However, no matter where you find a place in this culture for yourself – be it a high school, a culture centre or an editorial office, you
will meet young people not only silent but confused, who, holding on
to a copy book or a pile of papers, will want to speak to some
intelligent and sensitive person. The essence of providing criticism
boils down to the ability to have such a conversation oriented towards creative sensitivity. A critic can take various forms of actions on various levels: a note, a review, a sketch, an essay, or a
dissertation. Each of these forms has its own character and that
character needs to be learnt and practised. Each of them, however, while possible to master through the appropriate techniques,
is in its essence based on that elementary skill of a creative conversation and it is that skill that we will develop here, not only
through forms and techniques, but first and foremost through conversation: a direct, emphatic, active, human interaction.
The local context is also of importance. It may be philological or
historical studies (history of arts). They have particular features
that must be called upon here (which does not mean rejected): it is
necessary to draw a subtle borderline between the character of
these studies an the character of a critical workshop. Critics need
the entire knowledge that we gain when studying philology or the
history of arts but they also need to have their own approach. They
should be well aware that in the long run this knowledge constitutes a set of tools for fulfilling their task but does not substitute
that task. In other words, there is always room for improvement in
the use of those tools, but one needs also to remember that they
are only tools. Young people are not only intimidated by that knowledge but also frequently overwhelmed by it. While pursuing the
admirable desire to master it, they forget about themselves, their
own sensitivity, understanding, and opinions. And in this context,
which, by the way, is a universal one as it can be defined as a school
context (regardless of the school level – we include the university),
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81
that critical workshop has to acknowledge personality, sensitivity,
intelligence, and the right to an independent opinion. A critical conversation is but a historic dissertation. It is a dialogue and not a
recitation of categories.
A literature or art historian is obliged to find the permanent,
universal and, so to say, timeless sense of works of art. Although
they are never successful, and, as we know, cannot be, the obligation itself remains unquestionable. The mission of an art historian
is realised through the constant failure to fulfil that obligation –
there is a sense hidden in an object, so “objective” analysis of that
sense is a task for a historian. So, a historian is first of all taught
the “research methods”, mastering that array of instruments that
enable research objectiveness. Mastering research methods means also neutralising, if not eliminating subjective perception and
personal judgement. Ultimately that neutrality is realised not through achieving some picture of work of art that has no assumptions
or subject, but through the fullest possible demonstration of research categories and tools. The author of a historical work will entitle it Elizabethan Shakespeare rather than Modern Shakespeare
as I See It .
De gustibus non est disputandum – that famous ancient sentence, which often characterizes a dispute, needs to be put to
question here for the conversation to begin. Let me repeat: criticism consists mainly in revealing one’s self. Of course, criticism is
not solely the issue of “taste”. Despite its ancient origin, “taste”
is a misleading name from the point of view of its scope and subject matter. One should therefore rather say: “It is about myself,
my experience, my sensitivity, my predilections, my ideas, my personality” – all of that can be placed under the heading of taste.
The name is less important, however, than recognising a basic
meaning of that “taste” that is of primary importance for every
critical act. While a historian begins their work sort of by making
themselves unimportant and awarding all the importance to a literary piece (thus an object), a critic begins their work with selfrecognition, acknowledging the fact that they are the ones that
provide meaning. Anyway, they are an indispensable element of
that relationship without which meaning would not exist. Hence
they need to focus on themselves, so that the relationship, and
thus the meaning itself, can have a place.
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This is the very point of departure for a critical conversation –
not a discussion (thus not a dispute). It is not a discussion or a
dispute because its point of departure is not a set of categories,
concepts, or tools, but an elementary judgement: “Do I like it or
not, is it mine or not?” Why do we attribute so much importance to
such an elementary judgement that usually is ridiculed if not left
out altogether? This is not result of any subjectivist debauchery or
a relativist caprice but from a clear and strongly grounded awareness: reading (watching) is a relation, interpretation is a relation,
conversation is an interpersonal relation, thus an inter-human one,
created through an artistic (literary) piece, but ultimately and nonreducibly interpersonal. Here he is, Homer, Shakespeare, Dostoyevski, timeless, grand, genial in his super-creation, and here you
are, confronted and overwhelmed by that giant. To yourself you
seem incidental, tiny, almost powerless. However, you do need to
understand, adopt, and recognise as the basis for your activity
that not only do you exist and have the right of judgement but that
you also are obliged to make a judgement. If you do not take and
fulfil this obligation, not only will you yourself disappear but there
will have been no place for the relation that gives birth to meanings
and turns culture into a phenomenon that makes sense. Thus, Homer, Shakespeare, and Dostoyevski, too, will in a way cease to
exist for you will have deprived them of their meaning.
An indispensable element of a critical relation is your subjectivity. This does not mean, however, that the relation itself becomes
subjective, or, to put it more simply, that all is permitted, subject
to your whims. That is not the case, and that is why we are obliged
to disclose a subjective judgement in one moment, only to surrender it to objective control, rationalising, working, in the next. In a
plain conversation I will often say: “No, I do not like it”. In the next
minute, however, I will start wondering what the meaning of that
spontaneous judgement was, what features of the object under
judgement and what properties of the judging subject it reveals.
So I will ask you and we will ask each other: “What did you actually
have in mind when you gave that critical judgement?” We will even
ask one another about what the other person was unconscious of
while making that judgement, what hidden, preliminary preferences
or predilections they were subject to, because forming a critical
judgement consists in disclosing its premises, becoming aware of
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83
them and thus rationalising them. A judgement worked out and
formed in this way becomes the subject matter of a critical act. As
soon as that work is completed you may give it the proper written
form of a note, a review, a sketch. Your text shall be subject to
discussion and evaluation, and our meetings shall turn into a series
of such utterances, discussions, and evaluations. In this way a
critical workshop becomes a living critical circle.
So we begin with conversations about literary pieces, they might be classical or contemporary, and each of us has the right to
choose. There is, however, a prerequisite that the pieces accepted
be read by everybody. The reciprocity rule – I help you and you help
me – is an indispensable rule of this work. The person that proposed a given piece begins the conversation about it, and that beginning should take the form of an opening, rather than a lecture. It
should actually boil down to presenting their personal justification
of their choice: this is why I chose this piece and I am trying to
convince you that it is important for me. As it is important for me,
it should be important for you, too, but we will find out if that is so.
A conversation opened in this way and focused on the proposal and
its author should take place in two circles. In the first one we aim
at revealing and approaching the properties of the piece, including
(and perhaps first of all) those overlooked by the person that chose
it. The task of this interpretation circle is neither rejecting nor
confirming the legitimacy of the choice; judgement as such is sort
of suspended here, and what motivates us is common investigation.
The second circle, which might be called “subject-oriented”, displays a similar situation. While the first circle referred mainly to
the literary piece, i.e. the object, the second one in the first place
refers to the author of the critical opinion, i.e. the subject. These
circles, of course, overlap in conversation, just as the elements of
the opinion are intertwined with elements of the piece and cannot
be ultimately cut apart or conclusively separated. One needs, however, to have in mind the influences on this conversation, so that
those intertwined elements of the opinion and the piece do not
turn into a kaleidoscope. So in the subject-oriented circle we focus
on the properties of the opinion presented, we verify its coherence, justifiability, and power to convince. As in the object-oriented
circle, our task is neither to accept nor reject the opinion presen-
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ted. Judgement is suspended and straightforward investigation
comes to the fore. Does this opinion provide sufficient justification
for the importance of the choice? Is it accurate in indicating the
features of the piece? Are the suggested conclusions grounded
and do they support each other properly? Finally, what unconscious
or undisclosed preferences of the author lie behind this opinion?
Would their pronouncement or disclosure change the shape of the
opinion and the judgement about the piece? The task of this circle
of conversation is not confirming or rejecting the author’s opinion,
either. Instead, that opinion is to be widened, enforced, and crystallised in the flames of critique. The result of the whole investigation should be a better grounded confirmation or denial of the importance of the chosen piece, thus of the importance of the critical opinion. Neither is final and binding for the initiator – they have
the right to hold on to their opinion, they can also change it. What
counts is the conversation, joint investigation, a dialogue-oriented
critical study.
We then come from speech to writing, which is usually the most
difficult part. We deal with writers, they are the ones who come
and ask for advice, an opinion, consultation, and confidentially (in
one-to-one contact) entrust us with their literary efforts or pieces
of work. The ability to talk with them is very important and our
workshop serves the development of that ability. However, coming
over to a public presentation of one’s efforts, before whole group,
constitutes a certain barrier, and crossing it might pose a problem. Nobody can explain this phenomenon, but it definitely exists
and is the experience of other writing workshops confirms that.
Perhaps the reason is that for those young authors writing is a
truly intimate activity and results from deep, internal needs? Anyway, their intimidation must be respected and the barrier cannot
be broken by force. The process of opening up in front of a public,
the basic form of which is reading a text out loud in front of a
group, has to be gradual and reflect the rhythm of the opening-up
of particular team members. The initiation of this opening-up pertains to the tutor, it is them who need to reveal themselves, present their text, present it for collective vivisection, and form it
together with the group. What is important, it should not be a
finite, published text but one that is being worked on and polished.
Joint work over such a text is a double lesson: it shows that at
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least in that area there are no ultimate works and every piece of
work can be improved; it also shows that their joint examination
during the workshop is a very good means of improvement. A good
opening will certainly find its followers and the workshop will start
operating the way it should. At each subsequent meeting new works
are worked on. This is what it is all about.
There may be different kinds of conclusions of the workshop –
best-text competitions concerning one literary piece, annual and
semester competitions, finally, collective publications. The entire
team should participate both in discussions and in work on texts
and in their evaluation, and all participants should have an equal
share in this. Such a “jury” may follow its own rules and these can
become a fun component of the workshop because both the types
of competitions and publications, as well as the means of evaluation must be flexible enough to adjust to properties of the group
and features of its members. That is because in a creative workshop even group work should be individualised.
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Stanisław Siekierski
B OOK HANDLING INSTITUTIONS
The conception of the workshop was brought about by practical
needs. Intensive changes taking place in publishing houses, bookand magazine-selling business made the students strongly interested in the problems of the functioning of book handling institutions. That interest could not be addressed by the university since
none of us teachers were running classes in that field. A certain
number of students had long been interested in the issues of the
social conditions of a literary piece and of a book. The demand for
the newly introduced classes confirmed our earlier recognition of
student interests.
The aim of the workshop was to acquaint students with the
issues and the system of functioning of particular book handling
institutions, with special regard to material aspect of a book that
conditions the reception of its symbolic content. I tried to enable
my students to examine the communication system of a book: starting with the publisher, through bookstores and libraries, as well
as promotional institutions that bring the book closer to the public. I focused on publishing houses, libraries, review magazines, as
well as on the characteristics of publishing production with a special focus on popular literature and the non-professional audience.
For the first few years I verified the theoretical assumptions and
those concerning student internships.
The following model of the workshop developed on the basis of
that: it comprises about 20 hours of seminar, 40 hours of interviews with representatives of book handling institutions, and 60
Stanisław Siekierski: literature expert, specialist in the sociology of literature, professor at the Institute of Polish Culture.
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87
hours of internship, mainly in publishing houses. The strong point of
that model is its combination of three types of experience:
• discussing the specialist scientific literature;
• learning problems through direct contact with competent employees of book handling institutions;
• work in a particular publishing house, library, editor’s office.
The overwhelming majority of students that enrol for the class
lack even a basic knowledge about the way book handling institutions operate. Only very few persons have a limited understanding
of the work of publishing houses or editor’s offices dealing with
problems of publishing; the bulk of them start from scratch.
The first part of the workshop is of a propaedeutical character.
Chosen readings are the basis for a seminar-oriented discussion of
the main issues of the reception of literature and the way book
handling institutions operate in other countries that have the most
experience in that area. A significant amount of attention is given
to popular literature, which accounts for a large part of publishing
production, and which has not found its place even in Polish studies. The seminars cover problems of modern book handling institutions with a special focus on publishing houses and the issues of
reception.
The seminars are followed by meetings with distinguished experts
on book issues. It should be emphasised that the University does
not pay the guests to come to the meetings. The guests have
expressed their satisfaction with the meetings with students, who
include both their most active customers and their future employees.
The cycle of talks by the invited guests is to constitute a coherent whole. The first group of guests introduce the students to
the general situation of books in Poland. The sequence of talks is
usually the following: representatives of the Institute of Book and
Readership discuss the results of the latest research into the
scope of influence of book in Poland; a representative of the Book
Information Centre presents the institution, papers, and results
of research on the number and character of publishing houses,
book warehouses and bookstores in recent times; a bookseller discusses the situation of the book selling business and the problems arising from the changes in supply and sale of publishing
houses, in the tendencies observed in Poland and other European
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countries; other representatives of the Institute of Book and Readership acquaint the students with problems of Polish libraries
confronted with other countries.
The second cycle of meetings is of a more practical character,
problems of particular institutions are presented. The first guests
here are editors of review magazines, who present and compare
them to other magazines that promote new books. An important
component of that information is the profile of individual target
customers and usefulness of published materials for bookstores
and libraries. That cycle of classes includes also newspaper inserts
concerning books.
The meetings with magazine editors are often very lively due to
the personal interests of the students in persons taking decisions
about the choice of reviewers for important magazines. Each year
several students take on same reviewing work, what does not always take the form of permanent employment but constitutes an
important element of meetings with professionals who can develop
contacts with magazines placing reviews and critical texts. An important aspect of the meetings is acquainting the students with
the magazines important for a Polish philologist, but frequently
known only for their covers.
The meetings also present the students with the issues of various publishing houses, especially literary ones. Obviously, one cannot meet all the representatives of even the most expansive publishing houses. A relatively modest presentation of publishing also
takes place during the students’ internship therein. The original
assumption of the workshop that the students should complete
their internship in all book handling institutions did not prove successful. Internships in magazines promoting literature were not
possible as the work organisation in those editors’ offices did not
allow for that. The students could not be included in the basic
realisation process. They were unable to evaluate the incoming books in accordance with the preferences of a particular magazine,
they could not order reviews, either, they also found it difficult to
discuss the texts that had already arrived, they felt like intruders
that were interfering with work of the office. There are, however,
individual situations where the student has the opportunity to do
an internship in a magazine. The internships at bookstores proved
unsuccessful as the employees there are more wardens of mate-
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89
rial goods than partners in conversation with potential customers.
The students were also unable to work at the back offices due to
trade secrets binding the permanent staff. Very few students
expressed interest in internships in libraries.
One might ask about the advantages of internships in publishing
houses. Firstly, they awaken the interest of the majority of workshop participants, especially in the case of institutions producing
particular literary and scientific texts. Secondly, the associated
publishing houses understand the needs and benefits arising from
such practices both for the students and for the houses’ management. Thirdly, the students can be included in the entire production cycle, beginning with proof-reading (less frequently with editing the translated text), and to end with the advertising note of
the published book. Furthermore, the tutor of the group, which
usually is very small (2-5 persons), acquaints the students with
the whole organisational structure of the publishing house.
The level of this presentation varies to a large extent, depending
on the structure of the publishing house, didactic skills of the tutor, and the students’ interests. Furthermore, the interns are
obliged to become acquainted with basic publications about the
house in which they do their internship.
The work is organised in a way that enables the students to
participate in the compulsory classes, they do not need to spend
the entire 60 hours at the office. The majority of tasks can be done
at home. This is especially true of such assignments as proof-reading, text editing, writing notes about the items published. After
several years of shared experience the internships take place today in a very friendly atmosphere. The students are aware that the
internships require additional effort from the publishing houses,
and from the point of view of the publisher the students are at
least partly educated professionals showing interest in the problems of the staff of the publishing house.
Placing students in publishing houses is contingent on many
factors, the most important of which are personal contacts of the
workshop leader or the colleagues from the Institute of Polish Culture. Secondly, these are houses that enjoy a good reputation in
the publishing environment. Thirdly, the managers of the institutions must agree to this kind of co-operation. Fourthly, both parties must fulfil the obligations assumed. Fifthly, the publishing ho-
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uses represent diverse publishing programs. During the past several years there have only been a few cases where we had to give up
co-operation. We are in fact witnessing a steady increase of the
number of publishing houses taking on students. This has resulted
also from the growing interest in the workshop among students.
An important educational element of the internships are the
students’ reports at the end of the academic year. Those classes
not only are a sort of summing up of knowledge about the publishing houses in which the internships were held, but they also aim
at evaluating the publishing house on the basis of the knowledge
gained during classes and the literature on the subject. The reports are made by groups. One class is devoted to discussion of
the experiences and opinions of the entire group taking part in the
internship in a given institution.
The workshop cannot be treated as an education in editing. It is,
however, an important introduction to the problems of the profession. Such a preparation may constitute the point of reference for
self-education and work in publishing houses.
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M arek Pr
zybylik
Przybylik
J OURNALISTIC WORKSHOP
The main objective of journalistic workshop is to acquaint students with the foundations of professional journalism and to prepare them so that in their future careers they are able to deal with
the editing of local newspapers, designing bulletins and using journalistic techniques to promote culture.
A workshop is the most suitable form for developing editorial
and journalistic skills. These professions can be regarded as crafts, in so much as the education takes place through constant
practical classes and studying within the system: master – apprentice. Practical experience aids the acquisition of good habits
and a well-conceived routine that are necessary in this field.
T HE
PROCESS OF ENROLMENT
The general preparation of the students is usually sufficient to
begin the journalistic workshop without any additional preparatory
classes. During the first classes, which have a qualifying character, applicants receive a simple journalistic task, namely, to prepare and write a text. It is supposed to be an article of a certain
length, usually approximately 1600-1800 characters. The students
have a week to accomplish the task: to collect the information for
the assigned topic (different for each candidate) and to write a
text that would meet the requirements for such a journalistic form.
Marek Przybylik: journalist, promoter of the local press movement, member of Warsaw-City Council.
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Such a test is the most effective form of qualification. It separates
those who are truly interested in workshops from those who only
wish to obtain a pass.
After two weeks, the group of participants stabilises at about
20-25 participants. Such a number is sufficient to run the workshop smoothly and effectively.
A PPROACHING
THE PRACTICAL ASPECT
During the past six years the workshop has often changed its
character. This has resulted from such variables as the ability of
the tutor to access editorial offices, journalists’ willingness to cooperate and technical conditions.
In the beginning more emphasis was put on theoretical issues,
meetings with experienced journalists, discussing different forms
of journalistic work, browsing through newspapers and visiting editorial offices. Only part of the class was devoted to the testing of
practical writing skills and editing journalistic texts. However, since the beginning, all the willing students have been given opportunities to test their skills at the editorial offices of newspapers,
radio and television.
Since last year the classes have had a more practical character
and are supposed to teach the participants how to work with a
text. Most of the students that participated in last year’s workshop took part in voluntary placements in two of Warsaw’s local
weekly magazines: “Pasmo” (distributed in Ursynów) and “Południe”
(distributed in Mokotów). During their placements, the students
were involved in current journalistic work including taking the responsibilities of city reporters and writing articles for these magazines.
As in the first years of the workshop, the students have the
opportunity to visit the editorial offices of the press, radio and
television where they meet recognised and experienced editors.
Thanks to this they can become acquainted with all the specifics of
the mass media. As far as possible, willing students are able to
serve an apprenticeship. Apart from the scheduled placements in
“Pasmo” and “Południe”, necessary to obtain a pass, willing students can become acquainted with work in television. In previous
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93
years several students became familiar with the work of the Warsaw Television Centre. Volunteers also underwent training in the
Polish Press Agency following in the footsteps of regular candidates headed towards a journalistic career. Similar opportunities to
familiarise themselves with work in radio were given to all those
who decided to visit the offices of local radio stations more frequently. The workshop’s participants had their summer training and
student work placements in the editorial offices of dailies.
T HEIR
OWN NEWSPAPER
Currently, a group of the workshop’s participants makes up the
editorial staff of the two monthly magazines distributed at Warsaw University. The first one, “Uniwersytet” (“The University”), which
has been published in different forms for six years, has preserved
the character of a local paper and informs its readers about goings
on at Warsaw University. The second one which is currently being
formed – “Uniwersytet Kulturalny” (“The Cultural University”), a
mutation of the former title – intends to be a monthly magazine
about the cultural life of university society. Both magazines have a
circulation of 10 000 issues and both are distributed amongst
readers free of charge. They are financed by sponsors and advertising.
The current situation, namely, the possibility of using both magazines to train students in a workshop environment seems to be
the most advantageous so far.
As we can see, the main focus of education during journalistic
workshops is to teach practical skills essential for editorial and
journalistic work. This is made possible by the good general preparation of the workshop’s participants and their motivation.
O RGANISATION
The organisation of the journalistic workshops this year resembles the work of an editorial office. The participants who constitute
the editorial board choose an editorial team to take an active part
in editing the newspaper. The team is headed by the person taking
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the role of editor-in-chief (who changes in the middle of the academic year) and his sub-editors.
The main objective of the editorial team and the editorial board
is to plan subsequent issues of the newspaper, editing and what
results from this: the preparation of texts that are to be published
in forthcoming issues. It is thanks to this that the students learn
the skills of gathering information and forming short articles from
it. At the same time they familiarise themselves with the fundamentals of the profession necessary for these activities, methods
of compiling a newspaper, the fundamentals of press legislation
and the basic principles of editing a newspaper. During these tasks
they use skills they have acquired earlier, often during other workshops, such as taking photographs, using a computer, editing websites or using the internet to send texts.
The preparation of one issue lasts over two weeks. Most of this
time is spent collecting material and preparing texts. Fortunately,
students are well prepared for these tasks and writing articles
does not actually cause any major problems. In most cases their
texts meet all the basic requirements and no numerous or major
corrections are necessary. When a text does not meet the newspaper standards, there are individual consultations with the author to discuss what mistakes have been made, how to correct
them, what needs to be added, or how to collect the necessary
information so that the text due to be published is well-written and
could eventually appear in the newspaper.
The students also have the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the techniques of putting a newspaper together and assist in such tasks in a professional computer studio. They can also
make corrections of texts and participate in all the tasks involved
in newspaper production as far as the stage of distribution and
direct contact with the readers.
The programme also includes meetings with recognised experienced journalists, visiting editorial offices of the press, radio and
television as well as agencies and meetings with active Public Relations specialists.
The students’ preparation for the prospective editing of cultural regional press is aided by annual national meetings of journalists from the local press. During ten-day intensive classes several
participants of our workshops have the opportunity not only to
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95
increase their knowledge concerning the editing of newspapers but
also to meet other amateur journalists, editors from the local press.
Relations between the tutor and the participants stem from
the character of the workshop and from the necessity to work in
an atmosphere that resembles work in an editorial office. Unlike in
a professional newspaper, the tutor does not have the same opportunities to encourage the authors to work. Nevertheless, it is
possible to achieve a paper that is published, and despite all the
problems, the student-journalists prepare their materials quite
thoroughly.
Having several articles published in the paper gives their authors satisfaction, which is an award for the effort they put to
prepare the materials. Equally important is the response and positive reactions towards the texts published in the paper from the
readers.
So far the culmination of the yearly journalistic workshops has
been the preparation of a special summer edition of “Uniwersytet”.
This is the best evidence so far that the many hours of work have
enabled the students to acquire the foundations of journalistic skills.
At present, when the participants have at their disposal a paper
which is published every second week, evidence that they treat
their classes seriously is the sheer fact that the paper is published
regularly. It is also significant that the materials are more interesting and reflect the life of Warsaw University much better than in
previous years.
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G rrzegor
zegor
z Godlewski
zegorz
A NTHROPOLOGICAL TRANSLATION
CLASS
The anthropological translation course consists of practical classes. They take the form of a workshop, though their primary aim is
not necessarily developing professional translating skills. Practising these skills is rather a way of acquiring other skills of wider
application which are important for culture animators, provided
that their basic tasks involve translating cultural messages and
not just texts from one language to another.
It will be better to present the aimes and tasks of the translation course (in connection with the aimes and tasks of culture animation) not as assumptions but as results, thus in the order of
their real appearance; not assumed and pushed through but designed and inspired or even detected throughout the course, disclosed, and exploited. So we begin with the description of the course
development itself.
Participants. The workshop teacher (just like the workshop participants) should, of course, have an optimum command of the language in question (English in this case), although a perfect language knowledge is not indispensable. Most importantly, he/she should be as experienced a translator as possible, and, so to say, a
self-aware one, i.e. one able to notice more general translation
problems and solve them “consciously”: with consideration of the
broader contexts of particular problems and the aim of developing
general translation strategies (referring to attitudes rather than
to techniques or formal solutions). As important is his/her knowledge of the area in which the translated texts are situated, because it is on the intersection of linguistic and content-related
competence that the translation quality is decided. He/she should
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also be able to organise and manage group work (which is particularly difficult considering the fact that translation is in general rather individual work), as well as to manifest two, in a way contradictory, skills: taking a distance – at least a temporary one – from
your own ideas and imposing optimum solutions if none of the suggested ones seems perfect.
A good command of the language is of course a premise for
participation in the course, although an absolute minimum is hard
to define: the participants frequently make up for linguistic shortcomings with knowledge of the area that the text refers to, and
conversely. Personally, I gave up all pre-selection procedures, relying on natural selection: those who for various reasons are unable
to keep up with the classes will usually quickly give up themselves.
Therefore it is worth treating the first 2-3 classes as a trial period
(and plan them appropriately), limiting only the final number of participants to 20 (optimum group size: 10-15). An important requirement on the part of the participants is their readiness for regular preparation of individual translations at home.
The course is basically meant for the students of “Culture Animation” but also for other students of the humanities. It is useful
considering the fact that the standard of the joint translating work
is a function of the diversity and richness of the participants’ knowledge and competence.
Subject matter, i.e. the translated text. First and foremost it
should be situated within an area that the participants have already come across, and which is of importance for their further studies, as well as for their future independent professional activity.
The subject of the classes are basically academic texts, of a discursive and not purely artistic (literary) nature, as these require
separate skills and work methods.
The selected texts (for practical reasons – not longer than about 40 pages, thus articles or book chapters) should not have been
translated into Polish so far – so that the students have a sense of
participation in true translation work, and not in an artificial exercise whose results will serve nothing (that also eliminates the temptation of reaching for a ready translation). For the above reasons it
is also important that the translated text be worth translating –
thus chosen not only for its usefulness as the subject of a translation exercise but also for its own cognitive value (optimally the
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students should be able to evaluate it themselves on the basis of
the knowledge they have gained so far). The chosen text should not
be of too high a level of generality nor should it boil down to the
description of some detailed case – texts that preserve a balance
between concepts and description allow us to consider a wider
range of problems of the translator’s work. Finally, one should see
to it (as early as in the phase of text selection) that the translated
text be put to some practical use (e.g. at other classes), and if
possible, published as well. All that serves to create conditions of
authenticity of the workshop practice, which has a considerable
effect on the participants’ motivation and attitude.
During the last four years of the translation course that I run at
the Institute of Polish Culture of Warsaw University the following
texts have been translated (all of which fulfil the aforementioned
criteria fully or in major part):
- Jack Goody’s Word of Mammon , chapter of his book Logic of
Writing and Organisation of Society; the students acquainted themselves with another chapter of that book (translated by myself)
during the course “The word in culture”, and their translation was
discussed at a seminar and was included in the supplementary literature for the classes “Anthropology of the word”; one of the workshop participants is taking steps for the rest of the book to be
translated and published;
- David Riesman’s Oral Tradition, Written Word and Screen Image : an article known to the students from translation of its much
shorter version; their translation was discussed at a seminar and
was included within the scope of the course “Anthropology of the
word” and in the handbook;
- Clifford Geertz’s Deep Play . Notes on Cockfight in Bali: translation included in the programme of the course “Anthropology of
performance” and in the handbook;
- Richard Schechner’s Ritual and Performance : translation also
included in the programme of the course “Anthropology of performance” and in the handbook.
Course organisation and itinerary of classes. The course takes the form of one-year cycles (each devoted to a different text),
each consisting of fortnightly meetings, each lasting three hours
(experience shows that such time organisation corresponds to the
nature of the course better than a standard formula of one and a
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99
half hours every week). The participants change every year, however, in justified cases particular persons may extend their participation for another year, the benefit of which is the preservation of
a certain continuity of the classes and a presentation of the work
form assumed at the classes.
The first classes are devoted to a general presentation of the
text to be translated, a profile of its author and their work, as well
as discussion of the basic principles and issues of a translator’s
work, with reference to the issues of linguistic relativism and their
practical consequences known to the students from other classes.
Where possible, samples of translations of the author’s other works
are presented and discussed critically. That is an opportunity for
revealing the existing terminological conventions or word uses existing in the translated works of that author or others, referring to
the same problem area. If there is the need or possibility, the students get acquainted with the written works, audio-visual or iconography materials typical for specific translation problems; such presentations can also be made later, especially when the students
themselves find new materials useful in solving particular problems.
After completing the preliminary phase and settling the makeup of the group, the actual phase of translation work begins. Everyone obtains copies of the entire text and prepares their own
translation of its subsequent parts (usually up to 3 pages of typed
text for every class). The classes take place in accordance with the
simplest formula: each of the participants reads out a sentence of
the source text (or more, depending on the syntactic solution chosen by the given participant), and subsequently their version of its
translation. That version is then subject to discussion during which
other participants express their opinions, criticise the suggested
solutions and set forth their own. The workshop teacher manages
the discussion, aiming mainly at as accurate an understanding of
the source text as possible, and calling the participants’ attention
to strengths and shortcomings of particular translation ideas, possibly also making the students aware of lost aspects of the meanings conveyed in the source text and the suggested Polish versions, as well as more general issues of inter-cultural translation
or general theses and problems of cultural anthropology interwoven with the propositions of the source text. The discussion usually goes on until consensus is reached as to the shape of the Polish
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language version, which is noted down by a minute-taker (“a scribe”, as we are accustomed to calling them), a function which is
performed each time by somebody else.
The teacher’s tasks include indicating ways of solving more difficult problems that cannot be resolved in the course of a regular
discussion: that may involve reaching for sources allowing for making the source meanings more concrete (which also involves consulting a native speaker), verification of intellectual or cultural contexts of the statements contained there, analysing the literature
of the subject (especially translation) in order to find possible ways
of solving similar problems, adopted terminological conventions, etc.
The teacher also determines how thoroughly the Polish language
version should be discussed at classes, and what can be left to the
editing decisions of the minute-taker.
Subsequent classes begin with the minute-taker reading out the
text translated at previous classes. That text is also discussed by
the participants; this time, however, the discussion focuses only on
the most important dilemmas (especially if someone comes up with a
new solution) and the linguistic shape given to the text by the minutetaker, whereby these issues are considered within a broader context
of the entire text translated hitherto. In particular cases, if new
meanings or translation ideas appear during translation of particular
text types, backward analysis of the completed translation is carried
out and appropriate modifications are made. The ultimate editing of
the entire target text is performed by one person for the sake of the
linguistic coherence of the text: in the analysed case this was done by
the workshop teacher, although that need not be the rule.
One, of course, needs to aim at completing the translation by
the end of the year. However, one does not have to require this at
all costs, especially at the cost of work quality – if necessary, the
translation can be completed by chosen participants outside regular classes and under the supervision of the teacher. That was the
case with the aforementioned texts and I have to admit – not wishing to glorify the necessity – that that enabled a fruitful individual work with the most interested and competent participants. One
basic issue crucial for the workshop idea is providing the published
translation, which at least in part was made during classes, with
information about that fact containing, if possible, the the names
of at least the most active participants.
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Tasks and goals. As has been stated earlier, not all of the aims
were and could have been assumed and planned in advance. I did
foresee, of course, that I would share my experience with the participants (and I was generally successful in this regard) but I became aware of many of those experiences only during actual joint
work on a text. In that sense, running the workshop has been and
still is for me a source of new practice and self-awareness and
therefore I am considering the possibility of adopting the idea whereby each participant would run one session of the workshop.
The most important translating skills and goals that can be developed during a workshop in question include the following:
• A potentially comprehensive understanding of the source text
with exploitation of various textual and extratextual sources,
with consideration of all intellectual and cultural contexts possible for activation.
• Treating a translation as a hermeneutic procedure: reading the
whole through its parts; translation decisions as working “hypotheses of part”; activation and putting together of possibly broad horizons of the knowledge of a translator as an interpreter
and reconstructed attitude of the author as the creator of the
text to be read out.
• Skills allowing the reconstruction of “deep structures” of the
author’s discourse as a method of applying coherence to a text
containing “undefined spots”, enabling also the reconstruction
of original conceptual categorisations of a given discipline.
• The necessity to reconstruct an explicit or hidden conceptual
network present in the text and referring it to general terminological conventions and solutions assumed in Polish.
• Avoiding “lexicographic” translations based on bilingual dictionaries, using rather monolingual ones, searching for Polish equivalents of the source meanings with consideration of semantic
connections among the selected linguistic means.
• Taking into consideration the knowledge and expectations of the
assumed reader, modifying the Polish language version depending on the features of the particular receiver identified .
• Awareness of the existence of contradictory vectors defining a
translator’s work: principles of the translation’s accuracy and
the principles of faithfulness to the “spirit of the Polish language”; setting the limits of compromises between those princi-
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ples anew each time, with a consideration of the individual features of each case.
• Knowledge of the methods of signalling original meanings outside
of the main text of the original and the principles of their application.
• “Dialogue” translation leading to confronting one’s own translated version with others’ ways of understanding a text and building its translation as a way of verifying the assumed solutions.
However, the most precious, and not fully planned result of those classes was that apart from training technical translation skills,
they have provided a convenient opportunity for becoming aware of
and practising, at least partially, the role of a mediator in intercultural contacts, an intermediary and author of an intercultural translation – which seems to be an indispensable component of an animator’s role. Although in the case of culture animation diverse
cultural codes appear in place of diverse natural languages, the
mediation principles seem similar and considerably easy to define
through a simple transfer of translation skills onto the ground of
animating work. Translation work allows for their isolation and to a
certain degree for their practice in “lab conditions”, which are easier
to arrange than the real animation situations and which allow for
better control and self-control.
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M arcel Ł
oziński
Łoziński
IN AN ATTEMPT TO TEACH
DOCUMENTARY
I do not have much experience in education. For one year I ran
daily classes in the FEMIS film school of Paris, I ran weekly classes
in documentary at the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University for one year as well, and I was a counsellor at an intensive
ten-day documentary workshop in Marseilles. I also provide frequent individual friendship-based “consultations” for students of various film schools.
That is the entire pedagogical experience that I have.
Obviously, I had to adjust the forms of my work to the amount of
time I had, but the sense of that work has always remained the
same: to make my students aware of how very personal the process of making a documentary is and to prove it to them. They have
to finish the course having their first film ready. I want them to feel
that all the talk about film, all the work that is ahead of them will
bring a particular, tangible effect. Otherwise we have a failure to
take the opportunity to taste the profession and make an attempt
at checking oneself.
When I face my little group for the first time I have mixed feelings, as I do want to awaken their enthusiasm for documentary
but also to tell them how difficult the profession of a documentary
director is. It is a job that brings misgivings and doubts, where
Marcel Łoziński: graduate of the Film Academy in Łódź, documentary director, since
his debut in 1973 he has made over twenty titles, including such awarded productions
as 89 mm do Europy , Wszystko może się przytrafić, Żeby nie bolało ; his new project,
Kinematograf, is to present voices of “men in the street” who want to comment on
issues important for them.
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everyone – be it just for a moment – turns out to be weak, sometimes helpless. Making a documentary is not only disclosing one’s
experiences, fears, complexes, and dreams, but also exploiting the
intimate world of other people, which often is more frustrating. We
hide behind their backs. We speak about ourselves through their
lips. Through taking shots of others we show ourselves. We nourish ourselves on the heroes of our films.
This is what I talk about at the first class – I tell them that they
will get fantastic and very dangerous tools: camera, microphone,
and film cutting bench, and that it is up to them what use they
make of it: for good or bad. That is the basic ethical problem of a
documentary filmmaker: how much one is allowed to do, to what
extent, where that moral boundary lies.
Our level of responsibility for others must be very high – if it is
not, we are not entitled to work in this profession. One must talk
about this a lot.
Later on I talk about my own problems. I open myself to my students without hiding my own limitations. I open myself in the way I
would like them to have the courage to open themselves in their
films. I speak about my uncertainty at each stage of film realisation.
An idea – how hard it is to come across one, how much effort
is required to trace it. I always search for a topic that will have at
least a bit more meaning to itself than what can be seen on the
screen. So seldom are those attempts successful. And if they
are – the doubts return: is it a good idea? Is there really anything
to it?
The documentation – if an idea goes back to some particular
situation, will I be able to show it or provoke it in such a way so as
not to distort the reality and introduce my thought and emotions
to the film? Was I careful enough in spotting all that is important?
Things get even more complicated when I have an idea first and
only then do I seek a particular reality that matches. At this point
the biggest problem is to attain the consistency of the idea with
the reality. Conscientious documentation becomes crucial for film
realisation. An error, an oversight or taking a “wait and see” approach will invariably lead to a catastrophe.
At this point the question returns: did I do all I could do?
The screenplay – the last opportunity to eliminate mistakes
from the already documented film topic. That means the necessity
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105
of choosing the so-called means of expression that are adequate
to the content. That means imagining the shape of the future film,
its structure and drama. Has that attempt been successful?
The shots – how will what I wanted to say be reflected on film?
How to set the camera? What optical effects to apply? When to
turn the camera on and when to turn it off in order to be sure that
my heroes did not expose themselves too much and that I did no
harm to them? At the same time: have I missed anything important? Have I not manipulated reality for my own needs? In other
words: have I been honest?
Editing – that for me is the most exciting phase of work. You can
do almost anything with the material on the film cutting bench. It is
just like with Lego bricks, which you can use to create whatever you
want – the construction created should only contain our message,
at the same time preserving a form that is a creative replica of the
reality. Editing is like playing puzzles, where one would like to find
that one correct arrangement of elements. That is probably hardly
ever the case. I do 10-15-20 editing versions, none of which seems
perfect. At this point the mistakes of the previous stages are take
their toll. At a certain moment, however, one has to say: this is
enough, I cannot do better. Have I found an optimal version?
Attuning – what effects to use for strengthening emotions without pushing it too far? Should there be music or not? It might be
helpful but it may also spoil the effect. And the basic question:
does the dramatic line of sound harmonise with the whole?
Eventually a model copy is created and it is too late for anything
else. The film starts to live its own life. I feel relieved that I do not
have to do anything more, but often angry that I might have done
better.
Then the arduous chase after a new topic begins and I often
have a feeling of having nothing new to say and a feeling of incompetence.
I tell my students all about it – there is a need for close contact,
for very honest, informal, and personal conversations. This is an
endless process of asking oneself questions about the sense of
what one is doing, i.e. whether anybody really needs our work.
– This is the kind of job it is, Ladies and Gentlemen – I say. –
Those of you who are not scared, who feel that you have a passion
for it, have a go. The most important thing for them is to find out if
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they really have something to say to the viewer. I am not able to
put anything in them, I can only help them get out that “thing” that
they may have inside and help them transfer it onto the screen by
providing them with basic professional tools. That is fairly simple. A
more difficult thing is to make them understand how personal the
process of directing is, how difficult it is to, first of all, find oneself,
one’s views and emotions, and then to protect them during that
entire industrial production mill of film making. “To protect” is the
right word, as the growing market pressure requires directors to
constantly strengthen their artistic “backbone” if they want to
remain faithful to themselves.
G ETTING
TO KNOW ONESELF
I keep repeating that a real documentary arises from the author’s individuality, from their reflection, experiences, emotions and
intuition. Their internal life is an element of reality among the ones
they encounter when making a film. One should know as much as
possible about oneself, learn to express one’s passion, agree to
disclose what is inside. That is what we will expect the heroes of our
films to do. However, we should start with ourselves. That is not an
easy thing to do but this job involves a sort of exhibitionism.
In order for my students to experience that, I encourage them
in the beginning to tell us something about them that they consider important. First stories are usually standard ones, resembling
the CVs enclosed with college applications. Later I ask detailed
questions, I try to dwell upon some issues. Sometimes a simple
“Why?” suffices to reveal more. I listen carefully and I try to trace
back what I consider honest, unique, individual. That is a very delicate situation – sometimes I manage to bring them to the point
when a student says: “You know, what I told you about was my
biggest tragedy”. Or: “I would like the others to understand what I
have been through”. Sometimes tears appear, sometimes laughter. Of course, that is a sort of a psychodrama which aims to
separate the truth from banality, honesty from clichés.
Those conversations have sometimes been extended by written
replies to questions like: “What am I most afraid of?” Or: “The
meanest thing I have ever done”. Of course, if the authors do not
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107
want me to, I do not read those works out to the group. We discuss them individually.
The point of those exercises is obvious: in order to get through
to your hero you have to get through to yourself first and feel how
it hurts sometimes. You cannot make others feel this pain. You
have been through it yourself, so it will be easier for you to find the
fine line that you are not allowed to cross when interfering in another person’s life. At the same time, however, you have learnt certain ways of arriving at the truth.
G ETTING
TO KNOW REALITY
It is time to go outside. I ask my students to get acquainted
with some place, situation, event, thoroughly and to describe it. I
choose staple topics, i.e. topics that are usually talked about as
especially attractive. Most often these are e.g. a sobering chamber, railway station, fire station, circus, police station, dog training school, etc. The first attempts are usually a trivial description of reality, of the obvious, they follow a common path. Then I
encourage my students to seek unknown, surprising areas in those
places, to focus rather on interpersonal relations, on the functioning of the institution itself or to find something which contradicts
the very essence of the place described. And it sometimes happens that some of them manage to open new boundaries, to trace
something beyond the stereotype. Those places would later become only an excuse to show e.g. human ambitions, the struggle for
power, someone’s sense of what is wrong, or simply sketching an
individual portrait. The rest was just the background.
One of the more interesting descriptions touched upon a love
drama in a police station. A student spotted the following situation:
a policeman on night duty used the breaks between taking down the
details of various people brought to the station to make wireless
calls to his fiancée. He was not sure of her love, he was afraid that
she was cheating on him. A moment after one call he had to take
down the personal details of a car thief. Then he would call the girl
again. Those interrupted talks went on endlessly. I am going into
such details of that story to specify the way of seeing the reality
that I find important: an unexpected, revealing and genuine one.
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In FEMIS I had more time to extend those exercises. I gave
them more personal topics, e.g. “My home”, “The school I used to
go to”, or “The person closest to me”.
F ILM
ANALYSES
–
BASIC WORKSHOP KEYS
How are documentaries made? What means of expression are
used? Why are those films made? The next stage of the classes is
devoted to searching for answers to those and similar questions. I
choose films that may vary considerably in the methods of realisation used. I usually show :
Muzykanci (The Band ) by Kazimierz Karabasz. I use that film to
talk about, among other things, an analytic description of a situation, the size of sets, camera settings, shooting faces, lighting,
synchronic sound and playbacks, editing, narration rhythm, about
construction and drama. Finally, as with all the other films, I speak
about the author’s message.
Z punktu widzenia nocnego portiera (From the Point of View of a
Night-Shift Janitor ) by Krzysztof Kieślowski. Here we are interested in ways of provoking situations, the participating camera, linking the synchronic shots with offs and internal monologue,, spy
shots and prepared scenes, the way of using music, leading the
narration to the conclusion, finally the pars pro toto method.
Dzień za dniem (Day by Day ) by Irena Kamieńska. We talk about
the rhythmic structure of the film, the role of internal monologue,
ways of using archive materials, methods of constructing characters.
Siedem kobiet w różnym wieku ( Seven Women of Various Ages )
by Krzysztof Kieślowski is an opportunity to show the possibilities
of linking analytic observations with synthetic editing; we talk about
how one can show the flow of time in a documentary about a collective hero.
Król (The King ). My film. It serves as an example of extreme
asceticism and the various possibilities of presenting a hero. We
talk about literalness and truthfulness in film.
The above is the minimum on the schedule. If I have enough time
I try to present many more of those films – I mean the basic canon
of Polish documentary: from Powódź (The Flood ) by Jerzy Bossak to
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109
the newest films by the youngest generation. In the future it would
be good to be able to show documentaries by such directors as
Depardon, Louis Malle, Wiseman, Kramer.
An analysis of those films leads directly to asking oneself elementary and at the same time the most essential questions that I
carried with me from the film school in Łódź and that I always ask
myself before making a film.
What?
(Topic)
In the name of what?
(What do I want to say?)
How?
(Means of expression)
We discuss that fairly extensively – and we start working on
making a particular film.
T OPIC ,
DOCUMENTATION , SCREENPLAY
At this stage I do not impose any ideas, I wait for them. Here I
often suffer the first defeat. We seemed to have understood one
another, we made intelligent analyses of the films, we agreed that
we must learn certain principles of the profession, that we must
know exactly why we make films. Meanwhile many conversations
about film topics look like this:
Student:
I want to make a film about this old lady that browses through garbage. That is a horrible picture.
Me:
Did you meet her?
Student:
Yes.
Me:
Did she agree to be filmed?
Student:
Of course.
Me:
And what did that lady do before?
Student:
I don’t know, she has probably always browsed
through garbage.
Me:
Does she have any family?
Student:
I don’t know.
Me:
Where does she live?
Student:
Presumably at the railway station or in a shelter.
Me:
Didn’t you ask her about all that?
Student:
Why? That is not going to be the subject of the
film.
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Me:
Student:
Than what is it going to be about?
Haven’t I just told you that it is a horrible picture, when such an old lady is browsing through
garbage. I can feel it, can’t you?
If on a given day I still have some enthusiasm and hope left, I try
to explain to my interlocutor once again, that one image, be it a
most horrible one, does not form the basis for a film, that the
most important thing to do is to find out what lead to that picture,
what brought about such a destiny. I tell my student to extend
their documentation. That brings no result.
– Sir, I want to be an artist, not a sociologist – he says when I
advise him again to find out about the story of that lady to at least
some extent. In such a moment, I already know that such a person
will never become a true documentary filmmaker. Notably, that was
not an extreme case. Many of my students are already full-blown
artists, whose various emotions I, having specific, engineering expectations concerning the precision of thinking, will never understand.
Sometimes I get that feeling of wasting my time but I comfort
myself that usually one or two out of the ten ideas I hear are mature ones. So it is worth going on.
We discuss the ideas together, which is important for me, as
sometimes we are able to improve something. It is important
that my students understand that if they do not specify the
construction, drama, and what I call hypothetical (i.e. possible
or probable) situation components at the idea-documentationscreenplay stage, there is little chance for success. Even the
best editor will not assemble anything reasonable out of accidental shots. I also advise them to be aware of their starting
point and destination regardless of their hope that reality will
bring something wonderfully unexpected. To my mind, in a documentary that is so unpredictable it pays to provide oneself with
as big a sense of safety as possible – for example by an earlier
definition of the point of departure and destination. Those two
points are the limits of the entire film drama, the concept of
which is also worth having in mind. Such main elements of construction must be contained within the screenplay. It often happens that a film diverges from its screenplay, but a well thought
over screenplay is that one indispensable, basic element of support.
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T HE
111
SHOTS
There was too little time at the Warsaw University classes and
during workshops in Marseilles for each of the students to make
their own film. I decided that they should make one film together.
And because I had never succeeded in receiving some consensus
about the topic, I proposed a topic myself.
The film consisted of the students’ versions of Gadające głowy
(Talking heads ) by Kieślowski, reduced to 7 minutes. The work consisted in asking people the simplest questions, like: “What according to you is the most important thing in life? What do you expect
from your life?” Then those answers were put in a natural chronological order, from children to very old people. The advantage of
those tasks was their simplicity, attempts to enter into authentic
contacts with people, learning to listen to them carefully. Maybe it
was also touching something more, some wider exposure to a person’s condition. The students conducted up to 200 interviews, out
of which a bit more than ten were to some extent included in the
film. That gave the students some measure of proportion of the
work input to the result obtained in a document.
There exist thus two films carrying the same title: The survey –
one made in Marseilles and one in Warsaw. Maybe more will be
made in the future?
Initially I was present during the shooting but I quickly realised
that before each take the students sought my approval. I, on the
other hand, felt like intervening immediately when I thought, for
example, that the camera should be set in a different way, or that
the set should be different, or that the students were incapable of
gaining contact with their hero. It is, however, their film after all.
We devoted much time to solving general problems earlier during
conversations about the topic, documentation, and screenplay. So
I decided to leave them alone during the shooting.
There is only one condition: the workshop participants have to
work with a real camera operator or with someone who has already
made films, just like students of directing in film schools shoot with
student camera operators from higher years. I try to make sure
that my directors agree with their camera operators on the general sense and climate of the future film in as much detail as possible. I use various examples to explain what such agreement consi-
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sts in and how important that co-operation is, especially in a documentary.
E DITING ,
ATTUNING
Regardless of whether we are to edit 10 films or one jointly
produced one, we start from an overview of all materials and then
discuss them. I require students to put the sound down on paper
and it is on paper that we put together the so-called ladder, i.e.
the sequence of scenes. I consider that stage, the stage of choosing shortcuts and subsequent attempts at putting the material
together of constructing a film, to be one of the most important.
This is also because it has an integrating impact on the group.
Sharp, honest, authentic discussions of colleagues’ materials, a
real interest in somebody else’s work are something that is unfortunately disappearing from professional filmmaking. Each of us filmmakers is alone now – the times of endless group watching of one
another’s materials and trying to figure out how to help the author
are gone. Once nobody imposed anything on anybody else. There
was only the common search for the best results, anyway the author would make the film their way because they had their own
style. Today young people are deprived of such a comfortable atmosphere. They are alone.
Notably, the workshops are often the last opportunity for students to be together.
My situation at this stage of the work is a fairly delicate one. I
would like their films to be as good as possible. Sometimes I know
how they should do it and so I have a problem here that I am not
able to resolve completely. How far can I go in directing them?
Where does assistance end and interference begin? I comfort myself that the best students know what they want anyway and that
then my role boils down to showing them their more obvious mistakes, to helping them get out what is important for them from material.
After settling an optimum “arrangement” on paper, I leave them
alone at the film cutting bench. Later on we watch together subsequent editing versions, we discuss them and look for the best
one. When I notice what I call “material wearout”, i.e. when the joy
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113
of discovering new editing possibilities comes to an end I say: enough. A few more attempts at fine-tuning the film follow and that is
the real end. We agree that the films are ready, and that, as in
professional production, we cannot make any more changes.
The last phase is a conversation about what we wanted to achieve
and how successful we were, and conclusions for the future.
From my limited experience we can conclude that one or two
persons out of the ten pre-selected have a professional future
ahead of them if they have a bit of luck and motivation. The rest of
them will hopefully at least have a different understanding of a documentary, which is also some benefit brought by these workshops.
There is no way to learn real directing; it is only possible to give
candidates a chance to enter that wonderful and dreadful profession.
P.S. The basic equipment for the workshop: a video camera, an
external microphone, a tape-recorder for recording “offs”, a film
cutting bench, a sound mixer. A person familiar with the camera
and the film cutting bench is also necessary.
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Juliusz Sok
ołowski
Sokołowski
P HOTOGRAPHIC WORKSHOP
All the evidence leads to the conclusion that mind,
soul and human heart are involved in photography in a
deep, natural, subconscious way. It appears that the
material image has mental qualities.
Edgar Morin
Photography is a mechanical and objective record of the world
seen, in the course of which light creates the picture of an object
on photosensitive material. It is a form of reality itself.
Photography is a subjective interpretation of reality, saying more
about the photographer than his/her model.
Photography is a set of pictures along with their intentional and
practical uses and functions.
The subject of the workshop is to perceive photography in a way
that escapes the above definitions. It is photography as a process
– event and clash. A photograph as the trace of a meeting. A photograph as the gift that the photographer can get from his/her
model. A photograph as a symbol of the tension between reality
and imagination, between general and particular and between the
ordinary and the ideal. Photography as a form of cognition.
During the course of the workshop I am primarily trying to get
the participants interested in the author’s subjectivity in documentary photography. We are interested in the selection of the
Juliusz Sokołowski: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University,
photographer; he considers his greatest achievement to be the success enjoyed by his
students; participants of his workshops established the Association of Photographers
“poniekąd”.
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115
means and methods, the thinking and cognitive process preceding
the taking of a photograph. My aim is an attempt to convince the
students to treat photography as a challenge, not fun; an attempt
to teach them how to combine their knowledge, emotions, experience and intuition.
I seek to make the participants aware that each photographer
has to feel responsible for the photo, for himself, for and to the
models. Someone’s picture can be only obtained, but never taken
away. We talk about the ability to be among other people, not always similar to us; about such virtues as openness, humility; about
the art of conversation as well as that of listening. I introduce
photography as the art of choice. We talk about the merits of the
author’s freedom, which results from great self-restraint. I speak
of the tensions, mental and physical efforts as being inherent elements of the photographer’s work. During our meetings I refer
most of the time to my own experience as well as to that of participants. We recall also the photos that are generally available from
the papers, taken in places we know from either our own experience or mass media. We talk about the photographs, working methods and biographies of such photographers as Nadar, Julia, Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Eugene Atget, Paul Strand, Karl
Blossfeldt, Eugene Smith, Sebastiano Salgado, Zofia Rydet, Bogdan Dziworski. Among the recommended sources are: Susan Sontag’s About Photography , Roland Barthes’s The Light of a Picture ,
John Berger’s On Seeing.
Another aim of the workshop is to provide technical knowledge.
I stress that technique is used only for recording and has to come
after content and the selected form. I discourage students from
the fascination with equipment and technology, urge them to develop the knowledge and technical skills and to use only such tools
which are essential to the realisation of the ideas. The “practical
exercises” over the last five years have taken different forms.
Several times I have asked the students to bring one photograph significant for different reasons, not necessarily one taken
by themselves. I even encouraged them to choose photographs
that had been published. However, they always brought their own
photographs. I asked them to prepare a presentation about the
selected photograph: why it had been taken; what events had preceded the shot; whether the presence of the camera affected the
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course of the events; whether the picture was only a record or
whether by activating our memory it evoked some emotions; whether the developed photograph permitted the exposure of invisible
elements or features of the event or the objects; whether the
picture met the photographer’s expectations; whether the photo
might be significant and understandable for others. The author’s
opinions were confronted with the feelings of other participants.
Another “exercise” was the Saturday bus trip made by the participants of the workshop equipped with their cameras. Their task
was to photograph each other amongst strangers (other passengers) in a public place. After developing the photos we talked about
the emotions present during the shooting in those circumstances,
about the reactions of other passengers.
Portrait. The photographer is left on his own with the person
being portrayed in studio conditions (an artificial situation). The
participants took turns and played the role of photographer or model.
Then they described their emotions depending on which side of the
camera they had stood. In the photographs taken we confronted
mainly the opinions of the photographer with that of the model. We
talked either about ways of eliminating or deliberately using the
artificiality of the situation.
Feast. The meeting at an old table set in the studio, covered
with a white tablecloth, on which there were plenty of victuals. The
whole meeting was recorded by a hidden camera. Basically, we were
interested in the people’s responses to the photographs of themselves that had the qualities of “stolen” pictures taken by a hidden
camera. And here, though the feast was quite lenten, we were
particularly concerned with the problem of responsibility of the
photographer to his/her model.
Technical exercises: cameras, lights, etc.
Outdoor photography. Three trips have taken place: the Castle
in Sucha Beskidzka, the ecological farm in Zawadka near Dukla, and
Bydgoszcz. The participants tried to realise their own projects.
The most interesting among them were the portraits of the inhabitants made in their houses, outdoor shots or those of one particular place selected by the photographer.
Exhibitions. So far there have been six exhibitions: five in Warsaw; one in Sucha Beskidzka.
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Janusz Byszewski, M aria P
arczewsk
a
Parczewsk
arczewska
C OMPLETION (DESIGNING CREATIVE
SITUATIONS)
J ANUSZ B YSZEWSKI: THE END
It is much easier to conduct workshops than to write about
them. Particularly when we conduct them together, putting into
them all that we have in common, what we call, “looking in the
same direction”, and obviously, completing them with our differences, separate experiences, interests, opportunities.
Subject. In my opinion, what results from the essence of a creative
workshop is that it can be concerned with any subject. However, when
designing a workshop I ask myself the question whether the thing we
are going to deal with has to be important for me or the people taking
part in it, or maybe it should be devoted to a problem included in the
curriculum, or to something which is simply fashionable.
Creating an open space, e.g. such space which exposes the
participants’ questions, problems and emotions, helps to deal with
something significant for each person. A workshop, though conducted with a group of people, concerns itself with the individual,
uncommon, distinct and different. Exactly these individual creators’
Janusz Byszewski: co-founder of “pARTner” group (1983-1990), curator of the Creative Education Laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw, author of
projects focused on art and museum education.
Maria Parczewska: graduate of the Faculty of Psychology at Warsaw University, since
1990 curator of the Creative Education Laboratory at the Centre for Contemporary
Arts in Warsaw, co-author of the programme under which she delivers workshops
focused on museum and art education.
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answers / artworks on the subjects I propose (knowing the participants, their interests and capabilities), are the most important
element of a creative workshop.
It is very often that the students of a long-term workshop ask
me on our first meeting what the classes will be about and ask me
to present to them the subsequent topics we are going to be
concerned with. It is very difficult to answer this simple and obvious question. Sometimes Toni Packer lends a helping hand, in her
book Freedom from Authority when she encourages: “Let us start
everything from scratch and we will see where it will take us.”
My dream is to design such workshops that start from scratch.
However, I know how difficult it is and yet I feel – how important.
I often use the expression “designing creative workshops”. This
is not only wordplay. I am engaged in designing: I have co-designed
my house, the interiors I live and work in; I have designed decorations, films, books and catalogues; I plan trips and expeditions; and
sometimes I devise fantastic projects.
I think of situations that could improve communication between
people, those that help to solve problems and lastly some that aid
creativity. All these projects have a lot in common, namely, they
are always accompanied by drafts, drawings, plans, texts, notes
as well as many conversations.
A creative workshop belongs to the sphere of design. Such a conception allows me to think about workshop participants as designers.
Workshop objective. During my scholarship in Finland in the
1980’s I met a very interesting architect from the US. I really
enjoyed seeing places just with him. He showed me a lot of buildings – the light and shade, which was considered to be very important, the courtyards and bars that I would otherwise not have
noticed.
He gave me a short poem by Rod Mc Kuen:
“Trust me – for everything I do
I do the best I can,
Even if to make you happy
I will leave you by yourself.”
When designing a workshop then, I’m not trying to make one
happy at all costs.
I will repeat the three ideas from the poem: faith (not only in the
leader, but primarily in oneself); happiness; being by oneself.
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The form and organisation of a workshop. “Form and content
are an organic and inseparable whole, they constitute two sides of
one and the same thing” – this idea of Henryk Stażewski is close to
me and I hope is present during the workshops I conduct. Creating
their art, the participants do not “illustrate” the topic assigned
earlier but thinking in the language of art present during our workshop they give their personal answers to the questions posed. This
“language” could be installation, ready-made objects, limited only
to black and white paper, clay or one’s own body. If a workshop has
the form of a dialogue with another artist or exhibition (where it
sometimes takes place), then its language must be the language of
this particular artist.
Therefore, there is the need to constantly learn the languages
of contemporary artists. Unfortunately, without this not only we
will be unable to understand contemporary art but it will be impossible to establish a virtual dialogue with it.
Thinking and creating at the same time in a particular language,
we always think along with somebody; “it could be your friend, or
maybe your enemy, or perhaps someone indifferent to you. The one
you think with definitely influences our thoughts and the way we
think”(Józef Tischner).
We can think through material, follow its possibilities and limits;
we can think with another artist; with oneself; we can think through form, which can surprise us with its final sense; we can think
with philosophers or all the others who have dealt with this particular problem/issue before; we can…
There are two rules when it comes to designing a creative workshop that are increasingly important to me: simplicity and silence.
I am trying to make these rules even more present: more simple
and quieter.
The course of a workshop. The question concerning the course
of a workshop is just the question about its timing, dynamics and
even its dramaturgy.
The time of the workshop taking place either in the city, at the
university or the Centre for Contemporary Arts is defined by another time: the time of a lesson, the time needed to pass modules,
the time between other activities. It is not the time of creative
process, it is not the time resulting from natural needs, but the
one determined by other activities.
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The ideal situation would be to provide creative workshops with
their own time resulting from the needs of the natural dynamics of
a creative process. The easiest way to achieve this is through a
special workshop trip or outdoor workshops where time is not defined by bureaucracy or administration. I admit that I long for such
natural time.
Time is one of the most important constituents of a workshop.
And although, like silence, time is invisible, when it is used in the
same way it helps us to open new creative space.
Participants. When we talk about creativity (not about art) then
one’s skills are not essential. Many people are afraid of workshops
because they think about themselves as being non-creative, passive receivers of the culture and not its active co-creators; as being
someone who at school obtained the role of an imitator and not
that of an animator!
The problem seems to be connected with evaluation. The system of education is based on external assessment (you are assessed by nursery and primary school teachers, professors etc.). In a
creative workshop, external evaluation is replaced by an internal
one; every participant is responsible to himself/herself for what he/
she is doing and also has the right to give up their own realisation.
In this situation, objective criteria are replaced with one’s individual readiness to undertake a creative effort that does not undergo
any external verification. For many participants this situation of
freedom from evaluation is very difficult, and it often takes them a
lot of time to stop demanding from the tutor approval of their
work.
Many people are afraid they lack technical skills, they doubt
whether they could create a reasonable standard of work, similar
to those surrounding us that we can see on TV or in the internet.
To help overcome this stereotype I use Japanese aesthetics
originating from the ceremony of drinking tea Wabi-sabi, which I like
to refer to and can be briefly put in the following way:
“Wabi-sabi is the beauty of things that are imperfect,
nondurable and unfinished.
It is the beauty of things that are modest and insignificant;
the beauty of unconventional things.”
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Maybe, at a point of departure, it is worth escaping from the
“cult of objects” to the “Zen of objects” and to look at one’s own
work from a different perspective.
A point of arrival – the form of assessment. “
“It seems that
the teacher’s mental state, expressed by the interrogative form,
is similar to the mental state of an actor, expressed on stage by
the words of his new role. The teacher acts the role of a serious
questioner, but he does not ask seriously, he assumes the role of a
man who does not know the answer to the primary question and
acts as such. On hearing the posed question the student is serious to the same extent that the teacher is only acting, the questions that the teacher asks he takes seriously” (Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz). The person who conducts a creative workshop does not
play the role of the “asking teacher” Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz writes
about, but, like the students, he takes seriously the task they are
to tackle.
The dissimilarity of the situations results from the specific nature of a workshop being a form of creative work: all its participants fill the empty space with their activities (including the workshop tutor). We can’t predict what they will fill it with (intellectually, emotionally, artistically) – that depends on the personality of
each participant. The teacher is just another participant of this
creative journey (workshop), with its route and destination unknown before the start.
And, as often happens, the evaluation of the journey, whether it
was successful or not, belongs to each traveller (also to its organiser).
The relationship between the tutor and the participants. St.
John the Baptist expressed concisely a principle that is becoming
increasingly close to me: “I want him to grow so that I can become
smaller”.
Infrastructure – location, materials, technical facilities. It
seems to me that this is not only a technical or organisational
question, but is actually a question about the design method of a
creative workshop, where all the elements are selected and used in
a conscious way.
The location – it is primarily its ambience.
For many contemporary artists this category is very important
and defines the character of the work created. Very often artists
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coming to the Centre for Contemporary Arts spend weeks there
before we are able to see their finished works.
Genius loci is present on many workshops I have conducted,
often becoming an important source of inspiration for created work.
Sometimes to realise a project, the participants look for such locations that will stimulate their creativity; then it becomes an integral part of the artist’s expression. When understood in this way
the location becomes another potentialy creative medium, which,
as a result of the participants treatment, takes on new meanings.
This place becomes an active space, full of meanings.
Also the space deliberately not used or rejected takes on a new
meaning, which can sometimes be of great importance for the whole
artistic realisation.
The choice of the place I am to conduct my workshop or the
location for the individual work of the participants is one of the
many decisions each of us takes in the process of creation.
Materials. Of course, everything can be a creative medium.
Often, to stimulate our imagination and to trigger our inventiveness, it becomes reduced only to one medium, two colours or
three sheets of paper. In a different case, when a workshop refers to, for example, the Bauhaus tradition, the only colours used
are the three primary ones. During our outdoor activities we use
only natural materials, which begin “to have meaning beyond their
material worth”.
We very often think through materials; to paraphrase Józef Tischner’s sentence that I quoted previously, “what we are thinking
through has a great influence on what we are thinking of and how
we think about it”. I agree with this idea.
M ARIA P ARCZEWSKA : BEGINNING
When reflecting on a creative workshop, the basic question that
arises is concerned with understanding the term “creativity”.
The open form of the workshops enables everyone to participate
in them regardless of their skills, intellectual level, age, profession
or manual skills. Arranging creative situations means creating suitable conditions to activate a creative attitude understood as a
new, fresh, non-schematic approach to a subject, material, rela-
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tions and oneself, realised by breaking certain stereotypes in thinking or acting.
So another question arises, about the aim of the workshop, in
other words, the knowledge, skills and experience that the participants should acquire to trigger this creative attitude.
This does not happen just through expanding our theoretical
knowledge.
The results of psychological research on creative thinking do
not confirm the common conviction about the link between intellectual level and creativity. However, a creative person can be characterised by a few qualities worth mentioning at this point.
First, it is a peculiar way of perceiving the world, which is the
ability to identify its complexities and diversities. Next it is the
ability to be astonished, then the predisposition to observe, curiosity, emotionalism, rationalism and the capacity for specific and
abstract thinking. A creative person can be also defined by openness and tolerance towards ambiguity, independence and the courage to express one’s views, lack of fear of the unknown, a sense
of humour and, when it comes to solving a problem, the fascination
and the ability to a focus on it.
From the point of view of the person conducting a workshop,
another question arises: what subjects, conditions, situations and
relations could help to shape or strengthen the above mentioned
qualities? And what kind of behaviour from the tutor is likely to
inhibit them?
It seems useful to make a reference to psychological mechanisms, which on the one hand are responsible for the particular actions of the tutor, and, on the other hand, are triggered in other
participants.
In psychology there are many theories, each of them tries to
establish a cohesive system that would explain the mechanisms
behind the functioning of a human-being, the reasons for anomalies
and the ways of coping with them, and this creates the model of
healthy and regular development. Each of the theories gives a different picture of a man; refers to different forces and tendencies;
finds the core of problems in different sources and sees different
ways of correcting them.
Of the many acceptable levels of reflection, the phenomenological concept of man gives the possibility of practical application of
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its principles to every leader, teacher and animator – none of them
being qualified psychologists. This is also true for those students
particularly interested in working with a group in the future.
I will try to introduce a few essential elements of this concept
and show how to use them in practice; I also want to draw your
attention to traps one can get caught in while conducting a workshop or any group activity aiming to support the participants in
their full, versatile development.
Behind each educational activity stands a more or less well defined concept of a human being. The way we act and interact with
others depends on our views on human nature and the mechanisms of its functioning. It is of great importance in the case of a
parent, teacher or educator who can, through prolonged influence,
affect the shaping of certain features or attitudes of others.
Generally, they can be moulded by means of avoiding events that
could threaten one’s self-esteem (through the need for avoiding
punishment, suffering or depreciation, a so-called fear base is formed) or by means of aspiration to secure, maintain or increase
one’s self-esteem (through being proud and satisfied not only with
reaching the goal but with the mere fact of being active).
The phenomenological concept of man which is close to me emphasises the uniqueness of every person: it gives him/her the right
to find his/her own individual sense of life and personal hierarchy of
values, wherein the realisation of innate evolutionary tendencies
leads to healthy, positive choices (also social ones). This process is
called “development”. Development, according to the phenomenological concepts, is a constant process, never-ending nor leading
to pre-determined goals.
According to Abraham Maslow, development understood in this
way takes place only when the next step is subjectively more appealing than the previous one: more satisfying, when in a choice situation, we act according to a subjective feeling that one alternative
is better than the other.
This is, however, an ideal situation. After all, a process of development is undoubtedly affected by man’s social environment. Only
through contact with it can man’s natural abilities be improved.
This would then require from the immediate environment of a man
an attitude that accepts openness and empathy, which is the power of identifying oneself with a person and communicating our
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understanding of this person’s needs. Then questions arise: what
to be like in oneself, how to be in a group, what relations to create
with the participants, what subjects, materials, time and place to
take into consideration as a leader in order to advocate this process of development (which is, after all, unintentional, unplanned
and unpredictable)?
Therefore, it is particularly important in a group to focus on
“here and now”, which entails concentrating on what is happening
at a given place and moment with reference to every single participant as well as the group as a whole. As for the leader, what seems particularly important is to be approving, empathic, open, authentic, participating, active, involved and to rely not only on one’s
professional life but also on one’s own personal experience.
The leading person should also be able to integrate two kinds of
consciousness, or two, apparently contradictory kinds of presence, such as being both active and passive, analytical and synthetic,
being the one who controls and the one under control, feeling confident and doubtful, being serious and having fun, being objective
and subjective, rational and intuitive.
This ability to integrate contradictions, in a way aiming at a
complete-holistic thinking about oneself and about the world – this
ability is an important category of a workshop description, the essence of every experience, every development or even of a whole
life.
It seems important at this point to refer to the list of leader
behaviour that represses participant creativity as considered by
Ed and Sonia Newis of the Gestalt Institute:
• The world’s polarisation and a lack of integration between apparently contradictory aspects of personality, for example, yin and
yang.
• Unwillingness to have fun, a coolness based on the fear that one
would seem silly, infantile or funny.
• Rejecting risk and avoiding open situations fearing the embarrassment that could result from one’s own failure.
• Not appreciating one’s own potential or the group’s potential,
that is, reducing the level of one’s expectations to guarantee
oneself a visible, predictable result.
• Protecting one’s authority in inflexibility, despotism, functioning
in accordance with a role.
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• Evading the confrontation with one’s own frustration, namely,
avoiding any obstacles, for instance, dangerous topics that could expose one’s own negative emotions such as fear, helplessness – perceived as inappropriate, or as ones that should not
be present in the tutor.
• Overestimating the real world – that is apparent through underestimating fantasy, imagination, dreams, as categories that
are deceptive and non-objective.
• The need for sorting things out and keeping order, avoiding complexity; an excessive need for balance, symmetry, tidiness and order.
• Unwillingness to permit autonomy, not letting things happen at
their own pace: naturally.
• Unwillingness to exert an influence through tolerance out an excessive concern with being perceived as tolerant, loving and mature.
• Lack of understanding of the motivating force of emotions, using
up one’s energy to repress emotions, including positive ones and
all spontaneous expression; neglecting the influence of emotions
on the possibility becoming involved in something.
• Granting a result a value disregarding the meaning of the process, that is, aiming at a clearly defined goal in the shortest
possible time and manner; underestimating the quest itself, including mistakes and efforts.
• The last on the list is either limiting sense cognition to one of the
senses or regarding intellectual cognition as a value without taking into account meaning of the sphere of senses.
In a workshop situation, the atmosphere of safety produced by
the tutor is not related to the sphere of physical threats, but to
the psychological atmosphere of acceptance of the authentic needs of the participants; to the affirmation of the right to their own
independent thinking and acting; to an absolute approval of the
person, his/her interests, aspirations, opportunities; to an attitude of understanding and support for the search to find their own
solutions which creates the conditions for them to go beyond stereotypes, to penetrate new levels of understanding and acting, to
experiment with new materials, topics and conditions. And this is
connected with the risk of losing what we have already achieved,
what is already known, tested and guaranteed.
In all of us there are present two tendencies while undertaking
a task. One of them has to do with safety and self-defence against
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suffering, which results in lack of progress or stepping backwards,
that is, clinging to the past, relying on what is well-known, predictable and owned.
The other force leads man to fully use up his/her potential, inclines him/her to learn new things, to search, to go beyond limits, to
risk.
To move forwards, to develop oneself, it is necessary to feel safe
and not to have to fight for the feeling of safety.
All of us oscillate between the invisible boundaries of: dependence and independence, progress and lack of it, the known and the
unknown, safety and risk.
Therefore, the process of development is a never-ending string
of free choices between a pleasure derived from safety and one
derived from independence.
From the dynamic point of view, all the options are actually good
if we accept two kinds of wisdom – the wisdom of defence and the
wisdom of development. In this context the words of Dante Alighieri take on a special meaning: “Follow your own path and let people
say what they want”. This sentence could become the motto of
every creative workshop I have conducted.
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L eszek K
olankiewicz
Kolankiewicz
T HEATRE ANTHROPOLOGY
(A SEMINAR WITH WORKSHOP
ELEMENTS)
Classes in Theatre Anthropology are delivered in the seminar
format enriched with workshop elements. This combined structure
comes partially as a result of the origin of classes, and partially as
a result of their role.
1.
Anthropological research on theatre, and, in a broader context,
on performance, was launched dozens of years ago, focusing on
various humanistic areas, and for a quarter of a century on a specially identified area, referred to as theatre anthropology or theatrical anthropology, whereas the vast range of the latter discipline is better expressed by the term “anthropology of performance”. Without going deeper into such important discussions about
terminology, which are continued on ongoing basis, it should be
noted that such debates mark a typical stage of identifying borders and methods of a specific research area.
Generally speaking, theatre anthropology deals with the identification of universal cultural values describing human behaviour in
performance situations, defined as behaviour different from dayto-day activities – those universal values are being researched into
on the basic level of the pre-expressive stage behaviour of the actor and/or the dancer in various theatre traditions of Europe and
Asia. In the early 1980s, Eugenio Barba and a group of associated
researchers launched an innovative study dealing with experimen-
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tal comparisons of various theatrical traditions originating from
Europe, India, China, Japan and Indonesia (which was later expanded with behaviour expressed by dancers in the ritual Afro-Brazilian tradition). But although anthropology marked the starting point of their research (to sum it up, these are theses formulated by
Marcel Mauss in his paper on techniques of the body), the research as such is clearly positioned within the broad scope of comparative theatre studies, combined with the ambition to make anthropological generalisations. The research was, in a way, wrapped
up by a collective paper entitled A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology (published in 1991; the first edition in the Italian version was
published in 1983, the second edition in French came out in 1985)
as well as Eugenio Barba’s book The Paper Canoe: a Guide to Theatre Anthropology (originally published in Italian in 1993).
On the other hand, theatrical anthropology (anthropology of
performance) deals with research of all types of cultural performances, seen as an institution whose role embraces symbolic performance – play and/or experience of meta-social comments. Cultural performances constitute the major area of operations of society, because as a result of their programming in time and space,
ritual, folklore and/or aesthetic organisation as well as the requirement for direct and collective participation, they focus the society
on an active reinforcement and redefinition of traditions as well as
on reflection about social bonds and communication. Reflection here
occurs as an element of communication that makes it possible to
reinforce bonds at any time. The area of such defined cultural performances is extremely broad, naturally covering all performing arts
(including stage plays), quasi-theatrical rituals, especially shamanistic ones, as well as rituals related to the so-called cults of possession, various types of quasi-theatrical events, as well as public and private ceremonies, sports events, all sorts of agonic
events, donation rituals and execution events, public katharsis procedures, celebrations and carnival feasts. As theatre is only a variation of a cultural performance, theatre studies, and especially
the recent (in 1996) spin-off “ethnoscenology”, constitute only
one of many disciplines of this research area alongside ethology,
kinesics and proxemics, social psychology, ethnolinguistics (sociolinguistics), communication theory, microsociology, cultural anthropology, ethnography, folk studies, philosophy and the theory of
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culture. Methods drawing on elements of all those disciplines are
focused on cultural performing reality as such, as well as on the
specifically performing features.
Performing features are very distinctive for many human activities performed or effected in the presence of other people. Generally speaking, the performing dimension of action becomes more
or less visible everywhere where we are dealing with man operating
within a community. Research on cultural performing reality is thus
an investigation of all types of social events of direct communication, where message recipients witness the act of message development, give direct and instant feedback. The centre of the event
features Homo agens , a man or team acting in an intentionally
semiotic way within a specified social space-time frame, to be surrounded by a community integrated by focus of attention and reaction to this action. It is social communication understood directly
as an act creating a hic et nunc message, which is received directly, with the ultimate commitment that guarantees feedback. Anthropological reflection on perfomance investigates how the culture is reflected during direct communication situations, focused on
the performance or fulfilment of important acts.
Anthropologists had been investigating cultural performances
in this field long time before the moment when (in 1972) this term
was acknowledged by science and long before the moment when (in
1984) a collective study entitled Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance was published. A
study which became the first publication to play an inspiring theoretical role in this field was Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead’s album (Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis , 1942)
as well as a film produced by both scientists in collaboration with
Jane Belo (Trance and Dance in Bali, 1952). Naturally, there are
earlier ethnographic works dating back to as early as the beginning
of the twentieth century, discussing performance reality in various
cultures, but none of them inspired research in a brand-new area.
Parallel efforts were undertaken by American researchers associated with Boas’s school of anthropology and the Chicago school of
social studies, as well as by British social anthropologists, especially at the Manchester school, by French scientists within ethnography and anthropology-oriented social studies. A genuine breakthrough came with Victor Turner’s studies (beginning with Schism
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and Continuity in an African Society, 1957), which introduced the
concept of social drama to anthropology. Together with Erving Goffman’s papers on microsocial studies (beginning with Presentation
of Self in Everyday Life , 1959), as early as at the turn of the 1980s,
they contributed to the emergence of one of the most powerful
concepts in the humanities, based on analogies between the and
the theatre. The concept was so vast, that many began to accept
it as a brand-new research paradigm, drawing on what ethnolinguist Dell Hymes described in the mid 1970s as a „breakthrough into
performance”. The position of theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance) as a new research area was consolidated by
studies of Victor Turner (The Anthropology of Performance , 1986)
and Richard Schechner (Between Theater and Anthropology, 1985),
who managed to form a large group of associated scientists (who
produced a collective work entitled By Means of Performance, 1991).
As time passed, this scientific discipline was expanded by the introduction of theoretical enquiries, that on one hand tackled the
concept of the ritual and ritualisation viewed from an ethological
perspective, and on the other, the concept of play and game within
the general meaning of the theory of culture. This was also a time
when questions about universals were posed by theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance).
Classes in Theatre Anthropology were launched at Warsaw University in the academic year of 1982/1983. Their contents drew
heavily on the artistic quest of Jerzy Grotowski and his Wrocławbased Laboratory Theatre, and especially the anthropological Theatre of Sources project run in collaboration with an international
team in the years 1978–1982. A similar anthropological profile
was reflected in Grotowski’s later projects launched abroad. In
1997, Grotowski became the dean of a new department at Collège
de France – Chaire d’Anthropologie Théâtrale (the Chair of Theatrical Anthropology) established especially for him. (The author of this
study took an active part in the Theatre of Sources project, edited
Grotowski’s works and played the role of his anthropological consultant). Another important context for the classes in Theatre
Anthropology was made by the first news about the activities of
the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), established by Eugenio Barba in 1979. The first session of the School was
held in Bonn in 1980, and the second in Voltera, Italy, in 1981.
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Several years later (in 1987), Barba, an active theatre director
and the author of the concept of the “third theatre” – theatre
groups practising their original microculture – coined the term the
“anthropological theatre”. (I had a chance to visit Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro, Denmark, the permanent seat of ISTA,
only in 1991, and for the first time took part in work during the
seventh ISTA session in Brecon and Cardiff in 1992). The context
of the course was formed also by the artistic quest initiated by
Włodzimierz Staniewski and his “Gardzienice” Centre for Theatrical
Practices, founded in 1978. The Centre inaugurated theatre work
in a new natural environment, understood not only as a social and
cultural rural environment, but also (from 1982 on) a geographic
environment, to be called by Staniewski (officially during a seminar
held in 1990) “theatre ecology”, as opposed to theatre anthropology. (I took an active part in this quest from 1979 on, and initiated
a close co-operation with Staniewski in 1987). Thus from the very
beginning, scientific research in theatre anthropology and theatrical anthropology (and/or environmental theatre studies) was conducted by theatre artists, including Grotowski, Barba, and Staniewski. It should be noted that focusing on general performance
theory in theatrical anthropology, Richard Schechner, is also a theatre artist who developed the concept of the environmental theatre in the early 1970s. (I met Schechner in 1978, and our contacts were re-established during the first seminar in theatrical
anthropology in Brno in 1995). The fact that it was individual practice that encouraged artists to experience anthropological reflections, cast its distinctive spell on the profile of research within the
broad area of theatre anthropology (and/or theatre ecology) as well
as in the major discipline of theatrical anthropology; this is evidenced by experimental research.
As from the very beginning in 1982, classes in Theatre Anthropology delivered at Warsaw University constituted a follow-up
to my collaboration with Grotowski, they combined theoretical
enquiry with practical experiments, implemented within a modest scope. The overwhelming portion of methodology of those
experiments was adopted from the second stage of the Theatre
of Sources project (conducted by Grotowski’s international team
in the years 1981–1982), as well as from selected experiments
of the so-called participatory theatre, especially those experi-
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133
ments realised at Laboratory Theatre under the guidance of Jacek Zmysłowski (in the years 1976–1979), such as: Mountain
Project or Vigil . (It should be noted, however, that two events
dating back to 1982 directly triggered the introduction of classes in Theatre Anthropology: the premature death of Zmysłowski, the leader of the paratheatrical projects at Laboratory Theatre, with whom I had closely collaborated, as well as Grotowski’s decision to cease work in Poland and emigrate). The silence
of the participants was a unique condition for conducting those
experiments. Silence was observed both during the second stage of the Theatre of Sources project as well as during the abovementioned paratheatrical projects. And although “seminar ” was
the official name of the classes in Theatre Anthropology, their
experimental module was referred to as “silentorium” (a working
term coined by participants).
2.
The origins of the workshop orientation of the classes go beyond
the experimental character of this research area, drawing heavily
on the internal evolution of the didactic process implemented at
the then Polish Culture Department.
In 1980, 1981 and 1982 when the Polish history was pulsing,
Warsaw University teachers had to face unusual challenges. Like
the entire country, the University was changing and was never to
be the same again. Generally speaking, the young Polish Culture
Department, established in 1976, did not get a chance to become
overwhelmed by routine. It was a period marked by constant development of our objectives and functions at the Faculty, our university curricula, the working style applied to the collaboration with
students as well as the future profile of the Department, which, in
time, evolved into a distinct operating unit of the Faculty of Polish
Philology. It should be noted that developments were largely driven
by assistant readers, who, as a rule, being slightly older than students, were able to initiate and maintain direct, creative contacts
with them. (Assistant readers of the Department included: Michał
Boni, Grzegorz Godlewski, Zbigniew Mentzel, Mirosław Pęczak,
Maciej Zalewski and myself). All of them developed their own origi-
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nal methods for reaching an understanding with students. And it
should be remembered that nurturing a niche of mutual understanding was a high priority in those times. The crucial period came at
the turn of 1981 and in early 1982.
First of all, the Independent Student Association announced a
strike at Warsaw University and students started to occupy buildings, including the main building of the Faculty of Polish Philology.
And then came martial law during which all university classes were
suspended. Nevertheless, classes were continued both during the
sit-in strike and after the introduction of martial law. During the
occupation of the seat of the Faculty of Polish Philology, students
on strike organised classes in various optional subjects, whose format resembled a seminar-cum-rally. Several weeks after the introduction of martial law, university classes were relaunched in private houses. Held in conspiracy, their format combined elements of
seminars and consultations.
Such improvised classes delivered amid the intense atmosphere
of the sit-in strike as well as the almost intimate, quiet courses
taking place in conspiracy introduced a brand-new tone to didactic
work. After several months of a state of emergency at the university, we all knew that classes delivered at the Polish Culture Department would never be the same again, that they would never be
similar to courses taught before martial law and that the methodology employed by university teachers needed to be defined anew.
The mutual need for a broad application of workshops became apparent. This was the second major incentive driving the introduction of classes in Theatre Anthropology. And before the special line
of studies in culture animation was incorporated as a separate
specialization of the Polish Culture Department in the academic
year 1991/1992, the workshop format applied to classes in Theatre Anthropology, and especially outdoor silentoria, fulfilled avant
la lettre animation functions. In this sense, the specialization drew
heavily on the experience gained in this area.
3.
Classes in Theatre Anthropology have been continuously delivered for twenty years. Naturally, their functions and methodology
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have evolved over such a long period of time. The first decade was
marked by a dominance of workshop elements, whereas the second
decade saw the emergence of the specialization in culture animation, incorporating regular placements at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro and “Gardzienice” Centre for Theatrical Practices as fundamental elements, and eventually some experimental
works were relinquished. The workshop aspect of the seminar, however, had never been limited to experimental activities.
The contents of the seminar cover all issues related to theatrical anthropology, or the anthropology of performance. (The title
contains the traditional name coined before the aforementioned
scientific discussion about terminology began). Special focus is
attached to proto-theatrical phenomena, such as shaman rituals
and the cult of possession: shamanism, considered one of the core
manifestations of anthropogenesis, is both described in the context of ethnography and religious studies, as well as, or rather
mainly, in the aspect of paleoanthropology. Cults of possession are
also discussed in their contemporary form (mainly the Afro-Brazilian cult of candomblé and the Afro-Haitian voodoo cult), as well as
in their historical aspect (the Greek Dionysiac cult). A completely
different area is made up of issues related to ancient mystery cult,
analysed in the context of religious studies, psychology and anthropology (the concept of “persona” and the empirical development
of the “I” concept). The theory of performance focuses on the relationship between ritual and theatre from the genetic, modern and
functional standpoint (such as, for instance, the issue of “liminality” in rites de passage and “liminoidality” in art and entertainment). Key general anthropological issues include: body techniques
(mainly ritual dances as well as the relationship between performing and everyday techniques), the category of a person (“I” versus the performed character), ritualisation and game/play as a source of culture, drama/theatre aspects of mental and social life as
well as the function of performance in various cultural patterns.
Classes also tackle: works by pioneers of theatrical anthropology,
mainly Jean-Jacques Rousseau (and, by the way, in line with the
renown thesis of Lévi-Strauss – the pioneer of humanistic sciences as such), Friedrich Nietzsche, Antonin Artaud and George I.
Gurdjieff; non-European patterns of theatre and paratheatre performance models; various types of ethnological, anthropological and
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environmental research conducted by the makers of modern European and American theatre, mainly Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook,
Eugenio Barba and Włodzimierz Staniewski. These are, naturally,
only examples of issues discussed during classes, as their regular
review is not the goal of this study.
The workshop profile of classes in Theatre Anthropology is reflected by two eminent features of the seminar: its interdisciplinary content and translation activities.
Interdisciplinary content is distinctive feature of all anthropological reflection. It is the hallmark of theatre anthropology, and
even if its scope is limited to comparative theatre studies, it still
requires the collaboration of theatre and oriental language experts.
Throughout the wide area covered by theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance) the interdisciplinary nature of research is crucial. Ranging from ethology focusing on the ritualisation of primate behaviour, through paleoanthropology reconstructing Cro-magnon shamanistic practises, psychology, and especially psychology and structural and transactional analysis, ethnolinguistics, and particularly so-called ethnology of speech, microsociology building the theory of social roles and their performance in face-to-face situations, semiotics of culture researching
theatricalness and staging, to theatre studies and the philosophy
of culture investigating categories of game/play or drama. From
ethnography to folk studies dealing with the description and analyses of ritual performance to ethnology with its conception of
the performing aspect of various areas of culture, religious studies explaining animistic and mana cults, religions of enlightenment and conversion, to the history of culture investigating antiquity with the assistance of archaeology, philology and other auxiliary history-related branches of science. Cultural anthropology is
the mother discipline of theatrical anthropology (anthropology of
performance). Naturally, all studies in this area have their interdisciplinary aspect, and this transforms discussions of their contents into a practical activity. Being a relative young academic
discipline, cultural anthropology requires individual efforts. Classes in Theatre Anthropology inevitably reflect such an interdisciplinary approach. No content is left within the structure of the
original framework – the core goal always remains the shift into
an anthropological framework.
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During the initial stage, the interdisciplinary orientation of the
seminar contributes to the emergence and shaping of what Andrzej
Mencwel once referred to as the “anthropological imagination”, which
is the core and the pre-condition of all anthropological reflection. An
open anthropological imagination enables seminar students to search for the common reference-point of various studies in history,
religious studies, ethnography and social studies exploring the cult
of possession in ancient Greece or modern Brazil. Application of the
interdisciplinary approach enhances the range of available research
methods and offers an exciting cognitive perspective. And just as
anthropology never blurs the distintions between investigated cultures, the anthropological imagination does not blur the borderlines
between research disciplines, and never ends up as superficial amateurishness. Naturally, it only takes away the apparent certainty of
results obtained within areas closed to each other – “certainty”
that may be the result of a lack of knowledge of other research
methods and their outcomes. A researcher equipped with anthropological imagination, always activated when he/she sets off for a
journey across cultures and research areas, no longer practises
his/her own individual narrow discipline in the xenophobic ways applied before the journey. To some extent it sets him/her free of the
circle of narrow conditioning.
And if contemporary times have made us aware of how the mind
can become a captive of systems of thoughts – we have even started to fear the fixed, system-like elements of scientific discourse –
then this anthropological imagination may become useful in gaining
and/or consolidating scientific independence. Reluctant to give up
on its regular profile and strictness that are so typical for scientific enquires, anthropological research is yet not governed by firm
systems, thanks to its innate mobility. Scientists find it rather
easy to set themselves free from ideology, but breaking away from
the historical prejudices marking one’s own scientific discipline is a
tough experience. All humans need to break away from issues that
constrain and limit their own intellect.
The translation-oriented aspect of classes in Theatre Anthropology plays a fundamental role in maintaining the scientific discipline of research conducted during the course. This does not merely
mean that participants of classes investigate and discuss foreignlanguage papers, but involves the temporary transformation of the
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seminar into a cultural translation course, mainly focused on French
and English. Seminars have contributed to the development of draft
translations of studies focused on the cult of possession, as well
as a wide variety of cultural studies on performing reality. (Seminar-generated translations are mainly published in the “Dialog”
monthly). As we all know, the art of translation is governed by
strict rules, having an indisputable impact on the development of
general editing skills, including editing one’s own studies, and this
undoubtedly contributes to the enrichment of our knowledge of
methods used to build scientific discourse.
And anthropological discourse. Translation plays a fundamental
role in the comprehension process, what has been noticed in comparative studies for a long time and has stimulated anthropologists to draw substantial methodological conclusions. American cultural anthropology and French structural anthropology are strictly
related to linguistics; in his study entitled On Ethnographic SelfFashioning: Conrad and Malinowski, James Clifford presents an exquisite description of the role of the language and translation in anthropological discourse. Linguistic research, especially focused on an
area of the ethnography of speech, also plays a major role in theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance). In this context,
we may quote Clifford Geertz who said that the anthropologist
always translates, rewrites, and interprets a text on the basis of
another text.
The persistent efforts of translators may become a major activity for the subject. They offer an in-depth exploration of a certain
duality, which may appear to be a relationship at times: he/she
(with his/her manner of speech rooted in his/her cultural background) versus I (with my individual manner of speech also deeply rooted in my cultural background). This I–he/she relationship may evolve into an I–you relationship over time. The experienced I-you relationship is usually perceived as a reference to someone outside,
and may sometimes be better captured as an internal relationship
described as, for instance, an I–self relationship. This offers the
perfect momentum to discover the substantial duality of the subject. And this is exactly the anthropological cornerstone of both
theatrical anthropology and theatre anthropology. If anthropological reflection is a philosophy that sets off for a journey, then it is
philosophy that refuses to deny its supreme principle: “gnóthi se-
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autón” – discover yourself. Theatre anthropology and theatrical anthropology facilitate self-discovery within the subjective duality: the
I–character relationship. It is extremely helpful to capture the I–
you relationship as an internal liaison (an I–self relationship), as
duality is usually blurred during internal experience. It is much easier
to experience it when the second element is perceived by “I” as a
separate character. And therefore, all variations of cultural anthropology as well as theatrical anthropology contribute to the identification of the image of man – the image of oneself – abstracted
out of the contingencies of a specific culture: cultural diversity and
historical variability. And although this has created the foundation
of a brand-new hypothesis, it seems that the hypothesis may be
subject to experiments – experiencing the I–you relationship (I–ego)
results in a reversal of poles, where “I” turns out to be an ephemeral, culture-modelled subjectivity, and “you” (self) becomes a relatively constant subjectivity. Awareness of the ontological status of
theatrical characters and/or mythical characters performed in rites has here proved to be extremely useful.
Naturally, theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance) is not capable of identifying the role of speech in anthropogenesis by answering the question whether or not Homo erectus was
able to speak or whether a specimen of the Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens sapiens species employed speech during their meetings at all, and if so, what language they used for
communication. (Still, anthropology focuses on the consistency of
linguistic research – focused on the archaic profile of certain languages, such as, for instance, languages of African Bushmen and
Pygmy tribes – with the results of paleoanthropological research.
This is especially so given that both efforts are teamed up with
ethnographical research on the shamanism practised by those tribes). In addition, theatrical anthropology (anthropology of performance) often merely implies the existence of the pre-expressive
level – while theatre anthropology identifies it as its core working
hypothesis and makes an attempt at its experimental research.
Various experimental efforts carried as a part of classes in Theatre
Anthropology, mainly outdoor “silentoria”, were aimed at this very
goal.
“Silentoria” were held several times in a forest in the Warmia
region (the cost was always covered by the the participants). The
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journey to the forest was a response to the need for creating an
adequate environment for an experiment: taking participants away
from the mainstream of day-to-day activities and everyday interpersonal relations. The team-based profile of the “silentorium” was
to reinforce the participants’ internal discipline. Through the entire course of the experiment, all interpersonal contacts, mainly conversations, were cut down to minimum: speech was employed
exclusively to communicate instructions and critical information;
and no alternative communication methods were applied. This way,
performing various activities as a team, participants remained plunged in silence for the whole week, what reflects the meaning of the
term “silentorium”. The agenda was basically a replica of the agenda of the so-called second practical seminar of the Theatre of Sources dating back to 1982 (in delivering “silentoria” I was always
supported by Wojciech Chełmiński, a Japanese philologist and a
participant of this practical seminar). Specific activities required
average levels of fitness and were not exceptionally strenuous. Their
impact was felt by their rather painful repetition. During the experiment, all participants strove to remain alert for the longest period of time possible, and alertness as such was defined as paying
conscious and simultaneous attention to the inner and the outside
world. It was extremely important, or even most important, to
maintain alertness during intervals between particular activities,
meals or washing. Alertness was reinforced by hour-long “guards”,
held in the night in rounds besides sleeping participants. Some
activities were drastically static, other extremely dynamic – but all
of them required the very same level of alertness.
During one of the activities, relaxed participants simply lied down
on a flat surface with their eyes open for about an hour and a half.
The activity focused on backward and forward shift of attention to
the outside world – as indicated by the rhythm of breathing: breathe in and focus on the outside world, breathe out and concentrate on the inner world. The core problem encountered by participants was a continuous and rhythmic shift of attention, the fight
against sleeplessness and inconvenience produced by remaining still
for a relatively long time. The activity was delivered in a closed
room.
Another activity was delivered outdoors, between trees on
the edge of the forest at dusk, and lasted about an hour. Stan-
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ding straight and still with slightly bent knees, participants were
turning very slowly, almost unnoticeably, around their axis. The
activity focused on horizontal shift of sight – point by point in
changing light. The most difficult part was a maintenance of a
flowing continuity in such slow movements, which proved to be
tough as it was darkening and the body was to remain erect all
the time.
There was another activity delivered in an empty closed barn.
The activity lasted about two hours and participants were required
to move all the time. They could move slowly or fast, smoothly or
rapidly (walk, run, jump, whirl, roll and so on), but movements could
not be automatic or highly sophisticated – it was their very body
that was supposed to invent them. The participants were banned
from quoting movements they had learnt, imitating movements of
other participants or moving together with other team members.
The activity focused on continuous motion, increased awareness of
the organic aspect of motion as well as attention to the movements of other participants to prevent bumping into each other or
pushing. Continuity of motion and assuring an accident-free activity proved to be the most difficult part. Few participants managed
to achieve truly organic motion.
The curriculum of the “silentorium” covered several other activities, including a highly complex activity from the technical point of
view, called Motions (also known under this name from later Grotowski projects: Objective Drama and The Ritual Arts ). Some activities were delivered in the course of the academic year in university rooms cleared of furniture (laying down with backward and forward shift of attention focused on the inner and the outside word,
as well as whirling round one’s axis with assistance – elements
adopted from activities practised by “Gardzienice”), as well as outdoors in the suburbs (the Motions), but these acitivities provided
only a faded impression of the “silentorium”. During the week-long
course of the “silentorium”, remaining alert for a relatively long
time, their participants gained experimentally something resembling conscious awareness, in a sense that they managed to capture and maintain the functional “I” that observed their own conscious “I” in its endless activity. This outcome of the experiment
was valuable as it was achieved on the pre-expressive level, more
basic than the social level of operations of an individual.
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An additional outcome of the “silentorium”, which many participants perceived as extremely important, was an exceptionally sharp
perception of all details of ordinary interpersonal relations immediatedly upon completion of the experiment – already on the way
back on the train. Students felt as if they suddenly noticed interpersonal communication as such and were even able to identify its
channels. The familiar, everyday life participants were returning to
resembled the image of the life of an alien culture; putting on a new
skin – on the expressive level, getting used to to speech – was like
transformation into another character. This can be surely called an
anthropological experience.
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Erdm ute Sobaszek, W
acław Sobaszek
Wacław
F IELDWORK PROJECT
Questions about the theatrical craft:
• What are the components of the whole called theatre?
• How can a word become a beginning of a theatre?
• How can music serve the creation of new theatrical visions?
Questions about the relation between theatre activity and traditional culture:
• What is the significance today of reconstruction and continuation of tradition for the theatre?
• Can the theatre of the future be inspired by traditional culture?
• How does one arrive at a living folk culture?
• How can we define the religious connotations of artistic search
in a new way?
• Is village theatre necessary?
One more question about the word:
How can we find a word emerging from a background? A word
from a non-word, from emptiness, silence, from the background of
constantly undescribed, unwritten, naive culture, from the background of a collective suffering, the struggle of conscience, a religiously-coloured psychosis wanting to cure itself.
To look for the word where it has yet to be.
These broad questions, frequently leading to controversies, bringing out emotions and resentments, can be taken up practically
on only one common ground: a school. It is school that gives us
Erdmute and Wacław Sobaszek: founders of Village Theatre at Węgajty (near Olsztyn), whose theatre activity is to constitute an organic part of life of the local community, and should be rooted in tradition and custom; efforts of the theatre also cover
scientific and research work.
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the possibility of focused, conscientious work, of a fresh approach, with a an ever new young team, a considerable reserve of
power, sensitivity, a bias-free attitude, naturally open and critical.
W INTER
SCHOOL
The workshop is situated within the context of traditional performances and rituals of the calendar cycle: from the beginning to
the end of the winter period. The workshop activities involve learning forms and motifs, especially of two main phenomena: carol
performances of the Karpaty region and Easter door-to-door performances in the Polish-Lithuanian-Belarussian borderland. The aim
of the workshop is to prepare the students for participation in
trips to those geographical regions.
We have been dealing with door-to-door performances practically for 12 years now. What have we arrived at? As we are noticing more and more, that is a diverse field. At the moment the
most important and helpful thing are the observations of Jan Dorman, who analysed door-to-door performances in the sixties and
seventies, and considered it to be a sort of commedia dell’arte :
characters and situations are set but a big portion of improvisation adds a certain taste and energy.
Learning the language of theatre is the first and main task of a
workshop participant. Through gaining elementary skills of theatre
language the new student will be able to arrive at other meanings
of door-to-door performances, such as ritual, historical, and local
meanings, during the last stage of the training cycle, i.e. during
the field trip. That unique “cultural melting pot” contains a great
variety of traditions, beliefs, rituals, and languages that can only
be learnt when a workshop participant turns into an actor and
door-to-door performer in the right moment.
The theatrical door-to-door performance language consists of a
specific yet constantly renewed set of motifs. A workshop participant has the opportonity to choose several characters and masks
depending on their predisposition. From the very beginning they
learn to suddenly assume a role and change roles. We emphasise
improvisation, changeability, being “in a stream”, but by constantly
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returning to steady motifs we teach a careful attitude towards
those motifs, which are steady and unchanged.
In this way we introduce young beginners into the practice of
door-to-door performances. They even include persons that have
never come across a theatre workshop before. Such persons can
also take their first steps in the area of music. Door-to-door performances give great opportunities for musical initiation, which refers especially to singing, but also to playing instruments. Often
the first contact with an instrument made during door-to-door
performances is so strong that it later helps quick progress in the
independent study of the instrument.
Another very important advantage of the experience as a student and door-to-door performer is getting to know the theatre
audience – the owners of particular households. They are the cocreators of the environment through their reactions, behaviour,
frequently fitting within the convention of an unwritten scenario of
a visit. It is only through their participation that the purpose of the
performance is achieved. One can also observe here an element of
field research, learning songs, memories of the visited persons.
The need to overcome technical obstacles, the performance of a
variety of practical and organisational works by all participants is
also of a great cognitive significance.
A prelude to the trip are usually 2-3 workshop sessions of 3
days each. Each of them involves similar forms of work:
Learning traditional dances. The work on dances frequently
fulfils the role of a warm-up at the beginning of a workshop session,
however its meaning for the entire enterprise is a much wider one:
during a celebration the dances are the simplest language of communication between us and the hosts, they are also a source of
theatrical improvisations exceeding the scenario of a performance.
Actor’s workshop. Its form varies depending on the needs of the
student group, their preparation, etc. The point of departure are
motion exercises. The work aims at creating a space for the words
which build the performance. It is not, however, an acting workshop.
Voice work. Its aim is to overcome or rather avoid vocal barriers. In our work they are frequently an integral part of a theatrical workshop. The workshops of the Winter School in 1999 included separate sessions based on breathing exercises and musical
improvisation.
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Learning songs: Polish and Ukrainian carols, Easter songs, the
so-called “wołoczebne” songs and Ukrainian and Belarussian “wieśnianki”. The point of departure for creating the repertoire were
the songs brought in from field trips; we also use ethnographic
papers, Oskar Kolberg’s collections, etc. It is not only a matter of
conveying particular songs to the students (the more, the better)
but also a certain conscientiousness and discipline in their performance – so that they can become a clear language.
Rehearsing a “household performance”. The basic theatrical
material are the motifs of a Carpathian carol: the goat scene, the
beheading of Herod, the scene with the Jew – we assume that they
are well known in their outline form. We supplement them with the
Warmia stork puppet and other, ever new characters. For the Easter
door-to-door performances we prepare the so-called “oracyjki” –
frequently very complex rhetoric forms, which contain among other
thing holiday wishes and requests for gifts.
Each rehearsal of a household performance begins with a preliminary phase – learning several traditional dances, i.e. various forms
of “polka”, “oberek”, Lithuanian and Jewish dances. The next step
is working on a window performance. During the field trip it plays a
special role in that it announces the arrival of door-to-door performers, it is frequently performed with the accompaniment of an
instrument, e.g. a shepherd’s horn. During the rehearsal the song
is performed many times, frequently when walking.
For the work on the scenes of “Goat”, “Herod”, etc., a small
area is isolated within the theatre room to imitate the crammed
interior of a cottage house. The work principle is a simple one, the
only “instruction” is the performance of the scene by one of the
moderators without verbal commentary. Such a fragment is a signal for a student to make an instant decision to “take up” a given
role. They run out of the circle of “viewers” sitting around the space and leave the room only to come back disguised as the Goat,
Gypsy, Herod, etc., and perform the incantation, text fragment,
gesture, or dance foreseen in the screenplay. The situation is repeated several times so that every participant has the opportunity
to perform a given task several times. This contains an element of
a party game: each outstanding performance e.g. a witty one or a
very expressive one provokes the others to develop their own approach, so as to do as well as their predecessor. The moderators
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should be cautious and reserved: it is about the student’s own
activity, about each of them creating “their own” Goat, “their own”
Herod, etc., gradually becoming familiar with the outfit, the props,
and their own adaptations. The most important outfits and props
derive from country door-to-door performer groups: Szemel and
Goat were used by Węgajty performers until the mid 70s, the Gypsy’s outfit belonged to the “Dziady” group of Żywiec. The director’s remarks are limited to correcting mistakes in performing a
given role: so that the antique Goat’s head is not damaged in a fall
and that Herod’s mask be appropriately lighted with a wooden torch,
etc. Developing an appropriate rhythm of the sequence of scenes,
on the other hand, requires a lot of effort, a frequent obstacle is
the acting (“psychological”) attitude of the students towards their
role or plain sluggishness.
During an evening and subsequent rehearsals the length of performance fragments increases gradually, however the goal is to go
beyond scripts: theatrical dances and performances of all masks
signal the transition to the next phase of winter celebrations, to
the carnival.
Participation in the workshop does not require special skills,
however, it is important for the realisation of the field trip that a
certain proportion of pure beginners and more experienced participants be preserved. We try to select the participants that have
consciously decided to go through the entire cycle: the workshop
and the field trip as it is only the participation in the door-to-door
performances that qualifies for a “credit” for the cycle. A door-todoor performance is not a purely cognitive experience – from the
point of view of the persons visited it can even be defined as a deed,
a service. Therefore the participants are required to have a sense
of responsibility and the readiness to make a big physical effort.
One needs to have in mind that arrival of a group of “aliens” to a
village and their activity there is also perceived as a provocation.
Maintaining a steady, mutual contact is thus a safety requirement.
The fastest way of communication in case of a mistake or sluggishness and inattention in our practice has turned out to be a… poke.
During the door-to-door performances – be it at Easter or at
Christmas – we aim to visit all the households in the village, regardless of its internal divisions. That has turned out to be very difficult, sometimes even impossible. Frequently, behind the doors of
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households that were seemingly closed to us the most precious
meetings took place. The closing of the entire tour is usually a
dance party for everybody, including visitors from the city, less
advanced students. Another form of extending the door-to-door
performance experience can be participation in a session of the
Theatre Seminar in Węgajty. In the recent years winter sessions
were an opportunity to take up subsequent workshop activities, to
transform a door-to-door performance into a show of Ostatki, zapusty (Polish celebrations that close the carnival period) – a syncretic show. That is a open dramatic form, reconstructed each
year with a different group of students. The workshop activities
and the shows are accompanied by supplementary forms: academic talks, film projections, exhibitions, discussions.
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M ariusz Gołaj
W ORKSHOP SESSIONS
OF THE “GARDZIENICE”
CENTRE OF THEATRICAL PRACTICES
Young people in cities must find a place where imagination is stirred not only through conventional school
methods but also through participation in artistic and
social work, providing spiritual values and setting the
highest professional requirements.
Such a place must be excluded from urban context
where everything is done hastily and superficially.
It must assure the possibility of concentration and
experiencing its environmental values. It must be “a
new natural art and educating environment” where
effort of being is the beginning of creation.
Staying at such a place should be a training for the imagination. It should build up the feeling of internal freedom.
Fragment of “Memorial” by Włodzimierz Staniewski
submitted to the Ministry of Culture in 1996
In the early nineties the Polish Culture Department (later: Institute of Polish Culture) of Warsaw University and the Centre of
Theatrical Practices “Gardzienice” signed a close didactic co-operation agreement.
It was agreed that every year as part of its programme, the
Polish Culture Department would delegate groups of students to
Mariusz Gołaj: actor of the “Gardzienice” group since the beginning of the theatre’s
activity, leader of theatrical workshops, co-organiser of “Gardzienice” Theatre Academy.
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Gardzienice to attend performances and artistic events organised
by the Centre. Students selected from those groups were to participate in workshop sessions, lasting a few days, prepared and
conducted by the Centre employees. Important projects of “Gardzienice” would be discussed at sessions and scientific meetings
organised at the University.
I used to co-ordinate the programme and logistics of all “Gardzienice” workshop sessions, organised for students of the Polish
Culture Department/Institute in the nineties. There were a dozen
or so of them, held once or twice a year and taking usually 3-4
days. Over 200 students took part in them.
Many students went to Gardzienice on a regular basis, even for
several years. Workshop sessions were for them the beginning of a
longer learning process. Students took part in the following projects carried out in Gardzienice in the years 1994-97: “Semester
of Theatrical Practices”, “Courses for Culture Animators and Instructors” and since 1998 in the activities of the Academy of Theatrical Practices.
The Academy of Theatrical Practices is currently the basic didactic project of the “Gardzienice” Centre. Initiated by Włodzimierz
Staniewski it is the summing up of former didactic experiences of
the Centre and activity in the field of theatre (in a broad sense) and
culture animation. The project is supposed to cover two years’
didactic process – students come to Gardzienice every month for
the period of five to seven days. There are field sessions organised.
The programme’s assumptions, formulated by Włodzimierz Staniewski, mention the specific character of the Academy which may
be summed up as follows:
• combining the possibilities of repertoire theatre, experimental
theatre and indigenous folk production;
• teaching theatre with the use of methods characteristic of traditional cultures;
• drawing from the deepest human and spiritual values through
work with words, music, movement and theatrical space;
• promoting and discovering archaisms containing a common, universal tradition;
• building bridges between different cultures; also between socalled “low culture” and “high culture”, since the most valuable
cultural production has its origin in such a combination.
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Classes of the Academy are run by employees of the “Gardzienice” Centre and their long-term co-operators, academic specialists
(from Poland and abroad), outstanding theatre practitioners, experts
and representatives of traditional cultures. Classes focus on the
theory and history of theatre and aesthetics, archaism, indigenous
folk cultures, rites, ritual arts and ceremonies, music, word and
space in theatre and actor’s means of expression.
Since 1998 a dozen or so students of the Polish Culture Institute have taken part in the Academy of Theatrical Practices. They
are the main part of the group of young people selected from all
over Poland.
The reflections presented below do not refer directly to the
project of the Academy of Theatrical Practices; they focus on the
first stage of didactic work – workshop sessions, lasting a few
days, run by the “Gardzienice” Centre for students of the Institute
of Polish Culture.
A RCHIVES
I look through the files from the last 10 years – documents
concerning workshop sessions with students of the Institute of
Polish Culture.
I touch the rough folder from the nineties, I leaf through the
notes, records, participants’ letters, time schedules of activities,
reports. Tens of names, some of them repeated many times. Records dividing participants into groups working with voice and songs,
practising with partners late at night; groups leaving for early morning exercises, in autumn, spring, summer; groups planting shrubs
in the park, cleaning the Hut before music classes, raking up leaves
on their evening jogging path, setting up scenography constructions
for the performance. Medical records with participants’ health problems: somebody in the third month of pregnancy, somebody with a
spine problem, vision defect, knee failure – what a responsibility.
Records dividing students into groups doing their evening jogging,
persons in need of special, permanent care; jogging route – the longer one, in the direction of Wola Gardzienicka, the second hill to the
left, through the woods, then along a sand path next to the big oak
tress and a chapel, next to an orchard; the way back through the
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Ravine, in complete darkness. Sets of exercises in chosen places.
Yellowed pages, removed years ago from the kitchen door, with names of persons responsible for preparing breakfast, brining wood
for fireplaces and coal for stoves, persons preparing audio-visual
equipment for film and slide projections in the Hut. Lists of persons
cleaning the Carmina room, the Awwakum room, the Mill, preparing
their rubber boots for the Expedition along muddy roads, cleaning
the clearance in the woods where the training sessions took place.
Lists of tasks to be done before performances – ironing costumes,
fixing candles on “Awwakum ’s breads” (element of scenography and
one of the sources of light in the play Life of Protopope Awwakum ),
preparing torches for Carmina Burana, taking care of the horse and
his owner so that they do not get lost before the performance,
taking care of the local “drinkers” during the performance, around
the Outbuilding. Instructions for students concerning their discussions with the village people (preparing topics, choosing persons to
be involved, “elegant, festive attires”).
I recall the faces of people with whom we worked; with some of
them for many hours, with others for many months. On the meadows at Gardzienice, in the hall, in the Hut, in the Mill. On scientific sessions in Lublin, in Warsaw. During Expeditions – to the Ukraine, Gotland, Ireland or America.
Many students of the Institute who started their theatrical
experience here, invite us today to see their own projects, as they
say, drawing inspiration from the sessions at Gardzienice.
W ORKING
WITH THE BODY
After getting out of the bus and changing into casual, loose
clothes (students were asked to bring such clothes), session participants (20-30 persons) and the tutors (5-7 persons) ran from
the Outbuilding (seat of the Centre) along a steep path, through
the park, onto the Gardzienice meadow. That was the place where
the first classes took place.
Back touching back for the first time, backbone touching backbone; lifting the partner, bringing rhythm to practised elements,
first hop, first jump, sudden flight, both feet taking off the ground,
for a moment, losing contact with the ground to be suspended in
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the air. Touching the partner – giving him the courage to do something he has never done before, holding him up so that he can jump
down safely and softly and can proceed smoothly to another element, quickly, without having time to worry “whether he is up to
the task”, without thinking “whether his costume suits him”.
The exercises were chosen carefully, they were strenuous, they
were a challenge for the participants but with the necessary precautions, there was the absolute guarantee they could be done
safely. Anyway, the tutor could suggest an easier or more difficult
set of exercises; there were always exercise versions for those
shy ones and those more physically fit, practising basketball, artistic gymnastics or capoeira .
Insignificant, apparently incidental facts, brought the most relevant questions: how to prevent students from getting too muddy, or if they are already soiled with mud, how to make them accept
the fact that in the country, on the meadows (in spring or autumn,
after rain) mud is an inherent part of reality, and the only thing is to
be careful enough not to slip on it; what to do to avoid transgressing intimacy, to avoid embarrassment, to make sure that touching
leads partners to “reciprocity”, “sympathy” – provides them with
the sense and guarantee of the suggested theatrical journey; what
to do to make sure that young persons are not afraid of being
tired, that they are not ashamed of being tired, not terrified, to
make them feel that physical effort is a natural consequence of
movement, to prevent them from struggling against precipitated
breath, wet skin, sweating (which may lead them to worry about
its smell) how to convince them that after the first feeling of being
tired, after warming up, you may continue working and then only
when your body is aroused your work is easier, safer, more interesting, and you are happier working; how to convince them not to be
ashamed of this happiness when they would rather put on a mask
of “distant, educated urban youth” expecting to experience something theatrical, academic and cult; how to avoid participants’ commentaries during exercises – words, questions, worries, coquetry,
giggles – how to avoid such “escapes from the gist”, how to avoid
spoiling work with idle talk, losing time and energy.
Training at Gardzienice requires full involvement – involvement of
your mind, body, will and spirit. In an open space, on the meadows,
in the woods, in an orchard, the training is supposed to break down
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the known, to search for new, fresh and provocative body movements and partner relations. Its spontaneity and energy may remind us of children’s or animals’ play, but it is supposed to based
on precision, control, rigour – it has to be cheerful, cognitive, recurrent, safe and creative.
The first training session with students on the meadows provides
the answer – or at least points at further searching for answers – to
a number of questions which have to be answered before work can be
continued: more subtle, more theatrical work, work on the stage.
W ORKING
WITH THE VOICE
How are we to sing with so many experts and professionals around – on the stage, on TV, in video clips, in concert halls... And what
for? Is singing necessary for us to live? I sang for the last time in my
childhood, I was reprimanded and I was told to sit quiet. So I sit quiet.
Such explanations and excuses were quite common. Too common when we accepted them. However, it is a rule at Gardzienice
not to accept weaknesses.
Practice is the answer to many questions. If, step by step, we
sing without “swank” with unceremonious obviousness we invite
people to sing with us, then apart from those untalented ones who
sing the loudest out of happiness, you may soon get surprising
results.
For example:
• start with individual sounds, answering the instrument’s sound,
to its crying, moaning, laughing; start with “dirty” sounds, with
many sounds, loud and quiet ones, a whole range of whispers,
rasps and whistles;
• repeat a few sounds following the flute, as in a play, imitating them,
playing with them, pretending to be them… and sing a melody;
• be a part of the chorus – what a pleasure; it is like singing with
everybody, at full blast, at a Christmas Mass;
• listen to others singing so as not to sing too loudly, not to drown
out others;
• sing being close to your partner, together with him, mutually,
almost with his breath; only then set out for another, harmonious sound;
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155
• be in antiphon, with the partner, with the instrument; try to sing
the remaining part, lead, complete.
What a joy to see the happiness of people singing... “Singing for
those who dance and singing them; dancing for those who sing and
dancing them” – as Włodzimierz Staniewski says.
E LEMENTS
OF THE
E XPEDITION
At the beginning “Gardzienice” made Expeditions to see “the
natural environment of the theatre” – they made Expeditions through the mud. Mud is the Expeditions’ attribute – in Poland, in central Europe, but not only here. It is a natural, fundamental obstacle
you have to overcome to get to your destination. Get there on foot
since the regular bus will not get through the mud.
Twenty years ago, behind the mud, at a place where asphalt
roads did not reach, where there was no television, people gathered in fire stations because the theatre came to them. On a muddy
square there was a performance – what a an “odd thing”: “they
went on a cart and hit the horn and then a man took a lady out
pulling her hair; they jumped over the fire, and this lady stood on
one man and then fell, like the Virgin Mary from the heaven, but
they managed to catch her. And they sang, in various languages, in
Polish and in English, and in Jewish and in our language, local language they also sang. So we sang there too.”
Many people from cities, many “literate people” travelled with
us in those days – there are records.
One day of the workshop session with students from the Institute of Polish Culture was devoted to the Expedition.
Is it possible to contain the experience of the Expeditions in one
short day, especially a muddy day? Passing from the Hut behind the
river to Wola Gardzienicka, to the mill in Wygnaniowice and back to
our Mill (which no longer exists – it burn out in unexplained circumstances), and finally to the Awwakum room and the Carmina room?
Drawing a cart, singing, practising, working, jumping through “blazing
fire” and flying over the meadow on the “structure” from The Evening
Performance, eating bread, cheese, jam and onion, listening to a few
stories and watching archived films? Is it possible to contain the experience of the Expeditions in a short, one-day course?
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I am deeply convinced that the Expedition with students, organised within the framework of the session and following a beaten
track, did make sense. While travelling we witnessed facts, both
facts related to the road and artistic facts, created by us. Because such wandering was always like a performance and the “facts” –
and not only the words spoken about the Expedition – serve as
reference for future reflections.
Some students treated this whole-day journey as an ersatz of
the true Expedition, they wanted to do it “for real”… But there is
no true Expedition that would be better from all other worse ones.
The Expedition through Gardzienice was “real” and we, and especially they, were “really” a part of it. So if we performed the Expedition tasks (joint practice, singing, preparing etudes, marching,
taking care of one another, drawing a cart, having a meal, serving
others), then we would make another Expedition – to the Mill, to
the Carmina room, another attempt at “looking for the familliar
among strangers”, this time not among villagers but among students of the Institute of Polish Culture.
P ERFORMANCES ,
LECTURES , REVIEWS
An important issue in planning the agenda of the session was
maintaining the balance between practice and theory. It was important for the participants to touch the “alphabet” of the actor’s
workshop, as well as to transfigure it into theoretical and intellectual discourse related to the performance and “Gardzienice” philosophy of creation. Both the experience and explanation of the ecological aspect of our activity were significant.
This purpose was achieved through lectures and seminars with
W łodzimierz Staniewski, shows of archived materials, films, slide
films, publications, as well as meetings and discussions.
Work and life in Gardzienice is strictly, sometimes painfully interrelated with the environment. This follows from the assumptions formulated at the beginning of our road. Obviously, after almost twenty five
years, after fundamental political, economic and cultural transformation in the Polish country, in another reality, in different period of our
life, we are not fanatic in our adherence to the rules defined many
years ago; however, our fundamental message has not changed.
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Search for the “natural environment” took the form of practising theatre ecology – this refers both to the place where we live
(house, garden, village) and to the condition of our profession: theatre. This refers to creative inspirations and patterns taken from
nature and indigenous cultures, and from tradition of this land and
the land of our neighbours, including those neighbours living far
away. This also refers to our education and our didactic activity.
As is always the case in the theatre and often in life, things find
expression in details. Taking care of the house, of our natural environment, of the workplace, of the partners is the essential message
– that’s why the guests are asked to leave the place in the same
condition as upon arrival. That’s why the students are impelled to
wash floors, rake up leaves and set up scenography, that’s why they
are taught silence and singing and that it is effort and not idleness
which is the inherent characteristic of creation. That there is no
metaphysics without physics, no spirituality without practice.
The crowning of the students’ stay were the performances of
the Centre: Life of Protopope Awwakum , Carmina Burana , Metamorphoses and the final meeting with the tutors together with an
analysis of the session. Seen for the second time, the performances showed how simple exercises and practices of the actor’s
workshop are transfigured into the performance’s language – how
they are joined in études, choreographic arrangements, musical
and movement compositions, and to which transformations this
simple alphabet, experienced by the students in practice, was subject before becoming a performance.
Before they left, we induced participants to write down “reports” from the sessions at Gardzienice, thus obliging them to
verbalise and analyse the experiences and problems encountered
during their work. These reflections are, to a large extent, inspired
by such reports.
P ERSONAL
PLOT
How should we teach? There are so many patterns. Is it necessary to base on my personal experience?
While teaching, should I speak or be silent? Words often mislead
the participants and focus their attention on rhetoric figures, dri-
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ve away their energy, force them to listen with their ears alone and
ask with their lips, and not to breathe, sing and dance in full.
Should I teach through using patterns to be copied, using mimesis or rather by giving time for the individual expression of participants? Let’s remember that we have only 3-4 days and I want to
include so many aspects of the work, what can only be outlined.
Should I correct the actions of students, question their mistakes, or even “bite” painfully sometimes, or should rather I accept
the invention of practising students, their good will, youthful passion and lack of knowledge – closing my eyes to their mistakes, even
when they lead to misunderstanding, distort practice and make a
caricature out of it?
Should I use the benchmark of our own artistic achievements,
indecision and doubts… should I require so much? Or should I rather accept the new style, give a few performances, kindle the fire
and give up the so-called ethos and the rest of this long story…
since everybody will follow their own path anyway: time, circumstances and personal determination will put them in the place they
belong?
Should I remember the person I was when I was young? My
teaching experiments, my gurus, all these elations, exaltations,
errors, mistakes so unnecessary and needless, all these patterns
and films it is so difficult to get rid of today, which you recall with
sentiment and mystification? How to protect young people against
them?
Should I reveal the truth about the actor’s condition to those
young people – the hardships connected with this ill-fated profession, its humiliations and elations, its obscure, night and day apogeic perspective, this continuous swing between heaven and hell
and treading the soil: following those irreversible, unusual and often
unhygienic tracks which might lead to fulfilment?
Or should I have it all carefully balanced, ordered, perfected and
appear as a classical, musical and academic, curbed… madman?
Or should I share the condition of jurodiwy who has gone astray
so many times and who is really on fire?
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W ork
shops organised within
orkshops
the studies in “Culture Anim ation
”
ation”
C ulture organisation and local cultures:
Krzysztof Czyżewski (“Borderland” Centre in Sejny) Culture of dialogue (2000/2001)
Wojciech Krukowski (Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw)
Active culture institutions (1991/1992)
Janusz Marek (Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw) Culture
management (1992/1993, 1993/1994, 1994/1995, 1995/1996,
1996/1997, 1997/1998, 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001,
2001/2002)
Mirosław Pęczak Alternative forms of communication (1991/1992,
1992/1993, 1993/1994, 1995/1996, 1996/1997, 1998/1999)
Bohdan Skrzypczak (Local Activity Support Centre in Warsaw) Culture organiser as an animator of local community (2000/2001,
2001/2001)
Roch Sulima Anthropology of everyday life (1991-1992, 1992-1993,
1993/1994, 1994/1995, 1995/1996, 1996/1997, 1997/1998,
1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001)
Jan Wojciechowski (Institute of Culture) Contemporary cultural
policies (2000/2001, 2001/2002)
T he word in culture:
Tomasz Burek Literary critic’s workshop (1993/1994)
Andrzej Drawicz Literary critic’s workshop (1994/1995)
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Tadeusz Drewnowski Literary critic’s workshop (1995/1996)
Grzegorz Godlewski Translation workshop (1996/1997, 1997/1998,
1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2001)
Henryk Grynberg Creative writing workshop (1993/1994)
Józef Hen Creative writing workshop (1995/1996)
Tadeusz Komendant Literary critic’s workshop (1996/1997)
Jerzy Lisowski Translation workshop (1991/1992)
Tomasz Łubieński Creative writing workshop (1998/1999)
Małgorzata Łukasiewicz Translation workshop (1991/1992, 1992/
1993)
Piotr Matywiecki Creative writing workshop (1992/1993)
Andrzej Mencwel Literary critic’s workshop (1991/1992, 1992/
1993)
Marek Nowakowski Creative writing workshop (1996/1997)
Marek Przybylik Journalistic workshop (1994/1995, 1995/1996,
1996/1997, 1997/1998, 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001,
2001/2002)
Stanisław Siekierski Book handling institutions (1991/1992, 1992/
1993, 1993/1994, 1994/1995, 1995/1996, 1996/1997, 1997/
1998, 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2002)
Andrzej Szczypiorski Creative writing workshop (1991/1992)
Małgorzata Szpakowska Editor’s workshop (1994/1995, 1995/
1996, 1997/1998, 1998/1999)
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T heatre in culture:
Wojciech Dudzik Theatre work analysis (1992/1993, 1993/1994)
Wojciech Dudzik Alternative theatre in Poland (1993/1994)
Leszek Kolankiewicz Theatre anthropology (1991/1992, 1992/1993,
1993/1994, 1994/1995, 1995/1996, 1996/1997, 1997/1998,
1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2002)
Jarosław Ostaszkiewicz Theatre workshop (1992/1993, 1993/
1994)
Włodzimierz Staniewski Directing workshop (1995/1996)
Edward Wojtaszek Direction – animation (2001/2002)
F ilm
and audio-visual media in culture:
Seweryn Kuśmierczyk Film analysis (1991/1992, 1992/1993, 1993/
1994, 2000/2001)
Marcel Łoziński Documentary film workshop (1995/1996, 1996/
1997)
Mirosław Pęczak New media (1995/1996)
Juliusz Sokołowski Photographic workshop (1995/1996, 1996/
1997, 1997/1998, 1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/
2002)
Konrad Szołajski Film and TV Direction (1993/1994)
Andrzej Titkow Film workshop (1997/1998)
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Krzysztof Zanussi Film workshop (1994/1995)
M usic in culture:
Mieczysław Litwiński Self-tuning (2000/2001)
Jacek Ostaszewski Sound and silence workshop (1997/1998)
Roman Jenenko, Tatiana Sopiłka (“Drevo” Group) Traditional singing
workshop (1998/1999)
Jan Bernad, Monika Mamińska (“Muzyka Kresów” Foundation) Traditional singing workshop (1998/1999)
E ducation through art:
Janusz Byszewski, Maria Parczewska (Centre for Contemporary
Arts), Designing creative situations (1996/1997, 1997/1998,
1998/1999, 1999/2000, 2000/2001, 2001/2002)
Urszula Kochanowska, Reading pictures (2000/2001, 2001/2002)
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T HE “BORDERLAND – OF ARTS,
CULTURES, NATIONS”
FOUNDATION AND CENTRE
The “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations” Foundation and
Centre were established on the turn of 1990. The founders consisted of young people active in innovative artistic and animation
work in different cultural environments and fields. The Foundation
was brought into existence during the “Journey to the East”, several months of exploration of the Kaszuby region by an international
group of artists, animators, scientists and students who searched for new forms of cultural creativity and social expression through participation in workshops, theatre performances, lectures,
discussions, singing and playing music. The Foundation founders –
of whom the essential members still continue to be Małgorzata
and Krzysztof Czyżewski, Bożena and Wojciech Szroder – were looking for a suitable place to house their headquaters and become a
convenient environment for the artistic and cultural activities they
were planning. They discovered this place in Sejny, where at the
beginning of 1991 the “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations”
Centre was created.
The history of the project has been related by Krzysztof Czyżewski – the president of the Foundation and the current Centre
Director – in the essay published below, entitled Odd-believers . It is
enough to say that the primary objective from the very beginning
was to explore and animate the borderland cultural traditions through work on the new forms of their contemporary existence. As
time passed, the challenges of the multi-cultural region made them
subordinate their own artistic creativity to “the borderland issues,
revitalising small homelands, intercultural dialogue, tolerance oriented education, the attitude of the young towards tradition, arti-
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stic work with children and youth”. The actions oriented towards
the problems and needs of the local community have always been
related to deep cultural interests in the Lithuanian, Bialorussian,
Jewish and Gypsy cultures, which offered the multicultural traditions of this and other regions in Central and Eastern Europe.
In this space we can find the following long-term and cyclical
programmes and projects implemented by “Borderland”: “Memory
of the Old Age”, “Meeting a Stranger – the virtue of tolerance”,
Borderland Cultures Documentation Centre, Eastern and Central
Europe Forum, Class of Cultural Heritage in the Sejny secondary
school, the Sejny Theatre founded by the youth from Sejny (including the band) and different programmes addressed to children:
starting from the cycle “Home – Nest – Temple” to “Sejny Chronicles”. For several years within the “Borderland” there has been a
publishing house (apart from books, it also issues the quarterly
“Krasnogruda”) and a film studio.
The bonds of the Polish Culture Department, then the Institute
of Polish Culture, with the “Borderland” are strong and tight, since
they are rooted in times preceding the foundation of the Centre.
Institute employees are still members of the “Borderland” Foundation Council. Thus, when we brought to life the academic specialization “Culture Animation”, which roughly coincided with the beginnings of the “Borderland”, it was clear that having similar needs
and judgements “Borderland” would become one of the first and
most prominent our partners. As part of this co-operation, “Borderland” has been organising, since 1993, annual special training
for our students in order to show them the different activities
undertaken by this institution, to present to them the idea and
practical aspects of culture animation as performed by the “Borderland”, which is so close to our convictions.
Training is followed up and continued at the Borderland School,
which has existed for several years. By combining theory with practice, programme inspiration with training specific skills, laboratory
and workshop classes with visits to different centres in Central
and Eastern Europe featuring their own original cultural specificities, the students go through all the phases of the animator’s
work and finally develop their own animation projects.
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K rrzysztof
zysztof Czyżewski
O DD-BELIEVERS
… the sense of possible reality should be valued higher
than the sense of real possibilities.
Robert Musil
1.
A story of the turbulent epoch that started after the fall of
the Berlin wall; a story told from a distance of ten years, during
which we quickly grew out of the joyful “childhood” of the breakthrough time; a story of an everyday and artistic life, perceived not
from the perspective of a big cultural centre, but from the perspective of a remote province; such a story can be started as
follows…
In Sejny, a small town of abundant traditions, “at the end of the
world” (as they used to say when there was a USSR border running nearby, where there was the back of the beyond), halfway between a Polish and Lithuanian community centre (only established
recently), in the street renamed from the “Red Army” to “Piłsudski”, almost opposite to the “bishop’s palace”, in the vicinity of the
Town Hall on one side and the district office on the other, with the
Krzysztof Czyżewski: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Studies at Adam Mickiewicz
University in Poznań; upon graduation he collaborated with the “Gardzienice” theatre
and the journal “Czas Kultury”; in Suwałki region since 1991, where he founded “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations” Foundation in Sejny; he initiated a variety of educational, theatre and cultural programmes related to the cultural borderland as well
as Central and Eastern Europe.
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consulate of the Republic of Lithuania nearby with a sentry box to
protect the flag and the emblem of Lithuania, and with currency
exchange offices open round-the-clock; on the axis between the
Dominican monastery and the famous basilica; in a synagogue, that
is long-remembered as a fertiliser storehouse, and a slipper factory that did not survive the fall of communism, and that once was a
talmudic school, and in the building of an old post office, where
during the major overhaul under way a small roll of parchment was
found that recalls the times of a Hebrew gymnasium once situated
there – here the Centre “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations”
now exists.
This phenomenon should not be mistaken for the office of the
Borderland Guard Forces, whose officers stubbornly park they cars
in front of the synagogue, because it is closer for them, they say.
Once, one of the officers in a TV interview explained that borderland is a strip of land separating one country’s territory from the
other’s. The workers of “Borderland” from across the way entertain just the opposite idea in this respect: they claim that the
borderland is a zone of mutual intermingling, co-existence and dialogue. On top of that, they even do their best to make it so. To this
end they sometimes address the commanding officer and his subordinates with a proposal of collaboration and they do not usually
refuse – except very exceptional cases, which confirms one of the
principles of the new order that well understood competition is
constructive not destructive.
It would be more difficult to provide similar evidence as regards
other rules put into practice after the transformation. Indeed, there
are cases of returning property to its rightful owners in Sejny and
its vicinity: the Catholic Church has regained the premises of the
Dominican monastery and the bishop’s palace, tenement houses
and land have been reprivatised, and notaries have been examining
archives in search of legal owners of manors existing in the vicinity.
No one expected anyone to claim rights to the evangelic church,
but since there are “newcomers” in the synagogue and yeshiva,
everything seems to be clear. Unfortunately, after several incidences in a local restaurant, where a waitress’s deliberate remarks
that “dishes ordered by the Centre’s workers contain pork” did not
get the expected reaction, they had to reconcile themselves to the
fact that life does not always follow the logic of obviousness. We
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169
should not, however, overlook the barely concealed disappointment
they feel in connection with this fact.
An open question continued to be their membership, all those
strange personae have come from remote parts of Poland (only one
of the founders was a native). One day – when people (living next to
each other but never before having come together) of various nations and religions crossed the threshold of the “Borderland”, and
when in the synagogue lights were lit late at night and songs were
sung in many languages – somebody wrote the graffito “ODD-BELIEVERS” [“ŚWIROWIERCY”] on the Centre’s car. Although in the
case of other graffiti in public places such as: “Lithuanians to gaschambers”, “Poland for Poles”, or “Jude raus”, the perpetrators
were roughly known, they were usually juvenile punks (that was
probably why the graffiti were not erased instantaneously, which
rightly shocked the citizens, especially those coming from the outside), in the case of the graffito “odd-believers” its author has
remained unknown to this day. The only thing we know about him is
the fact that his hand writing style was all but similar to that of
the aforementioned juvenile graffiti.
The occurrence of the graffito “odd-believers” came together
with some letting off steam that had been building up since the
mysterious institution appeared at 37 Piłsudski St. Everything returned to normal, as before. The strangeness of the newcomers
became more familiar. The work of the Centre started to be done
by children, youth, and their parents, teachers, town councillors,
clergy and volunteers. The newcomers tried to appreciate the locals’ permission for them to be strange, and on their part they
respected the locals’ uniqueness, painful memories of the past and
different points of view. They did not teach anyone, they rather
listened and tried to understand and learn something from the old,
they tried to respond to various needs and problems now shared
together.
2.
The breakthrough of the years 1989-1991, which became a
time of beginning for them, still seems to be a bit unreal. From the
point of view of common sense, there was too much insanity, na-
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iveté, utopian thinking and too many coincidences to hope for rational and durable structures.
Towards the end of 1989 they went to a notary public in Poznań
to register the Foundation “Borderland”. The notary looked at them
mercifully and said it would be enough to pay 10 thousand zlotys
each for founding capital. There were seven of them. They distributed potential functions in a foundation among themselves. One day,
they were coming back from Sejny in a crowded regular coach when
one of them, apparently much disoriented, asked: “Who are we?
Secretaries?” “No – he heard. – Presidents.” They did not have
much money, but enough to start preparations for the “Journey to
the East” planned for the summer of 1990. They constructed carts,
one for their children, harnessed a horse and prepared an old jeep
and set off for a 4-month trip with their team, working on a play
based on “Blood Wedding” by Federico García Lorca. On the way
they were writing the programme of the Centre that they wanted
to establish. They knew they wanted it somewhere in the multicultural borderland, but they did not know precisely. They had made a
search in Łemkowszczyzna, in the Przemyśl region and in the Białystok region. Now they were strolling through Kaszuby. Sejny was
then becoming most real, as it was attractive with nearby “Miłoszówka” in Krasnogruda, with the White Synagogue, with the vicinity of Vilnius, with then existing friendship with Lithuanians and
Old-believers, with the presence of Andrzej Strumiłło in Maćkowa
Ruda and Wiesiek Szumiński in Krasnopol.
Whenever they had time they visited various offices to settle their
matters and brought in with them the scent of open fires and wet
grass. Mr Stefan Starczewski, vice-minister of culture, was very patient with them, although his question “So, what do you actually want
me to do?”, which he asked several times, was never answered clearly. The voivod (the head of the local authority) in Suwałki however avoided them as much as he could until they caught him on the back
stairs of his office while he was trying again to escape from an appointment made earlier by phone. In his hand there was a bag with wet
fresh fish. And that was another breakthrough. They sat down at a
table and fixed the minister’s visit, that took place very soon. The
witnesses of the event, which for the diarists of the epoch was a
symbol of the meeting of the old with the new, remember the minister
– a modest man himself, who had recently been involved in Helsinki’s
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human rights’ protection movement – was becoming more and more
anxious at the look of a dozen of bottles of alcohol, and of the table
which was receiving more and more sophisticated dishes. Another
anxiety was that of the hosts – the more they listened to the minister, the less they could understand the purpose of his visit. Toward
the end of that meeting – tiring for both the visitor and the visited,
when the last desperate attempts to interest the government guest
with proposals lucrative for both the parties proved to be good for
nothing, it was becoming more and more obvious that the only reason
for the minister’s visit was that crazy idea of those what’s-theirname young people. On the other hand, no sane worker of the office
could believe in such a crazy idea, and long after the visit they reproached one another for the misunderstanding surrounding the minister’s true intentions for coming, and for wasting the chance of winning a man from Warsaw over to their cause. As far as the establishment of the Centre was concerned, they assumed an attitude that
can well be compared to the famous Parallel Action from A Man without Properties by Robert Musil, which “definitely puts off the question of material actions until later consideration in accordance with
active passiveness”.
At the same time, independently of the official train of events,
unusual things started to take place around that vague idea of a
cultural centre in the borderland, and those events were unexpected and their import was difficult to overestimate.
For example, in an eremitic cell of the Wigry monastery, a surprised Czesław Miłosz, having come back to his homeland after fifty
years, could not help raising his eyebrows when, late at night, he
listened to the young idealists’ tales about what they wanted to do
in Sejny – the place that he remembered, from his holiday visits
coming from Vilnius or Paris, as very provincial with cobbled pavements. He sometimes interrupted them with short questions: “Well,
where are you going to live?”, “How are you going to earn your
living?”, “How about your children?” “What a strange man – they
thought afterwards. – A poet, but so practical.” They learnt only
afterwards that concreteness is not only the golden medium of
poetry the art, but also it is very useful in life: Mr Miłosz’s various
practical moves helped them develop their own activities.
Another example: senator Andrzej Wajda, whilst giving a speech
at the meeting of Sejny’s town councillors, was talking them into
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transferring the interiors of the old slippers factory to the “Borderland”. After this was done he would support the interior redecoration with funds from his own foundation. Another example: Andrzej Strumiłło, shaking his big hands before an eagerly nodding Mr
Mayor of Sejny, repeated: “You, Mr Mayor, must remember about
the future of the town”, which also meant that a modest number
of communal flats should contain at least one flat for the newcomers.
More or less at the same time, a state-owned farm situated in
an old manor was liquidated in Mała Huta, and Suwałki was considering the possibility of transferring that completely devastated
object to the “Borderland”, to give them their own place.
We should pay attention to one more fact from among this anything but precise a set of conditions accompanying the creation of
the Centre, which was rather nebulous at the beginning but started
to take concrete shape with time. We mentioned state clerks who
kept up with the forms of the old system. Those forms, however,
were relics of the past, things of the irretrievable past (as we then
thought). They were replaced by something that one might call blind
faith given that nothing could continue to be what it had been, everything was changing. We should welcome the new arrivals, although we did not know their prospects. It is hard to say what was then
the most decisive factor that made us think like that: the continual
replacement of office staff, the anxiety, chaos and disorientation, or
maybe the “chameleon instinct” that made people change the colour
of their skin in advance of the changes in environment in order not to
be surprised. And that’s what we are concerned with, changing
behaviour, which means openness to the new. Every crazy idea, every new proposal breaking free of old patterns, seemed to be obligatory. They believed that only now new centres of a new formula would
be established, and all other things – like those state-owned farms –
would completely vanish. After a while, however, they understood
that no one expected such innovative cultural actions from them,
and no representatives of culture, who were above all concerned
with preserving the things of the past, could be partners in most
unbelievable enterprises. Could they?
It now seems that the creators of the “Borderland” managed
to pass through a door that was only open for a short while in the
sphere of culture.
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While the authorities more often liquidated cultural institutions,
in the Suwałki region a new institution was about to be established. Another positive factor was a new voivod, Franciszek Wasik,
who quickly understood the need for the creation of such an institution. The only question was that of money, because you could not
take anything from the existing cultural institutions’ budgets. The
last minute news was that there was some reserve left in the
ministry. The only thing they had to do now was to see to it that
the decision be transferred by the end of the calendar year. It was
a very dramatic moment when Warsaw announced that it was impossible to transmit appropriate decisions to Suwalki. It turned
out that a lack of telex paper in the Suwalki office was to blame.
After many nervous telephone calls and actions, a complete set of
documents was ready at one o’clock on 31 st December 1990. On
7 th January the voivod officially established the Centre “Borderland
– of arts, cultures, nations” having its seat in Sejny.
3.
When the Centre’s existence was a fact, when all the formal
problems had become a thing of the past, its founders knew exactly what to do. They understood that it was the times that demanded new research into the areas of culture and education from
them. They also could but look for a new language of expression for
their work. They put aside their own theatrical activities and got
involved in the matters of borderland identity, the revitalisation of
small homelands, intercultural dialogue, education for tolerance,
Eastern and Central Europe, the young generation’s attitude to
tradition, recording the past, “silent” tourism, artistic work with
children and youth. All they did was “the first”: the first seminar on
small homelands, the first lessons on ethnic minorities at school,
the first trip to Transylvania, the first discoveries of multicultural
Vilnius (together with local Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Belarussians, Jews, and Karaims), the first Eastern and Central European
Cultural Forum, the first Class of Cultural Heritage, the first Borderland Cultures Documentation Centre.
The events proposed by the Centre were far beyond the established practices in the borderland as understood by the local people,
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but no one expected that ”odd-believers” would become like others.
For example: in the basilica, where a fight was under way over
introduction of Lithuanian services, Poles and Lithuanians prayed
together in Latin and their national languages. In a synagogue during All Souls’ day, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarussians,
Jews, Gypsies and Russian Old-believers came together to sing
and recollect the past. Representatives of ethnic minorities started to come to schools to talk about themselves. The mayor was
to be visited by the ambassador of Romania to discuss certain
”disturbing circumstances” connected with the presentation of
Transylvania’s multicultural heritage in Sejny. Families in Sejny welcomed several guests from the former Yugoslavia taking part in
the project ”To Understand Bosnia”. The Sejny secondary school
incorporated lessons on the history and culture of the Great Duchy of Lithuania and the local region into its curriculum. The Sejny
Theatre’s Klezmer Band started to be invited to the secondary
school’s finishing examination ball as they played “cool” klezmer
music. The local parish-priest announced solemnly from his pulpit:
“A great thing comes to Sejny – TELE-HUT!!!” (Later there were
many interpretations of that word in town, the most convincing of
all was this: “You, brother, come to Tele-hut and say you’ve got this
and that amount of ecological grain. What you say goes to the
satellite, and then all over the world. Then interested purchases
come to you, and you, brother, select the one from Germany or the
one from Canada and you sell what you’ve got”).
This train of anecdotes giving you a sense of general “odd-believer” practices could be continued on and on, but no one can have
so much patience and understanding for this as the inhabitants of
Sejny exposed to those practices on an everyday basis. Let us
finish this train of thought with a characteristic (to our mind) example, associated with the mass media, so important a field in our
modern lives. So, after one of the Borderland’s projects entitled
“Meeting a Stranger” there was a short piece of information in the
regional press about the fact that at the end of the event the
Lomza Bishop gave Mass in the Sejny Synagogue. That the misleading piece of information was not rectified, the readers did not
want any explanations and no one protested, in our opinion means
that all believed that everything was possible where “odd-believers” were involved.
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4.
We would not today deal with providing descriptions of the “Borderland’s” activities, being true to our opinion that the work should
reside in the sphere of practice, if it was not for a certain interest
accompanying the Centre’s activities from the start, which we were
not able to protect ourselves from. From the very start there were
also numerous misunderstandings connected with presenting the
Centre’s work outside.
We would like to devote some attention to this question hoping
that that will allow us to shed more light on the epoch in question.
In a time of democratisation, one is inclined to think that in culture
only those things count that are universal and universally accessible; and there is no better means of accessibility than the mass
media. Thus only those cultural events that managed to find their
way to the media are worthwhile. The way to the media was most
often a snapshot, a spot, a simplification, a reportage based on
what is “shootable” and ”sellable”. Please note that we are not
talking here about so-called mass culture, which is a separate phenomenon and has its own demands; what we are talking about is
culture that would like to, or should become mass culture not only
to earn money, but also to present ideas, to be present in the
process of democratisation. The accusation of elitism was feared
then, as the accusation of cosmopolitanism was feared in the time
of communism. In much the same vein they suspected everything
that carried a scent of creative ambitions, search, experiment,
independence from public opinion. ”Ambitious” meant ”not for people” in the epoch in question.
That kind of situation created a whole lot of ready-to-use clichés,
through which they perceived phenomena like “Borderland”. Let us
imagine a reporter coming to Sejny at that time. From the bus
station he goes to the nearest greengrocer’s and, pointing to a
shop-assistant with his microphone, he asks about the “Borderland”. Satisfied, furnished with real knowledge of life, united with
“the people”, he then goes to the “Borderland” where he can meet
those “strangers”, who will never be united, because they do not
convene galas, nor similar events for “the people”. They should then
be isolated, misunderstood, should remain at war with their neighbours, or even closed as a sect and persecuted.
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Now it is time to ask what “people from the «Borderland»” could
feel when the reporter – looking askance at the bookshelves carrying books about Central Europe – asked his sacramental question:
“How were you received by the local people?” He asked a question
whose answer he had known before, an answer formed in the epoch
of questioned ambitions. How to explain that strangers also have
their place among people, that they are respected if they do their
job well, if they can protect their identity and do not bend down
before anyone until their backbone is broken? On the other hand, it
is very difficult to remain a “stranger” in the face of the mass
media man, created by the mass media which shows much greater
dependency on stereotypes and a tendency to abuse its power as
regards the disloyal.
Can the activity of the “Borderland” Centre be deemed elitist?
Their work is often that of a laboratory that searches for new forms
of creating cultural events. Their work is never addressed to a mass
spectator. At the same time, however, their existence in Sejny in
1990 did not resemble a closed studio where artists work on their
piece of art to be presented in the lights of big cultural centres,
although prepared far away from those centres, in a provincial place. Unlike many other authors who after 1989 said that art can
finally deal with art itself and be freed of various political and social
burdens, the “Borderland” got “involved” from the very beginning.
They not only found their place in the centre of the town of Sejny,
but also at the heart of its inhabitants’ problems, problems that
are not visible at first glance for “hectic passers-by”. Those problems are stuck in the subconscious, or in some other secluded
place, behind a screen of various taboos. What is more, the form of
activity they have chosen is a form of active culture, and in a sense
is done not “for people” but “with people”. We do not have to do with
“prestidigitators” who show things to people, but with “animators”
who create things with them (sometimes in a very subtle manner).
That is why in “Borderland” together with children they construct a
house, a nest, and a temple, they participate in uniting religious
services or come together in “the song of the old age”, they cooperate in the Class of Cultural Heritage, or collaborate at the exhibition “Our good old Sejny”.
We can have a good reason for asking if participation in such a
form of culture-making can incorporate all the people.
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Although it is not at all an offer addressed to the chosen few,
although the Centre’s activities are open for all, the aforementioned notion “with people” does not necessarily mean “with them
all”. We should rather say: with individual personae.
We feel free to be so specific when we take into consideration
both the “Borderland’s” activities themselves, and the rumour in
town about them. For example, it was said that when the mayor
once asked to incorporate larger numbers of children and youth in
the Centre’s activities, the Centre’s workers answered that sometimes they welcomed whole schools or school grades, but authentic participants were those who truly wanted to work and to
make sacrifices. This is the only sense in which their work remains
elitist. The most important thing is their own effort, involvement,
creative passion without which culture loses its identity. Active
practice of culture does not permit getting anything for free. And
they should not be anxious to extend the circles of their respondents, who are entertained and who pay money for that; what they
should be concerned about is the presence of those whose ultimate contribution is creation and collaboration.
Now, as we come to the end of our story about the unexpected
existence of a new cultural institution somewhere in the borderland of Eastern and Central Europe, a minor thing comes to our
mind recorded in our notes from the account of eye-witnesses.
ODD-BELIEVERS! They say that that graffito remained on the Centre’s car for quite a long time. We are not going to erase it either,
although we do not know its author, and we are not sure of its
meaning to the full…
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I NITIATION TRAINING FOR THE
STUDENTS OF “CULTURE ANIMATION”
The Centre “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations” based in
Sejny has been a host to the students of “Culture Animation” since 1993. The training is one of the most important components of
its programme – because of the rich content and multiplicity of
platforms of cultural activity towards which the Centre educates
its guests, and, what’s as important, the unique atmosphere of
the training, being the result of the “ethos of an amateur” and the
“borderland ethos” practised by the team of the Centre.
From the content point of view, the training at the “Borderland”
Centre opens up and explores the following areas of reflection:
– the space of coexistence of various nations, religions, cultural attitudes, and customary patterns as a value and source of
unique cultural phenomena;
– the borderland perceived as a meeting place of all types of
diversity (thus not only ethnic borderland but also, for example, the
city area inhabited by people from various social groups, having
completely different financial situations, disabled people);
– participation in a local society understood as taking responsibility for the well-being of that society, resulting in the development of the participating attitude;
– perceiving others as partners in a multicultural dialogue;
– the difference between the cultural activity of formalised institutions of central administrations and a spontaneous activity of
individuals and groups in a local society;
– the cultural potential of every community: becoming aware of
the possibility to act in the most immediate area, in the closest
neighbourhood is of fundamental importance both for students coming from big cities and those from small towns and villages, as it
enables them to break the stereotypical and deeply rooted conviction of helplessness in face of the problems existing in the immediate environment;
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– recognising the tensions of a local community and the ability
to neutralise them through promoting a broadly understood culture of dialogue;
– the practical activity of a cultural institution and taking initiatives in the unique area of the borderland.
In order to present the students with such a broad programme
within a four-day stay, the Centre workers developed a framework
training project whose basic structure has remained unchanged
during subsequent field trips. The framework training program involves the following:
– an opening lecture of the Centre manager and the president
of the “Borderland” Foundation, Mr. Krzysztof Czyżewski, acquainting the students with the issues of the borderland and the scope
of activity of both institutions;
– presentation of the basic forms of the Centre’s activity,
which include: the class of cultural heritage in the Sejny high
school, the amateur children and youth theatre (which through
its repertoire invokes the rich and multicultural tradition of the
region), the library and the centre of borderland culture documentation, which has gathered sometimes unique materials depicting the areas of cultural borderland throughout Europe (the
collection is made available to everyone interested), international ventures (cultural-scientific expeditions, international conferences, discussion panels presented in the form of audio-visual
reports and documentation);
– “borderland travels”, i.e. visits to three places of different
cultural orientations: Puńsk being the centre of Lithuanian society
in Poland, Sejny, where Polish and Lithuanian cultures meet, and
Suwałki, the main city of the region, the seat of administrative
authorities of the borderland, where the problems arising from the
character of the borderland mix with the problems characteristic
for an urban community; during day trips to each of those places
the students have a chance to become acquainted with their “cultural topography” (meetings with leaders of local communities, visits to local cultural centres, talks with representatives of religious and ethnic groups, etc.); the students are divided into three
groups, each of which is to report on the results of their trip to
the other two, and this provides a follow-up to the observation in
form of an extensive discussion and reflection;
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– presentation of current projects of the Centre (exhibitions,
conferences, shows);
– meetings with representatives of cultural life of Central and
Eastern Europe or guests from those parts of the world where
lack of understanding for diversity triggers tragic results (Bosnia,
Chechnya).
The steady elements of the training are accompanied by other
events and presentations connected with the ongoing activity of
the Centre or the most up-to-date problems of the local community.
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M ałgor
zata Sporek- Czyżewsk
a
ałgorzata
Czyżewska
T
“ RAINING IN THE BORDERLAND”
AS AN EXPERIENCE
Meeting with cultural, religious, ethnic or generation difference requires a journey beyond the frontiers of one’s own world, a
journey into the unknown.
Such a journey was undertaken by the founders of the Centre
“Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations”, who arrived in Sejny from
various parts of Poland to live in the borderland. A similar experience will be shared by the participants of the practical training organised by the “Borderland” team.
It actually does not matter that the time and amount of knowledge for both groups: the students of the Institute of Polish Culture and our workers, are hardly comparable. It would also seem
that the short stay of a few days in the borderland could hardly
provide the opportunity to touch what is in fact fruit of many years
of daily practice, or to understand the complex nature of a reality
only penetrable through everyday contact.
Still, the essential components of both situations remain shared: departure – the leaving of your environment – journey into the
unknown – obtaining guidance – clash with what is different – an
attempt to get to know and understand it – an effort to find yourself in a new situation while confronting “difference” – drawing from
this experience a path of one’s own cultural practice.
Małgorzata Sporek-Czyżewska: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw
University; in the Suwałki region since 1991, co-founder of the “Borderland – of arts,
cultures, nations” Foundation in Sejny; together with Wojciech Szroeder, she manages
the Klezmer Band, Sejny Theatre and Cultural Heritage Class project.
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Going along the track delineated by the above components, one
might feel tempted to describe the ten years of our stay in Sejny
and the practices which were developed.
Still, these practices are included to some extent in the idea of
students’ practice and may become the subject matter of its description. Of course, not everything is the same and one could easily
point out differences, but we should remember that one of the aims
of the training is to pass on to the students the experience of “Borderland”, the “ten years” which differ so much from the “four days”,
an experience seeking to express its message.
D EPARTURE
The training attaches great importance to experience, more than
to acquired theoretical knowledge. “Departure” serves that aim.
The very act of packing up and leaving the home’s hearth creates
an opportunity to transfer somewhere else, not only in terms of
space. “Departure” increases the readiness for opening. When staying at home it is much more difficult to meet others.
It might happen that the stay in the borderland made our “departure” much more radical than we had earlier expected. And it
might turn out, what was confirmed by many participants in the
training, that borderland is not only an area geographically determined, a far-away land: it exists in Warsaw, and other places where
we stay, too.
We only had to “leave” to find it.
J OURNEY
INTO THE UNKNOWN
The training is a time of travelling into the unknown. Otherwise
no “departure” would be possible. Students arrive at the “Borderland” Centre, whose activities they usually do not know in practice, and in the case of teams conducting unique activities the
students’ notions are usually ill-informed. They enter an unknown
cultural environment where unknown languages, unknown religious symbols, and sometimes unknown conceptions of the world are
used.
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Still, not everything remains unknown. The borderland heritage
may be close to some as a results of their own spiritual quest,
reading or life passions. They sometimes come from mixed marriages or are influenced by the borderland history in some other way.
As sometimes happens, they might have been brought up in similar
places or some of their relatives might know people who have such
roots. Sometimes they have already chanced upon such places as
tourists.
These connections with “the unknown” are very important for
the training itself. One of its main goals may be recognising the
unknown. And then, what had belonged to the sphere of myth, the
past, family history, superficial life adventure, can enter the sphere
of reality, modernity, creative challenge and practice.
So it is not the exotic that this journey in the unknown is after
but recognition of the areas of our life, lost in oblivion, unreality or
insignificance – that may become the subject of our creative practice.
O BTAINING
GUIDANCE
The training usually starts with a night-talk with the “Borderland” team. The students learn the facts of their work and its
social and cultural context.
First of all, due to the fact of being divided into small groups,
they are assigned guides from “Borderland” for their next day’s
ramble in the surroundings. Such a person takes care not only of
organisation but also allows contacts with others, imparts his/her
experience and opens doors which otherwise would remain closed.
It is very important when one has to enter environments normally
closed to outsiders, such as Old-believers or Gypsies. It may not
always prove successful, but it happens that the presence of the
“Borderland” worker makes the hosts speak openly unlike talking to
a “stranger” which puts the speaker on his guard and makes him
leave things unsaid.
In this sense, the acquisition of a guide makes up for the drawback of a short period of training and creates the opportunity for
direct experience – which otherwise would cost much more effort
and incur more risks.
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E NCOUNTER
WITH OTHERS
One day of the training is devoted to visiting, in small groups
and accompanied by guides, various people and environments, organisations and institutions, important in getting to know life in
the borderland.
Among the communities visited are Old-believers, Lithuanians,
the Evangelical and the Orthodox, a Gypsy school, Polish and Lithuanian village schools, local authorities, ethnic minorities activists,
the superior of the Old-believers commune, a Catholic parish-priest,
the founder of a private museum of the Old Lithuanian culture, the
last surviving Jewish family in the region…
Such meetings must become events. One can’t speak here of
imperceptible permeation… They come here to learn something and
they want to learn something. And the dialogue with newcomers
belongs to the nature of things in the borderland, where everything
is different and looks forward to confrontation. Not only the things
the students learn are new and different but also their perception,
questions asked and understanding of the world adds a breath of
fresh air to the conversation.
Students in these situations are not journalists or politicians.
They are young people who have come to listen and learn. They have
been given a mandate to conduct talks in the borderland, which
must not be concealed or substituted. All the more so because
they are representatives of the majority and generation that is
usually unwilling to listen and for whom “talks” have long since broken down.
Such many-sided implications of the encounter with others make
this day’s harvest more than satisfying.
A TTEMPT
AT LEARNING AND UNDERSTANDING
On that day and night (and sometimes the following day too),
the students’ conversations concentrate on exchanging information and experiences gathered during the day long ramble.
The amount of historical data, details of customs, cultural input
is overwhelming: the 1919-1920 war between Poland and Lithuania, Old-believers’ principles of faith, Jewish heritage, struggles
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to have the Mass conducted in Lithuanian, differences between
Catholic and Evangelical doctrines, Gypsy code, symbolism of Lithuanian crosses, the role of the Dominican Order in Sejny, Czesław Miłosz in Krasnogróda, the “carry-off” way Old-believers would marry…
These facts overlap with contemporary problems of the borderland communities: the “monument war” between Poles and Lithuanians, and who this controversial bishop Baranowski really was,
and the near end of the world according to the Old-believers’ calendar, unemployment, the development of “silent” tourism, the crisis
of the Houses of Culture, ghettos of ethnic minorities and folklore,
a school needed for Gypsies, the nationality of Czesław Miłosz,
bilingual road signs, broken communication between generations,
creation of the Euroregion…
It has turned out that the passage from the acquisition of knowledge to understanding is not so simple. Especially if you have to
deal with contradictory interpretations of historical facts or attitudes shaped by distant events or unknown codes of behaviour.
It also appears that such dialogues have their roots in the local
borderland communities affairs which impercibly turn into the discussion of the contemporary Europe and its future form.
F INDING
YOURSELF WHILE FACING OTHERNESS
Both for the situation of the encounter with otherness and discussion analysing acquired knowledge and experience, the key is
to find yourself in a new situation. Without it understanding is
impossible.
Facing otherness in the borderland, we ask ourselves (and we
are asked) about our identity also in terms of responsibility. This is
probably the reason why the students react so livelily and personally to the things they meet and learn during their training.
It happens that the problems they are confronted with during
their talks are not matters of indifference, from somebody else’s
backyard, but a dialogue they are already involved in as Poles (though it may happen they are of a different nationality) and representatives of the young generation, Catholics (or of a different religion)
and Europeans.
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To understand the Lithuanians struggling to have Mass held in
their own language, or young Gypsies who cannot manage in the
state school, it is important to find your place in a relationship with
these people, with others.
This becomes especially important for a culture animator as it
positions him in a real context and introduces to action.
C ULTURE
ANIMATORS ’ PRACTICE
Only after the students have acquainted themselves, in as direct and many-sided way as possible, with the borderland reality,
after an attempt at understanding it through their own attitudes
and experience – the time for the presentation of the practices of
the “Borderland” team comes.
One whole day of training is devoted to individual presentations
by “Borderland” workers to show their educational and artistic
undertakings, coming from a concrete context of time and place,
regarding matters and problem areas already met by the students.
These presentations are accompanied by screenings of films, exhibitions, concerts, drama performances and other events, the fruit
of the work of the Centre.
The trainees are introduced by our workers to the aspects of
working with other multi-cultural regions of Central and East Europe, such as Bosnia, Bukovina or Transylvania showing the strong
affinities existing between these regions today and in the past.
Sometimes the presenters are also foreign guests speakers from
Central Europe who themselves have a lot of experience in social
work among ethnically and religiously varied communities.
Our talks with the students, until the very end of the training,
concentrate first of all on the new techniques of practical work in
contemporary culture. These concern not only workshop matters,
but also a new understanding of culture marking the transition
from a representational to an active model. These transformations
increase the importance of the role of the culture animator.
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Reports
On the first day of our training we made various excursions. The
participants were divided into three groups. The first group went
to Gabowe Grądy, a village inhabited by Old-believers, a community
living in isolation from the outside world in accordance with an absolute religious law (the spiritual leader chosen by the group is
named “nastavnik”). The second group stayed in Sejny to explore
the cultural landscape of the town and meet students from the
Cultural Heritage Class of the local high school. This is a joint initiative of the local high school and the “Borderland”; participation in
the classes is optional, the volunteers attend extra lessons at
school, activities in the Centre and go on various excursions (e.g.
to Siedmiogród) in order to learn the history and culture of the
region as well as tolerance for the Other (in the national, religious
and cultural sense). The third group headed for Puńsk, the major
centre of the Lithuanian minority in Poland. The problems of the
Lithuanian minority were outlined by Sigitas Birgelis, the poet and
the editor of “Aušra” magazine, published by the Lithuanian Association in Poland. From the discussion we learned that many Puńsk
inhabitants retreat into their own small world being oversensitive
as regards the national identity issues. In Birgelis’ words I could
sense fear of strangers, the ones come from outside…
The first day we all attended the opening of the exhibition of
works produced by the patients of the psychiatric hospital in Suwałki (another attempt at familiarizing with the differences and
overcoming human barriers, this time the differences between “the
sick” and “the healthy”). In the evening we met a Jewish cantor
from Łódź, Simche Keller. We were singing orthodox Jewish songs
together and listening to stories of their origin or ritual and family
situations which involved singing them.
The second day began with watching films which presented the
activities and accomplishments of the Centre. Then, we visited the
Borderland Cultures Documentation Centre. After lunch we met
with the NN Theatre from Lublin. The day ended by meeting a band
“Muzyki” from Grodno, who played the Belorussian folk music. In
the morning of the third day we had a discussion summing up our
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stay at the Centre. It was an opportunity to exchange reflections
and views regarding, among other things, nationality-related problems (Poles vs. Lithuanians, antagonisms, “getting out of the ghetto”) and our attitudes towards folk culture (commercialism or living traditions). I personally became convinced that it is good to
have a sense of belonging to one’s own “small motherland” and at
the same time to overcome the borders of your own country in
pursuit of your place in a bigger region, the “big motherland”, which
Central Europe is for us all. It is an excellent antidote against the
complex of provincialism, the only cure for xenophobia, lack of trust
and suspicion towards others, strangers.
P aweł Piasecki
Hiking around and the subsequent exchange of impressions were
for me the most important moments during the entire training.
What really mattered was not the number of meetings with the
inhabitants or cultural leaders but the experience of your own
behaviour during such meetings. Initially, I wondered why we met
only people who represented the Lithuanian point of view: no meeting with the representatives of the Polish segment of the population had been even planned. When leaving the office of the Lithuanian Association in Poland I realised that we were the ones who
represented Poles, without any clear awareness of this fact. Only
when we were exchanging impressions and feelings later on I understood that I am not an objective observer since I am Polish
aware of all the traditions of this nation. Whether I like it or not,
all these things are inside me, and therefore I find it hard to have
an objective outlook on the relationships between Lithuanians and
Poles.
When listening to Krzysztof Czyżewski later, who was talking
about the activities of the “Borderland” Centre, I got the impression that all their projects were designed not to abolish the existing differences between the Poles, Lithuanians or Belorussians,
but rather to make everybody involved aware that the differences
do exist and will continue to exist, so people have to accept dissimilarities instead of rejecting them. But this clear awareness I
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owed to the experiences of the day before, when I realised how
difficult it had been for me to remain an objective observer, free of
stereotypes, even though I did not even live in Sejny. Now I was
listening to the description of the Centre activities from a different
perspective, and I think I was more sensitive to the specific problems of the borderland, not exclusively this particular one, but any
kind of borderland. I became aware of the fact that prior to any
deliberate involvement in culture-related activities, one must identify and learn the specific nature of a given culture, the expectations and needs of the inhabitants, and of course their problems.
Because if you really want to do something useful for people – as
the “Borderland” does – it takes more than just settling down and
opening an cultural centre.
M ariusz K
owalski
Kowalski
I consider the short stay in Sejny a very interesting and significant experience. Never before was I so deeply immersed in a new
reality and made to ask such questions, questions which had never
occurred to me before. It is very rare that you can explore a place
so thoroughly – its past and equally complicated present, its surface and its interior, including the inner reality of the people who live
there. It was also a very essential personal experience – looking at
myself in several different roles: the role of a reporter-observer,
anthropologist, a future culture animator and at the same time a
member of a specific culture, nation, religion, all of which contributed to my cool stand-offish approach. The tension among these
roles was for me a very important, perhaps the most important,
experience.
For the first time in my life I could get to grips with what “social
reality” really was, how liquid the pictures of our own worlds are,
how much the perspective is dependent on the individual, how difficult it is to call things “true” or even “facts”; how readily the dimensions and judgements of events can be changed. We discussed
the Polish and Lithuanian reality of Sejny with the President of the
Lithuanian Social and Cultural Association, the workers of the Town
Culture Centre, the local painter, the President of the Association
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for the Development of Sejny and the Sejny Region and the Lithuanian Consulate. The whole time we were accompanied by our guide
who provided us with relevant comments. What we got as a result
was a very diversified picture, full of contradictions. Sejny seemed
to be a place where Poles and Lithuanians co-existed peacefully,
but where calling someone a “Lithuanian” was an insult, where people continued absurd disputes and arguments over minor details,
where Lithuanians are, on the one hand, discriminated against and
neglected but, on the other hand, oversensitive or even conflictprovoking.
This amazing portrait of Sejny proved to be a key to understanding the activities of “Borderland”. We could look at the truly admirable accomplishments of the Centre – the balance they had worked out between getting inside the world and culture of Sejny and
keeping their distance, which did not mean being above Poles and
non-Poles, Lithuanians and non-Lithuanians, but somewhere outside. This distance made it possible to remain close but not to take
part; this seemed to be the attitude pursued by the Centre: to
teach respect for one’s identity and to emphasise that dissimilarities actually share some similarities. The most vital thing was the
awareness and acceptance of one’s own intolerance instead of forcing people to show fraternal love.
The closed-circle character of the Centre activities is its very
big advantage. Mercifully they do not attempt to make everyone
happy but to do something useful for the people they chose to live
among, to foster their traditions, record their memories, show
them themselves. There’s nothing wrong when a recorded story
told by an old woman is significant only for her and her neighbours,
when a concert is attended by thirty people and the programme
includes twenty children. They have created a very valuable and
unique model of culture animation, which goes against any stereotypes, unification, routine and mass culture. They have won the
acceptance and trust of the citizens. The things they do are original, important and coherent, and though they act on a relatively
small scale they are not provincial since they co-operate with other
cultural institutions and are recognised by prominent foundations.
They are also able to support themselves.
Dom inik
a Cieśla
inika
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Miron Filipow will die soon. We do no know whether he will manage to teach his grandson how to read music and deliver mass;
whether he will manage to teach him enough to make him a proper
successor. Do the young at Grabowe Grądy have a faith as strong
as the old, since the latter did not have to choose between the
past and the future, between tradition and new culture, which makes
it so difficult to keep your identity and distinction. Perhaps, this is
the reason why Miron Filipow invited us home, as if he wanted to
tell us: “Look at what it is now, because it might be our last opportunity”.
While listening to this over eighty year old man, who was talking,
singing and presenting himself with a smile on his face, I tried to
guess to what extent he was authentic and how much of his performance was a game (“self-presentation”) inspired by the circumstances. He imposed the rules we had to follow in order to make
our contact successful. Nevertheless, all the time I could not get
rid of the “tourist’s complex” at a visit to a Skansen museum. I
could not resist the haunting feeling that I had made this man and
his family an object of some anthropological observations.
Their houses are more and more often deserted – the young go
to the city, marry people of different creed… The economic situation charges a very high price for survival – they have to forget
about their identity, the values which have been binding and essential.
A person living in a small community would have been able to
express themselves through this community (it is terrifying how
readily I use the past tense); once he has left the small community
he joins the macroculture and becomes a “man from nowhere”, a
cultural cosmopolitan who when asked: “Where are the ashes of
your ancestors?” can only answer: “Everywhere”.
zegor
z Sobaszek
zegorz
G rrzegor
The Lithuanians. There are two of them – the representatives of
the Lithuanian Association in Poland and the Association of Saint
Kazimierz. They are letting all their sorrows loose on us. They would like to have a Lithuanian school. The lessons in Lithuanian at the
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Polish school are held after five p.m.; it is late – the children are too
tired to learn anything. They do not have their own radio station
but only three minutes a month on the local television. And the
mayor does not let them erect a monument. They want it five meters tall. Professor Mencwel, in the film by Tomasz Lengren, is
remembering his stay in Puńsk, the town where Poles make-up a
10 percent minority: “I am leaning against the wall and the man
who is standing next to me is Lithuanian. Literally, we were struggling not to clench our fists. [...] And we were just thawing standing side by side”. The man from the Lithuanian Association maintained that there were no conflicts and, if any, they were blown up
by the media. The second went on to add: “Yes! Only a burnt down
flag…”. Our group, after a fierce discussion on the way to the
Cultural Heritage Class, concluded that the Lithuanians suffer from
ghetto syndrome. When asked about the relationships with the
independent Lithuania they answered: “No, we get no financial support from them”.
– But these Lithuanians weren’t honest!
– Have you ever met an honest Lithuanian?
We like the Cultural Heritage Class a lot. The teacher did not like
the modern pop music the young tend to listen to. This kind of
music was embodied in the class by Igor. Our group expressed support for this Igor. The students confessed to us that “Lithuanians
are normal, ordinary people; they are part of a situation”. One of
the girls said that in her neighbourhood a Lithuanian child when
calling another Lithuanian child addressed him as “You Lithuanian!”.
M onik
a P
u rrzyck
zyck
a
onika
Pu
zycka
Borderland is not only “a separation line between two countries” (as defined by one Customs Officer in a film about the Central and Eastern Culture Forum), but also the opportunity to “meet
the other”. Under the cyclical project with this title, the Centre
implements the idea of understanding. “The other” is someone who
has a different lifestyle, different nationality, religion, culture and
different way of thinking: a Lithuanian, Jew, Pole, Gypsy, a Psychiatric Hospital patient, but also the culture animator who has come
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for training. Try to understand him, get to know him. He is different, so let him be different.
To tolerate? Tolerance involves passivity and eliminates participation. It is always the better who tolerates the weaker. Therefore
tolerance is not the right option
Meet to talk about it. Maybe your dialogue with the other will
have some value and will offer some solutions. Understand “the
other” – this is the idea promoted by the Centre in Sejny.
Agnieszk
a M ioduszewsk
a
Agnieszka
ioduszewska
I needed this training to discover what culture animation really
look like. The culture animator… or maybe more adequately: the
idea practitioner – Krzysztof Czyżewski, the director of Borderland
is not sure. Nevertheless, it must be someone who animates, inspires, creates, establishes bonds. We said that an animator is
person able to remain in shadow to let others find their ways in
what they do. An animator should show the way, teach and know
how to open up people. It demands a really humble attitude. You
must know when and how to fade away.
When Krzysztof was telling us about the history and activities
of the Centre I realised how significant it was to do things together – with people who shared the same ideas and dreams. More
than working style it is the question of lifestyle which determines
everything else. The Czyżewskis, Szroeders and some friends of
theirs came down to this small borderline town not only to work
there as culture animators but to live ordinary lives.
What is the standpoint of “Borderland” as regards all the conflicts in Sejny? They try to work towards the co-existence of the
cultures and nations, between which there is a permanent tension
stemming from historical conflicts. Quite a challenge if you remember the words of Richard Hoggart: “If you want to be one of the
group you mustn’t attempt to «change people»”. So as Krzysztof
said, they try not to aim at the target directly, but nevertheless
try finally to hit the target. They work with children and youth from
the Cultural Heritage Class, make trips to Belorus and organise
meetings with the gypsy camp, encourage people to collect old
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photographs and to exhibit them for both Poles and Lithuanians to
see them, and they come with interest. It is not a question of
eliminating the differences, since the multi-culture is a source of
power for this place. It is also not a question of solving all the
conflicts, since they are too deeply rooted and cannot be solved in
a short time. But conflicts should not be provoked or stimulated.
We can learn how to appreciate and recognise our own as well as
other cultures. We can learn how to co-exist. The most essential
thing is to provide an outlet for different cultures, arts and nations.
This is also learnt by looking at other nations and their problems through such projects as “Understanding Bosnia”. A choir
from Bosnia visited Sejny. The singers were a group of miscellaneous nationalities and religions: Serbs, Croats, Christians and Muslims. “It was a great lesson to us all” – said Krzysztof. And he
went on to add: “I can’t imagine a choir like that here in Sejny. Or
maybe…?”.
When strolling around Sejny, we stopped every five minutes to
learn that here is the house of late… or here is the house from
which the roof was removed during the Tent Festival, what was
visible in the slides. And, of course, the Box Virgin Mary famous for
her miracles and the beautiful legends about her. I felt envious about this knowledge they have about the place where they live. So
many old pictures and postcards… I know that this a special town,
the borderline town. But you can always explore the place where
you live and try to invigorate it, animate it and influence it. Though
it is not always the case that there is a borderline between nations, almost everywhere we have borderlines between cultures,
times with all the related conflicts. And polyphony is everywhere,
where there are two people who think differently.
Agnieszk
a P
awlik
Agnieszka
Pawlik
Having worked with children for several years I have been trying
to design holiday “ethnographic” projects drawing upon the cultural and ritual resource of regions we have been visiting. In the assumptions of the project “The Memory of the Old Age” developed
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by the Centre, I have found everything that should be included in
any activities which are a gate to exploration of the reality. The
project is delivered on a cyclical basis for the borderland children
(Polish, Lithuanian, Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian). So it is a
local programme but has more general implications. It creates situations in which a child is not only a recipient and observer of the
tradition and culture but also a participant aware of its distinction.
We make our first attempt at self-identification in our childhood. This period has a very significant bearing on our value systems.
So it is critical to the value systems we develop for ourselves that
the process begins early enough, so in an apparently transparent
space, void of any meaning, we identify its archetypal, symbolic and
sacred elements. This is why I find it very appropriate that the
project makes references to the notions of house, nest and temple
as places of origin of human self-consciousness. The real building of
a house, nest and temple and all the efforts that are involved in
these activities are meant not only to help the children realise the
difficulties and rituals related to having something built as such,
but also to provide them with an opportunity to become aware of
all the dormant meanings and contents. By showing interest in the
most common and ordinary elements of our space, such as windows, tables or a sacred painting, we discover how they are connected to human life: birth, suffering, love, death, the magical and
the sacred. The similarities and dissimilarities revealed during the
personal confrontations of experiences and associations make it
possible to discover our own uniqueness and individuality as well as
those features shared with family, neighbours or people living in the
same region. The merits of meeting the representatives of different cultures and nations have been defined by the project creators as follows: “If we want to capitalise on our own heritage,
solve our problems and gain a true sense of ownership, we have to
look far ahead, pay attention to our neighbours and leave our door
open”.
A child whose value systems and role models are primarily shaped by mass culture will readily lose his or her sense of identity and
will change into a radar device registering only the activities of
people, who are equally pleasure oriented. This is why it is so important to meet the people of older generations who in sharing
their wisdom and experience consider the law of life. The meetings
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designed within the project “The Memory of the Old Age” enable
the young to establish such contacts without unnecessary hurry
and dangerous artificiality. The distance from curiosity and mutual
openness to true respect and trust is really a short one. Visits
paid at home and listening to stories encourage discussions on
subjects as basic as love, suffering, birth or death. The once-established bonds give the right to enter sacred space, the fascinating
exploration of which goes beyond any cartoon movie.
Joanna Piller
The three day programme was tight and comprehensive. All the
time in a hurry, we were running from one meeting to another. We
met the representatives of the local establishment, such as the
Mayor or the editor of the local paper and the director of the Lithuanian Culture Centre. In Sejny it is very difficult to be anonymous.
People know one another, at least by acquaintance. Since Sejny is
highly diversified in its culture, both historically and contemporarily, every issue is here discussed from at least two perspectives.
The minor or major frictions between the Poles and Lithuanians are
inherent in the everyday life of Sejny. Many of the wounds are not
still healed, and remain in people’s consciousness.
That’s why stunning stories revealing the truth were the most
impressive thing for me. I mean the stories collected and presented by the children in “The Sejny Chronicles”. Why divide if you can
unite? Why focus on the most recent events when the older will
continue to come back, having another dimension and weight? And
there were so many other moments which without “The Chronicles” would never be disclosed. These stories are as important as
the official history of the region, and for me, a stranger, they proved even more relevant.
I liked very much the methodology of the work on “The Chronicles” or rather the anti-methodology, since nobody had planned that
first there would be a model, than a performance and finally a book.
The project evolved sort of naturally. The materials collected were
used consistently. The family stories brought by children had to be
located on the town map, which was changed later into a model.
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The town model became alive as gradually the stories of the oldest
town inhabitants, the stories often kept deeply hidden in people’s
hearts for years, were added. Then the town was filled with music
and singing because: “If there are so many worlds here there must
be equally many songs”. And the Sejny Angels were guarding everything all the time…
We also saw a film containing recordings of the excursion made
by the youth from Sejny to Belorus, which inspired the performance of the Sejny Theatre entitled “Wijuny”. It must be a great feeling
to present people with their own lives, given as a story. This how it
was put by one old woman in the film: “I would like to tell you about
my life”. Some people want to be listened to, and some want to
listen to others. Then the truth is brought into existence, equally
important for both parties. Watching this film I could not escape
the impression that it was there that people walked touching the
ground with their feet…
As long as there are memories to be told and pictured, as long
as there is curiosity and excitement in the eyes of young people
who listen and there are lively sparks in the eyes of the old because
they have been listened to – the stories are alive.
Urszula Świerk
owsk
a
Świerkowsk
owska
In folk culture I have always been most intensely attracted by
its religious aspects, rituals and traditional songs, but above all I
admired the specific, profound manner of participation. I have kept
asking myself the question: how probable is it that the culture will
come back? Is it possible to teach children how to understand the
culture of their grandparents? Is it possible to teach not only the
lyrics and tunes but also the meaning of songs and singing as such?
Can these elements of folk culture be endowed with some meaning
in the new context, so they are not only relics, signs of the past?
During the three projects run by “Borderland”: “Home”, “Nest”
and „Temple”, the children created their own community with its
own culture and rituals through enjoyable theatre-like practices.
The children, by learning traditional songs, explored their ritual sense.
Exploration of folk culture and accommodation of its elements into
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their own culture was the ultimate purpose, not to serve any artistic idea. The creativity involved in the activities of the children was
essential, since they were not just students but also the creators.
They were not only taught folk culture but were encouraged to
actively participate in culture. Eventually they managed to create
something living instead of an artificial product: a true Home, a
true Temple.
“Borderland” teaches things which are most vital for those who
live in the borderland: openness to other cultures and understanding of dissimilarities. The activities they offer to children, such as
gypsy culture workshops or “The Old Book Whispers” project, stimulate curiosity not only of one’s own but of other cultures too. It is
always valuable when children of different national background, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, can meet and get to know one another.
But any meeting of this kind may rouse hostility instead of friendship. The novelties evoke contradictory feelings in children – curiosity
and fear. In a new environment a child will tend to emphasise the well
known, familiar features. Facing a situation which involves a foreign
language or different customs the child may feel timid, then the child
can either choose to adopt to the new reality or will deny it and
start attacking others in defence. When the curiosity is once killed
by the fear, it is very hard to arouse it again. The conflicts we face in
our adult lives can quite often be traced back to our childhood when
our curiosity was killed and, at the same time, we experienced the
danger which made us defend our identity at all costs. The safety
zone created by “Borderland” allows children to meet their peers
brought up under different conditions and to experience the value of
their own culture. It is exceptionally vital for children from national
minorities. The best proof of the effectiveness of activities oriented
towards identification with one’s own culture, is the fact that one
of the children who attended “Borderland” activities has become
the spiritual leader of the old-believers community near Sejny.
Em ilia W
rocławsk
a
Wrocławsk
rocławska
A few words about the programme: very exciting meetings with
interesting people – I wish we could have some more discussions. I
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missed having more free time to stroll around the places we visited, to immerse in this polyphonic atmosphere. But the intensive,
almost overloaded programme is the price to pay if you want to
hear this polyphony at all. But then you can only have a glance or
touch the surface of all these issues in which “Borderland” is involved. Nevertheless, you can get the idea of all the complex, interdependent issues.
The most important thing I realised there was that to work with
and for people, you do not have to know all the answers at the
start. For sure, you must have a pretty good awareness of the
problem, be able to make sacrifices and prepared for potential failures. The plan evolves in the process of patient and attentive
listening. We were able to witness a few examples of this very
specific skill.
Let’s take the meeting with the headmaster of the gypsy school, who told us about his problems, including those connected to
ethics. Because nobody will contradict that something must be
done for Gypsies in order to let them adapt and accommodate
themselves in the society, into which they have been involuntarily
thrown. We also know that there are no ideal solutions. The Gypsy
camps will not come back and nor the “classical” form of the currently deteriorated culture. The school as an institution seems to
be contradictory to the Gypsy soul by its very nature. It may be
perceived as one of the tools of assimilation. On the other hand,
however, it is nowadays probably the best way to create a stratum
of educated Gypsies able to explore their roots, their past and
tradition and save it for the generations to come. Such activities
with children may lead to mutual understanding and a willingness
to get to know one another, to make cultural exchange
The question is not only to tame but to let others tame you.
There are many doubts. How not to overstep the line between the
assistance or co-operation and imposing or forcing our ideas onto
others? The results of particular decisions can be evaluated after
an appropriate period of time. Nevertheless, it is extremely vital to
continue the efforts, even if some dilemmas or questions have not
been solved yet. A temporary obstacle in the fulfilment of our goals
should not totally discourage us.
Ola Chr
zanowsk
a
Chrzanowsk
zanowska
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In Sejny there are Poles and Lithuanians who live next door to
each other. They shop in the same places, they are neighbours but
they are not able to sing in the same choir.
What was impossible for the grown ups (namely to establish cooperation on some project) proved possible for the youth. “Borderland” created a band in which children of different nationalities sing
the history of Sejny with the songs of their ancestors. Poles sing
Lithuanian songs and recite Lithuanian stories, while the Lithuanians sing and recite in Polish. It seems that this project together with the Cultural Heritage Class are likely to set a good course towards understanding.
All our meetings and discussions were focused on the conflicts
of the borderland. Every new experience filled me with some nostalgia for something lost forever, some peace, a natural order…
Nowadays, the injustices, harms and tragedies are mere sensations. The true tragedies can not be seen through the camera lenses. In reality, nobody wants to take up this subject – so sad and
unfashionable. But at the same time a group of people from “Borderland” organises trips to Polish villages in Belorus. They are greeted there by old, damaged houses and old people, who have often
even forgotten how to speak Polish. Abandoned, solitary, need human warmth and attention of Poles from Poland. They die and are
buried with the histories of their suffering and injustice left untold.
The natural order of the world was destroyed. The village was abandoned by nearly all the young who might have taken over the farms
and continued the tradition. Empty houses, fields and senile people
with rosy cheeks who sing old songs and tell the stories of their
lives, since finally there are eager listeners. The end of the old order
and the old world. The tradition and history of the region will die
when the last villager dies, and there are only few alive now. People
from “Borderland” take records of the last days of these people in
an effort to save at least a small fragment from forgetfulness.
Anna M elon
To observe, to listen, to collect, to learn as much as possible, to
read but to read wisely, not like a parasite. We move as “children in
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the fog” to use one of Krzysztof Czyżewski’s expressions. We watch
ourselves inquisitively to learn whether we can still talk, ask questions and adequately read the intentions of those who we talk
to. Suddenly, we have lost all our skills.
The Polish and Lithuanian primary school. This time we are looked at. A group of intruders, oddly dressed, came to their history
class to attentively observe everything. We watched the room,
were watched by the children who politely stood up and then we
left. The headmaster stroked one boy as he communicated to us
that all the children were dear individuals for him. “Children perfectly understand one another – he said. – They don’t care who they
sit at the same table with – a Lithuanian or a Pole”. Maybe it is
true, I am not the one to judge here. Every source of information
renders information on itself as well, and as such is at least valuable.
Everything has been organised perfectly. We travel in a rather
small van. The driver is always on time and we keep to the schedule.
The right people wait for us in the appointed places. There is the
question of genuineness: how much can we benefit from meeting
rather “extraordinary” people in this pre-arranged way? How should we understand these situations and fit in with them? I feel
tempted to dive into some other ordinary, everyday life (for us, of
course, unusual), the stories of some old woman, a conversation
with someone who lives an “ordinary” life. It would be possible but
who would benefit?
Everything takes time and preparation.
Our trip to Puńsk lasted one day. We faced many questions.
Some of them have remained unanswered till today, some were
answered sort of naturally. We needed to make one more try or to
listen more attentively. What was really valuable was going on here
right in front of me.
The children of “Borderland” sang and danced for us the music
of their region. Through the music we learnt the past and the present of the town as seen by its young inhabitants. The church, the
synagogue, the Lithuanian wedding party, the arrival of Gypsies –
the past mixed with the present reality. And everything so typical
of the borderland environment. The performance space is beautifully sculptured with light. Thanks to the skilful application of light we
can see the interiors of the synagogue. The windows have blinds so
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there is neither night nor day there. There is no clock either, so
there is no time. No, there must be time, but it is different.
My impression is that I witness an act of creation that is meant
for this specific place only. This creation stimulates different aspects
of activity and existence. And they all fill out some gaps in us, some
omissions of the past. Through its activities “Borderland” gives
answers. But the answers are more directions set than prescribed solutions. Seeds you can harvest from one soil can never even
sprout anywhere else. First, the right questions have to be asked,
then you can seek answers. “Right” does not mean the same as
everywhere. During this experience, perhaps, we only managed to
pose some questions. But we set off in the right direction, though
the way ahead of us is very long.
M onik
a Dąbrowsk
a
onika
Dąbrowska
A lot of events and experiences in a short time came to us in
rapid succession. One can say: a group of students arrived at the
Cameldolite monastery to see the “Borderland” centre. That is a
kind of a definition of what happened. But this does not explain the
mechanism which led us from meeting the Old-believers or attempts
at singing with the Cantor from Łodź to reflections on the reality
and discussion about things which are vital in a higher dimension
than the specific world of the borderland.
The participants, mostly composed of students who came either
by accident or out of pure curiosity, went trough some kind of
experience. Perhaps it involved some ethnography to go to Grabowe Grądy – a village of Old-believers, or some sociology, when we
were talking about Puńsk or Sejny to a Lithuanian. The probable
intention was to let us touch a world of whose existence many
people are oblivious. They belong to a different reality and find the
problems of the borderland irrelevant. A two-day trip to Sejny or
Puńsk is too short a time to obtain any reliable knowledge or understanding. People who pop in for a while and soon rush away will
always be strangers. They represent a different world with different problems. The meetings organised by “Borderland” present
an “isolated” reality. I think there is a deliberate intention to offer
us some experience, but let us go back to our reality. Firstly, we
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had an opportunity to see a world that is rich and complex, to
which the knowledge acquired at school is hardly applicable. Secondly, an experience of a feast, during which all differences cease to
matter, because everything is shared in common: the Jewish songs
are mixed with Ukrainian melodies while the dancing party is attended by city dwellers of unclear origin.
The sense of isolation was intensified by the place where we
were staying. The Cameldolite monastery is seated on a special hill,
somewhere between the earth and the sky, outside the real world.
It is an exceptionally serene place. You can listen to yourself here.
It seems that a good “inner audibility” is the prerequisite of one’s
sensitivity for the surrounding world. This place is perfectly suited
for a meeting oriented more towards experience than cognition.
The activities of “Borderland” are not of the mediating nature.
Perhaps luckily, because they might be perceived as sheer interference. They work with children, young people. Meeting the Other,
Dialogues on Tolerance, performances, different projects – they
are all great… and hopefully of some significance to people who live
there.
Returning to a tradition is not possible. And nobody of “Borderland” tries to bring the past back to life. A girl attending the Cultural Heritage classes confessed that she had used to read “Popcorn” and “Girl” and to listen to all varieties of pop before. Now
she listened to Chasidic music.
Simche Keller, prior to singing each of his songs, explained its
meaning. None of the tunes was picked at random, since each of
them was sung with some purpose. He knew their origins and sense.
Somebody said: “When Krzyś Czyżewski is dancing the Chasidic
dances he is a Chasid, isn’t he?”. I don’t know. Do we become
Ukrainians when singing the Ukrainian songs? Or maybe, at least,
we are like Ukrainians.
Or perhaps it does not matter, since in the atmosphere of a
feast everything becomes one unity and joy pulls down all the barriers. The openness and flow become attainable to an extent which
I have never imagined – and everything belongs to everybody. There
are no “others” and “ours”.
Perhaps we should sing instead of thinking. Then everything becomes simpler and any doubts seem to be sheer figments of our
imagination.
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The experience we went through in Sejny is also valuable because we were confronted with situations to which pure reason and
intellect simply do not apply. The recurring reflection is: the issues
of history and identity become less relevant because singing has
its independent ways, it covers restrained areas and makes things
fit with one another perfectly, while our intellect rests. The experience of some intellectual helplessness in the face of some situations which are real, is extremely valuable. Especially, if this helplessness is not followed by emptiness but genuine joy. It is simple
– either you want to join in or you do not.
M ałgor
zata Litwinowicz
ałgorzata
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T HE BORDERLAND SCHOOL
The process of education started by the placement training at
the “Borderland” Centre was extended by the Borderland School.
The form of the School, organized by the Centre for a few years
now, is different and it has a wider scope of objectives.
The School takes place in three sessions of one or two weeks,
each of which is organised in a different place, where at least one
session takes place abroad, in one of the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe. What is important, the sessions take place in
provincial centres with their own original cultural profile, far away
from capitals and centres of unified popular culture.
The School participants are mainly persons from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe who are interested in enriching their knowledge and experience in the area of organising
cultural life in their own regions. It means that the programme
is addressed at new culture animators, who, however, have certain accomplishments and preliminary experiences in that area.
The students are therefore only one of the groups among the
participants, which allows for an authentic exchange of experiences and skills.
The School focuses on comparing and improving various methods
of cultural work in various indigenous cultural spaces, rather than
on the forms of activity of the “Borderland” Foundation as the activity model.
An important aspect of the session programme is the balance
between theoretical debate (ideas, history, culture animator’s
ethos) and practical education.
The training ends with preparation of the blueprint version of
the project of a cultural venture.
Content-related assumptions and tasks of the Borderland School:
– emphasising the importance and opportunities for extra-governmental initiatives and local ventures;
– improvement of skills necessary for organisers of cultural life
concerning the operation of a social, cultural, and educational organisation or institution;
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– development of a manager’s attitude indispensable for cultural work in the modern social end economic reality;
– acquainting the participants with the economic, legal, and
organisational dimensions of social and cultural ventures;
– reflection on the borderland ethos, multiculturality, its potentials and threats, cultural processes in European perspective,
consequences of the new shape of Europe after 1989;
– multi-dimensional interpretation of the concept of a “small
homeland”;
– recognition, understanding, and the ability to creatively exploit
of the uniqueness of own region;
– creating an international network of cultural contacts and
local initiatives and extra-governmental cultural institutions crossing national borders;
– creating modern communities of people of culture co-operating in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Just like the initiation training, the Borderland School is organised around the model structure of the programme of particular
sessions. The essential elements of that structure include the following:
– seminars, workshops, and lectures run by experts in the area
of culture organisation and covering all aspects of that activity
starting with basic assumptions through details of institutional
activity (e.g. theoretical borderland workshop, practical workshop
of a leader);
– “cultural exploration”, i.e. visits to cultural institutions and
getting acquainted with the cultural activities available to the inhabitants of the region (repertoire of the theatres, cultural press,
institutions popularising readership, other cultural offers);
– talks with representatives of local government responsible
for the cultural development of the region.
When possible the programme of the School is enriched with
additional points connected with the unique cultural heritage of a
region.
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T HE
IDEA AND ASSUMPTIONS OF THE
B ORDERLAND S CHOOL
BORDERLAND is a venue for meeting other people. It is inhabited by people of various nations, religions, and customs. It is a
place with borders running within a single community, not blocking
areas from us. “Border” here means not separation as might be
thought in view of the meaning of the Latin word finitimus – borderland means here a close neighbourhood rather than separation.
BORDERLAND is a multicultural region, where in order to live,
you have to co-exist with others for better and for worse.
BORDERLAND has an original ethos embracing the culture of
dialogue, tolerance, distance and critical attitude towards individual judgements. When this ethas is not put into practise, we fall
prey to the forgetfulness which contributes to the emergence of
individual justifications bluntly advocating only one selected point of
view. The perfect companions of this forgetfulness are ignorance
and megalomania. The monologue shatters the culture of dialogue.
BORDERLAND becomes an area of conflicts, historical prejudice, vengeance and destruction. Borders become visible and not
even limited relations can be upheld between its particular separate elements. The community of inhabitants starts to resemble broken fragments of a glass mosaic, which can no longer be assembled
together.
This is the every-day reality of Central and Eastern Europe after
1989. The borderlands constitute a fundamental element and every place like that is haunted to some extent by tension and intolerance.
The borderland ethos needs to be built anew to restore the reallife dimension of close neighbourhood and the dynamics of cultural
and economic growth. Achievement of this goal could be facilitated
by brand-new educational, cultural and social projects for restitution of the multicultural organic integrity of the borderlands. A fundamental role in such efforts is played by non-government organisations and other social initiatives which, boasting enormous creative
and innovative potential, are able to undertake implementation of
those projects. In this context, we also see the need for effective
material support adjusted to the multi-fold borderland profile.
On the one hand, the support should facilitate the smooth operation of such organisational and managerial work as well as the
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initiation of international liaisons. On the other hand, there is a
need to develop awareness of borderland regions, their potential,
sources of conflicts, as well as working formats that can be effective in multicultural societies.
Situated over a dozen kilometres away from the current PolishLithuanian border, the borderland town of the former Great Duchy
of Lithuanian boasting numerous well-preserved relics of the material and spiritual heritage of the past, Sejny has been carefully selected as the site of the “Borderland” Centre. The local architecture reflects its past: streets of the town centre featuring the White Synagogue and the former Talmudic school recall the presence
of Jews, a tiny Protestant church recalls the Protestant community, rising above the town, the Russian Orthodox church with the
grave of the bishop and poet Antanas Baranauskas testifies to the
co-existence of Catholics, Poles and Lithuanians, which has endured to be the reality of contemporary Sejny. The vicinity of the town
has an aboundance of relics of the culture of orthodox Russians,
whereas roads leading further east and southbound take us to
vast areas of another melting pot: settlements of Tatars, Karaites
and Gypsies, the whole of Belorus and Ukraine.
Sejny are the belvedere of the entire region of Central and Eastern
Europe.
The BORDERLAND SCHOOL delivers annual courses. During the
academic year, participants take part in 2-3 sessions with a duration of 6-12 days. Courses are delivered by experts coming from
various European states. Classes are delivered in the format of
lectures, seminars, practical workshops, and discussions, which
are combined with screenings of films and other didactic formats.
Each session is teamed up with cultural events: concerts, theatre
plays, one-author meetings, exhibitions, films, as well as meetings
with artists.
C ORE
AREAS COVERED BY THE CURRICULA OF THE SCHOOL
A. Running an organisation or a social, a cultural, or an educational institution in line with European standards. Classes cover:
1. operating methods and principles of the organisation;
2. management workshops;
3. preparation of projects for implementation;
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4. raising funds for activities;
5. assessment of results of individual activities;
6. partnership and international contact networks;
7. legal issues.
B. Practical and theoretical knowledge essential to conduct activities in specific borderland communities. The contents of the
course:
1. the borderland ethos;
2. the historical and the cultural heritage of borderland regions
in Eastern and Central Europe;
3. ethnic and religious minorities;
4. sources of conflicts and conflict-solving methods;
5. the potential and threats related to multiethnic communities;
6. borderland regions after 1989;
7. dependencies between processes occurring in contemporary Europe.
C. Action procedures and methods:
1. new project formats accommodating brand-new needs;
2. examples of the most interesting initiatives and innovations
in Central and Eastern Europe;
3. examples of projects focused on the specific borderland profile implemented in other regions of the world;
4. modern tools facilitating the implementation of cultural projects.
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M ichał W
ójtowski
Wójtowski
A N EXPEDITION AND A TOUR.
AN ATTEMPT AT SORTING OUT
EXPERIENCES
The awareness of the educational effect of travel has found its
clearest reflection, as is commonly known, in popular sayings. Fortunately, the scope of that awareness is somewhat broader and it
takes more refined forms as well. Thus the frequent use of the
formula of travel in the practice of developing education programmes. Below I will take a participating observer’s perspective on
two realisations of the idea of an “educational expedition” and compare them.
In July 1998, I participated in a scientific tour of MISH (Interdepartmental Interdisciplinary Humanities Study) around the Carpathian circle, i.e. the areas of western Ukraine, northern Ukraine,
and western Slovakia. More than two years later, at the end of
November, beginning of December 2000, I re-visited some of those
routes with a expedition with the Borderland School organised by
the “Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations” Centre in Sejny.
MISH tour was organised by Student Circle for Research on the
Culture of Central Europe operating within the Study. The circle
was run under the academic supervision of professor Halina Manikowska and doctor Włodzimierz Mędrzecki. That was not the first
Central-European tour by MISH. Previous ones had taken place in
1996 and 1997 and their route ran respectively through Polish
Michał Wójtowski: specialises in the history of Polish culture and the theory of aesthetic
education, post-graduate student of the Institute of Polish Culture at Warsaw University.
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land in the areas of the Teutonic Order and through Lower Silesia.
The later tours of 1999 and 2000 covered the area of Habsburg
areas (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Northern Italy),
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
The original premise for organising scientific tours within MISH
was the need for student integration, as the course of study was
not conducive to the development of personal and academic contacts. The solution to that atomisation was to be the obligatory
participation in at least one tour, archive or field internship chosen
from sociology, ethnography, history, or the interdisciplinary “Central European” studies which interests me most here.
The content of the Central European tours was largely defined
by the specialisation of the Circle mentors, who were historians
specialising in medieval and modern history. No wonder the academic content of the tours was oriented towards history, and to be
more precise, towards the history of culture. That concerned especially the history of the middle ages and modern times of Central
Europe (19 th and the first half of 20 th century in particular) though
digressions were made to a much more distant past. The main
issues discussed were those of Braudel’s “long duration”, the criticism of national historiography, the history of art, the history of
high and vernacular architecture, the history of city planning processes, the history of industrialisation, the history of national states, and the history of regions. The issues of ethnography, intellectual history, and history of literature were also present, though
not as strongly emphasised. The tours were preceded by compulsory one-year or one-semester preparatory classes which mainly
corresponded to the route of the tour and consisted of student
lectures or talks on chosen problems, which were subsequently
taken up during the tour.
The preparations for the expedition of the Borderland School
were completely different and divided into several stages. The preliminary stage was the festival “Camera pro minoritate”, organised
each year by the “Borderland” Centre, when a group of students of
the “Culture Animation” had the opportunity to watch films on the
issues of ethnic minorities. Participation therein was a prerequisite for the second stage. The latter consisted, on the one hand, in
participation in a series of classes devoted to writing the projects
of animating activities and the legal and economic grounds for such
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activities, and on the other hand, in touching the phenomenon of
multiculturality by visits to the places of the presence, co-existence, or remembrance of the communities of Jews, Tartars, and Belorussians, as well as encounters with persons belonging to those
communities or practising their traditions. Those visits and encounters, ordered as a sequence of one-day expeditions, were then
discussed in the group of students with the participation of the
“Borderland” staff. The third stage involved a two-week expedition
of the Borderland School. The fourth stage was a meeting of the
expedition participants involving further courses in writing projects.
Obtaining a credit for the entire cycle was contingent on a participant preparing their own project of an animation event or a longterm animation activity.
The route of the MISH tour covered Lublin, Lwów, Drohobycz,
Suczawa, Mołdawica, Woronet, Braszów, Sighisoara, Kluż, Baia
Mare, Koszyce, and Lewocza, and the Borderland School tour covered Przemyśl, Drohobycz, Użhorod, Czerniowce, Kiszyniów, Jassy,
Kluż, and Sygiet Maramoroski. We can put it differently: in the
first case the route covered East Galicia, Eastern Carpathian areas, Moldavia, Transylvania, Upper Hungary, and Spisz, and in the
second case it skipped Spisz but went as far as Kiszyniów, which
already is an interpretation. An interpretation isolating the main
and the common idea behind both trips, whose similarities did not
boil down to a mere partial convergence of routes. The most important similarity is the way of reading a map. There is something
peculiar in speaking about cultural and geographical regions, rather than about states (what is easier and closer to the modern
day practice). However, those names, which were frequently forgotten, seemed more appropriate to the leaders of both trips,
since reading map signs rooted deeply in tradition emphasised
the factors of relative continuity and co-existence in that part of
Europe emerging from under political signs, reminding us of sudden break-ups and conflicts of nations, cultures, and religions.
Thus, if the preparations for the trips favoured such map reading,
their goal was awakening or strengthening the awareness that
although multi-hour stopovers on country borders are something
of an inconvenience, the observations that the houses and towns
on both sides of a border differ less than those where there were
no political borders present, were very inspiring. I think I was not
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the only one to understand the space of both expeditions in this
way.
However, travelling similar routes, even if the style of map reading is similar, can mean reaching different places if the time axes
differ. The trips of MISH and the Borderland School were also similar from that point of view: in both cases we were supposed to
search today’s, frequently new political borders and the conflictdriven variability to find the symptoms of identity, continuity, of
what is measured by centuries and goes back to the “old ages”.
That similarity is especially obtrusive when I recall the image of the
trips through the windows of a fast-moving coach. Things change,
however, if one looks at things that happened each time we got off,
as the time axes of those trips are not only “long duration” and the
history of events.
What was far more important was their time rhythm regulated
by the length of stops on the way. During the MISH tour we did not
stop in any place for longer than one day. That was the maximum
needed for reaching chosen architectural objects, such as a Catholic or Protestant church, a synagogue, an Orthodox church, a
city hall, a cemetery, a Skansen museum, for the analysis of the
design of the object, for delivering a talk on some of those objects
or a historical, literary, or ethnographic issue. Such a fast rhythm
and the type of the sources of information (objects and talks) correspond with each other very well and jointly draw upon the past.
They draw upon what is the basis for the contemporary but what
isolates itself from it and leads mainly to passive learning. The itinerary was planned ahead anyway, which only increased the passiveness.
The rhythm of the Borderland School was completely different.
Stops lasted usually two days. That time was devoted to finding
informers. Such had been the case in places visited by the “Borderland” team previously, when it had been setting out new routes
or in places where the School was a real pioneer. Sometimes, however, the addresses were familiar. In all those cases the way to
learn, even in a limited way, about the life of local communities was
conversation. Thus the rhythm and the way of learning, as well as
improvisation provoked an active and independent attitude. They
also directed attention at the recent past and present time, where the expedition participants were mainly supposed to seek symp-
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toms and realisations of broadly understood animation activity in
various political, economic, legal and cultural conditions. Those tasks were allocated to two- or three-person groups who at the end
of the day shared their new experiences and observations. There
were also meetings discussed where the entire group had participated.
The rhythm of each expedition had thus its own character. Furthermore, it contributed to shaping the participants’ attitudes.
Those attitudes could be expressed by a number of dichotomies:
independence (arising from improvisation) – dependency (arising from
assuming a stiff plan); activity – receptiveness; focusing on the
present – focusing on history; experiencing – learning.
Of course, contrasts of this sort are somewhat general. That is
the case e.g. in the contrast between experiencing and learning,
which, to my mind, are a key pair of concepts here. It is beyond
doubt that developing a detailed lecture on the history of a city and
its architecture and then confronting it with reality is as much of a
cognitive act as confronting indirect cognition with direct experience. It also happened during the MISH tour that such a confrontation of cognition and experience resulted in demystifying national
historiography, which was frequently false for multicultural areas.
Undeniably, such demystification is for a humanist a priceless experience, and it is still a form of activity, an independent activity. The
experience of multicultural reality during the expedition of the Borderland School was similarly varied, just as a conversation during
which the expedition participants listened to the memories of their
interlocutors is as much of a dialogue experience as of a cognitive
act at a small scale.
The diversity of the participants’ attitudes draws on another
pair of expressions. Namely: while the participant of the Borderland School experienced and learned things with the naked eye, the
eye of the MISH expedition participant was equipped with numerous optical instruments, such as a telescope allowing them to think
about the history of regions and its many turns, and a microscope,
which allowed them to focus on even the smallest architectural
details. It seems that both instruments were being only constructed during the expedition of the Borderland School by its participants and they still had to learn how to use them. Both situations
have their advantages and disadvantages. In the first case, altho-
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ugh the participant is better prepared from the very beginning,
they are deprived of the priceless experience of a direct penetration of cultural reality. In the second one, although such an experience is possible, one has to work hard to reach it.
It seems, however, that work on the development of the appropriate instruments of understanding reality, even if it is a partial
understanding arising from the mere reconnaissance character of
a expedition, is invaluable. Let us not forget that the expedition of
the Borderland School is a component of studies that train culture
animators. Many of them in the future will come across situations
in their working environment where their arm is unarmed or the
instruments are not precise enough, including when the environment is less exotic than Transylvania. Therefore, it would be good
to drop the future animators off into the field without maps. The
expedition of the Borderland School, as many other forms of training, provides such an opportunity. It is, however, equally important that they should draw their own maps and build their own
instruments, as during an academic expedition like the one organised by MISH. One can speak here about two model programmes
going back to different assumptions and offering different experiences that may lead to a clash or to mutual fulfilment. In view of
the principles of our training programme in culture animation, I am
rather in favour of the latter option. An academic field-study and
an unplanned expedition introduced to the curriculum will definitely
enrich it and give a new meaning to the stereotypical outlook on
travelling.
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Reports
The first module delivered at the Borderland School was made
up of two elements: on the one hand, we got an insight into the
organisational structure and working methods employed by the
“Borderland” Centre, and on the other, we took part in a tour
around the Suwałki region and in the screening of films that presented the specific feel of this area. The second module of the
School’s course – a fortnight expedition to Ukraine, Moldavia and
Romania – had a similar structure, yet shed light on different
aspects. The first stage was focused on culture animation-oriented classes, whereas the expedition to all the regions of Central
and Eastern Europe enhanced the meaning of direct contact with
the borderland culture. The contact was adequately modelled to
our needs: during each stage of our expedition we met up with
people who conducted locally various forms of culture animation.
This has enhanced the consistency of the first and the second
module of the curriculum, and our expedition went far beyond a
standard tourist tour.
M ariusz Gradowski
In line with its assumptions, the School prepares participants
to conduct individual culture animation activities by a presentation
of principles of operations on the cultural market, whereas on the
other hand, its curriculum creates grounds for work in borderland
regions by highlighting their specific profile and problems. Focused
on both aspects, the initial session was delivered in the format of
classes tackling “management” and “borderland” topics. In addition, the activities focused on a wide variety of issues, and many
important problems were introduced on an ongoing basis. All concepts were nevertheless integrated by one clear-cut idea, which
was constantly stressed by organisers of the course: the School
implements strictly practical objectives. It does not intend to teach its students how to create “paper”, theoretical, projects, but
aims at facilitating the planning of actions that will actually be implemented. An additional inspiration driving the organisers is their
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plan to establish a network of individuals and cultural institutions
applying similar methods and operating in similar conditions. So
the management workshop and assistance with project development were of fundamental importance within the Borderland School curriculum.
Classes in cultural management tackled two core subjects: operating methods and procedures of cultural organisations and principles of development and implementation of projects in culture
animation. The class format was very simple. The facilitator explained subsequent steps of culture animation activities, gradually
revealing the structure of project description diagrams and at the
same time presenting the sequence of project planning and implementation. Classes also covered various forms of financing employed by cultural institutions (in the US and Europe). Such methods
used for the presentation of “new project” development clearly
communicated to us that money, if needed at all, should be the last
item on our checklist, as it is critical to develop a clear-cut and
comprehensive concept that can be transparent to any person we
present it to.
A similar concept drove classes in development of “new organisations”. The presentation of the sequence of activities essential
to develop a brand-new organisation was combined with an explanation of general procedures applied by “cultural entities” to raise
funds from three sectors, non-profit organisation budgeting principles, and NGO supervisory and auditing bodies. On this occasion,
we also got an insight into the operating methods employed by the
“Borderland” Foundation, and general operating principles of various institutions were customised to specific plans of particular
workshop participants.
The second session was dominated by consultations and presentations of individual projects delivered in smaller groups. All the participants presented their individual projects to other team members on the very first day. The previously discussed model facilitated
effective description of original initiatives. This test-like situation
provided an occasion to road-test the project, get feedback from
other participants, and identify its weak points. Further consultations were delivered to enhance the quality of projects. Facilitators
encouraged us to perceive the project not as a one-off event, but
the starting point or follow-up of broad-spanned activities. They also
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encouraged us to capitalise on this learning opportunity and seek
the assistance of other participants of the School’s course. Project
authors had to answer various questions, and the problems identified were tackled during group discussions. This indicates that the
foundations of future collaboration have actually been laid.
Franciszek Str
zeszewski
Strzeszewski
During the very first evening we were introduced to the entire
curricula delivered at the Borderland School. We got an insight into
its general assumptions, which provide that the borderland is the
venue of cultural dialogue; into its goals – being of assistance in
gaining general knowledge essential to prepare, develop, and implement an individual project, which is identified within a very broad
context; and into the School’s requirements, including the presentation of a ready project during the next session and kicking off
with its actual implementation.
Workshops devoted to borderland problems presented a practical approach to culture animation in borderland regions, which are
usually overwhelmed by conflicts, a reluctant attitude, or even accusations of treason towards national ideas or of treating “others” as
lunatics (“Odd-believers” written on the “Borderland” Centre’s car…).
Borderland may become home to various groups, encourage closer
contacts, mutual trust, but if there is no good will to co-exist, if
negative emotions, reluctance and intolerance start to dominate,
then the borderland can be swept by trouble and destruction, as in
by the case of former Yugoslavia. Working in the borderland, you
have everyday contacts with people who can suspect you of being a
partisan of the opposite side when you are actually striving to create a dialogue between them – and you can surely expect massive
problems ahead. Yet, it is important to continue your efforts, and if
you persistently work to implement your ideas, the final outcome will
be fruitful. It should also be stressed that lecturing others on how
co-existence in borderland areas should look like is unnecessary. Just
demonstrate that it was once or somewhere possible, so it may be
as well possible here and now.
Rigels Halili
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Borderland regions, areas that were once marked with borderlines dividing states, religions, nations, are nowadays regions where questions about identify stir heated emotions and numerous
reflections. Lands that are identified in the Polish tradition as Kresy (the eastern borderland of the former Polish state) are currently inhabited by people who live thousands of kilometres away from
the graves of their ancestors and speak a different language than
the population that once used to dwell in their houses. Their cultural system fails to draw on events of the past which constitute the
core element of the common knowledge of each and every community. Their common experience seems to be constituted rather by a
lack of common values and traditions, what may even create threats and encourage a determination to create their own original
culture. The fundamental identity-building factor, the unified image
of the world, is falling into pieces. For those who had left, it is a
world forever lost, and for the new settlers – a place where the
foundations of their own past can be erected.
During a week spent in Grodno, the city revealed its secrets,
indicating clues and trails reflecting the complex historical and contemporary situation of the region. Its day-to-day reality was observed by individuals born into various traditions, but continuously
overwhelmed by historical prejudices. To reach accord, we need to
initiate a dialogue, create an environment fostering mutual openness and tolerance. Actual openness to other people is in fact an
approval of their different background, an approval that does not
necessarily stand for absolute acceptance. A dialogue initiated with
another individual gives us an insight into the other person and
helps us to get an insight into ourselves.
But how can we overcome mutual stereotypes, which reflect
historical traumas and make us reluctant to open creative dialogue, which is the fundamental factor driving a cultural development
that cannot resort destruction and a recollection of lost places
and illusions?
Our objective during classes held in small, multi-ethnic groups
was to initiate a dialogue to view current concepts not from the
perspective of two opposing camps, but in the context of a commonwealth of nations sharing the same origins and common history. Leszek Szaruga writes: “Overcoming the urge for domination, possession [and also the need to attribute the biggest los-
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ses and suffering to oneself – JP], the ability to reconcile oneself
to one’s fate – which is interwoven with the fate and desires of
others – does not require contradiction, and does not have to
stand for giving up. Such should be the memories of Kresy borderland: memories of the multitude that need to be shared differently than in the past”.
Breaking free from the impact of the myth requires a demythologisation of reality. This can be achieved by a deconstruction of the
myth, its replacement with another myth or development of an
anti-myth that reveals the truth to supplement versions idealised
by memories or passing time. There was little time to identify which
of the above solutions is the most effective and the most feasible.
But it seems to me that identification of a common solution was
not the point; I believe that the goal we all strive to achieve is a
common approach to the goal and the initiation of mutual relations
by dialogue, overcoming stereotypes and clichés.
Joanna Piller
The journey to locations situated in “the borderland”, in the
geographical, ethnic and cultural meaning of this word, marked
the second stage of classes delivered at the School. The stormy
history of Transylvania, Moldavia, Bukovina, and south-western
Ukraine, had transformed those regions into an environment offering exciting observations of multi-ethnic and multicultural communities.
The journey was made according to an exciting format. It was
mainly focused on encounters with individuals, exploration of the
past and the present of those areas and places by dialogue, which
was initiated with both representatives of state institutions, foundations, schools, theatres, ethnic minority associations and private households. This offered a brand-new perspective on the exploration of new places – the expedition went beyond standard sightseeing, visits to museums and galleries, embracing direct meetings
with individuals who co-create the culture of places and local communities they are a part of. I can now see a unique map of this
region before my eyes, marked by various characters and their
statements, both private and official. This way, we are able to gain
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direct information about the current political and economic situation of those regions, explore traditions of ethnic and religious
minorities and get an insight into their day-to-day reality.
o - Jędruszak
Szczuczko
P aulina Szczuczk
For a variety of reasons, the expedition taken with the Borderland School was one of the most exciting cultural and anthropological experiences gained during my studies. First of all, all the areas
we have explored offered three-fold cognitive value: as historic locations featuring material relics of various cultural influences, as
multinational areas being a melting pot marked by the impact of
various, often distant, cultures (East Slavic, Roman, Germanic and
Hungarian), and as culture animation centres demonstrating various ranges and types of cultural activities. Secondly, the appeal of
the agende of the expedition has been enhanced by its practical
approach: the van used as a means of transport makes travellers
independent of local transportation, whereas a relatively small group size and relative organisational flexibility makes it possible to
customise the expedition to accommodate individual needs.
Only general milestones of the expedition had been planned in
advance. We were to visit cultural centres selected by the “Borderland” team as well as locations barely known as spots on the
map. In such places we were to conduct the pioneer exploration of
the area, gather information on local cultural institutions as well
as non-institutionalised cultural initiatives. We spent two days in
each and every location we had visited. Unfortunately, sometimes
we were forced to spend less time in certain places, leaving the
region with the feeling of hunger for more experience and hopes
that we would some day revisit them.
Em ilia W
rocławsk
a
Wrocławsk
rocławska
We observed the culture of locations visited from the perspective of the anthropologist who, burdened with no prejudices, is able
to listen and observe, remains open to new discoveries and the
distinctive profile of the explored culture. Everything we’ve done,
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learnt and seen largely depended on our individual initiative. It is fair
to say that we were paving the way. We visited towns and cities we
only knew from books, historical accounts and movies to decide
ourselves what we want to learn about them. We once visited, for
instance, a Jewish community to ask them questions. Almost everywhere we went, we met with openness and a friendly attitude
from our counterparts.
After two weeks of wandering – a very pleasant fortnight! – we
returned to Poland, and I was unable to respond to “how was the
trip” questions posed by my friends with a single sentence. I told
them that marketplaces in Moldavia resemble rather Southern than
Eastern markets, that “Soviets” are hated everywhere for what
they’d done; that while travelling across south-western Ukraine,
you see vineyards stretching to the horizon… The journey provided
me with a very exciting experience. I’ve learnt how to visit unknown
places unlike ordinary tourists. I’ve learnt how to understand the
different and the unknown, and become tolerant to things I don’t
understand. Well, and I am definitely sure that I will revisit Uzhorod
one day…
Anna Adr
yan
Adryan
It was a journey to the borderland situated within the former
boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As in Sejny, the wealth
and the distinct character of all the places drew heavily on the fact
that they were built and developed by people with various religious,
ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Cultural diversity has endured to
be the core element of the atmosphere of the region. Our goal was
to find people, places, symbols inscribed on stones, and scents drifting in the air. Our journey was a never-ending exploration of the
past. That is exactly why I have the feeling that we were constantly
forced to cheat time, go back and return, as if we wanted to forget
that disaster that made thousands of people and locations perish
into oblivion, that a new era has begun. Everything that’s left are
blurred traces, and we were determined to find them.
We decided to split the group into small teams to see more and
exchange experiences at the end of the day. Teamed up with three
colleagues, we decided to follow the Jewish trail.
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We set off for Uzhorod in south-western Ukraine. Everywhere,
barely readable traces, places, where something had once been.
The Jews who endured in the region are survivors and their children are either getting ready to leave the area or are too old to do
that. One day, while walking around the town, I felt like a witness of
the collapse of this civilisation. I was overwhelmed by a similar feeling during my search for a Jewish cemetery in Jassach, Romania.
In all the places I’ve visited, I got the very same impression that we
were making an attempt at uncovering the relics of Jewish culture,
which have almost faded away. With no one to look after them,
dead objects become forgotten. The language that had once been a
part of the local melting pot, is no longer spoken. Hebrew letters
have become meaningless nowadays – they have evolved into strange symbols on Jewish graves or blurred ornaments on rot-ridden
walls of crumbling tenement houses.
In my hometown, Jewish tombstones are lying on the river bed,
and letters they once bore have been worn away by water long time
ago.
o
oniuszko
M ichał M oniuszk
We would depart just after breakfast in the morning. Subsequent locations were situated far away from each other, and we
had to travel for many hours – nine, eleven or even twenty hours’
drive. In addition to the favourite pastimes of any car passenger,
we used to spend our time reading articles about the history of
the region which was our next destination. Materials were abundant thanks to our previous preparations. All participants had to
write a paper and gather several articles discussing one of the
milestones of our journey. In addition, the “Borderland” Centre
equipped us with portfolios featuring materials about towns,
regions and their inhabitants. I have to admit that the “van reading room” proved to be exceptionally effective. Moreover, with
a TV set and video in the cabin, we were able to see several films
about towns we were to visit during the journey (there was a
feature about Drohobytch, Tcherniovce or the Chassidim). Such
multimedia education was supplemented by the ever-playing tape
recorder presenting the music of regions and nations we were
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to explore – Gypsy, Klezmer, Moldavian, Ukrainian and Hungarian
music.
The van proved to be the perfect means of transport, fully accommodating our needs. Mobility, independence, the possibility of
making “active observations” of the regions we were passing by.
We often used to stop by whenever something unusual, something
worth taking a closer look at, came into our sight. Such was the
case of a giant horse market situated in the middle of an empty
field or a “cheerful” cemetery in the Romanian village of Sapanta.
“Reconnaissance” is probably the term that best reflects the
nature of all our activities undertaken during the journey. This was
no regular research carried out to implement an identified goal or
gain specific information. On the other hand, our quest was structured by specific rules.
After our first day in Drohobytch, we decided that moving around in such a large group is an ineffective way of exploring unknown
places or initiating contacts with prominent and interesting people. So we split the group into several teams which were to focus
on a selected fragment of the reality of a given town – search for
information and liaise with people. The people who thanks to the
“Borderland” Centre’s contacts were asked to “introduce” us to a
given region, played the role of preliminary “inductors”. The multiethnic profile of the regions explored had naturally indicated the
key for the selection of issues to be explored. This way, we had
teams searching for traces of Jewish culture, Ukrainian, Hungarian and Polish culture and the Russian Orthodox Church. Another
group tackled theatre-oriented issues. All the teams had a flexible
composition based on the specific profile of the location visited,
and selected issues constituted the starting point of our activities, leaving a large margin for individual choices.
We were making our first attempt at initiating contacts with
towns and areas right after our arrival in the evening. But actual
meetings usually took place the morning after, when the appointed
person was visiting us. After a short or a lengthy discussion, going
through all or selected items on the recommended agenda, our
group would head for the town. Our strategy was simple. We would
obtain information about issues tackled by the team from the guide, who often indicated which places or individuals should be visited. Another method we employed was asking people in the street
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for assistance – and few people refused us. We summed up the
developments of the day in the evening. All the groups presented
results of their exploration during the meeting.
This formula was applied through our entire journey, giving individual team members satisfaction from their efforts, and offering
much more information about a given place to the entire group
than traditional “sightseeing”.
The method highlighted the impact of individual activities. Exploration offers no ready results – and all outcomes require individual
efforts. You gain in proportion to what you can contribute. And
although we did not agree or develop this method in advance, it
brought about astonishingly effective results. I believe that all the
participants of future journeys will be much better prepared for
the expedition, and thus benefit more from this experience. It was
a good lesson.
M ariusz Gradowski
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N ORDISK TEATERLABORATORIUM
Eugenio Barba (b. 1936), Italian theatre director, theoretician
and anthropologist of theatre, began his studies at the Aleksander
Zelwerowicz State Theatre Academy in Warsaw as a UNESCO scholar in 1961 and soon found his way to the Laboratory Theatre of
the 13 Rows in Opole, where he spent two and a half years as
Jerzy Grotowski’s assistant, working on the plays Akropolis and
The Tragic Fate of Dr Faustus . In 1963, he began his independent
career there as a theatre director with a staging of The Divine
Comedy , a project he did not complete as he went to India in the
course of rehearsals. Barba played a key role in the perception of
Grotowski’s theatre in the world, initially as the author of the first
book about him ( Alla ricerca del teatro perduto. Una proposta
dell‘avanguardia polacca, Padova 1965), and then a publisher of the
book Towards a Poor Theatre (Holstebro 1968). The artist describes his stay in Poland in the book Land of Ash and Diamonds. My
Apprenticeship in Poland (Polish translation by Monika Gurgul, Wrocław 2001).
In 1964 Barba created his own theatre in Oslo – Odin Teatret
(Odin’s Theatre), which in 1966 moved to Holstebro in Denmark.
Existing until today, Odin Teatret is part of Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, a conglomerate of cultural institutions headed by Barba and
dealing with artistic, educational, promotional, and culture animation activity.
In the mid 70’s, Barba proposed the concept of the Third Theatre, understood as a social and artistic movement of people who
rejected the dominant model of art and life-style and formed theatre groups, creating their own cultural miniconfigurations, which
they called metaphorically “floating islands” and which aimed at
establishing communication with the audience on a “barter” – or
natural exchange – basis. Other groups ranked in this category by
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critics include Teatr Ósmego Dnia (the Theatre of the Eight Day),
Akademia Ruchu (the Movement Academy), and the Centre of Theatrical Practices “Gardzienice”.
In 1979, Barba created the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA), which groups artists and researchers from Europe, Asia and America. ISTA follows a model of working sessions,
organised in various places in the world and combining experimental activities, particularly in the field of comparing artistic techniques used by theatres from the East and the West, with theoretical deliberations in the fields of biology, anthropology, and theatre
studies.
The Polish Culture Department (later transformed into an Institute) established co-operation with Eugenio Barba and Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in 1991. In October 1992 students of the “Culture Animation” specialisation had their first apprenticeship in Holstebro. Invited by the Polish Culture Department, Barba delivered
a lecture at Warsaw University on 21 September 1993 during the
visit of Odin Teatret in Warsaw. Students of the “Culture Animation” participated several times in Odin Week – a week of open
meetings organised by Roberta Carreri and dealing with all aspects
of the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium activity – and also took part in
the programme presenting activities of various cultural institutions in Holstebro, prepared especially for them by Torgeir Wethal.
The Institute of Polish Culture is now preparing the publication of
two books by Barba: Theatre. Solitude, Craft, Revolt and The Paper
Canoe. A Guide to Theatre Anthropology.
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Torgeir W
ethal
Wethal
S TONES IN THE RIVER
In front of me I have three rows of keywords. They have very
simple titles: “Daily life at the Odin Teatret”, “Childhood”, “Youth”.
There doesn’t necessarily exist a sharp distinction between them –
sometimes the same word has ended up in all three groups.
I will not respect chronology. A thought or a memory leads to
other memories or starts new thoughts… I’m going to jump from
memory to memory, from thought to thought, as you jump from
stone to stone in order to cross a river. Which stone is going to be
the next you step on depends on the balance of the body and the
decision you make without thinking. Whether I will get to the other
bank or will stop in the middle of the river – time will decide.
The rules of the game are important. So together with the persons who asked me to make these remarks, we have assumed that
the people that I address know a lot about the activity of the Odin
Teatret. They’ve heard about the different performances, they’ve
heard about how we’re working, so it’s not necessary to speak
much about that. Irrespective of whether it is true or not, that
gives me the possibility to speak in a different way than the usual.
The ones who invited me asked me: “What is your personal history?
What are you, the actor, made of?” These are things I normally
never speak about. It’s like sitting in front of a journalist from a
woman’s magazine. But I accepted this as the rules of the game.
Torgeir Wethal: actor of Odin Teatret, he performed in all the plays staged by the
group since its beginnings in 1964; as manager of Odin Teatret Film he produced and
directed a variety of films about the work and performances of Odin Teatret and other
theatrical personages (including Decroux and Ryszard Cieślak).
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229
My father loved fishing. He didn’t do it very often but those
moments were the best in his life.
Just before Christmas I received a Christmas card. It was a
drawing of a child made on brown paper, the motif was a blue angel
flying up. I got it during the daytime, and in the evening I showed it
to my family. But by then an electric light was lit in the room, and
now I saw that on this brown paper there were a lot of small yellow
stars around the angel. In daylight I couldn’t see them. The postcard came from Poland. It was made by the daughter of professor
Osiński.
In my work demonstration about improvisation, I tell spectators
that before starting an improvisation I go through my archives, my
memory, to find my starting point.
Once when I was nine or ten years old, we went for summer
holidays in the mountains – my family and the family of my uncle.
Nearly everyday we saw a big bird – a hawk or an eagle – circling
around a mountain top.
One evening we experienced a fantastic storm; sitting in candle-light we were counting the seconds between the lightning and
the thunder, and creating fairy tales. In the morning we dressed
warmly and went to the mountain top where a big bird was still
circling. We walked for a couple of hours, my father, my uncle, my
cousin and I. My uncle brought a gun. When we came up on the
mountain top, the wind was so strong that we could literally lean
against it. The wind kept us up, but the bird remained far away
from us, above the next mountain top.
Once with my father I went to another cabin in the mountains.
There was a farm close by. One of the cows had run away from the
farm. It was pregnant. It had to give birth. It was hiding. Somewhere. So we created a big, big, big line of all the people we could
gather, and we went with fifty meter gaps between each other
through the woods searching the cow. I came to an opening in the
wood, the sun was just making a fantastic corridor of light down on
the cow standing there licking the calf which had just been born. I
waited a long time before calling the others.
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In 1964 I got a strange phone call. A person saying: “My name
is Eugenio Barba. I would like to speak with you”. – “About what?” –
“Theatre, of course”. – “Yes, that’s fine. How can we meet?” He
mentioned a well-known restaurant in Oslo. “How can I recognise
you?” – “I’m dark and I’ll be reading «Dagbladet»“ (it’s a Norwegian
newspaper). I went to the restaurant and met this man. Dark with
heavy glasses. Extremely correctly dressed in his blue blazer, his
blue jacket. But he smoked roll-ups like most Norwegians at that
time. He started to tell a strange story. He wanted to create a
theatre, and it should be based on a different kind of work than
that usually carried out in theatres of that time. He showed me
strange photographs of people jumping. Some of them looked like
they were flying in the air. On one photograph there was an actor in
a costume standing on one foot. And he said that the actor had
been staying in that position for ten minutes during one of his long
monologues in Faust . He showed me people keeping their eyes wide
open with their fingers and said: “This is a part of the actor’s
training”.
Nobody I knew had ever heard about the actor’s training in 1964.
We knew exactly what theatre was. And none of us had ever seen
theatre done anywhere but on an Italian stage. I had just tried to
enter theatre school. Without any success. I knew what theatre
was. And then – these strange words and strange facts.
There was a kind of intensity in this way of speaking. It would
take one year before I would try to enter the theatre school again.
So I said: “Perhaps I’m interested”. For a long time I heard nothing
from him.
Since I was five, six, seven years old I went out fishing with my
father from time to time. He was a fly-fisher, but we couldn’t afford
the equipment for two fly-fishers, so I angled with worms. I loved to
sit by the river. It’s the calmest solitude you can experience. One
day after fishing, going back to our cabin in the mountains, we
crossed a streamlet. In the water I saw a spinner just like the one
my father had. For one second I was the richest person in the
world. Until I understood that, of course, it was my father who had
lost it. But the image of the spinner in the water, and that second
of quick heartbeats, are still very strong in my memory.
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When I was 8-9 years old, I started to work – we never called it
“work”, of course – with an old man who was conducting a theatre
group at my school. He was a German. In 1926 he had escaped
from the war. He was a clairvoyant man. He was not a teacher. He
worked with theatre in different schools, he also taught teachers.
Many years later, I learned that he was an anthroposopher and
under the great influence of Rudolph Steiner.
He taught us fairy tales, not as something told, but as something we experienced. We made real theatre performances. He had
a theory of a clear division between different ages. He worked differently with children up to 8-9 years, and a group up to 12-13
years, one up to 16-17 and then a fourth group. But even for the
smallest ones, he asked for a certain kind of discipline: “We are
here to make theatre.”
5-6 years later I was still working with him. I remember I got
some letters from him asking me to gather the group again. “I will
be at school that day – he said – but, please, ask them to be there
on time. Especially the one playing the policeman. Why do we always have to wait for him? And, please, tell the girls not to bring
their knitting, it’s not a housewife gathering club. Please, tell – and
he mentioned the names of two persons – to learn the text before
they come. And tell the girls that if they want to show us nice
costumes, they must also be able to take criticism. We meet to
make theatre together”.
Today it’s very strange for me to read these letters. For many
years it had been difficult for me to understand why I continued to
work with Eugenio Barba. There had been a kind of missing link in my
memory. But seeing these letters I started to understand.
Some months after I had met Eugenio for the first time, he called
me and said we should make the first meeting. He had gathered
many people and borrowed a room at the university of Oslo. He came
to the meeting together with the Norwegian writer, Jens Bjørneboe. For most of us he was an important person. He was the writer
who after the war had been very severe in his criticism of Norwegian
society. Writing in the style of social realism. Later on he developed
to become one of the most universal Norwegian writers. Now he
was there together with Eugenio. And he had agreed to write the
group’s first performance. I don’t think this was the first time when
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Eugenio used his strategic intelligence. He had surely used it before,
in other situations. But the fact that he brought Bjørneboe with him
made some of us decide to join the work and was the move which
made it possible for him to create Odin Teatret.
I do not remember very much of what was spoken about, but the
conclusion was he would find a room where we could work. And
then we should start. Most of us were people who had failed our
entrance to the theatre school.
When, in 1972 or 1973, we played the performance The House
of My Father – which was build around parts of Fiodor Dostoievski’s
biography and novels – in Oslo I went to visit Trummler (that was
the name of the old man I had worked with when I was young). He
had not appreciated our first performance very much. The social
realism of Bjørneboe didn’t match his taste. But the performance
about Dostoievski – with all its wildness and music – he liked.
He lived in a small house, just outside a wood. In the garden there
were various herbs. If one of us in our dilettante theatre group had
a cold or was ill, his wife would send us medical herbs. But when I
came to see him, the garden was covered by snow. We were eating
and speaking. We looked at photographs of the old performances
and remembered that I had played Shakespeare when I was 11 years
old. That I played a monk when I was 10 and performed characters
from different fairy tales. We looked at his colourful set drawings for
the different performances. I remember how we worked as carpenters to create the sets. And we helped as scene painters. Though
he painted most of the scenography himself.
Seeing all the programmes and pamphlets, remembering that I
had produced them using the alcohol duplicator in my father’s office, remembering that, in fact, it was me who had written them.
Then he sat down by the piano and he found texts from the
various performances, started to play, saying all the different lines, playing all the music and the songs. When he was by the piano,
he always put his tongue under his lower lip. He had a big ring on
his little finger. That ring and that tongue…
As an aside, that placing of the tongue is the only naturalistic
detail I have stolen as an actor and used in a performance, in a
small fragment of Ashes of Brecht .
And then he was playing lines from a performance which we
made when our school celebrated it’s 100 year anniversary. The
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school was
mance, the
trees grow
I’m sure
233
called Abildsø. As he told us at the end of the performeaning of this word was “the place where the apple
and thrive”.
he is one of the deepest layers in my garden.
We started to work with Eugenio. 10-15 people. In a small room
in a school in Oslo. But how should we start to work? Eugenio had
no practical experience; the three years he worked with Grotowski,
the whole time he was an observer. And in that period the physical
training in the laboratory of Grotowski was not developed yet. But
he had seen different exercises which he tried to explain us, and
which we tried to do. None of us had a great physical background.
If there was any lesson at school I always tried to steal away from
it was gymnastics. And since I was the leader of the theatre group
in my new school I had the keys. There was always a room in which
I could lock myself up and read when the others did the gymnastics. So my body was stiff as a stick.
One of the participants in the group had taken 2-3 classes of
classical ballet, another had worked with a person who knew a little
bit about pantomime, one knew quite a lot about Swedish gymnastics. All of us became teachers. Teaching the small things we
knew. Everyone got a task to learn something new and teach it to
the others. So, from the very first day we were teachers.
We tried to create exercises. We also tried to do things like
standing on our hands towards the wall. Or to stand on one’s head.
I needed 2 1/2 years to learn how to stand on my head.
The room was in the top of the building; after 1 or 2 weeks it
was nearly impossible for me to reach that room. Because my body
hurt and the stairs were long and steep.
From the very first days on, we didn’t do only physical work or
training. We did theatre, too. We called it etudes. They could be
small situations, like walking in a wood, touching a tree, jumping
from stone to stone in a river, getting caught in a cobweb. Very
naturalistic. But it had to be done with accuracy. Or we created
small scenes, for instance a coffee party.
Most people left. After one month five of us had decided to
remain, and Eugenio founded the Odin Teatret. And for the first
time each of us paid 20 crowns to cover the rent of the room. I
was chosen the be bookkeeper. In fact I had attended half a year of
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mercantile school and I always loved and I still love the logic of
numbers.
After creating the theatre group in this new school, we were
working very hard. My friend who was the technician in the theatre
group got a gastric attack before the opening night. We were 14-15
years old and we worked the whole afternoon and the whole night.
But we also had the key to the teachers’ room: we came across the
place where the teachers hid their crates of beer. With the result
that the “rehearsals” finished at 2-3 o’clock in the morning.
It was a “serious” period. I think that the period between the
age of 13 until the age of 15-16 was one of the most “serious”
periods in my life. I was doing everything flat out. And I lived the
whole day with enormous enthusiasm. Mostly doing theatre. In different dilettante groups and in the professional theatres in Oslo.
One of these theatres made performances for children. And they
used children in the performances too. From the age of 10-11 I
took part in two of these performances every year. They were played for all the schools of Oslo. So at least half of the year I was
doing “professional” theatre. “Professional” means I was paid. Even
if the parts I played were small.
Once we performed Peter Pan . I played the part of one of the
Bluebells, one of the twins. This happened in the biggest theatre in
Oslo. It had 1200 places and was always full. There were always
good professional actors playing the most important roles. Some
of the best actors in Norway, and most of them took the job very
seriously.
One of the big scenes in Peter Pan was a battle scene. The
actor who played Captain Hook one day had difficulty putting his foil
back into its sheath. He forgot his line. Pause. Nothing happened.
Then he looked up at these 1200 children and said: “Excuse me”.
And continued.
He had been my mother’s boyfriend many years before she met
my father. He came from the same small, poor part of Oslo as my
mother and her family. Everybody living there worked in the railroads. That very early relation between my mother and him was the
closest connection with the arts anybody in my family had. He is
still a good and honest actor.
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Eugenio asked for enormous discipline. This was in 1964. I often
wonder if his demands would have been possible 5 years later. I’m
not sure he would have had any chance of getting the same response then. But in 1964 we were still used to a certain discipline
or form. We had been used to standing up and saying: “Good day”
when the teacher came into the classroom.
Eugenio’s discipline was like: “Do not make these jokes. Do not
pester the girls. Be here on time. Be here on time. Work. Don’t
talk”.
We were young and all of us still lived at our parents’ place. But
we had to earn money. I worked in my father’s office. Keeping books. Eugenio worked as a plumber, later on as a scavenger, collecting garbage in the morning. But it couldn’t continue like that. We
needed more time to work with theatre. After half a year or so we
started to work the whole day, some continued to earn money early
in the morning.
Eugenio did not respect the short public holidays like Pentecost.
He said: “Extra holiday here, extra holiday there, if we have to
respect all these, we’ll never work”. But these were the days when
all my friends went to parties, or went for a walk in the forest, and
at that age you have very strong friendships. We started to get
cut off from the normal rhythm of everyday life. But my best friend
and I continued our dialogue. He had also joined the theatre. During
the whole first year we continued not to decide whether to stay
with the group or not. We still had time, before the next opportunity to enter theatre school. I do remember this doubt very well.
But I don’t at all remember the moment of the first decision. I think
I forgot to decide.
Since then, on I have decided many times. I must admit that I do
not know at all what I should have done if I stopped working in the
Odin Teatret. But I do still live in the luxurious situation that I decide if I want to take part in a new performance or not. Every time.
We’ve never started to work on a performance which I’ve not made
the choice of taking part in.
I do not know if I’ll take part in the next performance of the Odin
Teatret. I’ve not decided yet.
When I was 15-16 years old, I helped Trummler organize a workshop for amateur actors, quite a lot of organisation and a long work-
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shop. I also started to take part in his organisation where he was
making reviews about theatre education in the primary schools.
When the Odin Teatret moved to Denmark in 1966, we did not
have much chance to survive economically. We got some money
from the town but not enough, so we had to do something to earn
money. We had no performances to perform because one of the
actors did not come with us from Oslo to Denmark. Eugenio started to organise workshops for Scandinavian theatre people, so they
could meet with what Eugenio considered the most important directions in European theatre. We were 5 people. Or 6 perhaps. We
did all kinds of work. Printing programmes, texts, cleaning the house, taking care of guests, making translations. In the theatre
there is a long corridor between the office and the dressing rooms.
I remember the whole corridor full of paper and some of us on our
knees there throughout the whole night finishing the programmes
before the arrival of the guests in the morning.
One workshop presented Decroux. The father of mime. One of
the most consistent men in theatre. One of the most important
inspirations in modern theatre. For actors. He was famous for his
clear and unique line. Famous for his concentration. Once, when he
was younger, in a performance he lost his balance. He stopped.
And started the performance over again from the beginning. That
was his only way to find that balance.
Some persons who had been his pupils worked in our theatre.
They had their own group, a mime group. They had been able to
make him come to Holstebro. It was an extraordinary situation.
Because he wasn’t interested at all in anything other than what he
himself was doing. If some of his pupils asked him if they could take
part in a workshop done by somebody else, for instance Grotowski,
he would not answer “No”. He would just throw them out. And they
would never be allowed to return.
He came, he was already old. He showed us all the different
exercises and small actions he had made. He wanted to show us
some short 8-mm films.
Film projection was my responsibility. The films were completely
ruined. It couldn’t work. I knew it couldn’t work. But I had to try.
We started. And the film stopped. He got angry, went out of the
room and slammed the door. That was my closest personal meeting with him.
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There must have been some strange kind of relationship between him and Eugenio because later on he came to see one of our
performances when we were performing in Paris. He usually never
came to see theatre performances of other groups. He came together with his wife. During the performance there was a strange
noise. In fact, he was sitting there speaking with his wife the whole
time. A person among the audience leaned over to him and said:
“Please, could you be quiet? You are disturbing the performance”.
Decroux stood up and said: “No, the performance is disturbing
me!” His wife grabbed her bag and they both went away. He knew
what was important for him. He didn’t permit his attention to be
distracted.
We went on a tour from Norway to Denmark with our first performance. After a while Eugenio went back to Norway to pass an
examination at the university, so we were left alone. One afternoon
we all were walking on a road by the sea. We had performed the
night before, we had been doing training and rehearsals in the morning, and we had to perform again in the evening. While we were
walking there, Eugenio came back from Norway and happened to
pass us by car. He saw us and got furious. He was so angry: “Why
are you not working?!”.
We had made a working plan and we were working at least as
much as we used to do. But it wasn’t the same plan as he had
made. I don’t remember if it was the first time he introduced what
he called a mulct. We had to pay a part of our – well, we didn’t have
any salary. But because we were selling performances, we got some
money for eating. So we paid a part of this…
Some years later in Holstebro, in Denmark. We were working on
a new performance. Eugenio was away once again. I was responsible for the work. And once more we had made a new working schedule – working very early in the morning and very late at night.
When Eugenio came back, he didn’t find us in the working room, and
he got completely mad.
Iben and I lived together in that period. He “grounded” us.
These three days “under house arrest” do probably represent
the moment of the decision I don’t remember from Oslo. We didn’t
want to be part of the group any more. We were leaving, we were
absolutely on our way away from Holstebro. Everything in us was
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saying that we did not want to stay there. We remained and continued to work. Yes, this is probably my first real moment of decision.
A group like that, created out of almost nothing, without money
or with very little money, surrounded by theatre institutions, by all
the traditional critics, is extremely weak. It has nothing but its
discipline. What does it mean, discipline? Lines, small invisible rules, keeping us together. It becomes like an immune defence system. It made us able to go all the way through these first ten
extremely difficult years. To confront ourselves with situations which
had split most other groups. And to continue to fight, to reach
theatrical results.
Bjørneboe, the Norwegian writer, wrote the first performance
for us. He gave us 70 pages of text. We used it as a base for our
work. We were allowed to use it completely freely. Slowly we cut it
into bits and pieces. We also used texts from other sources. At
the end we had a manuscript of 14 pages. He followed this work,
he was not against it. Some of the texts we had found – traditional
Norwegian songs, citations from the Bible, comments by the actors – were used by him when he rewrote his original text. It became a regular performance performed at the National Theatre in
Oslo. He was a strong personality. Periodically, he drank too much.
When we had to leave Oslo and travel to Denmark to live there, we
had to store some platforms at the farm where Bjørneboe lived. He
was to transport it for us in his car. But some of them were too
long, they did not fit into the car. Then he just took a big maul and
started to beat on them until they could fit into the car. I think he
was doing very much the same thing the whole time with Norwegian society, to make it more decent.
Later on he became a wise man, he became, as I said, more
universal. He called himself the Protocol Keeper of Humanity, his
books became better and better. Then he hung himself. We learned
that when we came home from a tour at Venezuela. We had been
travelling with a performance titled Come! And the Day Will Be
Ours . All of a sudden we felt poor and lonely.
When we celebrated our 20th anniversary, we created a prize
and gave it Bjørneboe’s name. We gave this prize, which was accompanied by quite a lot of money, to another great humanist,
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Heinrich Böll. Böll came and his task was to pass this money on to
somebody else. He gave it to an organisation working with Vietnamese boat refugees.
When we came to Denmark in 1966, we started to work on a
new performance. We worked together with a Danish author, Ole
Sarvig. He was perhaps nearly the opposite of Bjørneboe. A great
poet. Deeply religious. He wrote for us, but he didn’t write theatrical texts. He gave us a lot of points, titles of different chapters, a
lot of text fragments, no completed text. We worked on the story
of Kaspar Hauser. Kaspariana – we called it.
In the middle of Oslo, between the Parliament and the Castle,
there is a kind of long fountain. When the weather is nice, you can
skate on it. There is a scene in Kaspariana where Kaspar Hauser
is being born or brought into society, and I remember a flight up in
the air, to the top of the skies. I can walk on the top of skies,
reach for the sun, get burnt up, and my ashes can fall down on
this fountain between the Castle and the Parliament. This was an
improvisation I did to find the sound of how Kaspar Hauser was
born.
When we were in Denmark in 1965 on a tour with our first
performance, Ole Sarvig helped us. He had some contacts, and we
had some breaks during the tour, some days when we didn’t know
what to do. He proposed us to perform in an Art High School where
the students worked with ceramics, painting, and so on.
There was a problem, however: the room wasn’t high enough.
But we could get a full price. 350 crowns. I was the cashier, Eugenio was in Oslo, I said: “Yes”.
It was too low. After the show we had white paint under our
shoes, we had been touching the ceiling during the more acrobatic
parts. But no accident happened. This became an important performance in our history. Iben Nagel Rasmussen was studying at
that high school. After seeing the performance she wanted, if possible, to work with us.
Half a year later, when we were already established in Holstebro, she and the others came, and a new period started. It’s true
that we had been working as pedagogues for ourselves from the
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very beginning. But now we had to start teaching new people. After
all only three of us had come along from Norway. We needed new
actors.
When Iben came to the theatre, we fell in love, and we lived
together for some years. That must have been the beginning of the
“Odin Village”.
We used to travel a lot and we still do. After having worked with
us for 4-5-6 years many people left the group, most of them because of love. They took the consequences and said: “It’s more
important to me to be close to the person I’m in love with than to
travel, and travel, and travel”. But slowly the Odin Teatret became
a village where you marry your neighbour. And ever since then there
has always been a lot of couple combinations within the group. And
many official marriages, too. It became healthy and natural – and
difficult – just like in a village.
Sarvig, the Danish poet, remained close to us for many years.
He always came to see our performances. Sometimes he looked
like a big happy child. One morning listening to the news on the
radio we heard he was dead. He had flown out of the window. Once
again we felt very poor and lonely.
We played The House of My Father in Lille, in France. When we
arrived at the hotel, there was a message for me that I had to call
Eugenio in Denmark. I did. He told me that my father was dead. I
phoned to Norway to speak with my family.
We are not able to make more than one performance a day. We
never do. We do not have enough strength to do it. One performance a day is one full day of work. But the day I had got this phone call
we played twice the same night, to save a day, so I could leave
earlier and go to my father’s funeral in Oslo.
Once I was sitting in a tram. We came to the last stop. There
was one man who didn’t stand up and leave. I remembered – and
this is still true – that I’d never seen a dead person in my life.
Which was very strange at my age. I was always far away when
those who might have tought me the image of death, died. When
my mother died I was performing in Rome.
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Eugenio has always been a master of changes. This was clearest in the first many years. Every time we finished the work on a
performance, there was a kind of cut-off. Reorientation. Later on,
these changes became more smooth, more fluent in time.
One performance was stopped because one of the actors had
had a small accident on his bike. We had to wait some days before
starting again. Then, during this short period, Eugenio found out
that one of the actors had been smoking hash. He brought together the whole ensemble and threw everybody out.
We live in a very small society. And this probably happened early
in 1968. We’ve always practised extremely correct behaviour in
front of society. We knew how vulnerable we were as an organism.
If tongues started to talk in gossips about us, we would probably
loose our support and our working place.
When we travel and, for instance, work with people in different
villages and towns, we behave decently. We respect the local taboos. We know what we want and we don’t want to give people superficial reasons for being against what we want. The more we know
about the society we are living in or visiting, the stronger we are.
I was a child interested in theatre, but at the same time I was
also interested in film. One of the performances we played in a
theatre in Oslo had to be filmed. I got the same part in the film as
I had had in the theatre performance. It was directed by the best
Norwegian director of that period; he was also the writer of the
performance. The film came out very, very badly; it became a really
bad comedy. But for me it was a huge experience. A production like
that, in that period, took about two months. I was taking part in
20-25 days of production as an actor. The rest of the time I was
allowed to be part of the team. To bring coffee, to make the food, to
help carrying the camera which was heavy. Paradise!
I started to photograph.
I love images. A few years later I stopped photographing since I
was about to become good at it, and I was about to get too interested. I had to either become really good or to drop it. I dropped it.
I photographed the different workshops we organised, and sold
the photos to the participants. I have some fantastic photos of
Jean-Louis Barrault. Where he is jumping, with his open shirt,
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and still, once again, is making his “horse etude”. Although he
was old.
Photos of Dario Fo. When he came and performed for the first
time, we could hardly recognize that it was a non-existent language he used. “Grammelot” he called it. It was just a black language
which he himself had invented and put some real words into. For us
it was a great inspiration. And we made our next performance, The
House of My Father , in grammelot. In a Russian grammelot. Where
all the sounds were Russian-like and where 5-6 words were in real
Russian. Many people in the audience really believed that it was
Russian.
It was a wild period. A lot of people within the circles of Danish
Theatre spoke about us as a kind of monastery, we were just “locked up” in that black room and always working and always so serious. But our group has always been full of people living life to the full.
We played The House of My Father in “Russian”. We took part in
the Biennale in Venice. Venice is fantastic. It is killing. It works on
everybody. I remember, all of us slept with our boots on. There was
no time to take them off.
One of our actors, Tage, had to start voice work with Eugenio in
the morning about half an hour after we had come back to the
hotel. And for “one or another reason”, every time he was saying a
word, he would whistle at the same time. He couldn’t stop it. Eugenio was extremely fascinated, but Tage was not able to repeat it
the following day.
The House of My Father was a performance full of music, dance,
open beer bottles, colours, death. It was in the beginning of the
seventies. And as in many of our performances, a part of it was a
reflection on ourselves in that precise historical period.
I have one film with just 6-7 photos taken. Grotowski on a bicycle, and Ryszard Cieślak and Iben playing together in the background. Ryszard Cieślak sitting on the back seat of the bicycle of Grotowski.
I have had three masters. Eugenio is the second. Only later on I
understood that the old master of my childhood theatre was my
first master. Grotowski was the third. For 3-4 years he and Ryszard Cieślak used to come every summer to Holstebro to make a
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workshop for Scandinavian theatre people. And in three small situations he worked with me. These three situations are still an important part of my basic knowledge as an actor. He gave obstetric
aid.
First, there was a situation where he created a big group improvisation, a marriage. It had to be a marriage between me and
one of the other participants. We continued to work on this situation until we forgot to act and began to do real actions.
In other parts of this workshops we were working with Ryszard
Cieślak in physical and plastic training as we called it at that time.
We used the work with the two of them very much as a reference and a point of orientation. They changed and developed the training. And every summer we changed too. And every summer it
changed us too, even though we were already by then busy developing a completely different kind of training of our own.
Ryszard had this capacity of pushing you to your extreme limits
and at the same time taking care of you as if he held your hand. I
have some nice photos of him and his daughter when she was two
years old.
We had to leave Norway. In Norway we had no support. We
worked there for nearly two years. We made our first performance
there. But we were not able to get any financial support and to find
a place to work. The last long period of rehearsing our first performance took place in a bomb shelter, always humid and with a temperature of exactly 13 degrees.
My friend named Tor was good at working with dogs, training
them. So when we had finished the rehearsals he trained dogs for
people in one of the corridors of this bomb shelter to earn money
for the group.
But when we sat on the deck of the boat, Tor was not there, he
didn’t come with us to Denmark. He decided to remain in Oslo and
to train dogs. Today he still trains dogs for blind people.
He had decided not to leave. But we left. And when we were
sitting on the deck of the boat, we felt very much like the images in
the film by Kazan America, America . We were alone.
I left.
When you are 19 years old you have strong relationships with
your friends, and you fall in love every day. Families. We left. This
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might have been one of the few things that all the actors in Odin
have in common. We all left. We made a choice. But this also means
that we probably have one more thing in common: a huge memory
of solitude. Perhaps we are just a gathering, a group of people who
share their solitude. In some periods, at least, it has felt like that.
Eugenio is very – one might say – direct. Which is the opposite
image that one has of him, of course. Direct in the sense that he is
extremely concrete. He is never abstract. I would even say that he
has no sense of abstraction. You cannot show him a work and tell
him: “But remember, I’m wearing a black dress”. He sees what he
sees, and he cannot remember other things at the same time.
When he is working.
I have a good friend – Ferdinando Taviani. He is an Italian professor. He has written books on our work and he collaborates with
Eugenio when Eugenio is writing his books. He also works with us
when we prepare new performances, first of all as a kind of partner-in-dialogue for Eugenio.
But he and I also speak. It’s so important for me in some situations not to be clear, to meet a dialogue partner in a chaotic way.
Without knowing what I want. Not having to be concrete, not having to be clear. One who helps you to crystallise chaos.
Many people see a clear balance within the Odin Teatret. A balance of strength. It doesn’t mean that it is balanced all the time,
after all different powers are present in the group. One could say
that for instance Eugenio and I represent two opposite poles. You
would have to search long and hard to find two persons who are
more different than we.
Often the women in the group represent the strength and even
the hard element, and often the men represent the softer element. This is, of course, based on the fact that we have had space
and time to let our other halves grow. Or even to cultivate them.
All of us have these two halves.
In the group today we still have to face hard and difficult tasks.
Challenges. But we have become good at giving room and space to
each other. As Eugenio is able to open up space and give place for
the actors’ work, the actors’ needs, the actors are able to do the
same for him in many situations. At least in creative situations.
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In the middle of the seventies I had a difficult time. Personally, or
perhaps privately. We toured very much, met a lot of people. We
invested all of ourselves in this kind of life, we got involved with
many people. And then, after a week or two I had to say “good bye”.
We were in the “enthusiastic” age. And slowly I began to understand that I could become a “professional leaver”.
But we continued to tour, and we started to return to the same
places. Today all around Europe and South America there are many
places and people we come back to again and again. I don’t leave
them any more. A year passes, or two months, and you will meet
again next time.
There is one place which is good for solitude. It’s by a river. You
can sit there or you can walk. Maybe with a fishing-rod in your
hand.
Every day when I come home from work, I go down to the back of
my garden. There is a river there. Sometimes I fish. The biggest
fish you can catch in that river would fit into a sardine tin. It doesn’t matter. It is a place where I can stand hand in hand with my
solitude. And not feel lonely.
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Roberta Carreri
I MAGINE A WHITE ROOM
In the early days of my professional life, I would never start an
improvisation in the corner of the workroom, but always in the centre. Stepping into the centre was a preparatory action. In the improvisation, I would attempt to follow a string of images that I would
translate into actions in the space. The actions would take place in
linear succession: one after the other. I was not aware of “where” I
was physically. The walls of the room were my only limit. When I got
too close to them, I would change direction. It often happened that
the string of images would break. I would thus find myself in a void:
How should I act? Why act? The “power of the space” would then
take possession of me and drag me along with it. I would lose rational awareness of what I was doing. I would let myself go… like a dry
leaf carried off by the wind. My movements would come, one after
another: fast and strong to the point where I would have to transform them into slow and soft. I was the leaf and I was the wind.
I don’t remember when I heard of the dramaturgy of the actor
for the first time, but surely it was long after it had become a part
of my work.
At the Odin Teatret long periods of time can elapse before the
actor is faced with having to create a new character. For me, cre-
Roberta Carreri: joined Odin Teatret in 1974, she appeared in several performances
staged by the group and produced her own; she delivers acting workshops and her
original presentation of works depicting her professional autobiography Traces in the
Snow , twice a year she organises and conducts Odin Week, an open week at Nordisk
Teaterlaboratorium in Holstebro.
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ating characters is necessary in order to develop as an actress.
That is why I often wander about in what for years now I’ve ceased
calling “training” but, instead, refer to as my “private garden,” where I cultivate the characters I invent, beginning with a text I choose.
Here, the absence of the director obliges me to think about how my
actions and my words can succeed in reaching the spectator. I’ve
never worried about this when doing improvisations for a new performance, knowing that their significance in the eyes of the spectator is determined, in that case, by the director’s final montage and
by the context in which my actions are placed. In my “private garden” I’ve established a direct relationship with the imaginary spectator. And I therefore find myself faced with problems to solve:
How should I set the words of a text to a sequence of actions?
How, using my own presence, should I create a space, make it
“breathe”, destroy it and end up leaving an image that is different
from the initial one yet still related to it?
How should I compose, not only my body, but also the place
where I am in the scenic space and then decide the dynamics of my
actions?
How can I have the images I create follow one another without
producing an effect of predictability for the spectator that would
render them obvious and give rise to boredom?
How can I surprise, and at times disorient, the spectator only to
guide him/her back to port through the meandering of my own story?
Today, I occasionally use this form of dramaturgy in my improvisations during the creation of a performance. Poems and texts
learned by heart have constituted the basis of my improvisations
for a number of years now. The theme given to me by the director
prompts me to choose which text to follow in my mind. The text
constitutes an outline: a string of images to hold onto as I concentrate on how and where to make them concrete. Sometimes, however, when I allow myself to be transported by the dynamics of an
action, repeating it in different ways and amplifying it, it happens
that this string of images breaks.
A text, then, is at the base of a sequence of actions to be used
in the performance to accompany another text chosen perhaps by
me, or by the director, or perhaps the words of another actor. But
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at this point we have entered the territory of the dramaturgy of the
performance.
When I attempt to reproduce the course of my thoughts in
creative work, I find myself facing a sea of thoughts and sensations
to which I react. I am guided by questions.
★ ★
★
Imagine a white room with no windows. Empty. Like a blank sheet of paper. A wooden floor. Lights.
And you in the centre.
Your mind is filled with words, the space is empty.
Your feet begin to move.
How? They leave the floor reluctantly, they imagine themselves
to be in the act of being dragged out of the mud. Imaginary mud.
The mud of an emotional relationship that you are leaving behind.
And the heart?
It is heavy. The chest recoils, as if in reaction to a blow: the
impact of Disillusionment.
And the mind?
It is light. You are met with the fresh air of a future that is
unforeseeable, as are all true futures: full of possibilities. You are
light, free.
Your hands are full of bags and suitcases.
You walk, looking at the image before you of the man you have
loved blindly for years. You are Nora in the final act 1.
Your presence etches lines in the space that disappears as you
advance, but it must also leave a trace in the minds of those observing you. You stop. You place your travelling bag on the ground. You
look at its handles as you gently lay them down to one side. You
straighten up, speaking.
It’s hard, you must remember to breathe in as you lay the straps
down. This is not natural. It would be natural for an exhalation to
accompany this action.
But you are an actress on stage. You know what to do but you
must make it unforeseeable, like life. That is why you work on a
1
A character from Ibsen’s The Doll’s House .
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hidden dance between the different parts of the body, between the
actions and the breathing.
You create a dialogue between the sound of the footsteps and
the sound of the voice, the sound of your gaze… some glances are
screams, others are a whisper.
The spectator listens to the sound of your voice alternating
with the sound of your actions.
Where do you want to lead him? On what do you let your attention and the spectator’s attention linger?
Spontaneity belongs to the next step. Now you must think, choose, decide with your whole body.
Thinking about what to do is not enough. The essential aspect
lies in HOW to do it.
In your private life, “how” and “why” melt into one another daily,
spontaneously. Only in important moments do you realise the importance of “how”. Here, on stage, each moment is important.
You choose it, compose it. You move simultaneously and consciously on several levels.
Your actions can be illustrative or associative.
You caress your wrists as you speak of the freedom that awaits
you.
Your knees buckle on mentioning your children that will be educated by others.
You offer the wedding ring in the palm of your hand as though it
were a dead lark.
Not only that, you can also jump from the subject to the object:
you offer the ring as though it were a dead lark into the hands of
the hunter (you are the hunter) and your voice is the sigh of the
dying lark.
And the voice?
What happens to your voice? Does it soar above your actions or
does it spring from them?
Does it follow your hands or your feet? Your conscious will or
your innermost desires? Your yearnings.
What do you mean when you say: “Farewell”?
What are you saying when you say: “Farewell”?
Are you im paling a m an onto his conscience or are you casting off your m oorings? Skim m ing over the sm ooth surface, or
plunging into the darkness of the unknown? On the tip of your
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tongue or at the base of the throat . Behind the words lie the
actions.
Your task is to single out those actions and to make them come
alive in the space. To redeem them from their virtuality.
You can start from a theatrical text or you can start from nostalgia, the important thing is to start. To take the first step. To
rouse the spectator’s attention, gently or forcefully… and then by
negating oneself, surprise him.
Deviate.
A strong, sudden action accompanied by a whisper. Then you
advance slowly and with determination. Breaking the waves. You
become the ship you’ve spoken of. The ship that brought you to Ellis
Island 2.
Once again, you go from being the subject to being the object.
You are she who describes and she who is described.
You consciously recreate the ambiguity of real life.
You alternate dance steps with suggestive images fished out of
your memory. You choose objects that recur in so many countries
on our planet: black scarves, suitcases, candles, garden chairs…
to find them again. To find yourself again. You are the Emigrant, the
Uprooted. Aerial roots sprout from your flanks and influence your
balance. You are like a Phalaenopsis: a delicately scented orchid.
A dance between you and your possible past? Between you and
yourself? Between you and the spectator?
The floor of the stage is your level of encounter. Why do I choose
these words?
How many images cross my mind in the moment that I choose
the action to perform, or how to perform it? Only if no image crosses my mind will I be present in the action I perform. I must therefore perform it several times until the beautiful images that crowd
the vanity of my mind dissolve into the most simple of actions.
2
An island in Upper New York Bay that was used, between 1892 and 1943, as an
immigration station where immigrants were held in quarantine before being allowed to
enter the United States.
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To see everything and to see nothing: like the eyes of the dead,
half-closed in their silence. To abandon oneself to that part of oneself that is wiser than we are.
Everything is so easy when you cease to think, because you
know.
Holstebro, November 1999
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Roberta Carreri
L EARNING FROM TEACHING
Theatre is an artisan craft. It cannot be learnt from books. The
physical presence of other people – master, director, other actors
– is necessary to learn the craft. In theatre, the presence of other
people is essential both during apprenticeship and when what has
been learnt is put into practice. Theatre responds to a deep necessity of the human condition: relationship.
I have twenty-five years of experience behind me, and this makes me a potential teacher. What pushes me to teach and what – in
spite of pressing demands – keeps me from doing it more? Now I
can say that teaching is a necessity for me. It is a way for me to
make what I know my own by transmitting it.
Being a good actor does not automatically mean being a good
teacher nor conversely. A teacher must know how to teach, imprint and mark; how to put on other people the mark that we in
turn have received from someone that we have chosen to be the
one to mark us with their experience.
All I know, I have learnt from others. Often a look has been more
precise than a hundred words.
TO
LEARN FROM TEACHING
In 1974 I had been part of Odin Teatret for five months. A group
of actors from different countries had come to Odin Teatret to
participate in a workshop that was to last six months (the longest
in the history of our theatre). Torgeir Wethal led the acrobatic
work sessions, Iben Nagel Rasmussen those with composition. Tom
Fjordefalk and I – as pupils at Odin Teatret – followed these sessions together with the workshop participants. Else Marie Laukvik
worked on the technique of improvisation and the creation of a
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253
study around the theme of life in a Japanese village. As all the
actors from the group were engaged in pedagogical activity with
the participants, Eugenio Barba decided to give to Tom Fjordefalk
and me the task of directing the participants in training with props
(poles, sticks with ribbons, flags...). From the day I joined the group, I had trained daily with props, but now I found myself rediscovering my work. While showing the participants the exercises, I had
to be very precise so as to allow them to repeat them. I had to
focus my presence and my actions, which meant that my work
suddenly grew.
“An angel runs
Thru’ the sudden light
Thru’ the room”
Jim Morrison
In this way a change of consciousness happened in me. Suddenly
I was not the most fresh recruit: I was responsible for other people. Although I was aware of the fact that I was still not a master,
I felt strongly that in the moment of transmission I became part of
the tradition to which I had chosen to belong. I had also to learn to
see what functioned and what did not function in the work of the
people who had been entrusted to me. I had to detect what was
hidden behind that which resulted from my words and from my
example. I had to understand what did not work in the pupil’s way
of thinking. This was for me a new form of training: to concentrate
my attention on the work of another person for a long span of time
and identify myself with what happened in another body/mind. This
taught me to instantly translate what I saw into physical information, which is to develop a memory of actions not done by me directly, but by the dynamic which my body can recognise.
Later, after years of training and performances, the evolution of
this ability would be very useful to me to draw inspiration from the
other performers’ acting.
“A ghost precedes us
A shadow follows us
And each time we stop
We fall”
Jim Morrison
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TO
LEARN TO TEACH
At the beginning of my pedagogical career, I taught exercises
that in turn I had learnt from my colleagues, often without understanding their meaning in the theatrical context. I taught them because it was what I had learnt, without realising that the learning of
these exercises in my case was part of a long term education, while
for my participants to learn them was a unique and isolated event.
Years later I found myself conveying the training that I myself
had elaborated. The meaning of the work with the different exercises was clear to me at that point on a theatrical level. I had created the exercises myself and chosen them for their function in
terms of my developmental needs. But still we had the problem of
the workshop being very limited in time in relation to what our
apprenticeship at Odin Teatret requires. This invariably generated
frustration both in me and in the participants.
How could I, in the course of three days, lead the pupils so as to
give them an experience of what it means to work with continuity?
How could I make them find an uninterrupted form of varied scenic
presence for more than two hours? How could I infect them with a
need for rigour and discipline, that would allow them to attain the
maximum from themselves?
For ten years I have been searching for words, examples and
mental images that would allow me to transmit to others the essence of my experience: the approach to the work, the discovery of
continual presence and how to model the energy that produces it.
For my part, I am convinced that the form of presence with which I
enter the working space and I meet my pupils, determines my first
direct influence on them. Their availability to learn depends on this.
It is clear that it is not possible for me to transmit all my experience in the course of a workshop of a few days, but each time I do
a workshop I need all my experience. What and how I choose to
transmit is decided in the moment when I meet the pupils. The
workshop is the result of my meeting these pupils now. I must be
able to react to the given situation to allow experience to be passed from me to the pupils.
“In the Torah, the Hebrew «to know», often used in a
sexual context, is not about facts but about connec-
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255
tions. Knowledge, not as accumulation but as charge
and discharge. A release of energy from one site to
another”.
Jeanette Winterson
T HE
NEED FOR A MASTER
When I started to work in theatre years were needed before the
hours of training and the hours of work for performances would
give results. Now when I do workshops of three days or maximum
three weeks, I meet a great desire to learn fast.
I don’t remember when I first heard the sentence that today I
hear daily at Odin Teatret: “I don’t have time”. In the beginning we
were rich in time; we had all the time in the world. A dilated time,
within the four walls without windows in our working spaces. A
time outside the time of clocks and swelled by that concentration
during which we learnt, discovered, repeated and created. I needed
years to learn the most elementary acrobatic exercises. I needed
years to learn to work with body composition, years to learn to
sing, years to own the work with different resonators, years...,
years..., years... In those years, letters were sent with a stamp.
Now, in the era of speed and electronic post, I am constantly confronted with young people who think that it is possible to acquire
experience and knowledge as one buys coffee at the supermarket.
Of course you have to make the effort of choosing the brand, but
then it is enough to pay and you go out with your packet: “instant
coffee”, “instant knowledge”. The workshop culture, where you collect a curriculum full of important names, is created in this way.
But if the continuity of daily work extended in time does not exist,
these moments of great inspiration fall like seeds on cement. On the
other hand, if this daily work exists, these meetings with masters
are extremely important. This I know from experience. At certain
periods my actor’s work has been very solitary, even when working
in a group. In those moments I felt the need to let myself be inspired
by people who had a totally different experience from mine.
When I do work demonstrations or workshops of a few days’
lenght I am aware of the fact that what the pupils can learn is
limited, but I also know that what they can take with them is an
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inspiration to develop their work in a new direction. A real process
of apprenticeship requires a much longer time and a constant presence and an availability on my part to be inevitably hated by the
pupils; or “loved despite”. When you are a pupil you love and hate
the master. When you are a teacher you love and hate the pupil.
I am forty-six years old, I am no longer young, but I am still not
old. For years I have taken upon myself the responsibility of becoming a teacher. I continue to work in this direction, continually
developing my pedagogical work. For the moment though, I feel I
should still concede myself some time to grow as an actress, creating and presenting performances in the first person. To become
a master means for me to put in close-up the needs and potentialities of the pupil, putting myself in the background and moving
through the body of the pupil.
“What you see is not what you think you see.
Pardon me?
Shadows, signs, wonders. Who are you? What is that
you contain? What is salted up in the memory of you?
Memory past and memory future. If the universe is
movement it will not be in one direction only. We think
of our lives as linear but it is the spin of the earth that
allows us to observe time”.
Jeanette Winterson
When I was fifteen years old I dreamt of being educated, as in
Ancient Greece, by a pedagogue who even had a beard and white
robe, who would walk with me and reveal the mysteries of the Universe, a philosopher, a person who besides answering my questions,
would give me a vision of the world, would teach me a way and offer
me a meaning to my existence. I imagined I would pass my time
talking, walking under the sun or the stars and sitting in the shadow of great trees or tall columns.
From my adolescence I remember having had need of a person
who would push me to overcome my limits, following me along the
way; a person who would be available to accept being deeply hated
at certain times. It is painful to go beyond one’s limits: to grow.
The spontaneous reaction is to hate the person who makes you
suffer. In a very deep part of me existed a Need. I see apprentice-
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ship as a way of confronting one’s own Need. If it is real, you persist, and one day you will feel pleasure in your work. Otherwise, you
stop.
“If tears were gold, I would be a millionaire” – says an old Danish
song. If the litres of tears that have slipped into the gutters of
Odin Teatret together with the water of the showers were gold,
they would be enough to settle the foreign debts of many countries
of the world.
Eugenio Barba, besides being my director and the artistic director of Odin Teatret, has also been my master. Physically, the other
actors taught me the training work, but it has been Eugenio’s
presence in the room and his observations that obliged me to continue even when I felt that I could no longer do so. To do chains of
somersaults and learn acrobatic exercises at seven in the morning
made me literally throw up. But after running to the bathroom I
would inevitably return to the room to confront my limitations on
the acrobatics mat (forever smelling of sweat) and break through
those limitations. The master has to be an ocean of patience, the
pupil an ocean of trust. History is not in the words: it is in the
struggle. I think that only if your own work is the result of a meeting with the work of a master, can you in turn become a master.
This is probably what characterises each true tradition: the transmission of the role of master.
Holstebro, 29.9.1999
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Andr
zej M encwel
Andrzej
B ARBA’S UTOPIA IN THE
MUNICIPALITY OF HOLSTEBRO
I.
A Roman head, glasses in thick dark frames and eyes immersed
in an issue considered. He strolls while speaking, pausing from time
to time, then he raises his eyes and checks whether he is being
listened to – shining pupils and a smile. Unparalleled fluency and
precision of expression in a foreign language, he always knows what
he is saying and no notion is used carelessly.
He has all the features of an academic intellectual, but he is
more than that. He does not mention or need any external object.
His knowledge has not been acquired but learnt, it is proven by
experience and not by opinions. Eugenio Barba stands in front of us
alone, devoid of quotations, supports or buskins. His is barefoot
regardless of the season and situation.
To each notion used he has attached his own meaning and we
learn this meaning. It is not only formulated, it is in the first place
demonstrated. Who an actor is, what the roots of his art are and
how it is shaped – these are topics of everyday visualisations. What
may the role of the theatre be in culture and for culture – this is
the problem of everyday meditations.
In front of us we see the founder of Odin Teatret – Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium. The Nordic god of poetry and wisdom is a patron
of this artistic project. But the strength of this laboratory works
on us.
I think I understand when Eugenio Barba smiles. This is a boy
who has achieved success.
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II.
It is set in Holstebro, on the north-western edge of Jutland, in
Denmark. Why is it just here that we, Poles and Germans, Czechs
and Italians, Spaniards and Englishmen, as well as one Albanian,
one Colombian and one Canadian, listen to the addresses of Eugenio Barba and study the experience of his team? Because Odin
Teatret has worked in Holstebro for over 25 years.
A worn and old-fashioned photograph of an old man in the latter
stages of balding and grey hair above his ears, the round face of a
corpulent beer drinker, kindness in the corners of his mouth and
eyes. His name was Kaj K. Nielsen, and he used to work as a postman. In such a small country, in which there is a lot of space, since
it is has been well managed, each pavement has two lanes, including a wider one for bikers. I can see the postman cycling carefully
in his lane and chatting in a friendly way with the residents while
delivering their mail. Local residents are also friendly in their contacts with us. Kaj K. Nielsen was a social democrat and a union
activist, and in 1964 he was elected the mayor of Holstebro.
What sort of a small town was Holstebro at that time? The
agricultural municipality centre, going bankrupt, without any industry or capital, with the highest rate of unemployment in the whole
country, was deserted by young people and professionals. “Those
damnable small towns” – one of them must have said, like the Polish poet who died tragically around the same time.
A poet may say so, but not the mayor. Kaj K. Nielsen obviously
was aware that cheap land, tax deductions and beneficial legislation is essential for development. Every small economist knows that.
The former postman knew more. The town must be something and
its inhabitants must start to feel they are somebody .
At the beginning, two crazy things were done. The sculpture by
Alberto Giacometti was purchased in Paris; and the group of Eugenio Barba was brought from Oslo. The sculpture was placed on the
main promenade and the whole of Denmark was roaring with laughter as it was smallish and the price largish. The theatre was granted a farm in the suburbs and a small donation. Even the military
forces protested because it was not a repertoire theatre and did
not perform daily.
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III.
The day started with jogging, half an hour of tough cross-country racing on the surrounding meadows and also on the hill. The
chill, the wind, sharp, salty moisture from the nearby the North
Sea. Did I need it? – I murmured, still sleepy, since I had had a soar
throat since leaving and I was afraid of getting more seriously ill.
Later a small breakfast in the reading room, which also serves as a
club and canteen, coffee from the pot, buns from the tray, apples
from the basket. Jogging warms you up and the breakfast feeds
you, but is it all that matters here?
You are not running alone, you are passed by and am plified by
the rhythm of other persons running. You do not know each
other yet but you are getting closer. People seated and served
have their breakfast in a different way than those who wander
around and serve each other. They are separate, we are together.
Later we start cleaning. I am one of the seniors, so we – together with an Albanian professor and a French diplomat woman – are
given a corner to clean. It runs smoothly, but also students in the
kitchen, toilets and rehearsal halls work equally smoothly. Everything here runs smoothly.
The days start at dawn, end around midnight and are completely filled up – from Monday to Saturday. We take part in the Open
Week and everything is open to us, and this farm, refurbished a
long time ago, becomes our home. Home for everybody – regardless of origin.
This is the art of the highest calibre, and my old head, though
having seen much already, was charmed. Voice, movement, rhythms, body expression, space-time dynamics work in each performance with faultless tuning of meanings.
Work demonstrations introduce you into the closely guarded
creation processes. Inspiration and associations are rendered accessible, as well as the techniques developed over the course of
many years of training. Expansive Roberta Carreri, vibrant Julia
Varley, mysterious Iben Rasmussen, versatile Torgeir Wethal demonstrate these processes themselves. There is a prosaic aspect
of the thrill provided by such performances – we leave our shoes on
entering the rehearsal hall.
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We stand barefoot in front of the artists, a bit like Eugenio
Barba in front of us.
We are in a circle. Mutual radiation works here.
IV.
The building itself may not be very appealing, but it stands in
front of the city hall. The city hall is of a size fit for Kościan or Lipno,
but the building resembles the fortifications of the castle in Malbork.
The long wall made of matt, bordeaux-colour brick with battlements, half-tower and half-barbican. This is the way to the high
patio with glazed walls, a garden, a fountain and a terrarium. Such
a thing I have previously seen in the Hyatt Regency hotel in San
Francisco, and they say that this whole combination of Malbork and
San Francisco style is called post-modernism. Let it be called anything you like, I am interested in the library.
We would not be Polish without straightaway checking the library’s stock of Polish writers and poets. The computer instantly lists
not only Mickiewicz and Miłosz, but also Różewicz and Herbert. We
have translations of works of European literature, as well as Vietnamese, Tai and Kurdish prints. Each minority has its readership
privileges. The library also serves as a record and video library,
there is free access to the shelves and separate divisions for the
young, adults and seniors. I would like to stress that the architecture might not seem appealing, but in no other place in the world
was I so overwhelmed with such fierce jealousy. Because the most
bitter jealousy is awakened by things that are within an easy reach
yet seem unattainable metaphysically.
As for Kościan or Lipno, that would be enough. Today in Holstebro it is far too little. The town authorities did not finish with Barba
and Giacometti. Even during the term of office of mayor Nielsen,
composer Jorgen Plettner established a school of music and musical laboratory and received the appanages of the town composer.
Painter Jann Nielsen from Jutland obtained a study and a museum
thanks to private and municipal donations. I will refrain from listing
new schools, other museums, fantastic sport centres, or the even
more post-modernist Congress Centre.
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They say that “Holstebro is the town with a difference”.
What is the source of all this? – everyone is interested. From
taxes – the town has finally developed. If you want a high standard,
you need class. Kaj K. Nielsen will always remain an embodiment of
this axiom.
The Fiscal Office in Holstebro is located exactly inside the library’s building. Citizens settling their accounts with the fiscal authorities (which are really tough here – the lowest tax rate is 55%)
can see what they pay for. In the hall there is a collection of masks
from Bali, presented to the city by Odin Teatret.
Everybody may answer the question himself whether it makes
sense to do crazy things, bringing no profit.
V.
What is the creative process? There is no general answer to
this question. Because space is the thing which stimulates creative powers in you, and only in you. You must feel it, find it and exercise it in order to unleash your creative powers. Exercise, i.e. training, starts where a human being transgresses himself.
Julia Varley wanted to become an actress even as a high school
student, when she was dismayed to find out that she was losing
her voice. She came to Odin Teatret as to a hospital, because it
was believed that phonic exercises employed here would benefit
her. Today, after many years, I am not the only one to be deeply
moved when I can hear her telling her story and using all the overwhelming tones of her vocal cords during a special meeting.
But this is not therapy and Julia is not presented as a medical
case. She creates her own performances of unparalleled technical
perfection.
Why then do you work obstinately and persistently here, day by
day, months, years, on the sound, voice, word, rhythm, movements
and the space-time of the performance vision? The answer is clear
and Eugenio Barba explains it straightway – in order to create a
theatre which transcends obvious and predictable things, astonishes the auditors and creators. The spirit of this answer is known
to us – it is the spirit of Jerzy Grotowski. Long ago Eugenio Barba
spent three years in the Laboratory in Opole. Though Odin Teatret
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has operated for over 25 years, which itself is an exception in the
history of art, and it has become a multi-functional international
art centre, Barba has always emphasised that he feels like Grotowski’s disciple.
One of the key words here is barter – exchange. Learn to take
from somebody the best he has, and learn to give. What Barba has
taken, he now returns with interest. Without shame and false modesty.
Contemporary culture is a mass culture. Mass culture is a culture of automation – sensual automation as well as sentimental,
emotional and intellectual automation. The power of global transmitters, unknown in the past, aims to make you an unconscious
product of such automation. You won’t even have enough time to
recognise your feelings before you become speechless.
The fundamental prerequisite for creative activity is to be free
of automation. Therefore you must carefully practice your sound,
voice, language, movements, body and space-time. This is the second answer to the question of the sense of work performed in this
laboratory. You also have your voice – you will either enrich it or lose
it.
For this reason I believe that it is not only a laboratory of actor’s techniques, but a laboratory of high creative powers. Nobody
returns from here the same as when he arrived.
VI.
We have our suppers, the only warm meal (we had no time earlier), in Aktivitet Center. This is a sort of a cultural centre or a town
club, the building is old but well-maintained, like everything here. I
would say this is school architecture of the beginning of the century, like my high school in Żary. As for myself, I have felt good here
right from the beginning, and I cannot see anybody feeling bad. A
few funny and moving little things inside, some yarn products, baked clay objects and Christmas tree decoration. But here something is going on every day, people come, halls are packed and there
are no free coat-hangers. Dishes resembling home-made meals are
prepared and served by retired persons, who earn money and support the club. For the meals you pay with money from the Dutch
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foundation funds, so in a sense they come back to their source.
The citizens of the municipality of Holstebro are that smart.
VII.
Somebody will always ask you how to apply what he has managed to learn. Barba always replies – there is no fixed application,
you need to do it your own way.
“Try to build your own workshop”.
The age of great utopias is over. The age of small ones has begun.
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Beata Frank
owsk
a
Frankowsk
owska
N ORDISK TEATERLABORATORIUM
AS A MULTIFUNCTIONAL CULTURAL
CENTRE
Odin Teatret has been located in Holstebro since 1966. Since
1984 Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium – Odin Teatret has functioned as
an independent institution – one institutional entity (a kind of umbrella organisation), which groups various forms of activities. Many
individual projects have been organised under the auspices of NTL,
including: Farfa (Iben Nagel Rasmussen), Canadian Project (Richard
Fowler), Basho Project (Toni Cots), and Children’s Theatre.
NTL is financed from the funds of the Danish Ministry of Culture
assigned to various provinces; part of the funding comes from the local
Holstebro authorities (half of which is refunded by the state); funds for
specific projects are obtained by NTL from sponsors (which constitutes 50 percent of all funds). All NTL employees (18 people now) receive
equal salaries; their amount is regulated by the act on the functioning
of small theatres in Denmark, which brings them to the level of the
social minimum guaranteed by the Danish Actors Trade Union.
Forms of activity
A . PPedagogical
edagogical activity
activity:: learning through practice – learning
how to teach.
Beata Frankowska: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology and Gender Studies at
Warsaw University, member of the Association “Grupa Studnia O.” and the Association for Women’s Comprehensive Development.
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The pedagogic function of Odin Teatret is realised through practical and theoretical courses, seminars, symposiums, and conferences, organised in Holstebro and various places in the world (Denmark, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, England, France, Greece, Ireland,
Italy, countries of the former Yugoslavia, New Zealand, Norway,
Poland, Sweden, Germany, the USA, and Wales). The many forms of
pedagogic activity include:
– seminars, workshops and artistic shows for actors, directors, dancers, choreographers, sociologists, and culture workers,
all held in Holstebro, at the headquarters of Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (example: Odin week – the open week at Odin Teatret);
– long-term courses for actors/directors from specific cultural
circles (example: “Lume” – workshop for Brazilian actors);
– practical and theoretical courses and lectures in academic
centres (example: Aarhus and Buenos Aires universities);
– project-oriented learning; workshops for actors, directors,
and theatre groups (example: “Vindenes bro” – seminars for actors and dancers interested in working with the voice, lead by Iben
Nagel Rasmussen);
– co-operation of actors with primary and secondary schools at
the local level; visits of school and kindergarten excursions (also
pupils from schools for physically and mentally disabled children) to
the theatre; offering the theatre’s stage to students from ballet
and music schools to realize their own projects; creating joint projects with students from a music school (street theatre).
B.
P
erform ances: confrontation and transmission of energy.
Perform
Performances can be organised: at the site of Odin Teatret; in
cultural centres, where the there are no traditional theatre buildings; in closed spaces, such as prisons, mental institutions, refugee and ethnic minority centres, in open city and rural spaces; as
part of festivals and other theatre meetings.
C . TTransform
ransform ations: changes in space that lead to changes of
identity.
Transformational activities usually take place in the city space
with the participation of a specific local community. Their goal is to
create new, unusual situations that trigger unexpected reactions,
bring about changes in the consciousness, and create a feeling of
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new community. They are based on the co-operation of professionals with amateurs and open up possibilities of presenting various
subcultures and ethnic groups. Transformational activities can take
the following forms:
– barter: cultural exchange 1;
– parades: spontaneous theatrical activities in open spaces; interactions with passers-by;
– Holstebro Festuge – creating new, festive relationships and
social contacts on the forum of the local community;
– Transit Festival: a cyclical theatre festival in Holstebro – seminars, presentations of methods of work and performances of theatrical groups from different parts of the world (example: Transit
2: Theatre – Women – Politics );
– special projects prepared with concrete social groups in mind,
activity on the local level.
D. Research activity
activity:: transcultural dialogue.
In 1979 Eugenio Barba created the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA). So far, eleven meetings of ISTA have been
held. In 1990, the Euroasiatic Theatre University was founded as a
result of co-operation between ISTA and Bologna University. ISTA
sessions include the following forms of activity:
– open forum for practitioners and scholars; international sessions, symposia, seminars, conferences, lectures-presentations
(usually for about 200 participants): exchange of knowledge and
“professional personalities”;
– demonstration of the actor’s work: physical and vocal training;
– a series of performances for the audience;
– Theatrum Mundi: intercultural performance, a common venture of actors, dancers and musicians from African, Asiatic, and EuroAmerican traditions.
E . Presentations: hospitality
and promotion.
Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium has created a network of permanent contacts with about sixty collaborators. The shared promotional activity covers:
1
See below: Marta Juszczuk’s text Barter as a method of culture animation .
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– letting NTL’s site for work to theatre groups and associations;
– presentations of plays by other theatre groups from different
traditions at NTL’s site;
– organising exhibitions at Odin Teatret (painting, photography,
etc. exhibitions);
– activity of Odin Teatret Forlag (Odin Teatret Publishing House):
the publishing house started its activity in 1964 with the publication of the “Teatrets Teori og Teknikk” magazine, edited by Eugenio
Barba. In the same year, Jerzy Grotowski’s book Towards a Poor
Theatre was also published: since the arrival of Odin Teatret to
Holstebro, the magazine was published regularly until 1974, presenting various theatrical traditions: right now the main activity of
the publishing house is the publication of “Open Page” (as part of
the feminist “Magdalena Project”) and distribution of books about
Odin Teatret, ISTA, and theatre anthropology in Scandinavia;
– activity of Odin Teatret Film: the beginnings of Odin Teatret
Film date back to 1971; it started with a co-operation project
with an experimental programme of Italian television led by Mario
Raimondo, which enabled Torgeir Wethal to make a series of six
films about an actors’ workshop (including two films about mime):
in the following years, thanks to various forms of co-operation and
grants, films were made about the group’s travels (including The
Two Banks of the River , 1978), and the most important shows by
Odin Teatret were recorded.
Local-level activities:
example of Holstebro Festuge
The idea of Kultur uden graenser (Culture without frontiers) was
created in 1989 as part of the celebrations of the 25 th anniversary
of Odin Teatret. The initiative came from Odin, concretely from Eugenio Barba and Urlik Skeel, who set up an organisational committee
to co-ordinate the festival events. The idea was to create an event
in which the whole of Holstebro could participate, including various
institutions, groups, associations, local communities which do not
have contact with each other on an everyday basis. The project was
based on the co-operation of professionals with amateurs – that is
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269
why, on the one hand NTL invited to the festival theatre groups from
Bali, Japan, Brazil, India, Italy, and Columbia, and, on the other hand,
created a network of contacts with local institutions, like museums,
sports clubs, churches, the army, ecological groups, banks, urban
centres, restaurants, shops and factories. Bearing in mind the main
theme of the event, various groups and institutions were to translate their own specific language and forms of activity into festival
events. All participants of the festival financed their activities themselves (on a volunteer basis); at the same time the project was
supported by the Culture Foundation, affiliated with the Danish Culture Ministry, which finances local initiatives of co-operation between professionals and amateurs.
The title of the first festival Dem tog vi imod (We accepted them),
which was held between 23 and 30 November 1989, invoked the
situation of Odin Teatret – a group of immigrants from various parts
of the world who received a friendly welcome from the local community and have established a permanent presence in Holstebro. The
festival events lasted for the whole week. The festival was a huge
success – it was enjoyed by both the inhabitants and local authorities of Holstebro, on the one hand, and guests and foreign observers on the other. “This is really a great idea for the town’s promotion” – admits Ulrik Skeel.
Immediately after the end of the first festival the organisational
committee began work to prepare the next one, which took place
two years later between 6 and 15 September 1991. This time it
was entitled De Danske Columbus (The Danish Columbuses). The
festival’s theme, referring to the 500 th anniversary of Columbus’s
discovery of America, was to bring to life the characters of Danish
travellers: missionaries, anthropologists, artists, and businesspeople. Also held during the festival was a symposium on Danish cultural policy. Politicians, journalists, anthropologists, and sociologists talked about culture in the context of local identity, with a
special focus on the process of disappearance of cultural boundaries and barriers.
The main project Vandistier (Waterways) included five theatrical
sequences – symbolic rivers flowing to the sea. Odin Teatret, the
co-ordinator of the whole undertaking, personified the Grand River,
a river which flows in many streams, joining small individual events
and unifying local people and foreign guests. The River Ganges was
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personified by the Tascabile di Bergamo theatre, a theatre group
from Italy which had been co-operating with theatre groups from
India for 20 years. The River Mississippi was represented by the
Akadenwa theatre group from Aarhus, which established co-operation with a climbing club: their joint project included animating
walls and towers of local buildings. The River Nile was led by Nas
Lerpa, a Danish painter, living abroad for many years: from sunrise
until sunset, the main pedestrian precinct of Holstebro was flowing with large sheets of paper and passers-by, under the guidance of Lerpa, covered the area with lively colours. And down the
River Amazon sailed Hotel Pro Forma, a theatre group which animated the area of the bridge and supervised the construction of a
Viking ship.
In all, some 70 groups, institutions, and organisations participated in the project. The festival incorporated into its influence the
whole city: churches and trams, museums and the library, schools
and buses, streets and playgrounds, parks and river banks, roofs
and bridges.
The opening ceremony was staged in the city hall; in its vicinity
one could see camels and horses trotting by, men in tuxedoes and
women in ball gowns were dancing the waltz on stilts next to
which the Indian dance of kathakali was performed, scrolls of paintings were flowing down the streets and in the air colourful pictures were flying. Opposite the library, a sand desert was created,
where on the ruins of culture a demon was dancing with a Polar
bear.
On the roof of a supermarket, which serves as a car park on an
every day basis, craftsmen in silver overalls were building a 15metre long ship day and night. Every four hours, Hotel Pro Forma
initiated theatrical events which were closely integrated with the
building of the ship.
Each night, at midnight, the actors from Odin Teatret, dressed
in white robes, would call up the spirits of lost mariners and invoke
their songs and stories.
A group of climbing club members, dressed in white, light kimonos were climbing up the wall of a church tower to hang in the air
with white umbrellas in their hands. At the same time a couple of
newlyweds was going out of the church: a shower of confetti came
down on them like snowflakes.
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Rail traffic was stopped at the railway station: here, slowly, as
if in a dream, a Japanese girl began to dance.
On the last day everyone convened in the park. The construction
of the ship was completed. The city inhabitants brought their gifts:
items representing them and their city. All the gifts were put on
the shipboard. Inside the figure of Golem was also placed, an artificial man without a soul, then the ship was set on fire to burn in
accordance with the Viking burial tradition. During this lay liturgy,
conducted by actors from Hotel Pro Forma, all present sang the
song De store Skibe , composed by Frans Winther, a musician and a
composer from Odin Teatret. All the strange creatures participated in the rite: a polar bear, angels, demons and dancers on stilts
in evening dresses. Over the burnt boat a white balloon emerged
and flew up to the sky like a resurrected soul.
According to Erik Exe Christoffersen, festival events change the
familiar and domesticated space into a strange and exotic land;
new relationships and a new type of community is created between
the inhabitants of groups and circles normally living in different
worlds and sailing the routes that never cross 2. “Waterways” flood the familiar Holstebro and transform it into sunken Atlantis, a
strange and mysterious place, where one cannot recognize one’s
own neighbour. So these are not theatrical events in the classic
sense of the world, but rather transformations, sequences of living pictures that give the everyday space a festive and magical
character. Similarly, other local activities, like a show of a dog’s
training, a motorcycle slalom and archery shows acquire a different meaning in this festive context and become part of a different
reality.
In an open letter to Richard Schechner, Eugenio Barba provides
a detailed analysis of the Holstebro Festuge phenomenon (based
on the experiences from the second edition of the festival): ”When
actors throw themeselves into the daily life of a street or a market, they are not blending with local people, they don’t establish a
community with them. They are merely solidyfying their own identities, and therefore their own diferences. This leads to the possibility of creating a relationship.” 3 But it turns out that not only the
2
Erik Exe Christoffesen, Atlantis: the stages production, “Barbarernes Hug” 1991, nr 9.
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actor appears to be “different”; even more surprising may be the
sight of one’s neighbour riding a camel in the middle of the city…
Usually, though, groups of people of the same profession or the
same association or club do not communicate with their respective groups or communities. But when the owners of vintage cars
meet on the same roof with firemen, dog owners, archers, or ecological club members, they need to perceive one another and realise – in amazement – that they all come from the same city and
coexist side by side. This is – Barba says – one of the pictures of
interculturalism that breaks the routine of our life, here the “interculturalism of small traditions”. When members of a climbing club
climb the walls of buildings, of a church or the city hall, then – in a
country with no mountains, like Denmark, the activity looks as strange and exotic as the Hindu dance kathakali. Everything then depends on the context of individual events: “There is no genius loci,
genie of the place, either in theatre or in culture. Everything travels, everything drifts away from its original context, and is transplanted. ... we ... toured much of the planet, bartering theatre. ...
Now we have made a journey in our own home. True travellers know
this experience very well: the unknown world is discovered when
one returns.” 4
The festivals also took place in 1993 (Blandede aegteskaber –
Mixed marriages: Knud Rasmussen ), and in 1998 (Tur til Verdens
Ende – Until the end of the world ) and in 2001 (Tidens Tand – The
Time’s Tooth ).
3
Eugenio Barba, The People of Ritual. In: Theatre. Solitude, Craft, Revolt , Black Mountain Press, Aberystwyth 1999, p. 149.
4
ibid., pp. 151–152.
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M arta Juszczuk
B ARTER AS A METHOD OF CULTURE
ANIMATION
Barter, or exchange of goods, is one of the oldest ways of initiating interpersonal relations. By offering some goods to another
person, the donor can expect a gift from his/her counterpart. Confidence in the gratitude of the beneficiary draws on the equally
ancient principle of mutuality, which implies reciprocation of benefits demonstrating similar quality. Ethnologists believe that this
principle is present in the systems of values of all cultures.
A special type of barter is exchange of goods where material
benefits are of secondary importance or constitute one of many
aspects of the transaction. Ritual exchange of goods offering a
solely symbolic value is a primitive and highly effective method of
culture animation that integrates groups of people to launch joint
activities and motivates them to overcome their own limitations. It
also creates an occasion to reinforce individual cultural identity.
Much described by ethnologists, the institution of exchange was
discovered and adapted to the needs of modern man by Eugenia
Barba’s Odin Teatret in the seventies.
In the summer of 1974, the theatre left its headquarters in
Holstebro and set off for southern Italy. The group settled down in
a tiny village of Carpigniano, where Barba and his actors moved into
a rented villa. Geography and culture-wise, the Danish troupe was
thus set in a totally alien environment. Young, fair-haired Danes
with their daily acting workouts and rehearsals were set off aga-
Marta Juszczuk: graduate of “Culture Animation”, post-graduate student at the Institute of Polish Culture, interested in the history of Polish theatre in the 20th century.
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inst village locals – peasants, farmers and shepherds from the poorest Italian province, people who have never been to the theatre.
As Barba would said: two ultimately alien tribes.
At the very beginning, the Danish group operated in ultimate
isolation from the Carpigniano day-to-day reality, and lived by the
rhythm of its rehearsals and workouts. One evening, when their
first month in the village was just coming to an end, Barba and his
associates decided to visit their friends who were staying somewhere nearby. On the way to their friends’ house, the whole group
was strolling for the very first time down the streets of Carpigniano – kitted out in colourful costumes and holding musical instruments in their hands. Walking across the village, the sight of actors soon attracted a crowd of gapers and curious observers. Locals began to follow them. It turned out that the friends they had
planned to visit had gone out. Meanwhile, the peasants who were
following them on the way to the house started asking them to play
something. Barba’s group found itself on the market square – in a
public situation they could not withdraw from. They sang a couple
of Scandinavian folk songs combined with their own vocal improvisations. To their great astonishment, the audience responded with
massive applause and then demanded: “Now you have to listen to
our performance”. Peasants began to sing their songs – melodies,
which were interwoven with their work from times immemorial. They
sang songs heard during tobacco and olive harvests – love songs
and songs about death. Similar situations recurred several times,
like the time when, after the Odin-staged performance of Min Fars
Hus in Sardinia, the local audience replied with their own original
interpretations of traditional songs and dances. Eugenio Barba saw
this experience as a possibility to deliver similar events previously
prepared by his group members. This was the beginning of the
barter concept – one of the leading methods applied by Odin Teatret until the present day.
Within the anthropological meaning of this word, the essence of
barter is exchange of goods, which creates and reinforces fundamental cultural bonds. In theatrical barter, exchangeable goods include performance, songs, dances, monologues, sketches, and acrobatic performance – forms reflecting the essence of culture characteristic for all parties involved in the transaction. To explain
the nature of this concept, Barba refers to the example of two
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alien tribes dwelling on the opposite banks of the river. From time
to time, both tribes cross the river to exchange goods – a handful
of salt on a scrap of cloth, a bow on a fistful of beads. Then, they
return to their side of the river and remain alien and distant from
each other. But the effects of their efforts endure. Strangers initiating an interpersonal relation create bonds. Barba and his actors see barter as a starting point for a cross-cultural encounter,
an invitation to initiate a mutual relation or a dialogue. Odin Teatret’s barter is thus a proposal to create a universal form of
meeting, to initiate contact between actors and the audience despite their differences. Overcoming the feeling of alienation is the
source of excitement drawn from the contact 1.
In meeting strangers, initiating contacts with them, individuals
reveal their true self. They define themselves, and enhance differences. The mere event of an exchange of cultural goods reinforces
the intense and condensed feeling of individual identity. It stimulates the need for its practical demonstration – performance of a
song, dance, or presentation of a local folk costume.
Visualisation of mutual differences to oneself and the stranger
produces the need for restitution of individual cultural awareness
and tradition. This is the greatest value offered by barter. Reinforcement of elements, which are pushed aside in day-to-day existence of the community, deteriorated or almost extinct, become meaningful and relevant, and the barter vaults their status to an object of pride. Barba stresses that both parties taking part in the
exchange return to their homes enriched with additional values as
the meeting reinforces their original cultural background.
This is particularly important as performance, the object of
exchange in barter, is a product of the local culture and does not
offer any value as such. The core value is the event of meeting and
the self-expression of both parties. The final artistic result is thus
not the fundamental goal of barter. Barba stresses that in staging
performances for Italian peasants, Odin does not want to adopt
them to some alien culture presented by his theatre. It does not
intend to promote education in the countryside, but wants to pro-
1
Eugenio Barba, Two Tribes. In: Beyond the Floating Islands , PAJ Publications, New
York 1986, pp. 158-160.
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voke the local community to give feedback in its original language,
set in the local cultural environment. So the theatre does not focus on aesthetic values, artistic merits or precise mutual relations. Feedback to an excellent performance staged by Odin may be
the presentation of a simple dance or song, which is an equally
important form of expression of self-identity of the local community as performance is for Odin Teatret.
Besides this fundamental goal of barter, additional benefits include the ability to solve various relevant problems of a given group.
Provoked by Kai, a street parade of disabled school’s students on
wheelchairs, dressed in rainbow-coloured costumes and holding
balloons in their hands, was to draw the attention of the local
community to the disabled community – re-create their awareness
that the disabled do exist by our side and their colourful procession
is able to sparkle the town with joy. Another barter facilitated by
Bredholt led to exchange of presentations between a local theatrical group and an amateur troupe from the psychiatric hospital,
whose recent change of location did not make the local community
very happy. Such events have the potential to overcome reluctance
towards patients of the psychiatric hospital. Kai argues that during such occasions people can see for themselves that patients of
mental hospitals are not horrible lunatics. Some time ago, Bredholt launched a collaboration with Brazilian children of the streets
during preparations for a barter project. He recalls the event as a
source of enormous satisfaction. Lacking an internal structure,
the dispersed group was provoked for the very first time to get
organised and give a public performance as representatives of their community. An experience of joint efforts, speaking in one voice,
the awareness of individual potential may bear a fundamental impact on the future prospects of the group.
Barters presented in a variety of films made by Odin Teatret
seem to be events characterised by enormous spontaneity. Still,
all of them are preceded by careful preparations and are definitely
not merely the result of improvisations. This is also a binding condition imposed on groups who are invited by the theatre to deliver
a presentation under barter exchange. Kai Bredholt, who is currently working on barter preparation for Odin, helped me to identify
several fundamental principles of the method. First of all, the success of the barter depends on the interpersonal skills of the orga-
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niser, his/her tact and persuasion. It is purely impossible to organise barter by phone, fax or mail. The event requires a personal meeting with direct counterparts. Handshake and eye contact confirm previous arrangements. The first stage is the most difficult
phase – the animator visits a strange community, which may be
local small town authorities, village elders or the principal of a ballet school. His goal is to persuade his counterparts to accept the
proposition, provoke their curiosity in the joyful event, and finally,
sparkle up their enthusiasm, the driving force of collaboration. A
community selected for participation in the barter must feel responsible for playing its assigned role in the meeting. In barters
involving several groups, it is particularly important to imbue them
with the feeling that the participants are hosts receiving people
who will dance, play and sing at their place on a given day. This is to
make sure that a team who has completed its performance will not
leave the place of the meeting before watching the performance of
other groups. Such “barter” would be the ultimate failure.
To have a positive impact on the final event, goods exchanged as
a result of barter, such as performances, dances, songs or sketches, must be rehearsed under the animator’s supervision. This is
not only to assure desirable artistic expression, it is also the core
requirement that makes the event powerful enough to draw everybody’s attention, intrigue, move and make the audience laugh. Such
problems are not the case if a group of professionals or local masters of a given art join the barter. But if the event implies participation of a school choir singing monotonous songs that cannot be
told part, it is worth encouraging people to try even a simple choreographic arrangement. Poor dancers from an amateur group may
dress up in colourful costumes. To interfere in such way, the animator of the event must demonstrate enormous tact. The person
cannot make people feel that they are forced to do something against their will or they are “faking” something, in the negative meaning of the word. The animator, the actor or the group of performers, like Odin Teatret, is responsible for the development of its
own presentation adjusted to the given circumstances. Having gained this initial experience in the South of Italy, Barba came up with
special material, tailor-made for barters – dances, clown shows,
parades and street performances. The animator of the barter cannot limit his/her role to the role of the director who manipulates
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others to deliver some “cultural event”. Exposure and self-expression to the same extent which we expect from others is the core
requirement for participation in the barter.
Kai Bredholt argues that, as a rule, the performance should last
no more than one hour, which is a sufficient duration to heat things
up, get the audience involved in the event and save ample energy
for follow-up activities. Another key aspect of the event is setting
the barter in the right, safe location – finding a place where all
people can play the role of the host and the guest. Barter cannot
be performed in the vicinity of a highway, which will stifle all sounds.
The selected location should also be symbolic in a way or simply
remain important for the local population after the barter is over.
The perfect location should acquire a brand-new meaning in the
local reality. Therefore, barters should not be delivered in a forest
outside town if participants of the event are unlikely to ever return
there. It is much better to choose even a crowded square in the
centre of the town. Safe and closed space may be formed if we
simply line the audience into the circle.
Barters performed by Odin Teatret are not the sole known form
of adaptation of symbolic exchange used to animate traditional cultures. Similar activities were carried during the Expeditions and
Gatherings organised by Włodzimierz Staniewski’s Centre of Theatrical Practices “Gardzienice” 2. The concept advocated by Odin
Teatret implies that the ultimate goal of barter is its culture-creating effect, and actors see interactions with masters of foreign
vocal techniques as minor inspirations. On the contrary, Włodzimierz Staniewski puts the spotlight on the artistic and theatrical
aspect of Expeditions, which are the core method of gathering
material, archaic songs and gestures, to be processed during performances of the group. Although the experience of Gardzienice
varies from that of Odin Teatret, the common element of both concepts is the conscious performance of mutuality, sharing, giving
and taking – exchange as a principle providing some framework for
meetings of the theatre group with the rural community.
2
Cf. Zbigniew Taranienko, Gardzienice. Praktyki Teatralne Włodzimierza Staniewskiego.
Wydawnictwo Test, Lublin 1997, chapter “Wyprawy”, pp. 5-95.
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279
Both in the case of Odin Teatret’s barters and “Gardzienice’s”
experience, we see reinforcement of the primordial model of symbolic exchange aimed at the generation of core cultural values. As
a form of exchange of cultural goods, barter seems to be a universal animation method with the potential to inspire collaboration
with a variety of groups, ranging from microcultures of schools,
elderly people’s homes and prisons to rural communities or ethnic
minorities. The method is particularly effective in the reinforcement of team spirit, original social bonds or the restitution of individual cultural or social identity. It facilitates expression of identity
by practical activities or a dialogue with another man. It indicates
one’s place in the real world, and thus encourages tolerance and
openness towards other people.
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Reports
It must have been evil spirits that inspired a farmer to build a
cow-shed and a barn in such an ingenious way that in 1966 they
were ideally fit for adaptation for the needs of Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium. They must have inspired a farmer or designer. Even the
great Arnold Szyfman could here learn about the spatial organisation of a theatre building. The modesty and precision with which all
the rooms of Odin Teatret were planned, in accordance with the
needs, is truly amazing.
Coming to the mysterious Mecca of theatre anthropologists I
was expecting to see a gigantic centre, crowded and loud, pulsating with a fast pace of life, a very fast rhythm indeed, which seemed indispensable to ensure such a great success in so many
different areas in this fast-running world.
But at 144 Saerkaerparken I encountered a quiet and unpretentious Swiss watch. A miracle? To an extent yes, but a miracle provoked.
Never ask about the consequences of what you are doing. About
its use. Just keep doing. Do not speculate about the result. Forget
about it and the result will come on its own.
Kaj K. Nielsen – the Holstebro m ayor, who in 1966 invited
Odin – never asked. “We used to be a theatre that did not stage perform ances. Today Holstebro gets from us m ore than we
get from them . And I think that thanks to them we have m anaged to achieve a couple of im portant things. That is why Nielsen
is in m y opinion one of the people who contributed the m ost to
the theatre.”
~
Their
exceptional attitude to what they are doing is the source
of Odin’s energy and vitality. They are committed and this means
frequent discomfort and effort. It is not about looking for what is
nice, comfortable and pleasant. Such an attitude is destructive to
life. Only intensive work creates the sense of existence. Work is
existence. And at the same time it is intensiveness. It is not strange that people in Holstebro work 14 hours a day. It is idiotic that
we work only 8.
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281
That is why at Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium, instead of the presumed chaotic rush, we find order and calm. The rhythm of external life is not important here.
“What shall we do?” – asks a young student with a disarming
smile. She should meet Barba: Build your own San Marino. Become
a floating island. Find your direction in the world and start realising
it. Build something small, like San Marino, but something that will
be your own, essential and not overlooked.
And that – despite appearances – is enough.
Bartosz Zaczykiewicz
According to the teachings of I Ching all strength contains an
embryo of weakness, and great weakness a grain of great strength.
The ability to recognise such breakthrough moments and adjusting
one’s activities to them gives the capacity to rule the state or
oneself.
This rule seems to fit Odin.
One gets a different perspective on Iben Rasmussen’s strength
of expression knowing the history of her fight against drugs, one
admires Julia Varley’s incredible voice power in a different way knowing about the years of work to overcome her limitations.
Barba’s tribe has impressively managed to create its own space and location. There is a perfect discipline and organisation of
work here. Everybody knows their role and pays great attention to
the quality of their work, no matter whether as an actor or a sec r e t a r y.
Odin Teatret is one organism that cannot function artistically if
everyday matters remain neglected. Holstebro today is an energetic cultural centre. In view of a widespread hunger for “living truths”, this place evokes nostalgia and envy.
Jarosław K
aczm arek
Kaczm
A pedagogic strategy which requires from the pupil to set out
into the world, presupposes that the process of obtaining knowledge is primarily a test of character. The journey poses many diffi-
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cult challenges. Of which the most difficult is probably the status
of the stranger, which is inevitably imparted on the traveller. All
members of Odin Teatret have had to deal somehow with that experience. For the majority of them it constituted a test which acted
as a kind of initiation into the profession. The craft presented by
the people of Odin, just like the job of an anthropologist which is
probably the closest to what they do, requires professional skill in
being a stranger. They have acquired this skill in many ways, in
groups and individually, sometimes in foreign countries, where they
went looking for adventure.
The drama of being a stranger, which is the outcome of a journey, takes place mainly in the sphere of language. It is the most
violent in the beginning. It gradually fades away in several acts. As
Eugenio Barba put it, knowing the situation perfectly well from his
own experience, the problem of being lost in a foreign language
solves itself:
“Thousands of unknown sounds fill one’s ears and stay there. In
a short time the person masters the grammelot of this language
and becomes capable of imitating it. He recognises the language
but cannot understand it. He sees it as an intelligible mass of
sounds from which here and there some word he can understand
emerges. Next one acquires grammar and vocabulary. Through written signs he recognises familiar, but still unclear sounds. Slowly,
they get shaped into an ordered, classified and logical sequence.
Now the person can learn on his own. He knows how to help himself. He knows what to pay special attention to if he wants to learn
something”.
First the guests coming to Odin Week are flooded with waves of
unknown images and sounds, out of which the presented performances are made. The phonemes and morphemes surround the
spectators as the wood surrounded Macbeth in his castle. They
are incredibly beautiful, sensual, surprising and provoking as if dream-like.
An accordion was playing. A seagull’s scream became archaic
croaking. One person was singing in two overlapping voices. The
song was overpowering the silence. The silence was becoming louder than the song.
õ Musica, as if under the weight of the cross, was bowing
Dona
down under the burden of a red rose carried on the shoulder.
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She was at once an old women, a sensual lover and a little girl
skipping rope. She was coming to the mirror, letting her hair
down and starting to comb it; it was very long and very beautiful,
but grey and lifeless. She made a butterfly out of a lace handkerchief. She frightened it as if trying to pin it down, but the butterfly flew away and it did not become a brooch. Alive it was a much
more valuable decoration for its owner. A clown was mourning
the death of a flea-acrobat, which died doing its grand stunt. He
was kneeling doing giving it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. In
vain. A girl from a big beat song was dancing with an umbrella in
her hand and a hat turned upside down. W hirling round, she was
stirring clouds of parchment snow. A mother was breast feeding
a plush toy. From her breast sand was leaking instead of milk.
Biblical Judith transformed into a scary succubus, with whom –
according to Hebrew legends – men fall in love squirting their
semen in vain. Transformed into Lilith she was moving her fan
with even greater panache. The rush of air it created was dividing and tearing apart her hair, which hovered over her head like
a halo of materialised dusk. Some hooded figure was tearing away
candle flames with blacksmith’s pliers. She was sweeping her
own shadow off the floor. Medea was rubbing cold hands. They
were covered with blood. Over the horizon, a figure of a soldier
with bird’s wings attached to the shoulders was rushing by.
The participants of Odin Week were slowly coming out of their
amazement. After a short while they were gradually getting accustomed to the clichés distributed in front of them by their hosts.
They learned to imitate them now. The ever-present American cleaning the floor was fighting with a vacuum cleaner like St. George
fighting against the dragon. Others were chanting incantations:
Minotaurus, Minotaurus . Imitating facial expressions of the bloodthirsty Ulysses, they were shivering with their lips and baring their
teeth in a vampirical smile. They were chanting familiar songs.
One of the guests even managed to see a theatre prop in his
cigarette pack. He ceased to like the gesture he had been using for
many years to light up cigarettes. He realised that he had been
botching it until now. That realisation came after the work presentation by Torgeir Wethal, who – using the example of the act of
lighting up a cigarette – was showing how many micro-entities make
up even the simplest action. It turned out that out of its elements
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a sequence can be created which transforms into a theatrical configuration of almost any level of complexity.
As the demonstrations showed, the action will be successful if
such involuntary gesture is put through the tight sieve of body
awareness filtering out all the noise of innumerable and unjustified redundancies, performed precisely in an almost inhuman way,
so that it becomes an autonomous work of art. Lighting up his
cigarette Torgeir Wethal proved that all this is possible. A smoker
who wanted to get closer to that experience started experimenting.
The grammelot of Odin’s language turned out to be surprisingly simple. The guests were imitating it almost everywhere: at
lunch, during the mandatory cleaning, on the way from the hotel
to the theatre, and from the theatre to the hotel. Special space
was offered to them for that very purpose. It opened outside the
doors of the halls where the workshops were held. Workshops
started before sunrise and ended when there was light outside.
In the course of those several hours when the night was transforming into the day, the workshop participants were moving from
the state of everyday routine into out-of-routine alertness.
In the school designed by Rudolf Steiner, children learn the alphabet learning how to write their own name. In more traditional
schools learning to write begins with drawing waves and calligraphing individual letters. These are two schools, and two rhythms.
At Odin they teach us how to use our own writing in a synthesis of
these two traditions.
The writing of Odin Teatret was gradually getting imprinted into
the visitors’ bodies and at the same time, day by day, its language
was forming into a system generating understandable messages.
None of Odin’s creators was disclosing the grammar and syntax of
their theatrical language. Its most comprehensive picture was presented by Odin’s founder in his everyday lectures.
He showed how important in theatre work is the ability to step
out of the circle of phantasmagoric axioms despotically dictated by
mother culture. He recommended stepping outside of them and
marvelling at what is seemingly obvious. He asked: why, in the main
stream of European theatre, did the singer get separated from
the dancer and the dancer from the acrobat? Why in this tradition
is it a norm that action evolves linearly and the actor plays only one
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character and uses a commonly understood language? Why does
he speak at all instead of singing, as in all other theatre traditions.
Barba ventured to systematise those traditions. He divided
theatre into codified and uncodified spheres. He admitted that
Odin is a theatre built on the knowledge of those codified rules.
The codified theatre uses precisely defined techniques, which inevitably steer the spectator’s attention, his intellect, senses and
emotions in a way passed down from generation to generation.
Work conducted at Odin has the same focus. The creators of this
theatre do not seek concrete techniques, but rather something
that precedes these techniques – some metatechnique, the technique of techniques. This encompasses the rules of using one’s
energy, of responding to action with reaction, and of conducting
impulses. They all go in the same direction. They show the ways to
obtain the actor’s presence in the situation of an organised spectacle.
Odin Week is a precisely designed and minutely-thought-out
educational undertaking. This way of teaching has its methodology. The methodology is based on a thorough knowledge of the
mechanisms of spontaneous self-education, enforced by circumstances. This resembles a process experienced by a stranger
curious about the world who is trying to understand what people
around him are talking about. The teaching conducted by the creators of Odin Teatret is first of all a spontaneous and vivid cognitive process for their pupils. Odin’s creators teach how to teach
Odin to anyone who wants to learn it. The goal of this undertaking
is understanding.
M ateusz K
anabrodzki
Kanabrodzki
Odin Week was first organised in the 1980s by Roberta Carreri,
an actress from Odin Teatret. It is addressed to a wide audience of
directors, actors, teachers, students, critics, sociologists, etc.
As part of that, Odin’s actors show their work presentations, illustrating “creative processes and technical aspects essential for
creating a spectacle”, which can be seen on video, like the majority
of spectacles and journeys of the theatre. The programme of Odin
Week additionally involves participation in physical training, shows
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called The Odin Tradition , Eugenio Barba’s lectures, films documenting earlier performances of the theatre and evening spectacles.
All the time a rich library is also available, where one can buy books
and films.
Differentiation and the multitude of ways and levels of communication – from verbal explanation, through demonstration, to active
transformation to the body of a participant – can be seen as the
organising principle. Odin Week may seem to be an almost exhibitionist disclosure of the secrets of work, forms, techniques and
inspirations. Another aspect is explanation of the creative process
and preparation of the audience to watch performances. Barba’s
texts and lectures show that it is possible to reach this level of
openness only when the group’s internal rules and techniques have
been determined and worked out, only after laboratory work. One
of the main goals and motives behind this openness is explained in
an excerpt from one of his texts: “To create some tradition is to let
oneself be »robbed«”. The expression is used by Barba metaphorically – in the context of artistic craft he regards it as unnecessarily self-defamatory or just defamatory, because “in art, when you
take something from someone, you don’t deprive that person of it”
and because “in art, the result of an act of theft is not theft but
invention.”
Odin Week is a message about work, techniques, creating structures without mythology and ideology. No one talks about motivation, but shows the way, whereas motivation can be “read between
the lines”. All the time there are those “present not present” like
Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Coppeau, and Grotowski. Not through literal references, but through attention paid to work and techniques, to precision and thoroughness on all levels of activity. Also present is reference to the beginnings of work, to first inspirations
and meetings. All the time the starting point is recalled, the beginning of a story of challenging the rules functioning in society.
In many texts Barba writes literally that the theatre is a rebellion and only a rebellion can it be. It originated in a subculture and
in disagreement with social roles, now it is a cultural institution
working on many levels and incorporated into the society. Barba’s
text Theatre – Culture explains in part the mystery of “socialising
one’s asocialisation”. But first one needs to work on one’s own
relationships inside the group and the team. The main principle
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organising Odin’s team seems to be the principle of individuality.
Each of the team members is a distinct, strong personality. The
principle of individuality also works while building performances.
Actors prepare improvisations separately, and only later consolidate their actions under the director’s supervision. Barba wrote
about the idea of the functioning of the team according to this
principle: “It is often believed that a theatrical group owes its
unity to the similarities between its members. Quite to the contrary: what is needed is rather diversity, but it must be accompanied by mutual trust and, first of all, by full awareness that no
dominant unity independent of diversities simply exists. [...] It is
much better when the work of individual actors in a group develops in so different directions that from the technical and aesthetic point of view it seems that all ties between actors disappeared. It is this diversity, this lack of unity in the results of work
that constitutes one of the most certain proofs of the deep consistency of the method. The consistency of the method simply lies
in constant stimulation of the impulse that drives each individual
to follow their own paths to find themselves and their own vision
rather than the vision of their teacher”.
Joanna P
awelczyk
Pawelczyk
Work demonstration is a form of presentation of practical and
theoretical knowledge determining the system of work of actors
from Odin Teatret. It is a demonstration of their technique and
performed craft. Work demonstrations cut through the skin and
bring out organs that are usually invisible to the “human eye.” They
are anatomy lessons where the technique of the actor’s work,
practiced in Odin Teatret under the guidance of Eugenio Barba, can
be compared to a body stretched on the presentation table. Performers’ precision can help dissect and better analyse the process
– the time of coming to concrete effects. In the evenings, the parts
were again put into one body, which at that time was becoming
slightly better visible and more transparent to our eyes. Work demonstrations revealed to us the fundamental laws of Odin Teatret,
such as: the concept of improvisation in the work on building the
role or getting rid of rigid divisions set by specialization, that is
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crossing over fixed boundaries between such arts of a performer
as dance, pantomime, acting or music. Also presented were exercises focusing on typical dramaturgical principles, that is work with
the text, building the scenic character’s script, adding musical
elements, relationships between actors and the director. Work
demonstration is a performance in which, at a given time, people
as if become one with the role, concentrated on demonstrating
exercises, and then become relaxed and explain the principles and
directions of work, pointing to particular phases of the creative
process. One may get the impression that these performances
have a precisely defined shape and are based on a concrete scenario, where each word has its place, and each movement should
appear at a concrete moment.
What drew my particular attention, what I was feeling and perceiving throughout the whole stay at Odin Teatret, was the specific understanding of the team concept. To a great extent the principles and rules that determine the functioning of this group influence the character and shape of the type of centre Nordisk Teaterlabolatorium in Holstebro is. This system can be compared to
the structure of a polyphonic choir. It seems that each individual
is singing something else, but the melody is organised on one musical scale and what can be heard outside seems to be one harmonious voice. This pattern can be seen in the space itself, where
each of the actors has their own place, their own “cell”, where
they work, practise and concentrate before a performance. Every
day from early morning on, they sit in their rooms browsing through papers, reading, practising musical instruments, or sit in halls
perfecting performance elements, separately and together, bent
double or upright, concentrated – one can hear the murmur of
quiet conversations, quiet laughter, someone is practising his or
her voice.
o
oniuszko
M ichał M oniuszk
õ Musica’s Butterflies by Julia Varley
The performance of Dona
õ
(1997). Having thrown off Dona’s
costume and wiped off the maõ says: “I am and I am not Dona
õ Musica. I am and
ke-up, Julia/Dona
I am not an actress. I am and I am not Julia. I’m moving forward
and backward in time – like those jumping and dancing particles of
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an atom. [...] Chaos is an art of building complexity, starting
from the simple elements. Chaos creates forms, content, and
order – hidden, mysterious, and paradoxical”. In order to understand how these words can relate to the methods and essence
of work at Odin Teatret, and also to understand the results of
this work or how to open up to them – we started with a training
session.
Our training, just as Roberta said at the first session, was
solely an attempt to signal a certain direction of work, a synthesis of numerous, painstaking exercises. It was supposed to show
the most important aspects of building up the technique of using
one’s body. There are various techniques of extra-daily usage of
the body that impart it with an artificial but scenically credible
form. We can observe them in classical Japanese, Indian, or Balinese theatre, as well as in pantomime or classical ballet. But,
according to Eugenio Barba, despite any codified genres, there is
a common supracultural root, a certain tradition of traditions
that directly leads to the centre and sets out an elementary level
of organisation of all shows – the level of pre-expression, which
involves only presence and energy. It guides the scenic life and
sets the model for presence. It involves several rules which are
displayed in concrete techniques.
During everyday meetings with Eugenio Barba we repeatedly
heard that the Odin theatre group had been developing for years
through self-education. Each actor or actress was teaching what
he or she knew. We saw a film which documented the actors’
painstaking acrobatic training. With self-irony, characteristic of
Odin’s artists, Barba was telling us that at the very beginning
body work served the role of supporting the authority of the director who was not confident of his own competence. In the book
Paper Canoe he recalls how while watching theatrical performances from various Asiatic countries, including Bali, Japan, and Taiwan, he noticed that the actors have bent knees all the time. But
he discovered that thanks to Odin’s actors who as if intuitively,
after years of training, began to adopt such a posture. They call it
sats . We heard this word many times during Odin Week. In Norwegian it means: “to be ready, impulse.” Actors stress the importance of sats , which enables them to react instantaneously
and focus action in any direction.
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Actors from Odin Teatret often work incorporating blocks of
their own improvisations into performances. They use the same
im provisations to present various stories, adding different
texts. In different contexts these texts acquire a new meaning.
Improvisation may be based on any subject, to which the text is
added at a later stage, or it may go together with a specific
text. It is built on a sequence of association streams, or “budding patterns”. The thought goes in accordance with its own
logic which has little to do with the logic of reality. Eugenio Barba calls it “phenomenology of thought”. The linear character of
the text is destroyed because the appearance of a fact evokes
an instantaneous reaction. “Thinking through associations and
not through logical sequences enables me to act and react to
my own actions” – says Roberta. The actor does not interpret
the text, he is not overpowered by the plot, he creates the context and moves around events, rather in the midst of them. Julia
compares it to dance: “You can discuss with the rhythm, you can
quarrel with it, but there must be some consistency and a common line”. At this level of presentation, oppositions are revealed
through the gesture that conducts the dialogue with the text –
the word is defying the manner in which it is expressed, voice is
arguing with gesture.
The actors explain that they first make movements, gestures,
and only then they find them and learn why they were made. The
manner of scenic movement becomes a metaphor; all activities are
metaphoric. Words are translated into certain impressions or associations, and these into actions. In such acts, the action and
content are found. A repetition of everyday activities is an empty,
emotionless form.
At the presentation of the show Actors’ dialogue , Roberta
Carreri and Torgeir Wethal initiated a work with a short fragment
of Ibsen’s Doll’s House in which Nora leaves, returns her wedding
ring and forbids her husband to write to her and destroys the
future of their marriage. Roberta was walking onto the stage with
a suitcase a countless number of times and coming to the table
(actors are conducting dialogues with tables, Torgeir talks to Nora
from over his) to throw her wedding ring. At the end, when she had
“worked out” the details, she explained her action. The action of
walking through the stage with a suitcase in her hand:
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– Step: I’m walking as if stepping on mud (the mud of my life in
this house).
– Attitude: I’m walking to my husband with a withdrawn attitude, but at the same time driven by a gust of wind and hope (the
face directed forward).
– I’m giving back my wedding ring: the movement as if I was
putting a dead skylark on the table (the husband used to call her
skylark).
Roberta discovers action in every sentence, she discovers
unconscious movements accompanying feelings. Torgeir is giving
back the wedding ring as if he was tearing up paper, as if he was
killing.
Am id m any feelings that do not necessarily fall under the
category of “understanding”, suddenly there is a flash of truth
forging all opposites into one whole. This is what Eugenio Barba
is probably writing about when he contrasts the m ain direction
of European theatre, which is governed by the laws of logos ,
with the theatre overlooking the whole bios , in the deepest sense being dance hidden in the bodies of actors, flowing from down
below with a wave of rhythm and a dancing power even though
the body rem ains alm ost m otionless. It is in this theatre that
life trium phs, despite the tragic and hopeless m essage of the
play, regardless of the plot, facial expressions and gestures.
This is the life that can dance without m usic. In a conversation
with us, Eugenio Barba was also talking about the door that
can be opened by the spectator. The play’s reception is in each
case a unique incident of a clash between the actor and the
spectator ’s history. Each form of hum an expression constitutes m illions of doors.
In his essay The Third Theatre , Barba writes about the theatre
as an artistic activity in search of meaning. He himself is an archaeological relic that has lost its direct usefulness. We can bring
inside various fleetingly fashionable values and meanings but they
will fade away. We can also try to find our heritage inside ourselves
– a personal reason for doing theatre. “The Third Theatre” is the
domain of great rebels and reformers. Barba unearths the common thread linking him with the names he constantly recalls: Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Coppeau, Brecht, Craig, Artaud and Grotowski. This linking thread is nothing but one’s own attempt to create
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meanings that know no limits imposed by the surrounding culture.
But the quest for meanings is first of all the individual discovery of
craft.
To create meanings is to know how to find ways to find them.
a K
ołak
owsk
a
M onik
ołakowsk
owska
onika
Kołak
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F ACHBEREICH KUNST UND MUSIK/
SOMMERAKADEMIE
Fakultät für Theologie, Geographie, Kunst und Musik (Faculty of
Theology, Geography, Arts and Music) of Bielefeld University, headed by professor Klaus-Ove Kahrmann, organises a special line of
studies “Arts and Music” (Fachbereich Kunst/Musik), training primary school teachers in arts and music subjects.
Apart from regular university courses, the department is involved in running various cultural and educational projects, of which
the most important is Sommerakademie (Summer Academy), held
annually in Scheersberg, Schleswig-Holstein.
Students specialising in “Culture Animation” have participated
in all Summer Academies since 1994, and since 1997 in all InSEA
Summer Academies of Art as well – these take place in Poland and
are co-organised by professor Klaus-Ove Kahrmann.
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M arta P
ejda
Pejda
A
“ RTS AND MUSIC” STUDIES
AT BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY
The “Arts and Music” studies headed by professor Klaus-Ove
Kahrmann are formally part of the Faculty of Theology, Geography,
Art and Music at Bielefeld University. This line does not provide a
full course of studies – to obtain a degree, students need to complete courses from at least one other faculty. Because students
most frequently choose the specialization training art and music
are teachers for primary schools and kindergartens, their complementary specialisation is usually pedagogy.
The basic idea behind the “Arts and Music”, one that definitely
sets it apart from ordinary teacher training institutions, is the
interdisciplinary character of artistic education: subjects that students will teach in the future are treated comprehensively, so that
there are no separate specializations for future art teachers and
music teachers.
Students receive art and music education in the broad sense of
the term. Incorporating theoretical elements from other fields, the
studies focus mainly on teaching practical skills on at least several
levels, of which the most interesting seems to be methodology of
classroom work. Lesson methodology has not been isolated as a separate lecture or even a topic; each class is simply intended to serve
as a model workshop, which can be applied with minor modifications
and delivered to participants from any age group.
Marta Pejda: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University, she
collaborates with the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Warsaw and with the Batory
Foundation.
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The didactic curriculum comprises more than a dozen workshops
arranged according to specific fields and subjects, presented at
two levels: basic, followed by advanced. The basic level covers the
first two and a half years of studies, after which the student is
expected to present the equivalent of a BA thesis, which includes a
practical part – an artistic project with elements of visual arts and
music. The next two or three years of studies (the individual plan of
studies offers a certain freedom of choice) finish with the preparation of a diploma thesis and a diploma examination. Also in this
case, the practical part is equally important as the written, theoretical part, which it should illustrate and complement. In the
course of several years of studies, students are supposed to master technical artistic skills (in the fields of video, theatre, paratheatrical events, and photography), as well as musical skills (playing at least two instruments). The fulfilment of these conditions
enables students not only to convey their knowledge, but also, on
the ground of this knowledge, to prepare arts and music lessons
on a non-specialist level, appropriate for ordinary, non-artistic primary schools.
As already mentioned, most of classes in “Arts and Music” are
conducted in the form of workshops. Classrooms have been adapted to host various practical classes: with the standard equipment of plastic materials, the classroom space has been created
in such a way that allows for adaptations necessary to fit the needs of theatrical, music, and art programmes. More than a dozen
open-access halls are equipped with pianos and a grand piano and
their acoustics is suitable for playing all other instruments as well.
Apart from standard art classrooms, students can use specialized
equipment of the ceramics-sculpture workshop as well as the photo lab and the movie and video centre.
The curriculum for each semester does not contain obligatory
classes: students are only obliged to select a certain number of
art and music courses attached to a given year of studies. There
are no more than 12 students in a class, which makes practical
activities effective. Classes are run by faculty staff members, although some courses are also prepared by visiting lecturers. An
issue from the field of visual arts and music provides the framework for each class, which creates the focus for synchronic analysis of the subject with reference to various plastic techniques,
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various styles of music, various periods in the history of art, etc.
Students actively participate in classes not only completing practical tasks, but also discussing their own experiences and inspirations. A typical workshop teaches an analysis of a work of art or a
musical composition at a general rather than specialized cultural
level, which is facilitated by the use of a different type of language
and different (broader) references. Consequently, the recipient’s
sensitivity and synthesizing perception play a much bigger role than
textbook knowledge about history of art.
The programme also incorporates a curriculum of extra-mural
workshops and conferences organized in culture centres in other
cities in cooperation with similar foreign institutions. Other workshop sessions of art education are also organised with visits to
Fine Arts Academies in Germany and Poland, as well as in Denmark
and Holland. This aspect of the programme obviously facilitates
group integration, but also creates an opportunity for verifying
acquired skills and knowledge in different conditions and with other
participants.
Public BA and diploma exams are an interesting complement to
this unconventional method of education. As has been said, each
exam includes a practical part: an artistic project often prepared
almost since the beginning of studies and presented for evaluation
during a conversation with lecturers (BA studies) or as a written
theoretical thesis (MA course). The dates of the presentations
are made public, admission is free, which means that anyone from
outside the faculty or even outside the university is welcome. Our
stay in Bielefeld during the semester break gave us the opportunity to observe several BA projects. Each of them was prepared as
teamwork. This aspect of the work is strongly stressed by lecturers – the technical preparation of a presentation fosters and even
necessitates the need to learn teamwork, as it is the team that
performs the examinee’s individual project. Presentations are divided into art and music parts which are often not balanced proportionately and do not always have the same subject. In the musical
part, students performed their selected pieces of music, usually
played on various instruments, including voice. In the art part there are no formal restrictions: students presented both sculpture
and photographic exhibitions, short para-theatrical forms, performances, art shows, and photographic installations accompanied
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by music. Most of the authors provided the audience with presentation programmes which included the contents of the performance, a short commentary, and sometimes drawings or photographs.
These mini-publications may be treated as part of the project as
their layout and contents are usually connected with the whole
presentation.
The project is prepared under the guidance of a supervisor, but
neither the technique nor the subject are in any way imposed and
are selected by the author. The presentation is accompanied by a
discussion with the author during which lecturers (for the benefit
of other participating students) not only ask questions, but also
comment on the performance highlighting possible references to
the history of art or music.
The undeniable advantage of the public form of examinations is
the fact that each student presents a “real” project in front of the
audience. The “Arts and Music” studies simply give students an
opportunity to prepare a concert or an exhibition together with
the necessary technical support and the audience, that is – in optimum conditions for staging a cultural event outside the university.
Also important is the opportunity to see performances prepared
by other students, which gives the audience an insight not only
into the effects, but also the methods of work. Another important
feature of these presentations is the opportunity to enter a real
public space. Students are not obliged to present their works in
the faculty’s building, that’s why some of them stage their presentations in the university’s main hall, in the library or outdoors. The
practical skills and self-confidence acquired during the project result in a considerable number of quite professional public events
prepared by the faculty’s students and graduates. During our short
stay in Bielefeld, we had an opportunity to see such events, including a large ceramics exhibition in the library hall, which attracted
a considerable audience from outside the university, which would
not be otherwise easily drawn in even by some big city galleries.
The “Arts and Music” line of studies is a relatively new structure undergoing constant development. Plans have been laid to open
a new culture marketing specialization which will offer an alternative model of training. The specialization will provide obligatory courses in law, economy, management and administration, aimed at
organising a full range of cultural activities in Germany.
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KlausOve K
ahrm ann, W iesław K
arolak
Klaus-Ove
Kahrm
Karolak
T HE INTERNATIONAL SUMMER
ACADEMY “TRI-ANGEL” AS A FORUM
FOR AESTHETICALLY ORIENTATED
YOUTHWORK
There are numerous leisure time activities available to young
people nowadays. The choice is really difficult and the great amount
of possibilities often leads to young people starting all sorts of
things but never really finishing anything. This here today, gone
tomorrow mentality, which is also suggested in the advertising we
are constantly subjected to, is becoming more and more matterof-course. This results in a general splintering and disorientation.
Only a few young people can find their way out of this labyrinth on
their own and recognise the chances hidden outside the everyday
opportunities. The threshold to serious artistic-aesthetic work
becomes greater due to the many distractions: it means more
than just dispersion and easily consumable offers, it means personal input, commitment and staying power. That is why it has become more and more difficult to find participants for summer acade-
Klaus-Ove Kahrmann: professor of fine arts, author of numerous publications about
art and media education, dean of the Faculty of Geography, Theology, Art and Music at
Bielefeld University, organises annual Summer Academy in Scheersberg near Flensburg.
Wiesław Karolak: artist, professor at the Fine Arts Academy in Łódź, chairman of the
Polish Committee of the International Association for Art Education InSEA, organiser
and lecturer running a variety of artistic workshops, including a cycle of courses delivered together with Klaus-Ove Kahrmann for German and Polish students Open window of history.
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mies and similar activities, and the organisers must always think
up something new so that they are on the one hand more attractive and yet on the other hand do not lose sight of their fundamental
aim.
Our surroundings have left their mark on us in many ways. Everyone who lives around the Baltic Sea shares similar experiences
with nature. The coastlines, the fields, the sun, the sea, the light,
the rain – all these natural phenomena whose exploitation and even
destruction are so interwoven in our perception of our homeland.
The perception of those people who have grown up here has common roots and many similarities. We see that the forms of artistic
expression shown here have similar models and origins. In order to
understand this we must really get into our surroundings, leisurely
yet thoroughly, away from the hectic hustle and bustle of everyday
life. We must get into active communication with our surroundings
and understand those people who have similar ideas and goals as
ourselves.
The summer academies which we conceived and organized, the
Schleswig-Holstein Working Group for the Arts’ TRI-ANGEL in Germany and the InSEA Summer Academy in Poland, do offer this opportunity. They represent special phenomena in the European cultural landscape. Firstly, they are the only events of this kind, with
a workshop character, which address both young people and educators involved in youthwork from several countries. Secondly, it
allows direct contact between young people interested in arts and
can therefore be an important aid in personal development processes. Thirdly, it offers the opportunity to counteract prejudice and
isolationism between the peoples of the Baltic region and serves to
make the important questions and problems, such as those of an
aesthetical and/or ecological nature, visible.
The Summer Academy provides a breeding ground for understanding. This is especially due to its holistic and intercultural nature. The different forms of artistic expression are not separated
from one another here but are bound together by both the organisational form and the theme itself. With this method of working it
is easier to recognise cultural and social contexts.
Previous skill or knowledge is not required, but participants should
have a serious interest in artistic work. Our summer academies
are not events for artists with an elitist mentality who feel supe-
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rior to newcomers. We believe that when established artists work
together with young people who are on the threshold of a life dedicated to the arts, the result can be both fertile and useful. Here
the younger generation should be able to have the opportunity to
gradually build up a cultural consciousness which will enable them
to take an active part in cultural life in the future.
The International Summer Academy TRI-ANGEL which is run by
the LAG Kunst Schleswig-Holstein (Schleswig-Holstein Working
Group for the Arts) is primarily concerned with the countries of
the Baltic region and sees itself as an integration forum for young
people from this region. The participants and the workshop leaders
are multinational and are drawn from the region we mentioned above. The creative-oriented work provides the opportunity to make
contact with people from other countries, other national, historical and social backgrounds. Young people from Western and Eastern
Europe work together, develop contacts, learn from each other
and get to understand different national characteristics and different aesthetic approaches better. Young people aged 16 years and
above, and educators in the field of youthwork from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad/Russia, Poland
and Germany are invited to take part. Parents/relatives with children of at least 8 years of age also take part in the “Children and
Adults” group. Each year there are about 75 participants. The
InSEA Summer Academy in Poland lasts 7 days, is comprised of
four workshops and is particularly directed at participants from
Poland and Germany. There are however also guests from other
countries: Finland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania and Russia.
All summer academies have a leading motto, a leitmotif. This
creates the framework for all the workshops and the activities
they entail. The themes must on the one hand offer an orientation
but on the other hand they must also allow plenty of room for free
play. Over the last few years we have, in the InSEA academies,
dealt with the four elements: earth, fire, water and air. In TRIANGEL academies we had themes such as Pendulum, Labyrinth,
Oikos, Focus and Metamorphosis. Since 1998 the motto for the
InSEA Summer Academy has been “The open window of history”,
each year with a special angle on that.
Working in accordance with the workshop principle means:
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1. The work is based on personal styles and approaches. The
participants arrive with very different expectations. Some have already found their way of working, some are still searching. This is
why no general binding “style” can be set. The workshop leaders
must pay close attention to how the situation affects each participant. Helping and supporting the individual is of primary importance. Should particular approaches and methods be requested as
part of the workshop content, the leader attempts to fulfil these
wishes.
2. The participants have plenty of opportunities for self-organization. They also determine the pace at which they work, when
they introduce a rest phase and whether creative questions are
addressed individually or in the group. In the workshops there is an
organisation plan which anticipates the following phases: repetition, information, joint application, free work.
In the repetition phase we refer to experiences made and
knowledge obtained before the Summer Academy started. The leader uses this phase to get a picture of the basis for where to
start the planned work. This usually results in the necessity of
finding an inner differentiation since the conditions in a heterogeneous group, as far as age, previous experience and nationality are
concerned, are almost always very different. Inner differentiation
means that the methods and ways of imparting information must
be grasped differently. Each participant should be “picked up” where he or she happens to be at that moment. A too uniform approach results in only a part of the group being addressed and this
results in the group just “marching in step”, which has a disadvantageous effect on creative processes.
The information phase is harmonised with the results of the
repetition phase. The aim of this phase is to impart as effectively
as possible the content and methods which are necessary for the
work in the workshop, and this must therefore be very well prepared by the leaders. The information phase can have a theoretical,
practical or integrative emphasis; it is supported by auxiliary material and media which must be very carefully chosen so that it is
suitable for the group and the space available.
Joint application means that the knowledge gained during the
information phase is dealt with in more depth by means of limited
tasks set by the leader and that it thus becomes better anchored
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in the consciousness of the participants. Comments and aids should enhance the application at all costs. During the application phase the leaders can get an impression of how successful the information phase was, whether additional information is necessary or
if the prerequisite for free work is given.
In the free work phase there is only a rough orientation frame.
The group is now very independent and more or less decides for
itself how things will continue and what results should be aimed
for. The most important characteristic of the free work phase is
the increase in self-organisation. This can present itself in several
steps, each of which relate to each other. The contents and methods which were imparted serve to support the process of selforganisation – without making one’s own ideas standard.
The ideal situation – and this is not always possible even at the
Summer Academy – is when the participants decide for themselves
how the workshop should develop further and what the end result is.
All participants have the right to expect expert help and correction from the leaders as far as the conceptual work is concerned,
but since criticism in respect to artistic results can often touch a
sensitive point, the participants decide whether or not the work in
question is to be discussed in front of the whole group or not.
3. The leaders have the role of consultant and not that of
teacher. The workshop principle means a change in the leadership
role during the work process. The leaders only exercise the classical teacher and animator roles at the beginning of the workshop
and at certain “points of articulation” which have a chiefly informative character. An information head start is not used to anticipate
solutions or to (directly or indirectly) give answers. They do not
relieve the participants of having to make important decisions, nor
do they execute parts of the tasks themselves. A primary aim of
the workshop is to encourage processes on an individual basis and
to guide the participants to far-reaching autonomy in their work.
4. Important information is given and discussed in plenary
meetings. Plenary discussion should take place as regularly as possible, ideally at the same time every day. Here the leaders have
the task of summarising their observations and illustrating them
with examples. The plenary session should not be limited to lectures and explanations. An important part of the session is intensive
discussion of the subject addressed involving the whole group. Should
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the plenary session in a workshop be neglected, there is a danger
that the group will disintegrate. It is then very difficult to follow a
joint course.
5. Joint activities in the group enhance learning from one
another. Aside from tasks which must be executed individually, there
must also be tasks where the group process has priority. Should
this part of the work process not be foreseen, important learning
opportunities would be lost. To work together towards a common
aim is to follow other superior perspectives. Dealing with each other
and listening to each other leads to solutions which can only be
found in this way. To observe how others work in one’s own surroundings is an important step in optimising work behaviour. It is
possible that after this experience, old strategies are replaced by
better ones. Working artistically in a group must not be associated with competition. The work can also be orientated on jointly
agreed principles, characterised by mutual fairness and the experience of concentration and optimisation in mutuality.
E XPERIENCE
PEDAGOGY AND AESTHETIC PRACTICE
During the workshops there are many fundamental experiences
to be had. These experiences can then trigger further activities
which extend beyond the timeframe of the Summer Academy.
To implement experience pedagogy means intensive experience
of nature, going back to origins and dealing with forms of group
work. Our summer academies unite this fundamental idea with the
forms of integrative aesthetic work. In relation to experience pedagogy and aesthetic practice it is possible to formulate ten points
which are fundamental for workshops:
1. Experience. An experience has an comprehensive, fundamental character. It affects not only intellect or feelings alone, but the
interplay between both these types of experience. It is therefore
most important that all sensations and the memories coupled with
them should be taken into account. Experience means actively placing oneself at the mercy of a life situation, to work in and with this
situation. This work can be supported by logical or aesthetic powers. It is of advantage when both work together in unison. It is
then that the process also takes on an artistic form.
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2. Aesthetics. The term “aesthetic” comes from the ancient
Greek aistetiké, which can be translated as the “science of sensuous perception”. “Aesthetic” thus means “in accordance with perception”, “according to the laws of perception”. From this we can
derive two aims for aesthetic activity: 1. perceptual experience
should be made possible in various ways wherever possible; 2. in
the organisation of aesthetic processes, laws and rules are dealt
with in detail. The confrontation with perceptual means a debate
with all our senses, within the circle of perceiving, thinking, acting.
These three elements of the organisation of aesthetic processes
are of equal importance and are totally interrelated. None of these
elements can be missing in a complete aesthetic process.
3. Transparency of the senses. Necessary contact between
the different sensual experiences means that visual experiences,
audible experiences and physical (movement) experiences must be
offered in relation to each other. This explains why there is always
at least one “integration workshop” at the Summer Academy. This
workshop is planned and directed by two leaders representing two
different areas (e.g. music and painting). With the aid of this structure it is easier to realise aesthetic networking.
4. Bodywork. Work with and on one’s own body is both a prerequisite and a focal point in that: a) it has a very original character;
b) it can take place without the use of another medium; c) it establishes the total relationship to the ego; d) it is the primary representation of the holistic nature. Bodywork – with playful and simultaneously preparatory character – is meaningful and possible in
every workshop. Most of our leaders have recognised the effectivity of this and use their own specially oriented repertoire. Especially
useful are exercises from Tai Chi and the like as well as those based
on the work of Moshé Feldenkrais and Hugo Kükelhaus.
5. Delayed perception. We suffer from the fact that we often
shorten culture-related perception processes and thereby do not
perceive details and relationships. Observation, as a special perceptual function, is too seldom practised. It is thus necessary to
“stretch” perceptual processes artificially to put new life into them,
to make them more plastic and richer in their contours and nuances. The rediscovery of leisureliness is one of the most important
phenomena of our time. In the workshops there are plenty of opportunities to practise delayed perception. The leaders have me-
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thods tailor-made for the programme. Two steps we have particularly noticed in relation to this are: practising movement configurations in “slow-motion” and meditative absorption of nature as preparation for drawing outdoors.
6. Meditative processes. Autogenic training, Yoga, Zen-meditation and the like are a great help in revitalising the aesthetic
processes mentioned above. They address more intensely the right
half of the brain which is, in our society, traditionally less well trained and needs to be addressed more strongly. Meditative cycles
tend to reduce the potential of aggression so that better conditions for creative processes can arise.
7. Mental training. The mental anticipation of planned activity
means the creation of inner pictures, which more or less represent activity models. The more accurately these models are formulated in our heads, the greater the likelihood that the plans succeed. Since we generally do not take enough time for the preparatory
phase, and underestimate its importance, we must first slowly
learn to rediscover it and to this end mental training is a great
help.
8. Reflection and communication. It must be the aim of every
creative process to make as much progress as possible on the
level of reflection. It is not satisfactory to remain in the identification phase, to limit the reflection to word-picture co-ordination.
The meaning, the interpretation of that which has been experienced as strong incorporation of the ego (“What does this experience mean for me?”) is desirable (introspective step). The communication which can arise from this is advantageously enhanced by
using an aesthetic activity: singing and playing songs, painting pictures, making figures, taking photographs, writing poems and stories, constructing installations, doing performances. Speaking about
meaning often takes place but doesn’t result in much since only a
small part of the inner experiences can be expressed in words.
Reflection can also be carried out using aesthetic media, in that,
for example, I express my exercises in the form of a picture or a
composition.
9. Activity and rest. Communicative processes only run advantageously when there is a changeover between active and passive
phases, between activity and rest. This process can be compared
with the actions of a muscle. First it flexes, then it remains tense
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and then relaxes once again. Phases of rest (not sleep) do not
simply happen “on their own” and when planning pedagogical processes must be taken into account just as much as the active
phases.
10. Experience void. Many, particularly young people, complain
of being swamped with thrills and yet having a void as far as real
experience is concerned. They cannot discover their own place in
their environment and have difficulty in finding a way out of their
situation. We can fill this void best when we talk about situations
where there is a feeling of emptiness in theory and practice and
ask about their cause, and point out and demonstrate alternatives
which make possible a sensual, sensible experience of the world.
Due to their open structure, the summer academies offer many
opportunities to put these ideas to the test in practice. The most
difficult thing is crossing the structural threshold of the “old” forms
of learning and daring to be interested in other, better forms. Most
of the participants do, after all, come from a more traditional background as far as this is concerned. The conditions during the summer academies are helpful in taking this step, and working in groups strengthens innovative impulses even when these are fairly
weak at the start.
There is a great deal of discussion among the leaders about the
necessity for new orientation as far as method and content is concerned. Every year we make new discoveries and improve our concept.
We want to finish by a sentence by the Polish writer Stanisław
Jerzy Lec: “Do not walk along too well-trodden paths. You will slip
up”.
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Reports
The Summer Academy is designed and run in a way that gives
its participants the optimum conditions for discovering and expressing their talents and capabilities. What is meant by optimum conditions in this case is creating the friendliest atmosphere possible.
People coming to Scheersberg create a space in which they move
and they endow the place with a certain dynamic and a specific
climate. No tasks are seen as strictly defined, deadline-oriented
obligations and nobody refers to ambition as a proven means of
triggering human capacities. It seems that relaxed and unhurried
atmosphere motivates people to work to the best of their abilities.
Despite the seeming appearance of slowness and calm, the pace
at which people are transformed and acquire new capabilities is
incredible. This can be exemplified by the case of one participant
who came to Scheersberg hardly able to operate a VCR and went
home as an author of two film etudes. Take the examples of people
who had not had a chance to try their hand at sculpting, painting or
music since primary school and who had ultimately lost any confidence in their abilities in those areas, whereas here, in Scheersberg, were freely able to look for the most suitable, and most manageable means of expression.
Those examples might remind one of the great song by Jonasz
Kofta Everyone can sing. Everyone is aware of the pitfalls of such
“everyone-can-do” attitude. But the Scheersberg workshops are
by no means a kind of “believe-in-yourself” therapy aimed at stripping participants of their complexes, making them believe that they
could excel in everything that they undertake and that the road to
an international career lies open in front of them. Nor it is intended
to serve as a talent-scouting event that leaves to their own resources all the less talented ones.
In Scheersberg there is no division between the artists and the
audience that looks upon the work of art with bashfulness and reverence not quite understanding what it is all about. Obviously, certain
different levels of competence between participants can be easily
observed. For example, in the music workshop, there were both conservatory students and true amateurs, while – among filmmakers –
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there were both people with some previous filmmaking experience, like
a Łódź TV station cameraman, well-versed in the technical aspects of
the job, and young women who usually only had some idea of a script
and a strong resolve to master the filmmaking craft. Among those
who selected the Land Art workshop there were a music teacher
from Bremen, secondary school students from Leipzig, a graphic artist, a poet, a photographer-musician named Allistair (he looked like
Portos), a lecturer from the School of Fine Arts in Łódź, a student of
Polish philology, and someone who had no previous experience in the
subject at all, that is the author of this text. Despite all that, I did not
hear anyone complain about a lack of professionalism among participants or, conversely, their too high professional level. The decision to
join a workshop was not determined by any qualifications, interviews
or previous experience. Everybody had a free choice, and work was
based on the free will of participants. Workshop leaders provided us
with support and guidance at any time of day and night. However,
each participant was left to contemplate his or her idea on their own.
Even when each step of a workshop was precisely designed as in the
case of Aesthetic Process – from Imagination to Realisation where
each day was planned (the workshop started with a 24-hour session
of painting, continued with exercises in space limitation, to spatial
forms and collages), the design was only intended to help participants
realise their individual projects.
Also important is the fact that there were no physical or material
limitations. It never happened that anyone had to change their plans
or to resign from them because something was unavailable. One could
risk saying that for those two summer weeks a kind of utopia was
created for the almost 80 participants, one that provided space for
mostly good things to happen. At the same time, a stay in a place like
that does not make one reject the world he or she has to face on
return to reality. Channels of free expression opened during the Summer Academy function independently of the context.
On the first day of the Land Art workshop, Arune who ran it
said: “Tell us your story of the labyrinth”. Then Gerhild described
her labyrinth to us. Out of the house, into the garden, one had to
go through the corridor in the basement, where the unknown was
lurking. “Walk barefoot down my corridors to feel what I was feeling
at that time” – she said showing us a path dug out in the ground,
covered with pebbles and crushed shells. Shells and pebbles hurt
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your feet, gravel is sharp and dirty, but at the end of the road
there is a safe haven, bright, filled with hay and sprinkled with white sand. Arune, on the other hand, filled her labyrinth with difficult
obstacles – just like on a cross-country horseracing course; sometimes one had to climb up those obstacles as the structure was
built on a grassy slope; there was enough place to rest before
moving on. It was a closed labyrinth without a way out, without a
clear destination or a place of fulfillment.
Then, there was a concert in a painter’s studio, an African music concert, sounds from Japan, music coming in through the window, a photo exhibition, a film show and a whole night of dancing.
On the next day, Arune was cleaning her obstacle course, Susan was dismantling her polar labyrinth, and our (Monika’s and mine)
plaster of Paris hands were to be installed for the last time. Having
gone all the way from the seaside rocks to Scheersberg lawns,
they ended up in a big container with rubble. The audience of the
last row of the amphitheatre made up of red clay heads left their
places on tall wooden poles. The poles returned to the stage, the
heads were left in the grass.
Among the trees, there still remained the work of Lasma, a
Latvian. In Latvia, they put up structures made up of two linked
quadrilaterals. Those homemade structures are made of straw and
look like traditional Polish “spiders”. Hung at the ceiling to protect
against evil spirits, they collect and focus all the evil forces in the
household area in order to protect its inhabitants. Lasma hung
high her structure made of such three magic elements and they
seem to have effectively protected Scheersberg’s visitors against
all imaginable and unimaginable hostile forces.
There are places one would like to visit again, at least for a
while. This is what happens when one leaves somebody else’s place, and the place remains with its inhabitants still engaged in their
everyday activities. The Summer Academy is not a place, however,
but an interaction between people. What happens between people
is as important as any of the works of art that were created there.
Nobody came there specifically because of someone else, entering
a determined, defined space. All were but visitors whose meeting
endowed both the place and the time with identity.
M ałgor
zata Litwinowicz
ałgorzata
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A story presented through images is not the same as a story
frozen in words. We were taught in Scheersberg how to tell stories by Niels Reise, a Swedish-German filmmaker who looked seventeen and had a brilliant mind. Still, each story shares some common foundations. Just a few questions come to the fore: who,
where and when. Interpersonal relations are essential, although
emotions and reactions have a bigger dramatic resonance than
situations that they create. There is also conflict involved. Conflict
is extremely important from the point of view of the story.
So conflict was a frequent element of our work. Conflict understood here more as a kind of aesthetic category than as a real
clash. Films are created in tension in the most literal sense of the
word. The film set is a meeting place of various personalities and
levels of visual and verbal creativeness as well as technology and
organisation. Only constant attention and tension can reduce the
incompatibility of those areas. Lack of authentic creative personality can only bring about chaos. That explains to a certain extent
why bad movies so often inadvertently reflect something that we
might call “the state of social consciousness”. Of course, this state is inherently connected with the nature of the cinema. But it is
also a result of how work is performed. This impression is created
incidentally and is borne out of the chaos, accidentality and superficiality of the meeting on the film set. That is why quarrels about
each scene, tension when, in editing, we try to catch a hand movement in the most suitable moment, as well as anger that comes
from the realisation that it is not the same hand as in the previous
scene – all constitute not only inseparable but also necessary elements of filmmaking.
Of course, we had to experience real conflicts too. Although
sometimes they only seemed real. Like in the case of the early
departure of Danielle, a German representative of the young assertive generation. And sometimes conflicts touched upon things
fundamental. Like during the never-ending discussions between Niels
and Klaus-Ove. And sometimes they were funny. Like the quarrel to
determine who is more entitled to a nice patch of land – the filmmakers or land artists. Or serious. Like discussions that we were
having throughout the whole workshop – about the sense of work
during the Summer Academy, for example. This work was conducted on several levels. On the most basic one, even communication
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in a foreign language and concentration on longer discussions required considerable effort. And discussions we were having there
in plenty as filmmaking demands a solid theoretical foundation encompassing the theory of narration, the geometrical structure of
the field of view, and aesthetics. Then came lectures, lectures, and
lectures. And practical skills – starting with the first pressing of
the button, ending in camera movement. Finally, one had to generate a spark of creativeness, an idea that would stimulate others
and create tension. That required a lot of knowledge and practice.
On top of that, pure physical strength was needed to carry things
and organise events, video monitors multiplying in front of our eyes.
The day started just after breakfast and ended at midnight.
Followed by a short visit to a bar to make sure that other people
and things still exist. They do – and that could be another theme of
a film. Those things dominated our discussions, sometimes even
quarrels, giving rise to grievances. Filmmakers (perhaps also photographers) are a bit unconventional, slightly out of touch with
reality. The Summer Academy focuses on work, but it’s also a meeting place. The question is to what extent it should be a meeting
of people who observe one another and one another’s work and to
what extent a meeting of people who learn and work together. I
didn’t have a chance to see any presentation of other workshops,
actually I didn’t meet anyone outside the filmmaking workshop. I
didn’t have the time to. To a large extent, that was my own choice.
The Summer Academy offers and should offer the freedom to participate and an opportunity to choose the manner of work. It should also offer freedom to define the reasons why one comes to visit
the place. Usually, the motto of each Academy provides such a
formula. This year it was Pendulum. Vibrations of the universe. Nice.
However, too broad and perhaps unnecessary. Too often such mottoes set unnecessary limitations and offer superficial associations.
Isn’t the idea of creative work enough?
Creative work is fostered by the very formula of the workshop,
which offers activities of a very special type. First of all, it is a
meeting of people who vary in their commitment and preparation to
participate. It is also performance, because during the workshop
we do not learn how to perform, but rather perform proper. More
than ten days of the session in a fairly isolated setting enable participants to concentrate, relate to the new place and the subject,
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and stimulate energy. That gives everyone the impression of time
well spent. This is also worth remembering during other workshops
organised at the university, even during the academic year.
Organisation is something equally important. What can be said
about organisation in Scheersberg is that it was invisible. That is
the biggest compliment, I think, that could be addressed at any
organisers. They appear in the spotlight only when something goes
wrong. Which makes administration an unpleasant and underestimated job. In Scheersberg, one could see two representatives of
the organisers. Allistair Tarwid was their spokesperson. This Polish-Scotsman, domiciled in Germany and still missing his Lithuanian roots, expressed his insatiable desire and need to talk, although some of his jokes told at lunch were sometimes too alisterish
and might cause indigestion. The other person one just could not
overlook was obviously Klaus-Ove, the originator and organiser of
the Academy, walking down the paths of Jugendhof Scheersberg.
It’s a beautiful place. The nights forecasted good weather, but
the days started off with a mist and it would get warmer only at
around noon. One could forget about holidays. From the Bismarck
Tower one could see the whole of the surrounding area, closed off
at one end by the puddle of the Kiel Bay and at the other end by the
marshlands of the North Sea. We used the most beautiful vantage
point for our film set. A field, hills, a pastoral view, the relaxing
effect of which could be seen in the result of our work, which was
very different from what was originally intended. It was the quintessence of localness. People greeting one another in a friendly
manner. Thatched roofs, pastel doors and windows, even tarmac
paths.
All this makes one think about the sense of belonging. Especially, when one is involved in a meeting. The meeting began in a large
room, our everyday activity room or at least the place of our afternoon tea. We were standing by the windows – Ieva from Latvia,
Kirsi from Finland and me. With our backs to the room, we were
each looking out of our windows. Moving from place to place we
carefully avoided the possibility of a physical or eye contact. The
distance was well defined. Two days later we were ready to quarrel.
That is also some measure of intimacy.
Obviously, working hand in hand brings people together. Casual
remarks, discussions stirred by concrete issues carry much more
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meaning than disputes of the kind “what is it like in your place and
what is it like in mine”, which I can remember from a similar visit
two years ago. And the people were interesting. Mathias, a Pedigree Pal salesman, a filmmaker and amateur actor with three university diplomas; Axel, an artist and teacher in one, with a complex
of his parents who feel underestimated in the society that appreciates only people working full time; Gabriela from Rumania telling
her psychoanalytic stories; sceptical-ironic Klaus; Pinocchio-faced
Arne. And most of all Niels Reise. Radical in thought and action,
leaning towards the Left and feminists (“Lion is a king, a queen,
respectively, of all animals” ). A Frisian, one of the last ones to
consciously identify as such, who abandoned Yale University to study at the Film Academy in Łódź, far from “capitalist shark and
bourgeois schools”.
Niels showed us a film he made in Poland, in a Slovinian village of
Kluki. The last Slovinian, Herman Kecz, told him about the sense of
national identity that was sprouting inside him in confrontation
with aggressive neighbours – first Germans, later Poles, and how
this identity disappeared together with the physical disappearance
of those who could or rather were forced to feel it. Niels brought
back to life old photographs for a while. He also evoked certain
questions. Soon after the film was made, Herman Kecz committed
suicide. Did he look too deeply inside his own identity? That’s another risk of anthropology. Another insight showing how much identity is created, imposed.
On a completely different level, Nielse’s film reveals the face of a
creative process that originates in an authentic creative need. This
is the first essential moment of telling any story. And of participation in anything as well.
Iwona K
u rrz
z
Ku
The most important element of the ceramics workshop is the
moulding material, called white clay and the various ways it can be
used in creative work. White clay is extremely pliant and can be
formed in any way, can be easily mixed with other materials and
yields well to creative ideas. Each stage of the creative process –
including clay preparation, drying, baking, and glazing – opens many
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opportunities of exercising one’s creative invention. According to
Peter Sommer, the main goal of the workshop is to work in the
archaic-artisan mood, whereas the technological side, like the complicated process of glazing and baking, is not important. It is not
typical ceramics that are made here but rather “burned earth”.
The goal is to feel what it is like to work with material which will
consequently lead to results of some artistic value. Practice obtained during the ceramics workshop develops perceptive skills, the
ability to differentiate valuable works of art, a critical attitude towards one’s own artistic work, and – undoubtedly – one’s aesthetic
sense. Creative processes should be triggered by the workshop
leader in a cautious and conscious way. If the workshop participant
is most important, then they should be offered conditions that
enable artistic forms of expression to stem from their personality
and result from their deep reflection, artistic decisions, and a conscious use of the various principles of craftsmanship. A lot of attention in workshop activities is placed on individual artistic work.
“Exercises should be designed in such a way that each participant
has a chance to express their own imagination and creative solutions.” The role of the workshop is to prepare participants for creative work proper, which is a synthesis of technique and artistic
skills, and each task is to provide them with experience in both
technical and artistic dimensions. Working with clay is an exercise
of this kind, which opens participants to various aspects of aesthetic
practice.
The artist must focus on his own personality and, in the search
for his own identity, he should learn himself, open his senses to the
reality of everyday life, and do exercises that will generate results
in his artistic work. “When works of art are created through immersion in life and out of external images, then artistic work is
articulated as a result of reflection on one’s own existence” (Peter
Sommer).
M onik
a Górsk
a
onika
Górska
The group I was a member of included four Poles, a Lithuanian,
three students from Russia and a German. We were supervised
and guided by professor Wiesław Karolak. The “Hause and Gehau-
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315
se” workshop was an intensive analysis into the meaning of what
makes a home – where is the dividing line between home as “just a
place” and home – one’s own place.
We started the first day with psychological exercises. In the
first one, we were asked to express ourselves by placing an egg
(just a plain egg) in the proper place. Then, we had time to evaluate
and possibly comment all the exhibits. Some eggs were placed in
nests, some set against the backdrop of greenery, some nailed
hard to the surface, there were eggs in cages, eggs of different
colours, someone even staged a performance. In our next task, we
had to define our own symbolic space using a piece of rope and
three poles. Putting up a real yurt was also an interesting experience. It took more than ten people to build it. Everyone admired
it. It was beautiful and colourful, it had a unique atmosphere – at
first sight it suggested something extraordinary, but at the same
time warm and promising adventure. Inside, there were tapestries
on the wall, light coming down through an opening in the roof, a
small fire in the centre, and this charming warmth that makes
people talk – a din of voices outside.
On 17 June, it was raining in the morning and everything was
wet. Unable to work outdoors, we gathered inside the building.
First, we used matches to make our home-visions, then we watched films about various artistic projects. The first one from the
“Borderland” Centre about building a temple I had already watched
twice. Ones that followed documented professor Karolak’s projects – “Hay”, “Play”, and “Colour.”
On the following day, we had a brainstorming session generating
ideas related to our “Home” project: My home is my window/ My
home is my flower/ and my book/ My window is my home/ my world/
me. It is difficult to “make” one’s own home, find the idea of home
in oneself. I was thinking a lot about what home meant to me, what
was the most important thing about it. My first idea of home was
a failure. Putting up a home of various kinds of windows was too
simple, to banal, and too obvious. Art should be simple but it can’t
be too direct. Recipients must find in it something for themselves,
they must be shown direction, stress a problem.
During our discussions, professor Karolak suggested that I should
take up something that remained in the sphere of my interests of
language or literature. My idea connected with the inscription “mein
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Haus” was evolving. My idea was that if I feel well in various places
and I leave a part of myself everywhere, I should do something that
would ideally reflect this state and which would allow everyone to
find their own interpretation of it. I had to make several dozen
plates with the inscription “mein Haus” and put them in various
places. Later, during a public presentation, I left some of them in a
basket placed in the centre of the square and encouraged everyone
to take one and use it to mark “his or her place.”
M onik
a Urbańsk
a
onika
Urbańska
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IV. PROGRAMME
Iwona K
ur
z
Kur
urz
C
“ UL
TURE ANIM A
TION” –
LTURE
ATION”
FRAM EW ORK OF THE PROGRAM M E
The purpose of the special line of studies in “Culture Animation”
is training people for operating in the field of culture. Culture is
defined here as the space for self-realisation, expression, and realisation of values, which, of course, means a living space subject
to constant transformations – operating within it is thus associated not only with particular skills but also with a certain attitude
towards it and the problems it poses. The condition for operation
in a situation so-defined is understanding this situation.
QUALIFICATION
The participants include University humanities students (especially of cultural studies and Polish philology), who have completed
their second year of study and passed an exam in the basic cultural anthropology course and accompanying anthropological subjects. The curriculum for these classes was developed at the Institute of Polish Culture and constitutes a theoretical basis for
the study, and then practice, of culture animation – it allows the
students to get to know basic anthropological categories by learning to understand the social reality in which they will be operating in the future.
Iwona Kurz: researcher of film and audio-visual culture, post-graduate student of the
Institute of Polish Culture, co-organiser of operations of “Culture Animation” specialization.
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Academic theoretical education is available for the entire duration of the programme of “Culture Animation” due to the fact that
it constitutes an additional set of classes for the students of humanities. The curriculum assumes that a future animator should
have the knowledge of the history of the Polish culture and of the
neighbouring cultures as well as of cultural theory and anthropology, especially the anthropology of modern culture.
W ORKSHOPS
The seminars fulfil an introductory function in relation to the
workshops whose orientation is assumed to be practical. Students
of “Culture Animation” are obliged to complete 180 hours of workshops. The workshops are of a practical character; distinguished
specialists in various fields, artists, practitioners, field leaders,
and organisers run them. Each teacher thus designs these classes individually, so two courses on the same subject, for example
movies, if run by two different people will have completely different
goals and approach.
The introductory and advanced workshops are organised for five
culture areas: theatre, art education, movies and audio-visual aids,
music, art of word (by convention, organised in “baskets”). The
students are free to select classes of their choice out of the Institute’s offer. These courses are a training ground for the participants to develop their artistic ambitions and needs. Artistic creation is understood here as individual expression, but also as the
way of stimulating the activity of the people and groups that an
animator will work with in the future.
The majority of workshops take place in the normal academic
cycle – several hours every week or fortnight. There are also regular field sessions organised where single workshops or summer
schools are held (such as the Summer Academy in Scheersberg
organised by Prof. Klaus-Ove Kahrmann). The class teachers have
various goals: (1) some workshops end with some creative product
(e.g. Marcel Łoziński’s film workshop, during which the film Questionnaire was produced); (2) others are about initiating some
creative and cognitive process which need not lead to a defined,
particular result as what counts more is bringing out the creative
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need and readiness (musical, photography workshops); (3) another
workshop type are presentation classes during which in a series of
meetings with culture animators the students get to know the
functioning of a cultural institution and what lies at the basis of
cultural activity – individual initiatives (the media institutions workshop led by Marek Przybylik, “Vade-mecum of a culture manager”
led by Janusz Marek); (4) finally, some workshops teach a particular education or animation method so by learning it through practice the participants gain a ready tool for practical application (“Designing creative situations” run by Creative Education Laboratory).
All students must participate in the classes in “culture organisation” (e.g. run by the Centre for Supporting Local Activity), whose
aim is passing on the knowledge and skills indispensable for taking up
practical cultural initiatives. The syllabus involves the presentation
of the legal and financial framework of the operation of cultural institutions, as well as the recognition and definition of the cultural needs of a local environment, the principles of developing a project,
gaining partners, fund raising, and subsequently, project realisation
all the way to the phase of the evaluation of the results. In this way
the experience gained during the workshop can be captured in a
framework that allows addressing local needs and problems.
A PPRENTICESHIPS
AND INTERSHIPS
The workshops lead to the gaining of experience – that is also
the goal of apprenticeships organised in chosen cultural centres
which have been checked and deemed as good examples of such
institutions. Part of them consists in involving the participants in
the daily work of the cultural institutions or in work on particular
initiatives. The students can organise this type of workexperience
on their own by finding an apprenticenship location at a local cultural institution; this also gives them experience in the area of job
search.
There are also several institutions that remain in close co-operation with the Institute of Polish Culture of Warsaw University: the
“Borderland – of arts, cultures, nations” Centre at Sejny, the “Gardzienice” Centre of Theatre Practices, the “Węgajty” Village Theatre, Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium at Holstebro, Denmark, where the
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students spend several days in order to “get to know the area”.
They participate in specially prepared programs – workshops, sessions, performances, demonstrations of work, and a series of meetings with representatives of local groups and institutions whose
purpose is not only to present the way an institution works but also
to point out its local, and broader, context of activity. Such a reconnaissance also gives opportunity for noting and understanding important features of animating work. Getting to know an institution
operating on the edge of artistic and educational work of local or
broader character, usually in a culturally diversified centre, enables
the students to construct a model animator’s attitude understood
as constant redefinition of oneself and one’s place with reference to
the cultural context and the community in which one lives and operates. This is why the travel and the intercultural experience, of life in
motion are so important – they force people to confront their own
likes and habits, their own experience, with a different cultural reality and a different rhythm of time and space. A similar reconnaissance is necessary in case of every animating activity which is to be
effective and to make sense on the condition that it addresses the
needs of the community at which it is directed.
Another important skill whose significance can be observed during field activities is work group and team building. The basis of
this process is shared experience which has an integrating character. This process (or its onset) is brought about by joint task completion, joint work over some project that requires compromises,
joint recognition of the field whose results are then to be submitted to other participants in a coherent form.
R EPORTS
The condition for obtaining a credit for an apprenticeship is writing a report. Each participant is obliged to present a text whose
aim is not to report actions carried out during the training but to
reflect on one’s own experiences. Those texts are not rated, the
only condition is writing them.
The place of reports in the curriculum of “Culture Animation”
has been discussed for a long time. The role of the process of
writing in making one’s impression objective is obvious; even super-
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323
ficial experience of the complexity of an animator’s work carries a
stimulating effect, it brings in a lot of results – the writing process
helps to order them, verify them and transform them. The reports
thus serve self-education, shaping the skill of making use of one’s
own experiences. Profiled texts give very good results: when the
participants are asked to write about one aspect of a trip. Such a
text can already be a prelude to one’s own animating practice.
P ROJECT
The students conclude the training process by developing their
own project of acting in culture – the knowledge, experience, and
skills gained during the courses should be expressed in the idea of
an activity, take a definite shape. Graduates should be able to write
a project, a request for subsidy, but first and foremost, they should have an idea of acting in a particular environment. That requirement makes sense as much as at least the most interesting student projects will have a chance for realisation. The platform of
such an activity is the “Culture Department” Association, which
was founded with the Institute of Polish Culture by graduates and
students of “Culture Animation”. The successfull realisation of cultural projects created by the students, graduates, and partners
of the “Cultural Animation” programme, however, requires a network of institutions co-operating within the training curriculum
and operating in culture.
E VALUATION
The programme also includes the tools of evaluation – the methods for the estimation of its effectiveness. Evaluation is made
from viewpoint of participants, leaders, and organisers, and through examination of the programme’s effects.
Trainees evaluate the programme on two levels of educational
process. After each exchange, apprenticeship or workshop outside
the Institute, students are supposed to answer questions in the
questionnaire. Therefore, as the side effect, the reports written
by them become an evaluation of the planned and organised activi-
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ties, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of a specific
course. When finishing the whole traineeship, each student is supposed to fill another questionnaire with a wider range of questions.
This way they get the opportunity to describe the quality and effectiveness of the entire programme: the academic and practical courses, their range, organisation and methods of training.
On the other hand, the leaders of the workshops and the organisations hosting the trainees are also asked for an evaluation. The
confrontation of opinions given by trainers and by participants in
reports, and the monitoring of courses (elaborated effects, models, projects), allows the programme managers to evaluate thoroughly both the training modules and their specific components.
The most important measure of the programme’s success is
contituted by the projects of cultural activities which serve as a
condition for receiving the final certification of the training. The
quality of such projects is to be the best mark of the programme.
CURRICULUM
QUALIFICATION
Credit for a course in anthropology of culture
During their first two years of studies students participate in a
series of courses which provides theoretical background for future
cultural work. The basic course – Anthropology of culture ends with
a paper and exam; beside students credit for courses in Anthropology of the word , Anthropology of performance and Film and the
audio-visual in culture.
60 hrs + 90/180 hrs, exam
LEVEL 1
Participation in a series of workshops
Students accepted into the training programme participate in workshops. These courses in artistic practice – understood as individual expression and as a measure of activating individuals – are led by
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practitioners: artists, cultural managers and leaders of social groups. The workshops are organised in five areas (“baskets”) according to the various domains of cultural practice:
• theatre (e.g. body movement workshop, theatre director’s workshop);
• music (e.g. traditional music workshop );
• film and the new media (e.g. photographic workshop, movie-making workshop);
• art of the word (e.g. “The word in the Internet”, journalistic workshop);
• fine arts (“Reading of pictures”, “Designing creative situations”).
Workshops are accompanied by a set of seminars, lectures and
other theoretical courses.
240 hrs
LEVEL 2
Credit for a course in the organisation of cultural work
Students are free to choose among various workshops, but they
are obliged to participate in the cultural worker workshop which
provides knowledge and know-how on cultural practice:
• the legal and financial framework for cultural work;
• the way to recognise and identify cultural needs in local environments;
• planning the activities – their aim, working method, budget, results;
• looking for partners, facilities and funds;
• organization;
• evaluation and dissemination of the project.
To acquire credit for a course, students have to elaborate their
own project of cultural work or write a paper analysing a chosen
dimension of culture animation.
30 hrs, paper (project)
LEVEL 3
Apprenticeships and internships
The Institute of Polish Culture co-operates with many cultural and
social organisations and institution at which students are obliged
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to do work practice. Such work practice may take two forms: participating in an enterprise organised by the institution or in a “field
trip” – recognition of the local environment in which the institution
exists.
The condition for receiving credit for work experience is writing a
report describing all the details of the work done and analysing the
experience acquired.
30 days (or 180 hrs), reports
LEVEL 4
Final exam – elaboration of a project of cultural activity
The final condition for a graduate of the training is the elaboration
of a project of cultural work and carrying it out. Students should
use the knowledge, experiences and skills acquired during workshops and apprenticeships. The projects should be developed enough to be ready to carry out.
project
CERTIFICATION
All graduates are granted a university MA degree confirming that
they have finished an additional vocational training course in culture animation.
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327
M agdalena Rodak, P
aweł Rodak
Paweł
C o - operation: M arcin Niem ojewski
C ULTURE ORGANISATION
Within the framework of “Culture Animation”, the classes from
the area of culture organisation are of fundamental importance.
Therefore, these classes should be general and comprehensive enough to meet the varied demands of the students connected with
the choice of that particular area on the one hand, and on the
other, to teach the basic skills useful in the work of culture animator and organiser, regardless of the environment and of the type of
culture in which they will operate in the future and regardless of
the type of their activities.
Therefore the classes in culture organisation should present,
encourage and prepare the students for various kinds of animating activities, both those involving artistic work and social and
educational work. The aim is making the students sensitive towards the social aspect and social framework of their activities.
Culture animation can mean the production or co-production of
movies, theatre plays, exhibitions and concerts, or it can mean
engagement in various types of social institutions and ventures
Magdalena Rodak: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University, in
1990s she worked for the French Foundation for Poland.
Paweł Rodak: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University, historian of Polish culture, lecturer at the Institute of Polish Culture.
Marcin Niemojewski: graduate of the Faculty of Polish and Lithuanian Philology at
Warsaw University, lecturer at the Institute of Polish Culture, co-editor of “Krasnogruda” quarterly.
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whose sense is community work (e.g. work with children and teenagers from pathological families, with the unemployed, the lonely, the disabled, etc.), or, finally, it can be a mixture of them
both.
C ULTURE
ANIMATOR
– S OCIAL
ANIMATOR
The concept of culture animation as well as the animator’s attitude (basic skills, personality traits, competencies and qualifications, ways of acting, dangers) are understood here according to
the project “Culture organiser as social animator” produced by
Bohdan Skrzypczak (the Centre for Supporting Local Activities) and
the commentaries prepared by “Stacja Szamocin” Theatre Centre
and “Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation.
The Centre of Local Activities
The concept of “animation” became a part of our vocabulary in
the 1980’s. and has recently become a universal label used rather
freely with regard to culture, tourism, local governments, religion,
social aid and even the economy. What does this broad term mean
then? In its basic dictionary sense it is: enlivening, making others
act.
Animation can be simultaneously understood as:
• an aim, i.e. provoking people to action aimed at satisfying various
proper and environmental needs;
• a method of social action consisting in the mobilisation of groups
and society in general to independently solve community problems based on their own resources;
• a process of discovering the potential in people, groups, and
communities to transform their individual and social reality;
• an activity in the area of initiating, organising, supporting, and
co-ordinating the social activity.
Revealing and activating the strengths of a society in order to
boost its development is, as it turned out, a common goal of culture animators, social pedagogues, social workers, leaders of local
institutions, members of local governments, and even businesspeople. Particular areas of activity (culture, education, social aid, business) are of secondary importance because the most important
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329
thing is the method of the fieldwork. From this point of view animation is both a method for operation in a community and a basis and
way for perceiving reality. It goes beyond shaping an active attitude
aimed at creative personality development. With tasks so defined,
a person managing the whole process, i.e. the animator, has a
special role to play.
“Stacja Szamocin” Theatre Centre (Ida Bocian, Luba Zarembińska)
Working in a small local community is a very specific activity.
A lot depends on the place in which one operates and on the
personality of the animator. Little can be taught here. But there
are several practical skills that may be of use in such a case.
Some communities (especially the apathetic, incoherent, and
culturally neglected ones) need a leader. Some others (ambitious, with traditions of amateur work, or already in conflict) need
more of a negotiator – some sort of a catalyst for a given community.
A leader is a person with some kind of vision in mind and not just
a lot of ideas and they need to come up with specific ways for their
realisation. A leader “resuscitates”, awakens local aspirations which
sometimes are long forgotten. Their enthusiasm is contagious, and
a community reveals the need to participate in culture. They are
the author of projects and, what is more important, their executor.
Skills of a leader: they, of course, have to know how to work with
a project, how to construct a budget and they need to have a
background in cultural work. They also need to be able to present
the assumptions of a project and convince others to the project.
They have to know how to share tasks with their co-workers, plan
their development, and manage people.
A negotiator (catalyst) – is a person that does not manage but
only assists the actions taken by others, they conciliate within
communities in conflict, provide advice, consultation, their experience and contacts, they match various kinds of interests and
creative groups, they act as an intermediary between various groups (also between the authority and the leaders). This role is a
more difficult one because it is not a visible one and requires a lot
more patience and ability of work with other people.
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Skills of a negotiator: apart from those required for the work in
culture and with projects, mediating skills and knowledge of human
behaviour are also indispensable.
It is important to equip animators with skills that will help them
work in far from ideal environments. As our experience shows, in
some cases one can even develop a sort of automatic skills – in this
case they mean a basic knowledge and the ability to construct a
project or a budget, to write requests, present ideas and ways of
their realisation clearly. Several times during the workshop series
the students should write a project, simulate its carrying out, and
critically evaluate its chances of being carried out successfully.
When conducted in a consistent way, this kind of exercise develops
habits of listening, creative discussion, the ability to take criticism, defending a project, negotiation, flexibility, all of which are
indispensable for performing the function of an animator of a community.
Animators should be prepared to work in an environment where there is practically no place for them. W hile getting to know a
chosen environment, an animator has to confront a task of finding a place for their function in the reality encountered – determine their goals and tasks to be performed, find partners for
talks and co-operation. It is difficult to change a community so it
is the animator that has to adjust in the beginning. Subsequently, through their work and while realising other goals they will
influence a change in the common opinions of the role of culture
at a local level. An animator will become an indispensable element of society which in the future might help to turn their function into a profession.
“Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation (Jan Kawecki, Waldemar Mirek)
In many people’s awareness the word “animator” has become
the key to all doors in the new Polish reality. It has been substituted for the word “activist” which is out of fashion nowadays. In
reality, neither of them is adequate to the situation that is occurring on the path between a creative author and a manager. Actually, an organiser of a cultural event today is an author of a cultural
project. Animation does not mean organisation because the latter
comprises an entire complex array of problems and tasks. The ani-
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mation is understood rather as initiating and supporting or coordinating certain social activity. It is not a magical prescription for
all social problems or a universal method of acting on behalf of a
community. An animator with the inborn predisposition of a creative author can perform a spontaneous and individual initiation of a
project but not having organisational experience and institutional
support they will not be in the position to address the problems of
its carrying out. It is hard to speak of a profession of a creator of
active forms of participation in social life. It is important to become
aware of the proper professional competencies and natural creative and organisational abilities that an animator-organiser-manager
should have in order to be capable of carrying out their tasks and
facing the challenges. Anyone who wants to have an influence on
the organisation of the project at its every stage needs to demonstrate all those competencies.
Necessarily, the working method of a culture organiser as a
social animator needs to comprise the entire range of the issues
of culture, social science, law, organisation, management, and economics. Organisation refers to structure, and animation rather to
a sort of a social mission that is limited to initiating and stimulating. For a cultural project to be realised, however, one needs organisational structure. Young people that want to fulfil themselves
through culture have basically two paths to choose from. The first
one is assimilating into the encountered, public or non-governmental structure. That may create difficulties in finding one’s way, especially in public sectors that are usually fossilised. The second way,
much more difficult and risky, is creating culture anew. While building up a new structure one needs to have in mind that culture is
a domain where the supply comes before the demand and that
requires considerable outlays. There is also the third way which
typically involves private and commercial structures.
An author and organiser of cultural projects should demonstrate a determination in their activity, resistance to stress, failure
and lack of acknowledgement, especially financial reward. They should have imagination, intuition, sensitivity, and “a good nose”, as
well as the ability to function in various social and political contexts. They also need to understand people and society, economy,
culture, arts, music, theatre, etc. They should know and even be
fascinated by the area in which they want to be active. They should
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have an internal fervour that will attract others, be it professional
partners or culture receivers.
Animation is a bottom-up activity. It is known, however, that no
animator will make or force the receiver to be a participant of their
project and, in addition, to pay for the ticket. Having an internal
need and the sense of fulfilling a mission a culture animator will
always aim at working to the benefit of a community. They will expect
changes in the cultural policy of the State and try to promote the
ideas of their programme in the media, and they will want their
project to reach a broad range of receivers. It seems, however,
that what we need today are talented managers of culture that
demonstrate the potential and competencies of an animator, organiser, and manager. In order to realise a cultural project successfully one should bring together all those competencies or should
work with a good team. The animators themselves may suffer disappointment if they commission others with the implementation
of their ideas.
STRUCTURE
Our discussions with the “field” workers resulted in a conviction
that if one wants to give the students a minimum preparation for
community work, the greatest possible emphasis should be placed
on practice:
• visits to institutions;
• interviews with people active in the local environment;
• internships connected with performing particular tasks to the
benefit of a hosting institution;
• preparation and realisation of particular projects.
The courses in culture organisation should also allow for presenting the students with the specifics of the work in the following
areas:
• different communities (a village, a town, a district of a big city);
• institutions of different legal status (an informal group, an association, a foundation, a local government institution, a crosscountry cultural institution);
• running different activities (educational, pedagogical, artistic).
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333
WORKSHOPS
Culture Organiser as Social Animator. The workshop series prepared by Bohdan Skrzypczak and run by the staff of the Centre for
Supporting Local Activities (CAL). The assumed method of classes
consists in teaching through active participation (work in small groups, simulations, task-based training) and basing the instruction
on a group process (from referring to the experiences of particular
persons through group reflection and their conceptualisation, and
joint acquisition of practical skills).
The Culture Organiser as Social Animator workshop should be
available to all students in “Culture Animation” as one of several
basic workshops. The workshop classes of this kind may be organised in a different mode than typical academic classes (several-day
or week sessions once a month; weekend sessions – the details to
be settled with the workshop organisers). The programme should
comprise various specialist workshops allowing the students to
gain “technical” skills such as such as fund-raising for cultural activity, writing projects, requests for subsidies, agreements, contracts, formal and legal mechanisms and the framework of activity
of particular cultural institutions, such as associations, foundations, etc.
Forms and partners of animation activities – studio visits . A
series of “field” classes consisting in visiting interesting institutions in Warsaw and the surrounding area, especially those active
at a local level. They would be interwoven with meetings with their
institutional partners (e.g. commune office, county office, business
sponsor, media, Ministry of Culture, centre of NGOs, Batory Foundation, Centre of Voluntaries). Those visits should, first and foremost, be made to institutions interested in accepting interns. Several meetings should be devoted to discussing the students’ observations and reflections. These classes should emphasise the
issues that have not been widely addressed in the curriculum hitherto and that include:
• the character of the activity of NGOs;
• social context of an animator’s work;
• the character of the activity at the local level.
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Examples of institutions to be presented:
• playrooms around Warsaw and youth club of the Society for Developing Children’s Activity “Szansa” in Marki;
• the Association of the Friends of Integration, editor’s office of
“Integracja” magazine;
• children’s clubs of Powiślańska Fundacja Społeczna;
• “Dom Tańca” Association;
• „Studnia O.” Association;
• Imielin Culture Centre;
• District Centre of Culture Promotion of Praga-Południe.
In our view making the students leave the University campus will
encourage them to get interested in local activity, which, though
seemingly unattractive, may give a great amount of personal satisfaction. People that may run or co-ordinate such classes can be
sought among the trainers of The Self-Aid Initiative Service Office
(BORIS), Local Activities Centre (CAL), but also in graduates of “CultureAnimation” (“Studnia O.”, people associated with “Dom Tańca”,
etc.), and members of the Association “Katedra Kultury”.
Managerial workshop. A workshop in that area has been run for
quite some time now: “Vademecum of a culture animator” – a programme designed, developed, and implemented by Janusz Marek
from the Centre for Contemporary Arts 1.
A DVANCED
WORKSHOPS
A broader range of advanced classes in the area of organising
social and cultural activity should be developed. These could take
the shape of workshops or training sessions run by trainers from
NGOs specialising in that type of activity. It seems worth extending the offer and scope of classes connected with “culture management”. Those classes would not be compulsory – they would be
organised in response to meet a specific demand and a need for
addressing a given topic expressed by the students. For example a
block of classes exploring the particular issues raised during the
classes run by CAL could be created.
1
Cf. description of the workshop in part II Workshops .
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Examples of topics and problems:
• Why and how to set up an association or a foundation.
• How to write requests, projects, reports.
• “The Money Map” – where and how to look for funds for activity
(public funds from European organisations through local government funds, co-operation with companies, Polish and foreign foundations, private persons).
• Communication/interpersonal skills.
• Taking decisions/resolving conflicts – mediation.
• Co-operation with media (local and national press, how to prepare a press release, how to organise a press conference).
• Liability of an event organiser.
• How and where to gain information? How to use it?
• Performance evaluation.
One of the key com petencies of an anim ator should be the
skill to communicate effectivelly (interpersonal skills) on various
levels: with the people that they co-operate with, with the “custom er ”, the artist, a com m une clerk, a sponsor. It is therefore worth offering the students a com m unication workshop that
would raise their interpersonal skills. Such a workshop could be
run by Jarosław Paleta, the president of “Szansa” Association
and lecturer at the Tertiary School of Social Service Workers
where he runs that kind of workshop. The m ain em phasis is placed on conveying certain theoretical knowledge, practising it
and inspiring the students to a sort of self-reflection. According to Jaroslaw Pleta, in the situation where the funds for
local ventures com e m ainly from com m une and county budgets,
the potential anim ators should be taught public speaking, convincing and defending their views, and shown how to face clerks
who are not always friendly. From experience he believes that
such a workshop could take the form of a series of 10 threehour m eetings.
This type of workshops and training session can be run also by
other professional trainers that do training for NGOs, e.g. from
the Foundation for Development of Civic Society, “Education for
Democracy” Foundation and the Civic Initiative Service Office BORIS.
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INTERNSHIPS
We consider the internships an extremely important form of
student training. We have entered into contact with model institutions that can accept students for internships and training of three
kinds:
• initiation training (in the field, for everyone, possibly a choice of
several options);
• specialist (in the field, for smaller groups, also for individual students);
• individual.
1. Initiation training
This would be a (compulsory) group studio visit, with both initiation and integration functions. Its aim would be presentation of the
work of an institution and the local conditions (including its local
partners), and it would also allow some time for the exchange of
ideas. The purpose of this training is to present effective institutions active at a local level and breaking through common stereotypes of a “country culture centre”, a “playroom for poor children”,
or “a culture organiser in a small town”.
Potential hosts:
• “Pogranicze – sztuk, kultur, narodów” Centre, Sejny;
• “Ziarno” Ecological and Cultural Association, Słubice;
• “Szansa” Centre of the Society for Developing Children’s Activity, Kampinos;
• “Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation, Lublin;
• “Szamocin” Association.
The “Pogranicze” Centre based in Sejny has hosted the students of “Culture Animation” for years now. Every year there is
such a big demand for that placing that selection among candidates is necessary (the determining criterion is prior activity in related domains). The reason for that popularity is the rich content
and multiplicity of platforms of the model of cultural activity towards which “Pogranicze” educates its guests, and, what is as
important, the type of interpersonal bond that is created between
the Centre workers and the training participants during the meetings.
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From the content point of view, the training at the “Pogranicze”
Centre 2 opens up and explores the following areas of reflection:
• the space of the coexistence of various nations, religions, cultural attitudes, and customs as a value and source of unique cultural phenomena;
• borderland perceived as the meeting place of all types of diversity (thus not only an ethnic borderland but also e.g. the city area
inhabited by people from various social groups having completely
different financial situations, disabled people);
• participation in a local society understood as taking responsibility for the wellbeing of that society: developing the participatory
attitude;
• perceiving others as partners in a multicultural dialogue;
• the difference between the cultural activity of formalised institutions of central administrations and the spontaneous activity
of individuals and groups in a local society;
• cultural potential of every community; becoming aware of the
opportunity to act in the most immediate area, in the closest
neighbourhood, is of fundamental importance both for the students coming from big cities and those from small towns and
villages – in order to break through the stereotypical and deeply
rooted conviction of helplessness in face of the problems existing in the nearest environment;
• recognising the tensions within a local community and the ability
to neutralise them through promoting a broadly understood culture of dialogue;
• practical activity of a cultural institution and taking initiatives in
the borderland area.
In the case of the “Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation such an
expedition might involve the following:
Day 1.
• presentation of the Foundation staff, its profile, principles of operation, modes of financing, main difficulties, future plans; a meeting with a representative of one of the Foundation sponsors;
• a meeting with a conservator of historic buildings and monuments;
2
Cf. above the chapter presenting the “Pogranicze” Centre and Foundation.
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• a meeting with the NN Theatre;
• visiting the Old Town in Lublin.
Day 2.
• meeting with Klanza association (pedagogy of play);
• meeting with the “Happy Childhood” Foundation, which runs several playrooms for children from difficult communities (theatrical activities);
• a visit to the Majdanek Museum;
• a meeting with the representative of the municipality.
The “Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation seems a good partner for
the Institute as it runs both the high-culture activity (organisation
of the series of concerts of cameral music joined with art exhibitions, the struggle for reconstruction of the Old Theatre and creation of a culture centre therein) and animation (the August “Old
Town Days”, a Christmas Eve party for the people of Lublin organised jointly with other associations and institutions). They have no
steady financing out of public sources: they apply for subsidies
from European, government, and local government sources, from
Polish businesses and foundations and generate a moderate income with their own activity (publication of CDs with classical music,
postcards featuring the Old Town).
An interesting internship location can also be the “Ziarno” Ecological and Cultural Association in Słubice. This is a very interesting
centre that runs various types of activity deeply grounded in local
country traditions and an ecological philosophy of farming, and which
has very extensive contacts with similar domestic and foreign institutions. “Ziarno” is both an ecological farm (with its own bakery), a Rural Centre of Local Activity and Education acting in the
adapted barn and organising educational workshops for children
and teenagers, a language school for children, the editor’s office of
the local newspaper “Wieści znad Wisły” and many other forms of
activity.
2. Specialist internships
These would include internships for groups of several students
(sporadically also for individuals) showing an interest in a specific
type of activity. The most important of the existing internships is
the “Borderland School” organised by the “Pogranicze” Founda-
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tion 3. Out of the possible internships we present two very substantial offers made by the “Ziarno” Ecological and Cultural Association and IDEE Foundation.
Ewa Smuk-Stratenwerth from the “Ziarno” Ecological and Cultural Association proposed an open-air photography training session
for the participants of the photography workshop run by Juliusz Sokołowski. The Association would host young photographers for a couple of days and in return they would leave the results of their work
behind, i.e. artistic pictures of the neighbourhood (and there is a lot
to take pictures of!). Another interesting preliminary offer involves
inviting two students that together with children and teenagers would prepare a theatre performance based on The Fiddler on the Roof
and joint exploration of Polish, German, and Jewish traces in the area
where the Association is active. The show would then be presented in
Poland and in Berlin.
Monika Agopsowicz of IDEE Foundation (the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe) spoke about the possibility of organising internships for students interested in local activity and journalism. IDEE Foundation maintains many contacts with the best local newspapers and
magazines across Poland (including the neighbourhood of Warsaw) that
have already organised internships that combine watching and participating in the editing of a local newspaper with meetings with commune
or county authorities, local radio, Culture Centre, etc.
3. Individual internships
It seems important to aim at making the internships as specific
as possible: they should not be limited to performing minor office
duties but they should involve an obligation to perform a given task
(e.g. development of information materials, contacts with press
during a particular cultural event, preparing a request for subsidy,
developing reports, help in running a given event, co-operation in
organising of a big social or cultural venture).
One should also extend the list of institutions accepting students for that kind of internships to the maximum. Apart from the
institutions that are co-operating with the Institute on a regular
3
Cf. the chapter presenting the “Pogranicze” Foundation and Centre in the part III
Partners .
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basis, interest in accepting interns has been expressed by “Ziarno”
Ecological and Cultural Association in Słubice, the Centre of the
Society for Developing Children’s Activity “Szansa” in Kampinos, “Galeria na Prowincji” Foundation in Lublin, “Stacja-Szamocin” Theatre
Centre, IDEE Foundation. The source of internship contacts and ideas can also be the Voluntaries Centre, one of whose aims is putting
together volunteers and the organisations that need them.
The conclusion of the educational meetings with the “Pogranicze” Centre might be another internship organised by them and
meant mainly for the students that participated in the initiation
internship and the Borderland School. That would be a week or a
two-week individual internship for one or two persons and having a
purely practical character. The date of the internship would be contingent on the timetable of “Pogranicze” as the internship is to
involve a direct engagement of a participant in the preparation and
running of a large venture taken up by the Foundation. An intern
guided by a tutor would be able to implement all their knowledge in
practice, improve their skills, and find inspiration for own activities
at the end of the internship. This last stage of education would
take the form of professional training meant for the students about to graduate and preparing to take up employment.
L ECTURES –
SEMINARS
The workshops and seminars described above should be accompanied by at least one series of lectures / seminars presenting e.g.
the assumptions of cultural policy of the state as well as the activity of the Ministry of Culture, a network of government, local governmental, and extra-governmental institutions running social and
cultural activity, the legal framework of operation of cultural institutions, sources of financing of such institutions, structure of local government.
P RESENTATIONS –
MEETINGS AT THE I NSTITUTE
It would be useful to organise the presentations of the various
organisations interested in cooperation with the Institute of Polish
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Culture and ready to take interns, or simply the ones running an
interesting and important activity in the sector of non-governmental institutions. They could take the form of a series of open meetings.
A
DIPLOMA PROJECT
While developing the principles of granting credits for the course it is worth using the experiences of the School of Social Services: its students develop a “social project” whose completion is a
prerequisite for obtaining a diploma. The project may be prepared
in groups (up to 4 people) or individually. Every group or person
works under the supervision of a thesis advisor. The project usually
involves planning and performing a particular work on behalf of a
particular institution. The students’ work consists in gaining certain theoretical knowledge, multi-spectral project preparation, and
potentially, in its implementation. This usually involves a monthly
internship in a given institution. The diploma papers involved, for
example, an information booklet on the accessibility of public institutions for the disabled (several thousand locations were examined). For “Integracja” Association the students prepared a project
of the review of movies about the disabled (that project was not
implemented after all). The thesis advisors participate in the search for internship locations. That methodology allows the students to “feel the taste” of particular activity and enables them to
take more conscious and mature decisions in the area of their professional career.
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Bohdan Skr
Skrzypczak
zypczak
The Centre for Supporting L
ocal Activity (C
AL)
Local
(CAL)
C ulture organiser as social animator
1
Culture understood in a broad way, as a complex set of values
setting the sense and way of human life, is especially close to those who deal with it in local communities, be it through inspiring,
stimulating, managing, financing, or in the form of planning and
organizing. It is thus currently indispensable to consider cultural
phenomena in a broad social context.
In an attempt to isolate the results of such a participation in
culture one can point to at least several basic results which include the following:
• increasing knowledge about the surrounding world and oneself;
• development of skills useful in culture reception;
• development of cognitive and artistic skills;
• development of interests;
• change of attitudes towards tangible and intangible values of
culture and towards others;
• changes in the value system that sets out an individual path;
• change of cultural patterns.
Bohdan Skrzypczak: animator of social and cultural actions, co-ordinator of projects
“Przystanek Olecko” and “Dialog”, president of the Association “Local Activity Support Centre”.
1
This series of specialist workshops concerning social and cultural animation has been
developed on the basis of training and project experiences of the programme “Centres
of Local Activity”, the result of which is the CAL method, i.e. the method of animation
and development of local community based on the activity of the residents (in the
social area, that of culture, ecology, entrepreneurship, social aid, and democracy).
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Culture is in this sense the source and reinforcement of the
community, and its essence and practical dimension is the mobilisation of life forces, owing to which people change the situations
they found and create their lives and themselves.
The cultural area thus defined becomes a field for animation
(cultural or social and cultural) which is simultaneously a form of
organising cultural activity as well as a modern method of activating a local community. The resource, inspirer, and realizer is a
competent and function-aware social animator.
W HO IS AN ANIMATOR AND WHAT ROLE CAN THEY
REALLY FULFIL ?
“The heart of a local community” is how an animator’s tasks
were defined by one of workshops participants, which shows their
multidimensionality and the scale of emotional engagement that
we place in that expression.
Animation is derived from the wave of rebellion of French youth
at the end of 60s. The social revolution that took place in Western
Europe and USA was a reaction to cumulating phenomena of the
inadequacy of social systems (education, politics, social care) and
social life. Reflection upon basic values, such as freedom, love, solidarity, justice, and responsibility revealed a strong dose of dogmatism and schematism which dominated the life of public institutions whose symbol was first and foremost the school.
Animation was an attempt at rejecting formality, hierarchism,
and bureaucracy of interpersonal relations. It was to recreate authentic social communication and enable organisation of relations
among groups of people on the basis of their creative activity. Social life does not exist without groups as they are the school in
which we gain individual and group activity skills.
Animation as a work method went farther than the analysis of
the internal dynamics of a group process. It shed light on the environmental and institutional context in which groups operate. In
this way it became a method for provoking citizens to act on behalf
of local communities. A local community is also a group living on a
specific territory, where between its members exists the sense of
common identity and bond. At this point the concepts of animation
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came together both with the Polish tradition of social pedagogy of
Helena Radlińska and with American experiences of community development.
Animation, so understood, is both the method of social activity,
an attitude, and a way of seeing reality. It goes beyond shaping an
active attitude focusing on creative personality development. With
tasks so defined a particular role pertains to the person managing
the process, i.e. the animator.
It is the animator that enlivens the environment spontaneously,
and mainly out of their very function, being aware of their social
role. They are simultaneously a teacher, a tutor, an initiator, and an
organiser. What counts is not only the attitude but strictly defined
professional and personal competencies. Some indispensable features of character such as dynamism, openness, passion, and
tolerance have to be supplemented with methodology of group work,
planning, shaping interpersonal relations, managing projects or
teams.
An animator thus becomes a sort of a catalyst for change, especially in the situation of a permanent transformation that we are
experiencing in all walks of life, including our immediate environment.
Only an animator perceived in such a comprehensive way will be
able to fully exploit their environment and act therein without focusing only on one problem, social group or sector.
The following professional competencies seem thus indispensable:
• awareness of the necessity to diagnose resources and needs of
an environment;
• learning both about material and spiritual values of an environment that allow for controlling powers being obstacles and support in transformation;
• planning, i.e. ordering and thoughtful engagement of all social
forces (persons, institutions, groups) for the realisation of a
goal important for an environment;
• creating an effective system of social communication, i.e. securing full information on activities planned and taken up in an environment;
• building a social coalition around a problem or interesting all powers in the environment in co-operation, negotiating terms;
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• animation of task groups and developing their gradual independence, providing them with motivation, knowledge, and techniques of effective actions);
• group activity co-ordination and monitoring;
• evaluation of plan performance (analysis of results and changes,
introduction of modifications in the assumed plan).
The functions of an animator thus focus around three main platforms:
• content (what counts are problems and goals integrating a group) – the function of an animator consists in the consolidation
and organisation of a group around a problem and commonly developed action plan;
• action method (tools and techniques offered to a group) – the
function of an animator consists in training and monitoring group activities;
• relations inside a group – the function of an animator consists in
noticing the varied individual and group potentials and providing
appropriate expression.
The profession of an animator requires joining content-related,
psychological and social competencies, whereby the following deserve special attention: the skill of taking up interpersonal relations, curiosity and absorbing power of mind, empathy, passion and
energy, patience, sense of humour, sensitivity to conflict situations,
innovativeness, flexibility and consistency. All that allows to overcome very serious difficulties that an animator comes across in
their work, whereby the following should be emphasised:
• difficulties with obtaining quick and measurable results of one’s
actions;
• hard time letting go of groups they were strongly bonded with
(“traitor”);
• leaders remaining in the shade, while feeling the authors of all
measurable successes (the role of an animator is seldom appreciated in the short run);
• a usually burdensome necessity of mediating and negotiating cooperation between social and institutional groups and partners;
• the necessity to join the tasks of an animator, organiser, educator, and activist;
• a very wide field for activity which makes it impossible to feel
competent in any area one is dealing with;
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• the danger of crossing the border between animation and manipulation;
• difficulties with keeping private and professional life apart (consistency of ideals pursued and private life desirable);
• possibility of conflict between own views and the opinions of the
group one is working with (they should not impose their views on
the group even if that would speed up the problem solving process).
The animator may be protected against those threats by awareness of the role and method used in their actions and by remembering about the main directions of activity: the obligation of daily
enabling and provoking groups to participate in social life; the necessity of a better utilisation of institutions and contradiction of
their specialisation (promoting open institutions); working on the
resistance to change that takes place both in residents and in
employees of public institutions; inclusion of various partners from
the local social scene to co-operation.
Only joining all these components will result in comprehensive
animation of the environment thereby bringing us closer to the idea
of civic society, participating democracy. It will also counteract creation of a professionals’ democracy, where the society is represented by officials, politicians and specialists.
An attempt at making a detailed description of competencies
and tasks of an animator proves that that area exceeds all definitions. Social life constantly sets out new challenges and methods.
The role of an animator is to follow the social process, so that its
new shape can be created by active citizens themselves. Therefore, it is extremely important to gain up-to-date experience from a
variety of environments.
P ROFILE
OF THE WORKSHOP ACTIVITY METHOD
The effectiveness of teaching is contingent on a skilful engagement of students in the education process and on good contact between the teacher and the student. Therefore, the method applied will be “learning by doing”. More precisely it is based on:
• learning through participation;
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• learning through experience;
• learning through acting;
• learning through research.
The sequence of events in a workshop session begins with relatively easy and clear situations and tasks and goes on through
more complex and difficult ones that require using the skills gained.
The exercises are done in groups or pairs.
Teaching course: referring to experience – reflection – generalisation (conceptualisation) – practical skill.
Our style of workshop activity consists of the following components and techniques: an illustrated lecture, simulation games,
practising particular skills in the form of games and educational
situations, basing learning on a group process.
Purposes of the training:
• preparation of students for work in a local environment as an
animator of cultural and social activity;
• presenting the broad context of the social impact of cultural
activity;
• preparing students for practical social and cultural diagnoses of
local community;
• introduction to using modern methods of social animation on the
basis of group work, planning, and independent projects;
• analysis of institutional, formal, and legal areas indispensable for
taking up and organising cultural activity.
Workshop series plan
1. I as an animator
Goals: integration of workshop groups, identification of educational activities, analysis of experiences in the area of cultural activity, definition of the psychological and professional portrait of an
animator.
Teacher: Barbara Chruślicka, psychologist, trainer associated with
Polish Psychological Association, associated with TROP Centre.
2. Local environment and community
Goals: presentation and individual analysis of the basic concepts
connected with development, social and cultural activation and animation of local environment (local community, interest groups, leader, animator, cultural capital, social capital, social bonds, little
motherland), a map of local community.
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Teacher: Paweł Jordan, trainer, social politician, initiator of national and international social projects (centres of voluntaries, local funds,
centres of local activity), president of BORIS Foundation.
3. Social, institutional, and legal conditions of the activity of
a local culture organiser
Goals: presenting a culture organiser as an initiator and animator of social activity, recognition of an institutional environment
and the legal conditions inherent in local social and cultural activity,
presentation of the role, possibilities, and forms of activity of nongovernmental organisations, analysis of the principles of financing
cultural and social activity.
Teacher: Bohdan Skrzypczak, a social and cultural animator, a
trainer associated in STOP, director of the Centre for Supporting
Local Activity.
4. Social and cultural analysis of the environment
Goals: diagnosing the profile of a community, interest group,
social, and cultural needs, analysing relations between tradition
and the modern cultural dimension of environment, analysis of cultural and inter-generation communication.
Teacher: Ryszard Michalski, culture scientist and animator, founder of “Tratwa” Association, organiser of Intercultural Academy
specialising in work with youth and subcultures, currently working
at the regional Culture Centre in Olsztyn.
5. Methods of organisation, animation, and the promotion of
cultural and social activity in a local environment
Goals: methods of animating groups and teams, gaining and
motivating individual and institutional partners, promoting and financing activities, social impact on an environment through cultural and artistic activity, marketing and social advertising in a local
culture, stimulating activity of an environment through culture productive activities.
Teacher: Bohdan Skrzypczak.
6. Planning and designing cultural and social activities
Goals: principles and forms of planning social activity, working
through projects, construction and realisation of a cultural project,
organisation of time and resources, assumptions of a project.
Teacher: Katarzyna Sekutowicz, etnographer, trainer, and supervisor of the School of Trainers of non-governmental organisations, consultant for planning, evaluation, and work on projects.
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7. Monitoring and evaluation of animator’s work
Goals: introduction to the methods of monitoring and evaluation
of cultural and social projects, planning of the students’ own projects, summing up and presentation of possible internships.
Teacher: Katarzyna Sekutowicz and Ewa Jasińska, trainer and
supervisor, teacher of social communication and activities planning, develops methods for animating local activities,
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Roch Sulim a
T HE WORD IN CONTEMPORARY
CULTURAL PRACTICES
The project’s purpose is to practice the word instead of teaching about it. The project has been based on anthropological, not
linguistic, grounds and focuses on the word as used in expressions, in the “texts of culture” in general. The workshops and internships for students are to identify the basic types of modern
language practices, the variety of “co-existence within language”.
These classes will look at the cultural role of the word from a different angle than we used to during routine language and literature
classes at school. The project idea originates from a belief that the
notions of the word and language tend to be increasingly narrow
and technical, and in social perception they are, more and more
often, identified with institutions of the “language standards and
correctness”. At the same time the existential sense of language
experience has become nearly extinct. The workshops and internships are designed to restore the old art of listening and speaking;
the art of “recording” the world and reading these various human
records.
In general, the project puts an especially strong emphasis on
the word as the medium of cultural experience and its changing
position among the different practices of modern communication
dominated by electronic and audio-visual media. The purpose of these
workshops is to re-establish the contacts with the great “civilisation of the word”, which nowadays is overshadowed by the seemingly ubiquitous “civilisation of the image”. Therefore, one of the primary project objectives is to convince the students that the word
remains one of the most rudimentary and essential links with the
tradition and its encoded hierarchy of values – it is the basic means
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and condition for understanding and re-updating tradition. It is also
based on the presumption that the contemporary cultural communication systems are aimed at fulfilling the society’s information
demand, while the need for commentary and interpretation of the
world of the image created by the medium is not satisfied. The
word continues to be the most subtle and complete medium to
convey ethical problems. Thus, the project presented here is intended to defend somehow “the civilisation of the word”.
The series of workshops “The word in contemporary cultural
practises” covers the word’s varieties and functions as polarised
in culture nowadays, namely the literary word, which is fundamental to the logocentric cultural model (promoted mostly in printing)
and the oral word, which is still a powerful means to constitute
meanings, especially related to everyday life. However, the secondary oral function may be considered an autonomous practice of
the contemporary word with an aesthetic tinge. The literary word
is the subject of workshops designed by professors Andrzej Mencwel and Stanisław Siekierski1.
In contemporary social awareness the culture of the word is
identified with the culture of books. The transformation in the cultural communication type, namely the domination of audio-visual
culture, supports or makes this identification even stronger. The
so-called book crisis makes us reflect on word culture. Reading
books as a form of word practising, tends to be one of the most
basic indicators of participation in the so-called high culture and
becomes synonymous with this culture. Reading as a type of cultural experience and modern book technology, its creation (manufacturing), social circulation, publishing market and position, namely
its function in the overall practices related to the printed word are
the subject of a workshop entitled “Books among the contemporary” conducted by professor Stanisław Siekierski, a culture sociologist, expert on books and book reading.
The primary objective of the workshop is not to restore the
great tradition of “passion for books”, but to make the students
familiar with the psychological and social dimension of reading as a
still important but unrealised constituent in the way and style of
1
See their texts in part II Workshops .
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life. From this perspective the function of the printed word is better diagnosed by the institution of “home library” than by the institution of public library. The central issue is to evoke reflection over
the changes occuring in reading manners which may be among others
divided into school reading, instrumental reading, self-educating,
initiation reading, entertainment and the reading which symbolises
participation in the “high culture” (culture values oriented). The
workshop teaches the students to interpret the reading process
and organise reading under conditions definitely unfriendly to books.
The problems defined as “contemporary book technologies” is a
subject of workshop internships organised in selected publishing
houses with different traditions, production capacities, profiles and
applied typographic techniques. The workshop participants will learn to work with the author’s text and will get familiar with promotion methods, books dispatch to wholesalers, bookstores and libraries. The skills acquired during the workshop will be further developed during conversation meetings with recognised experts
on the modern publishing market. The programme will stress the
changes in book circulation (for example the change in public reading room profile) and the new forms of literary fiction: “telefiction”, short stories published in popular magazines addressed to
women, etc.
At the end of the workshop each student is expected to develop
a project of his/her own home library, which will expose not only
one’s individual choices and reading habits but will be a synthesis of
the acquired knowledge and practical skills.
The social diversification of the word, so typical of contemporary culture, has a primary bearing in the cultural micro-scale.
The sociology of language messages provides important input for
the description of contemporary culture dynamics and the Polish
language in terms of general semiological practice which contains
both political and ethical aspects. These problems are covered by
the workshop entitled “The dominating word and the peripheral
word”.
The objective of this workshop (conducted by professor Roch
Sulima – an anthropologist and folk scientist) is to make an attempt at revealing the polyphony of the modern Polish language
and to draw the students’ attention to spontaneous language phe-
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nomena, to the significance of the “small language communities”
(family, circle of friends, peer-group, etc.), as well as the impact of
jargons and local varieties of Polish on constituting the linguistic
representation of the world. During the workshops the students
will try to identify and understand the situation of “cultural and
linguistic edge”, so typical nowadays of the Central and Eastern
Europe, which enriches the variety of cultural experience with the
presence of languages and literature of ethnic minorities in Poland.
This will help “Culture Animation” students in undertaking activities in the local cultural institutions, in performing the groundwork
for the modern regional education. The basic educational source
texts analysed by the student will be available now linguistic evidence in the form of different personal documents called in the
traditional culture “zapiśniki”, published in print in the following press
titles: “Regiony”, “Literatura Ludowa”, “Napis”, “Konteksty” and
other or research material from the archives.
The modern literary word, including poetry, more and more often
exploits the meanings and rhetorical tricks typical of newspaper
language, which has become the most common and dynamic environment of word practice.
The primary objective of the “Journalistic workshop” conducted
by Marek Przybylik is to identify and create the basic experiences
related to responsibility for words which by means of the newspaper model everyday practice and responsibility for the word’s social
impact. This objective is fullfilled by students in the course of editing and publishing their own monthly magazines “Uniwersytet” and
“Uniwersytet Kulturalny” 2.
The increasing limitation and specialisation of what is “listened
to” constitutes a typical quality of contemporary linguistic practice. The communication rules and semiotic environments of the spoken/listened word are subject to ongoing changes. It is noticeable
in the radio programme transformations, in the changes of radio
language in the context of the social circulation of the public word.
The well-known voices (the radio) seem to retire into the background to make room for the famous faces (the television). These problems are addressed during the workshop entitled “Radio: medium,
2
See the description of the workshop in part II Workshops .
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of information, artistic expression and a means of interpersonal
communication”. The workshop is devoted to this “home medium”
of the live word which still has quite a big power for setting standards in social speaking practice (once used to be high register).
On the other hand this is the medium which individualises public
language. One of the basic objectives of this workshop is to make
the students aware of the radio’s influence on contemporary spoken Polish, with special emphasis placed on the invasion of colloquialisms and “verbal noise” (“empty talk”) promoted by the commercial radio station speakers.
The students become familiar with the poetics and pragmatics
of the radio message and also, or perhaps first of all, with the
phenomenon of the radio language, namely with the norm creating
function of the individual speaking styles. The radio, unfortunately
more and more often by broadcasting archive recordings, has remained the model of live, beautiful Polish, the model of well developed competencies of speaking in public. The workshop has been
designed not only to prepare the students to work “on air”, but to
restore, to the possible extent, the “mission” of the radio as “the
live word” medium stimulating the language consciousness and
imagination.
The borderline condition of the word overwhelmed by the electronic media technology is best represented by the Internet word.
In this borderline situation it provides an opportunity to remind all
of the model functions that the word has in the culture and that
constitutes the culture. Internet is the cultural space where words
may unite or divide, may be practised or neglected, creative or dull,
liberating or totalitarian, showing the technologically new richness
of their potential.
The workshop entitled “The word in the Internet” is supposed
to draw the participants’ attention to the increasing reduced
function of the word in the contemporary culture of the audiovisual type (as most frequently emphasised), but also points to
the new, purely technical prospects for words created by the
electronic media. Special attention is paid to words displayed on
the computer screen and in the web (including the Internet literature). The issues related to the electronic visualisation of the
word and of the secondary oral functions will be also addressed
during the workshop.
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The workshop provides the basic information necessary to use
the dynamically developing Internet technique and to reflect over
its social consequences, including such issues as creating the cultural meta-language for the Internet word, anthropological reflection on cyber-space filled with text or constituted by this text. The
main problem is whether the individualistic behaviour in the mass
culture has any chances of existing, considering the Internet being
interactive and enabling mutual interdependency between the mind
and technique. In the recognition of the Internet as the new type of
medium of cultural initiation there is a warning to avoid creating
the electronic communication utopias and related social myths.
One of the most mysterious types of word in contemporary cultural practices is the storytelling in its traditional sense – as the
oral message with autotelic function. Among the other practices
of the contemporary oral word, storytelling is getting more and
more specialised but still contains rudimentary patterns of oral
culture. Storytelling is not supposed to reconstruct the form of
this culture beyond its native environment or to restore traditional
culture but remains an important component (supplement) of the
modern word circulation dominated by the technology (print, writing, multimedia).
Storytelling as the separate cultural practice which constitutes the meaning of human actions is the subject of the workshop
entitled “Storytelling, storyteller…”, delivered by Magda Górska,
Paweł Górski, Beata Frankowska, Agnieszka Kaim, Dorota Maciejuk, Jarosław Kaczmarek and Małgorzata Litwinowicz – a group of
students and graduates of the former Polish Culture Department,
now the Institute of Polish Culture at the Warsaw University, whose activities are know as the activities of “Studnia O.” group.
During the classes exceptionally strong emphasis will be placed
on the dramaturgy of the live storytelling as the practice which
constitutes the small circles of cultural solidarity, small communities of active culture capable of animating the culture in local environments by initiating powerfully attractive events.
The workshop participants, the instructors and invited guests
(a continuous exchange of roles) will create a micro-scale cultural
event, a sort of “narrative performance” which tests all potentials
of storytelling, establishes the ephemeral institution of the “storyteller of our times”. The experiences of situation and change, the
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transformation, cultural liminal change – the typical intensive experiences of our times – are undoubtedly the storytelling generators
and serve as storytelling regulators. The storytelling is then the
cultural form for “social dramas” and reflects the dramaturgy of
real life.
Arranging cultural events is aimed at diagnosing the contemporary culture, its efficiency and anthropological obligations imposed
on linguistic practices. It is an attempt to determine whether the
culture dominated by technical media leaves some space for storytelling and “storylistening”, whether there is a niche for storytelling and what inner layers one must reach to develop one’s own
story and not to rest satisfied with the literary text staged in the
theatrical manner.
The basic objective of this workshop is to create the storytelling
space which encourages participation understood as being present through one’s own storytelling. The story basics (thematic,
historical, formal and poetic) from which the narrative performance will be developed are agreed by the students and leaders. The
themes may be from classics or the so called “urban legends”. The
work upon the performance is preceded by translation of the text
into a story – this being an exceptionally important part of contemporary culture animation programmes – in this way reversing the
traditional storytelling situation where text, gesture, rhythm and
voice make one integral entity. Therefore, one of the most important workshop objectives is to individually find one’s own voice by
constructing and “expressing” the story, i.e. by creating the increasingly rare nowadays situation of “self-realisation” in the live word.
The workshop cycle under the common name “The word in contemporary cultural practices” delivered for the students of “Culture Animation” is designed not only to recognise the position of the
word in the culture dominated by multimedia but marks the shift
towards the real word as the basic medium of interpersonal obligations.
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Zbigniew Gieniewski
R adio: the medium of information, artistic
expression and a means of interpersonal
communication
During the first decades of its existence, radio performed the
same role and had the same social reception as television today. It
started with simple crystal sets equipped with a pair of headphones and went as far as quadraphony. In the 1920s and even the
1930s (of which we can be sometimes reminded by American movies), listening to the radio was a family event. Sometimes, groups
of neighbours would meet, just like in Poland in the 1960s, when
one could see people mesmerised watching television. After World
War II, the voices of Polish Radio announcers (like Bocheński or
Świętochowski) had the same social appeal as today the faces of
popular television presenters. History has now gone full circle, as
headphones or isolated rooms are used for the purpose of seclusion and listening to the radio in its purest form – from an invisible
broadcaster to an invisible listener.
Initially, radio constituted a point of reference and a language
model – today, on the contrary, it tends to follow the dictate of
colloquial language. Were that only a result of well-thought-out
action aimed at maintaining and broadening the audience one could
consider it a sign of the changing times. Unfortunately, it is also
the result of the pressure exerted by the so-called presenters who
have dominated commercial radio stations, bringing in their lack of
Zbigniew Gieniewski: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University,
radio journalist.
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knowledge of the basic rules of language, and – which is worse – a
total disrespect for them.
No professional workshop can teach its participants the Polish
language, rather it can only bring participants’ attention to the
deterioration of the language and the reasons behind this state.
These phenomena include both the falling rate of readership and
the pervasiveness of politicians in the electronic mass media.
On the other hand, journalists, especially those from radio and
television stations, serve as a kind of transmission belt conveying
their more and more impoverished and flawed language to mass
audiences. If addressing the issue of language in the form of a
workshop makes any sense, it does so only to the extent that
students are made aware of the fact that they are – especially in
the professional and public life – responsible for the future shape of
the Polish language.
Therefore, I would start each meeting with a kind of mistakesharing session: students would contribute mistakes that they had
heard (or spotted in the press), including syntactic, vocabulary, pronunciation, stress and other mistakes, the most important and widespread of which would then be critically analysed by the group.
During the workshop I would also introduce a rule of “self-correction”: everyone who realises that he or she made a mistake,
tries to correct it (which is becoming a very rare practice nowadays), and if the person fails to do it, he or she is corrected by
others. Obviously this rule would apply to the workshop leader as
well.
S UGGESTED
TOPICS
(SELECTED
EXAMPLES )
1. Reading in front of the microphone
A sentence in the Polish language can usually be built in several
ways: its elements can be placed in various order and the sentence
will still be understood, especially when read. It will cease to be
understood, however, when it is read in an illogical way, with disregard to intonation and proper stress.
Example: commentary to images shown in the news programme. We listen to it from a videotape and then without it. What did
we understand? What did we manage to remember?
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The news programmes of 20 years ago were read equally fast,
but with intonation and logical accents put in the proper places to
make the message memorable to the listener; it followed the logic
of the sentence written with regard to radio reception, which, unlike the written word, makes it impossible to go back to what has
already been said.
The pace of reading should take into account the perception
capabilities of the listener, which result mainly from his or her education, familiarity with the information and habits.
Example: fragments of radio news programmes from the 1960s
compared with the so-called hosted news programmes of contemporary commercial and public radio stations.
Exercise: rephrase in the form appropriate for the radio, information given by Polish Radio in one of the main news programmes.
2. Voice as the medium of the message: informative, opinionforming, emotional
The role of Levitan, the chief announcer of Radio Moscow, in
view of Stalin’s rather bland voice; the manner of using the voice to
impress the listener.
Tradition of selecting Polish Radio announcers and reporters in
accordance with the phonic quality of their voice. Examples from
archive tapes.
The voice as a minor or secondary asset if it is not accompanied
by the appropriate logic, intonation and emotional load.
Exercise: reworking of a selected newspaper article into a radio
newscast, reading it in front of the microphone, followed by group
analysis.
3. Interviews
A. Conversation
By “interrogation” I understand bombarding interviewees with
pre-planned questions without listening to their answers carefully.
In interviews of this kind we often hear the interviewee forced to
blurt out: “But I have already answered this question.” This is the
sign that answers are not important: what matters is to ask questions (usually with the intention of impressing the audience).
Examples: interviews published in contemporary public and commercial radio and TV stations.
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Counterexamples: interviews with celebrities conducted by Larry King (CNN) or by one of the BBC or France Inter interviewers;
especially those longer programmes that reveal the importance of
the art of asking questions.
Exercise: select “the topic of the day” and prepare for the discussion in the studio, be ready to present one’s position.
B. Moderating a discussion
Journalists are in a particularly delicate position: they need to
make sure that all invited guests have a chance to present their
opinions (given the restrictions of the time on the air), and at the
same time they cannot express their own preferences and have to
prevent quarrels, violent clashes and interruptions.
Exercise: discussion – participants take turns playing the role of
the moderator; based on the recording from the session analysis
of behaviours and forms of expression used by participants and
interventions made by the moderator, especially in view of the very
short time available on the air.
C. Journalist as psychologist-confessor
This is probably one of the most attractive forms of late-night
radio activity, however we need to ask if all radio presenters have
adequate qualifications (not only formal, but also stemming from
personal, adult-life experience); whether lack of those qualifications
can be replaced – from the listener’s perspective – by the presence of a professional psychologist-mediator; if presenters hosting
such night-time intimate-yet-public programmes are always aware
of the human responsibility they have to shoulder?
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M arcin W ieczorek
T he word in the Internet
Despite the unquestionable visual and multimedia aspects of
the Internet, no other medium uses language and its potential in
so many diverse ways and forms. All the forms of participation in
the Internet are based on the word. The word permeates websites, e-mail messages, discussion lists, “chats” and constitutes
the basic medium of Internet contents; it is through the word that
Internet behaviours and values are displayed.
It’s necessary to handle the problem of the word in a way that
does not differentiate the ways the language system is used into
those important and prestigious as contrasted with those unimportant and colloquial. For example: Internet novels do not owe
their importance to their artistic value or to meeting the criteria
of “mature prose”, but rather to the fact that they are an opportunity for collective play, where even the authors of one, awkward
sentence aspire to the role of writers. That enables us to realise
that the word is productive and the range of its possible functions
is limitless. That productivity refers mainly to the productive ability
of the word to cope with new tasks.
So the Internet constitutes a cultural space in which the word
may serve the unifying and dividing function, it can be practised and
neglected, creative and unproductive, liberating and restraining –
manifesting itself in the new fullness of its potential. That is why
the language of the Internet is a particularly important cultural
phenomenon that will provide a common perspective uniting the
various themes and problems addressed during the seminar me-
Marcin Wieczorek: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University,
involved in research in sociology of literary life and literature on the Internet.
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etings. The meetings will attempt to present the language as the
specific subject undertaken during the anthropological research
trip into cyberspace. The question about the sense and consequences of the change and continuation of language enables us to
see those aspects of the Internet that are really new and creative,
and which, consequently, can bring about changes in culture.
So context analysis should be the basic assumption behind research, as well as its objective. Context analysis in the sense of
the kind of analysis that both looks into the many mutually complementary contexts (technical, technological, social, economic, legal,
or cultural) exposed through tackling the issue of the word in the
Internet, and that determines which of those contexts are relevant and which irrelevant.
That is why one type of meetings will focus on fieldwork and
research into the cyberspace. The themes of research trips reflect the basic range of activities of Internauts as well as the related issues and problems. Such forms as web pages, especially home
pages, e-mail, “chat”, discussion lists are characterised by active
participation in a new community. However, the themes proposed
by the seminar leader are intended to create a kind of framework
for discussion, further research and exploration rather than a catalogue of issues with ready-made answers. That’s why during workshop meetings students will use direct Internet access to make
preliminary explorations and research into network phenomena (those meetings will be conducted in a room equipped in computers
logged into the university network).
Introductory conversations with students enrolling into the
workshop will also help select the list of issues to be discussed
during the seminar. According to the course syllabus, the group
will meet every two weeks to review materials describing selected
Internet phenomena prepared by the students. In this way, students will collect feedback and get ideas to help them write a report necessary to obtain the course credit. The form of the report
does not have to comply with the standards of an end-year paper,
but should be that of a fieldwork and Internet trip journal; it can be
a collection of materials related to a given subject, a selection of
creative applications of Internet tools. Prepared throughout the
year, the reports should break away from the long established mass
media ways of talking about the Internet. Students’ introductory
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presentations and interpretations will be further verified in practice while surfing on the web. So, during classes students will have
a practical opportunity to go on a trip into cyberspace (with a
guide).
The second series of meetings will focus on discussions and
interpretations provoked not only by analysed aspects of Internet
behaviours, but also by suggested reading list items.
The basic premises behind these meetings aim to initiate an
anthropological and communicative analysis and interpretation of
the Internet. The premises in question include: the necessity to
separate the real social impact and status of the Internet as a
medium (i.e. its real rather than fictitious content) from the imagined or projected influence, and the belief about the inadequacy of
current technological (and/or IT) as well as statistical knowledge
about the Internet.
What is attempted here is to present an interpretative rather
than a systematic perspective. That is why the discussion meetings will focus on enabling students to intersubjectively experience participation in the new medium and to put the experience in
the anthropological perspective as a form of participation in culture.
The “Word in the Internet” course will attempt to present a
range of issues related to the Internet and the principles governing
the medium in its various dimensions and functions. What seems
of paramount importance is to encourage participants to ask questions, define problems and propose interpretations in a way that
would reflect the constantly changing content and functions of the
Internet. That is why looking into the relationship between the creator and the user is much more important than counting the “mouse-click” statistics.
The goal of the workshop is to prepare the participants, equipped with a broad cultural and anthropological perspective, to perform the roles of future organisers of the Internet, culture managers, conscious critics and commentators of the current reality,
initiators and designers of various institutions and messages of
cyberspace and virtual reality. Experience gained from participation in the preparation of the content of the Internet and from
observing Internet-related journalism seems to suggest that the
ultimate vision of the functioning of this medium assumes a priori,
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though unconsciously, that it will inevitably become similar to other
media in terms of its worst features: commercialisation of goals
and types of activity, lowering intellectual quality, homogeneity and
standardisation of the types of participation.
In order to create a different image of the Internet, an analysis
of the basic popular mythologies, mass culture myths and their
impact on the vernacular of the Internet will be undertaken. What
is more, it is necessary to create one’s own vision, looking for
those types of participation that seem to be the fullest and the
most creative. Examples of that type of Internauts’ activities can
encourage others to similar acts of creativity as opposed to a
merely commercial use of the new medium.
Another goal is to collect materials that can present the Internet in its most valuable and interesting aspects, when it enables full
rather than fragmented and satisfactory rather than superficial
communication, and when it helps to show how the medium creates
interpersonal space, the space of contact and discussion.
Those premises should be used to initiate research focusing
around the following issues:
1. systematic description and interpretation of communication
systems in the Internet, other than web pages, which include e-mail, “chat”, discussion lists, hypertext, etc., which could
show the intermedia and not only multimedia character of
the Internet;
2. initiating discussion about the Polish part of the World Wide
Web, based on the assumption that the Internet witnesses
not only the process of globalisation, but also a reverse process of creating web pages in national languages;
3. analysis of publications about the Internet aiming at separating futuristic fascinations (e.g., of virtual reality or hypertext) from real-life realisations;
4. analysis of selected elements of Internet contents, with special emphasis placed on creative ways of applying new technologies;
5. characterisation of interfaces, web applications, web page
editors, as well as the computer equipment that is their
medium; specifying the circumstances that result from the
influence of peripherals (printers and monitors) and their
considerable influence in the new type of communication.
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365
Selection of subjects and problems:
1. Cyberspace (Internet) anthropology, problems of the turning point and IT revolution; the role of the Internet among
other media.
2. Internet community; interface problem. Web browsers – the
condition of Internet surfing.
3. Participation: its types (web pages, e-mail, irc-chat, discussion lists, etc.); Internet content production (redefinition
of the concept) and Internet content creators, Internet
artists in search of a more complete form; non-commercial
content production.
4. Web page – home page; virtual persons, virtual personality.
5. E-mail: writers’ republic.
6. Discussion lists, Internet forums.
7. Irc-chat: secondary orality or secondary typography.
8. Hypertext and cognitive structures.
9. Ludic functions and sources of many forms of Internet activity.
10. Traditional forms of communication (press, magazines, books) and culture-embedded discourses in the new medium.
Examples of selected discussion problems: literature on the
Web. Transfer phenomenon and other forms of literature
presence.
11. Popular Internet mythologies; mass culture on the Web.
Examples of selected discussion problems: Internet portals
as incubators of mass culture.
12. Polish cyberspace and the universality of the English language; projects of networks in national languages.
13. Internet democracy. Violence, pornography, neo-fascism and
freedom of speech and expression.
14. The word on the Internet – features, functions, and significance.
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M ałgor
zata Litwinowicz
ałgorzata
S torytelling, storyteller…
W O R KKSHOP
G RRU
.” A SSOCIA
SHOP TEACHERS : M EM BERS O F THE “
UP
A S TUDNIA O
TION :
PA
SSOCIATION
“G
O.”
B EATA F RANKOWSKA , M AGDA G ÓRSKA , P AWEŁ G ÓRSKI, J AROSŁAW K ACZMAREK ,
A GNIESZKA K AIM , M AŁGORZATA L ITWINOWICZ , D OROTA M ACIEJUK
The aim of the classes is to attempt to look together at what
the art of storytelling is, contemporary storytelling in particular.
The workshop is organised around the preparation of an event – “a
narrative performance”, a microsession that will be devoted to storytelling and the present day. We will begin by looking within a defined and largelly uniform area – 1001 Nights’ Tales , Scandinavian
sagas. However we are not aiming at the reconstruction of traditional ways of storytelling existing within a culture that is different
from ours. Rather, we are trying to reflect upon the place of oral
expression and its manifestations within the society of the printed
word / society of the Internet. The classes, of course, are not
theoretical in nature, however, all our attempts at “practising the
spoken word” have to be accompanied by careful reflection.
Although we will be referring to traditional storytelling techniques, we will not be getting involved in reconstruction but, instead,
will be looking for the modern day storyteller. After all, “the Sheherezade of our times” might be sending the troubled king e-mails
and postcards with stories; probably then he might not be considering beheading her, which changes the whole thing. Maybe a life
Małgorzata Litwinowicz: graduate of the Faculty of Polish and Lithuanian Philology,
post-graduate student of the Institute of Polish Culture, co-author of “Grupa Studnia O.”
programme.
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threatening situation does not provoke a mad flow of ideas which
then changes into an orderly stream of speech? On the other hand,
on a closer look it might turn out that narration in a way always
accompanies the situations of change, transition, and border situations. Despite the change of techniques and media it might be
possible to indicate the permanent components of a story, situation, or the act of storytelling, whose forms simply vary from culture to culture.
The components of “a storyteller’s practice”, which we introduce into our classes, serve to raise awareness of and experience
the situation of storytelling in modern culture. They serve the handson experience of the condition of that culture without referring to
the apparatus of theory: is there still a place for telling and listening to stories in the culture? Does the culture contain a niche for
a story? What resources do we need to tell our own stories and
not content ourselves with a theatrical reproduction of a literary
piece? This experience will be accompanied by theoretical commentary which refers to the place of the word in culture and which is
devoted to the corresponding issues of the history of culture.
The programme presented below is general in character and will
be altered to suit the character of the people that decide to work
with us. The outlined workshop scheme does not take into account
all of the work that will have to be completed by each person individually. The suggested individual activity is, first and foremost, searching, both in terms of the artistic and the research work.
Possible programme:
1. Presentation of the components of group work: story and
elements of narrative performance. When telling stories our
aim is not a performance whose participants are divided into
the actors and an audience. Our basic task is to build a story
space that will encourage active participation, whereby our
guests are free to choose the story’s language. In this way
they can help to create the event by adding in their own
personal stories, by some type of artistic activity, or by giwing a theoretical commentary. This is the main aspect of
this work, making the participants aware of it is the major
goal of the preliminary presentation. We can decide jointly on
the story base on which we will start building up the performance, thus hoping rather for joint search than a mentor’s
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2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
account. We are currently focusing on the 1001 Nights’ Tales but the issue of the “topic base” is an open one.
Work on the story.
Search for the source text. Our having to begin with text is
something symptomatic of our times, reversing the traditional storytelling situation, where text, gesture, rhythm, and
voice constitute its integral part, where a storyteller in a
natural way learns and acquires the elements of storytelling.
We are to put together the assumed whole out of the scattered parts, and we are only able to imagine and suppose
how those parts can be put together into a whole that is
neither a theatre play nor an act of recitation. This situation
should not be hidden and the students should be made aware
of the specificity of this situation, where they will build something none of us has seen or experienced.
From a text to a story – searching for one’s own place among
the plots of the story; “storytelling exercises” – bringing out
various voices in a story; work on isolating the basic structure, basic plots; building particular versions of the story based on the same structure.
Techniques – elements of voice and body training; work on
gestures, props; further extensive “storytelling” exercises,
which allow every participant to feel the taste of translating
a literary text into a story, search individually for their own
voice in constructing and telling stories; preparing “etudes”;
staging ideas – gesture, movement, object, voice, figure; from
an individual story to a multi-vocal one – search for link points, joint areas of individual variants and performances.
Work on the event: placing a story within a historical and
cultural context. Depending on the degree of proficiency and
engagement of the participants the meeting might take the
shape of a seminar or of a ”microsession”, an event during
which we present the results of the work in process. One
cannot assume that something will “definitely” happen – sometimes maintaining an artistic language and sometimes giving it up has a better effect. We never take ourselves for
experts in any of the issues we touch upon, therefore we
entrust our guests with the content matter of those meetings, and preserve the role of intermediaries or animators
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for ourselves. This is a very important aspect of the work
which we would like to make explicit: preparation of such an
event is, of course, connected with intensive research whose aim, however, is not becoming a specialist in a certain
area. Rather it is to find links between the artistic form and
the language of the sciences. After all, at this stage we
aren’t trying to distance ourselves from our attempts to
find a method of artistic expression. Instead, we are trying
to show that the story lives in many different languages.
With effort, even the unemotional language of university seminars can be one of the languages the story lives in.
7. Work on the event – further building up of a common story
with the actual event in mind; including scientific language in
the story, building it around “imaginary places”, which will be
filled with the invited guests. Every participant works on their place, the role that they foresaw for themselves in that
story, the character that they will become during the event.
8. Work on the event – the organisational side. If the work really
aims at an open event, issues such as room, guests, deadline, finance, etc. cannot be left for the last minute. Anyway,
they will not distract anyone from the core project – anyone
working on any project deals with organisational and financial
problems. Disgust for paperwork or lack of skill in that area
frequently leads to the collapse of excellent projects. Therefore, we will include those problems in our meetings; however, we suggest performing particular tasks in that area (included in the class hours) instead of devoting entire meetings
to their unproductive analysis.
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Agata Chałupnik, M ateusz K
anabrodzki,
Kanabrodzki,
L eszek K
olankiewicz
Kolankiewicz
T HEA
TRE IN CUL
TURE
HEATRE
CULTURE
In the era of the mass culture the theatre seems to be an anachronistic medium. It belongs in a different epoch. The electronic
media and/or media productions have taken over many of its functions. Therefore, persistent cultivation of theatre is a counterpoint
for the current overwhelming cultural pattern. Playing with illusion,
so inherent for the theatre, seems today to be, more than in the
past, playing with the illusions of culture, or simply playing with the
culture.
Every theatre is such a game: from peep-show to opera. But
the truly high stakes are played for at the theatre, where being
peripheral and marginal makes an integral constituent of its ethos.
This theatre was given different names: “off-theatre” (the name
suggested by Miron Białoszewski and expanded upon by Marta Fik),
“the third theatre” (the name given by Eugenio Barba). This is the
theatre conscious of its liminal qualities.
It is liminal, off-theatre, the third, because it breaks the smooth transition through subsequent circles of social experience; it
breaks the routine thinking and acting and destabilises the petrified patterns of behaviour. By definition it is an anti-dogmatic and
anti-structural theatre. Categories attached to fixed points of reference became more flexible, just to make them dance in a diffe-
Agata Chałupnik: graduate of the Faculty of Theatre Studies at the Theatre Academy
in Warsaw, interested in anthropology of performance and theatre.
Mateusz Kanabrodzki: graduate of the Faculty of Theatre Studies at the Theatre
Academy in Warsaw, interested in anthropology of performance and theatre.
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rent configuration during the performance, or perhaps only at the
rehearsal or workshop. It frames situations, in which “the choice
remains open, while the virtual continues to be open as well’ (Richard Schechner). It makes us realise the “possible change in our
goals and judgements – the reorganisation of reality as viewed by
our culture” (Victor Turner). It encodes in the audience/participants
alternative worlds and selves; verifies and revalues cliches, challenges social authorities and personas. It provides laboratory-like conditions to re-define the relations with oneself, the surrounding environment and society. Imposing the face-to-face relationship it shapes the skills of co-operation and co-existence; as Helmut Kajzar
put it: “it enables the sovereign entities to be in contact”.
Contrary to competence referred to by the mass culture message it taps an active attitude towards the surrounding reality.
Since the time of the para-theatrical activity of Grotowski’s Laboratory Theatre, this type of theatre has continued to be one of the
basic ways of cultivating active culture. In the programme of “Culture Animation”, which is also rooted in those experiences, the
theatre programme may become an essential, momentous part.
G OALS
The project is supposed to make the participants aware of the
games with culture – its illusions – which are played at the theatre.
To say more – it is to be an invitation to get involved in the game. We
want to achieve this goal by offering the students classes during
which they will be familiarised with theatre-related activities including these typical of an institutional theatre. However, the emphasis will be placed on the off theatre, third theatre mentioned above.
We realise that this type of theatre is something that can not
be taught. We think, however, that it is worth the effort of teaching how not miss it in the mass of information input contained
in the education process and in the perception of the contemporary culture; and most importantly perhaps – in the perception of
one’s self. We also find it essential that people are instructed in a
practical and theoretical manner, how to create the most favourable conditions in which such a theatre could emerge, or even advise
them how to cultivate it once it has been established.
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We will feel that the project has lived up to our expectations if it
results in events which require knowledge, imagination and courage, setting up an example of a practising, active culture. The model
project was undertaken by the students of Warsaw Univeristy who
accomplished a unique project in 1999 combining the poetic theatre of Miron Białoszewski with street performance techniques;
the performance was shown during the “Mironalia” festival in a
backyard in Tarczyńska Street, just opposite the house where the
poet lived.
S TRUCTURE
We would like the education of the “Culture Animation” students in theatre to consist of two stages. We have planned preparatory introduction classes presenting a broad variety of phenomena related to theatre undertakings (such as the off theatre, the
third theatre, etc.) as well as workshops and internships providing
the opportunities to experience theatre in practice.
We suggest that the classes developed and delivered by Lech
Sliwonik should be considered the preparatory and introducing classes mentioned above. The classes are supposed to be focused on
the following issues:
1. theatre as a spontaneous, non-institutional form of activity practised in the pursuit of self-identification;
2. theatre as means of social communication;
3. theatre as therapy and self-development, both in individual and
social dimension;
4. theatre as means of self-expression;
5. theatre as means of building private and local ties;
6. theatre in the process of education and social re-education;
7. theatre as a primary group.
The specific nature of acting in such a theatre should be covered separately and include, among others, the following issues: the
necessity to reconcile the artistic work with organisation; team
leader’s role; process-oriented type of work and work of art; selfdidactic nature; creation by a group.
The specific qualities of the language typical of this theatre will
be discussed; the following issues will be covered:
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1. open form poetics;
2. its temporary, slap-dash manner (“cheap” theatre, made with
minimal resources);
3. montage and contraction as techniques of the theatre metaphor;
4. collage and grotesque aesthetics;
5. literary text vs. the word as the performance effect (“on-stage
writing” in accordance with Konstanty Puzyna);
6. theatre as an instrument to play music;
7. the unity of piper, singer, dancer and actor;
8. transgression of the body in the theatre.
The phenomenon of action within theatre will be illustrated with
historical and contemporary examples, including audio-visual material.
Workshops with the following persons have been scheduled:
1. Grzegorz Bral (“Pieśń Kozła” Theatre in Wrocław);
2. Jolanta Krukowska (“Akademia Ruchu” Theatre in Warsaw);
3. Edward Wojtaszek (Theatre Academy in Warsaw);
4. “Art Animatiae” Association in Warsaw.
We hope to organise workshops with the following artists: “Kana”
Theatre in Szczecin, “Komuna Otwock” Theatre, “Biuro Podróży”
Theatre in Poznań (Paweł Szkotak), Jade Persis and Jonathanem
Grieve from Para Active Theatre from Londynu, theatre animation
workshop with Edward Wojtaszek and internships at the Literary
Department of the National Theatre and in the office of the Mały
Theatre in Warsaw.
The aforementioned workshops and internships may complement
the most valuable workshops in Odin Teatret in Holstebro (Denmark), in the Centre for Theatrical Practises “Gardzienice” and the
Folk Theatre “Węgajty”.
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Edward W
ojtaszek
Wojtaszek
D irecting – animating people:
from conception to realisation
In general, understanding of the work of a director is, delicately
speaking, vague...
I am convinced you cannot teach “having ideas”, nor can you
shape one’s artistic personality, nor can you teach direction. However, you can and you should realise a few basic truths about the
work of a director, and, through this, about theatre in general:
1. Theatre is concrete, in other words it consists of space,
time, light, sound, direction, rhythm etc.
2. In the theatre you work as a team, with and among other
people. The best concepts, ideas and intentions do not work
if you cannot reach out to your collaborators.
3. A director is, according to the situation, a co-ordinator, creator or someone who inspires the actions of many people,
whose work (although in different areas) should contribute
to the one cohesive effect called the performance. The whole
quality of this effect depends on the director’s ability to allocate tasks for the co-workers (actor, scenographer, musician, choreographer, light engineer, sound engineer, make-up
artist, technical manager and almost all the members of technical staff at the theatre); it does not matter whether it is a
large institutionalised body or a small group where the same
Edward Wojtaszek: theatre director, founder of Pracownia “TEATR” (1983-1994) established at Lubuski Theatre in Zielona Góra, author of Polish- and French-language
papers on theatre education in Poland, gives lectures in elementary goals of the theatre director at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw and delivers a variety of workshops
addressed to children, actors, theatre trainers and students in Poland and abroad.
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functions are to be realised in a different way by a smaller
number of persons and for a smaller amount of money.
4. The most significant and delicate element in the work of a
director is working with an actor. The ability to present the
actor’s task in a clear, concrete way that encourages cooperation requires a certain mental discipline. A big difficulty
can be speaking in a concise and detailed way but, above all,
in a way that would employ the actor’s imagination, intelligence and skills in line with the director’s requirements. What
most often causes problems is the choice of words that should
set this work in motion.
The workshops are designed as practical classes for a group of
12-16 students, in the range of 2-4 hours a week during 2 semesters.
Considering the realistic possibilities, it is necessary to assume
that the subject of these classes will be the moments in the work
of a director that “activate” an actor. The purpose is not in the
outcome but in the process. The point is not to achieve a complete
short performance (“etude”) or fragment of a performance, but to
be able to define the actor’s task, to conduct a rehearsal, discuss
and correct it. Other members of the group are the actors.
Semester I
1. Practising the skill of naming the things one can see (the
objective and subjective analysis of space and situation).
2. The arrangement of space. Perceiving the potential of a room
is needed in order to create the space one envisioned using
simple scenographic measures and what is at hand: furniture, props, partitions and lighting. The arranged space is then
analysed and described by other participants.
3. The so-called “entrance”. In the prepared space, a student
must compose the first 30 seconds of a scene using the
actor’s “entrance”, the way of introducing light or sound so
that as much information as possible about the presented
world can reach the audience.
4. Composition exercises, where the fundamental elements are
the time, size and shape of the space, rhythm, sound level
and light. Work takes place without a text or with a mini-text
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which is superficially absurd and for which a student has to
compose a situation, its motivation, sometimes a mini-plot
and embrace the whole thing within an internally cohesive
short “etude”.
5. Basic acting exercises, through which one can be “on the
other side”; one can test on oneself what precision, or lack
of it, in the director’s instructions means; one can experience the situation when an actor does not understand the director.
Semester II
1. Selection of a text (or texts) from which a fragment will serve as material for work during the classes.
2. A directorial analysis of a text.
3. An attempt to describe an idea with a view to theatrical
production: scenography, music, technique, lighting, casting
etc.
4. Conducting a rehearsal: casting, defining an actor’s tasks,
first-reading rehearsal, “situational” rehearsal.
Attention: it is a possible in semester II to work without a literary text, if an earlier idea is accepted by the group to conduct a
certain theatrical construction, whose point of departure will be a
non-literary impulse.
All the classes in both semesters are governed by a “triad”:
task – evaluation – correction. This means that the aim of the classes will be primarily that of the clear communication of one’s ideas,
conducting a rehearsal and afterwards correcting the final results.
The classes give students the opportunity to:
1. check whether their way of formulating thoughts and feelings
is comprehensible to others;
2. try to create a reality which originates from their imagination;
3. check the extent to which they are able to activate, lead and
co-ordinate the work of others;
4. become accustomed to a situation in which one has to justify
or, sometimes, defend one’s concepts in public.
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Jolanta Kruk
owsk
a
Krukowsk
owska
B ody consciousness workshop
The “Body consciousness” workshop was born out of the experiences of the “Akadem ia R uchu” 1 Theatre in co-operation with
num erous teachers of various disciplines (ballet, yoga, acrobatics, m artial arts, pantom im e). Its present form results from
specific experiences of the theatre of m ovem ent, theatre of
visual sign run by the director of the “Akadem ia R uchu” Theatre, Wojciech Krukowski. This specific character is drawn from
the analysis of gesture, its com m unicative value based on body
plasticity.
Movement, body in motion is the first, the most intimate relation with our emotions. Most workshop tasks are aimed at creating a situation where we experience ourselves in our physical
aspect (weight, balance, limitations, contact with a partner). Then,
it is important to master what is recognised. Departure from conventional movement – searching for forms (going beyond routine
perceptions and limitations of the body).
Jolanta Krukowska: in 1962-1969 practised artistic gymnastics under the guidance
of Halina Hulanicka (student of Isadora Duncan), in 1970-1972 member of “Stodoła”
Pantomime directed by Marek Gołębiowski (working within the Marcel Marceau tradition), since 1972 member of “Akademia Ruchu” Theatre, since 1986 has been working
individually in USA, England, Italy, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
1
The “Akademia Ruchu” Theatre was set up in Warsaw in 1973. Its founder and artistic director is Wojciech Krukowski. From the very beginning of its activity, the “Akademia Ruchu” Theatre, known as “the theatre of behaviours” and visual narration, has
been a group performing in various disciplines – theatre, visual arts, performance art
and film. Common features of the creation process of the Theatre include: movement,
space and social message. Thus, the conviction that artistic radicalism and social
message do not have to exclude one another.
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In the workshop I persist in getting back to basic behaviours in
which I believe: I sit, I stand, I lie, I breath. I try to answer “yes”. I
am a partner to myself in play when I “work with my body”.
Attention is the necessary condition for anything to come
into existence. It makes it possible to set free “the truth about
movement” and events. Complete involvement in the action is
the necessary condition to get to know oneself – “self-consciousness”.
The world created in the theatre is a physical and visible one.
For the actor it is at the moment of creation the most realistic of
the worlds. “I make the world” – arduousness, uncertainty, a certain deeply hidden truth which gives you strength. At the same
time, the happiness of having control over it. With our consent,
“nothing happens without us”, but together with other people, together with something greater than us. WITH TIME, ANXIETIES,
DIAGNOSING OF THE WORLD, TAMING OF DANGERS, WITNESSING WHAT IS HAPPENING.
In our workshop activities we are supposed to experience ourselves in very specific conditions. This is the place where we have
the right to make mistakes, to display “odd behaviours” which are
beyond social standards (or standards of everyday functioning); this
is the place where we go beyond our habits and routines. We make
transgressions in order to feel the extremes, limitations, excesses – in order to get back to ourselves in deeper harmony and
awareness of what we have at our disposal. At first, we experience
ourselves through imposed forms, and then we search for our own
ones. We work but at the same time we are attentive observers of
our own behaviours. We build up confidence in ourselves. We create a situation where we can confide in others.
All exercises are aimed at harmonising our concepts about movement and real actions.
Workshop activities will include the following:
1. movement plasticity;
2. exercises strengthening the body;
3. co-ordination of movement with breathing;
4. passive relaxation of the body;
5. work with a partner;
6. space, group in space;
7. improvisation.
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MOVEMENT PLASTICITY. The important value of these exercises
consists in giving us the idea about movement abilities of particular
joints, and through repetition, increasing movement possibilities.
We follow a principle of working on one joint, i.e. arm girdle in opposition to an immobile but relaxed body. “Roaming” the movement
scale, its expression values in this scale. Seeing what exists, what
is at my disposal, makes it possible to consciously use “blocks” in
building a sign, a metaphor. Through systematic work one develops
movement intuition – body is a sensitive form capable of reacting to
impulses of all kinds, being, at the same time, able to use them
consciously.
BODY STRENGHTENING – the term used in therapeutic techniques of working with the body. It refers mainly to relations between
body posture and the flow of energy and the consequences resulting from energy flow disorders. In general, these techniques are
based on the assumption that emotions affect the shaping of human posture. The body is their “record”. Referring to these techniques, I am mainly interested in returning to the principles of correct body posture, including conscious easing of tensions in the
body in a standing posture. I am working on the technique. Beyond
any doubt, there may be emotions conditioned by the posture. We
watch them without following them. All the exercises are accompanied by conscious movement observation.
CO-ORDINATION, MOVEMENT–BREATHING. In this sequence, at
the beginning I would rather refer to Eastern techniques (kung-fu,
yoga, tai-chi) due to their tradition and proven positive effect on
health and body expression. Harmony between movement and breath is “the truth about the body”. After doing the “assigned” exercises, the participants create their own sequence of movements
based on the relation: movement – breath (resonant).
PASSIVE RELAXATION OF THE BODY. In this set, we focus mainly on the passive body. In this work performed by a pair of partners
what is important is the mutual acceptance, the consent to handling. In full relaxation, the body is “placed” is such a way so that
its particular part can be stretched. Active, passive: each part
experiences being in both roles.
WORK WITH A PARTNER. All exercises in this sequence are aimed
at making participants sensitive (to the partner’s signals), building
up confidence, co-responsibility for the created form. Intensive
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physical contact is based on creating and easing tensions. Energy
of relations and communications is contained in the body movement (face excluded).
SPACE – GROUP IN SPACE. It exists at all times. Either we
place ourselves in it, taking into account its conditions or we set
its limits ourselves. Exercises which I suggest refer to group and,
at the same time, individual co-responsibility for its organisation.
IMPROVISATIONS. Improvisation is the most natural form of
creation. In practice, the “Akademia Ruchu” Theatre constituted
one of the most important creative experiences. Since the group
was, in a sense, a collective actor, we had intensive training devoted to building our sensitivity to a partner or partners, responsiveness as well as working on the situation which presents itself,
responsibility for its sense and formal shape.
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Syllabus designed by Sewer
yn K
uśm ierczyk
Seweryn
Kuśm
Introduction by Iwona K
ur
z
Kur
urz
F ILM AND AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA:
CULTURE ANIMATION BY NEW MEDIA
We live in a “pictorial” civilisation. This term assumes the domination of the image in day-to-day experience as well as a certain
tone of slight disrespect (“pictures”) of such a form of perception
– and description of the world. Most common and obvious accusations formulated against audio-visual media advocate that those
“producers of pictures” consolidate the passive attitude of the
audience. The passive attitude of the audience encourages a widespread passive basic model in interpersonal relations and social
life. Seen in this context, audio-visual media naturally stand in conflict with the idea and practice of culture animation.
Acceptance of this diagnosis of the position of audio-visual media in the contemporary culture enforces agreement on the priority status of cultural education. Collaboration with the media is an
essential element of work for every culture animator who needs to
understand the nature of the media and capitalise on their potential. When we talk about the identification of the local community’s
potential, identification of areas for culture animation, we always
have to bear in mind that, in almost all cases, this will be an environment modelled by the audio-visual media, usually television (a
model media environment). The ability to capitalise on audio-visual
media is not a common skill, and awareness about the need to
include media education in educational curricula has only recently
Seweryn Kuśmierczyk: film historian and theorist, deals with feature film analysis,
lecturer at the Institute of Polish Culture.
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been accepted by a wider section of the society. Without classes
describing the language and application of the media, their basic
genres, the environment they operate in, it is impossible to develop
the conscious attitude of the audience – audience that would consciously receive not only audio-visual messages, but, considering
their role in the culture nowadays, also messages formulated by
the contemporary culture in general.
Demonstrating how audio-visual messages should be perceived and
interpreted, such classes draw heavily on theoretical courses in film
and new media anthropology. They should be activity-oriented and picture-focused, delivered in the workshop format, which facilitates the
learning process and reinforces skills of the culture animator. Interpretation creates a brand-new perspective, which, if focused on the
surrounding environment, may contribute to the development of new
attitudes, and like photography, “evoke” images, attitudes and eventually trigger activities. In this context, the camera depicts the positive aspect of its mediating role: it creates distance that opens a
whole new perspective and facilitates enhanced perception of familiar
“own” reality – it facilitates “close-ups”. It becomes a tool for recognition, which is only a step away from comprehension.
Another step leads us from passive reception to active application – to application and participation at a stage at which audiovisual tools or hardware may activate their users. Application of
new media in culture animation may be two-fold. The first goal is
integration and animation of groups by artistic performance – film,
photography, video or the web. Artistic performance in those areas does not have to be, or even often cannot be, individual, it requires teamwork, development of common or at least shared sensitivity, mediation and conflict-solving. It requires meetings. Sometimes groups are built as a result of events as was the case with
the “poniekąd” group that was created by participants of Juliusz
Sokołowski’s photographic workshops. The group has currently evolved into an association supporting works of its members but also
investigating and transforming the aesthetic urban environment.
Meetings can be also facilitated by another application of media
for culture animation – when a camera or hardware is incorporated
as a tool of culture animation carried out in the local environment.
Such tools can be used for recording organised events, joint efforts and day-to-day life, for identification of the area, space in live
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and work in, and a computer room may become (as it is the case in
some counties and housing estates) a social and cultural animation
centre combining social life with work and improvement of living
conditions. In this context, it’s worth enhancing the multimedia
role of Internet which has created a whole new environment for
building new relationships – creating networks which may contribute to future joint fieldwork.
P ROGRAMME
STRUCTURE
Lectures
The lecture “Film art” is conducted by Jerzy Wójcik, an outstanding cameraman and film director, a co-founder of the Polish Film
School, a lecturer at the Film School in Łódź. The lecture format
combines a typical academic lecture with film projections commented by the lecturer. He discusses problems in detail, “presents”
them on the screen by referring to the samples selected deliberately from classical film productions. The programme of the lecture
includes analyses of basic elements of the film language and elaborated characteristics of issues concerning the very nature of the
film art: problems of construction and structure of a film work,
ways in which time and space in film are shaped and expressed,
integration of visual and sound elements, the function of light, and
the human dimension of film.
Seminars
Common audio-visual “illiteracy” enforces focus on classes introducing the language of the new media. This important role would be
very much facilitated by seminars (usually combined with elements of
workshops) tackling audio-visual culture issues, particular genres and
techniques from the communication and anthropological perspective.
Workshops
On one hand, workshops “reinforce” seminars – as they discuss
the language and application of media – and on the other, they
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create an experiential environment, which gives a better insight
into all the discussed issues and offers preliminary training for future professional roles. Workshops of that kind are delivered by
Janusz Gazda “Introduction to film drama”, Andrzej Kołodyński “Foundations of film criticism”, and the most practical of all Wojciech
Michera’s “Principles of film craft” (the courses focused on practical training in work with the camera are essential). Recommended
additional workshops include classes delivered by Lidia Zonn “Introduction to film editing”, Ryszard Kluszczyński “Introduction to video art”, Klaus-Ove Kahrmann “Video as a form of expression” and
Juliusz Sokołowski “Photographic workshop”.
A separate cycle of seminars may cover workshops devoted to
AV techniques and messages – and building groups focused on those “communication junctions”, application of Internet, designing
websites etc.
Another important element is Seweryn Kuśmierczyk’s workshop
entitled “Cinematography institutions”, which gives an insight to
the landscape of the film culture in Poland and presents culture
animation perspectives.
Placements
Institutions willing to co-operate with the Institute and organise placements for students include DKF (Film Discussion Club) “Pod
Spodem”, which is active in the university community, “Gutek Film”,
an independent film distributor who also deals with culture animation (organises film festivals for young people and training seminars in media language). Other recommended placements: the Centre for Contemporary Arts, KinoLab, Polish Federation of Film Discussion Clubs.
From another perspective, it is important to include classes at
Lothe/Lachmann Videotheatre into the placement programme. The
makers of the Videotheatre continuously seek for new video and
theatre formulas, and handle the entire infrastructure and organisation of their work themselves.
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385
Andr
zej K
ołodyński
Andrzej
Kołodyński
F oundations of film criticism
Considering such a broadly defined subject, the course provides
a preliminary introduction outlining selected issues related to this
specific professional profile. It is essential to present the diversity
of roles which are nowadays fulfilled by people who write about film.
I believe that presentation of selected detailed issues related to
comprehension of the film work is simply essential. Equally necessary is explanation of the meaning of fundamental terms which constitute the core element of the critical interpretation of film works.
Classes must have practical background and create the possibility of making references to specific films, which implies division of
classes into lectures and tutorials.
DRAFT:
1. Identification of the role of the film critic in the cultural life.
Performed functions: (a) a communicator, (b) an intermediary
between the work and the audience, (c) an interpreter. Awareness of the cultural background in which the critic operates. Practical examples of various types of activities pursued by the critic.
Exercise (based on film materials): identification of differences between a mechanic film record and an interpreting film
record. An initial attempt at definition of film work.
2. The fundamental form of written criticism: review. The definition and identification of various types of reviews depending
on the specific medium and target audience. The structure
of the review.
Andrzej Kołodyński: film critic, editor-in-chief of “Kino” monthly, author of numerous
publications on film, mainly documentary and popular movie genres.
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Exercise: an analysis of the presented film work (a short feature film); identification of the review format.
3. Oral review. Differences drawing on the specific profile of
the medium applied: radio, television, live speech. Functions. Reviews in the service of propaganda (a historical
overview).
Exercise: an analysis (drawing on specific examples) of practical aspects of oral reviews aired on television.
4. Interview. Functions and techniques depending on the specific medium. The interview as a discussion broadcast live (radio, television). Press interview. Constructing questions. The
issue of journalism ethics.
Exercise: meeting with a journalist specialising in interviews
with movie business personages.
5. Selected aspects of film poetics (I). Clip and take. Colour and
light. Camera movement. Editing.
Exercise: an analysis of selected film sequences.
6. Selected aspects of film poetics (II). Time in film. The definition of style. Individual style.
Exercise: an analysis of selected film sequences.
7. Avant-garde in cinema (I). Historical avant-garde in relation
to trends in other areas of art (impressionism, surrealism).
~
Avant-garde cinema circle. The repertoire of technological
tricks and solutions. Examples.
õ
Exercise: an analysis of Bunuel’s
Chien Andalou in the context of psychoanalysis and surrealism.
8. Avant-garde in cinema (II). Animation techniques, digital technology. Examples.
Exercise: Peter Greeneway’s Dante , selected Cantos. An attempt at interpretation.
9. The author in cinema (I). The definition of individual and collective author. Historical definition of the studio system. The
role of the director. An outline of the problem in the context
of film theory (from classic thoughts of pioneer theoreticians,
like Irzykowski, to French New Wave and American “direct
cinema”).
Exercise: examples of the director’s “signature style”.
10. The author in cinema (II). The definition of production. The
role of the director. Selected elements: narration and the
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11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
387
role of the camera (objective and subjective narration, the
camera as the narrator). The contemporary meaning of the
author of the film.
Exercise: an analysis of presented examples.
Documentary film (I). Definition and a brief overview of the
history of the genre. Documentary genres by types of narration: epic, edited, lyrical documentary. Propaganda functions. Ethics of the documentary film director intervening
in the reality.
Exercise: an analysis of examples.
Documentary film (II). Genres: report, documentary record,
staged documentary film. Differences resulting from the
recording technology applied. A historical overview: cinema
verité and sub-genres of direct cinema. Improvisation as a
means of artistic expression.
Exercise: an analysis of Marek Piwowski’s Psychodrama .
The film as a propaganda vehicle. Manipulation by interpretation. Manipulation techniques.
Exercise: examples ranging from “the Polish sequence” in
Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible to American election video clips.
Definition of the film genre. Standard means attributed to
particular genres – a historical outline employing the example of the movie thriller. The question of going beyond the
framework of the genre. New techniques.
Exercise: an analysis of examples.
A critical review with elements of critical essay. Discussion
focused on the format and the structure of selected examples.
Exercise: an example of a film work being on “the edge of
the genre” – Peter Greeneway’s M Like Mozart . Development of draft critical review.
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Janusz Gazda
I ntroduction to film drama
1. First meeting
What does a script writer’s profession consist of? Can one learn to write scripts? What is talent and what does it consist of?
What talents can be developed and how? What can be learnt?
A script writer’s work starts with observation and has no end.
A necessity of constant observation of people. Fixed writing principles vs. aiming at uniqueness (a paradox: an author is to discover something and tell a new story and the writing principles are
fixed; an author is to avoid schemata and the principles create
schematic frameworks). The knowledge of principles does not guarantee success but success is more difficult and frequently impossible to achieve without observing principles (big talents have
the writing principles “in their blood”, they use them instinctively).
The definitions of script writing (e.g. the art of manipulating the
viewer’s emotions, the art of seeking the truth, the art of interesting storytelling). Basic elements: seeking the truth, expression
(visuals, dramatic tension, movement), the hero (a fragment of an
individual fate and existential experience), uniqueness (of the hero,
the history in which they are involved, the picture – scenery, landscape, interiors).
What is the essence of movies? The revelation that took place in
1895 Grand Café in Paris during the (documentary!) movies of Lumière brothers. Each distinguished author has their own concept
Janusz Gazda: scriptwriter and film critic, has been working for television since the
1970s.
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of the movies. Griffith: “I want to teach you to see things”. Examples of opinions of famous directors about what cinema is for them.
A script writer should also seek and find their own concept of cinema (and at least think about it constantly).
Basic categories: problem – topic – metaphor (in the understanding of Paul Shrader, the script writer of e.g. Taxi Driver directed
by Martin Scorsese). It is good when an author is able to link the
problem that they want to express in their future movie with own
and deeply lived personal problem (link the artistic works, other
people’s story with own experience and obsessions). The meaning
of Shrader’s words: “Art pays back”.
2. Between the original and the madeup
Different kinds of relation to reality: (1) A story about an event
that took place in reality and e.g. was written down in the form of
a report (the problem of a hero involved in that event: the hero
based on a real character or an invented one). (2) A story of a
person that is authentic, ordinary, unknown, distinguished, or famous in a given society or in the world (biography). Types of biographies. (3) Elements of documentary style in a movie not inspired by
authentic events; in every movie (there are films, usually unsuccessful, whose points of departure are authentic events or characters but which in their way of storytelling and depicting do not
use what I call the “elements of documentary style”).
From fact to creation. From the concrete to generalisation.
External, authenticity (scenery, looks of the characters, landscape) and a deeper truth about a person, human experience. Seeking
uniqueness of that experience. From an original to universality. An
original may turn out uninteresting. Will the mere reproduction of
the external events suffice? The role of a historian or a journalist
vs. the role of an artist: a fiction writer, or an author of a movie. “A
historian tells us about the events that took place, whereas Raskolnikow’s crime never happened”. An analysis of Dostoyevski’s
documentary style and his creativity. A similar analysis of Kafka’s
The Trial. Develop Milan Kundera’s words concerning novels: “A novel does not analyse reality but existence. And existence is not
what happened, it is the field for human possibilities, all that a
person can become, what they are capable of. Fiction writers draw
an “existence map” revealing one human possibility or another”.
Refer that to movies.
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3. The idea – the topic – the hero
What is a topic? What is a good idea? Where to seek ideas?
Types of inspiration (discussion using examples of movies). Reality
vs. imagination. Idea vs. topic. How to formulate a topic properly?
Examples. Exploring a topic: content-related (cognitive), drama (action, tension, emotions). What is worth bringing out of a topic?
Seeking visual attractiveness and originality in a topic. How to verify an idea and a topic found in reality or invented. A draft script.
Why does one want to make a given movie? Topic development:
characters and action. Two-plot (two-topic) construction of a scenario. Maintaining a single topic.
4. Drama paradigm
Three acts, two turning points: beginning (act I), middle (act II),
ending (act III). In other words: exposition – turning point I – confrontation – turning point II – dissolution. Ancient model: exposition
/ peripeteia / catastrophe. “The paradigm remains unchanged. (...)
Birth? Life? Death? Is it not beginning, middle, and ending? Let us
think about the development of huge civilisations built up from the
cradle of the entire collectivity to the peak of power, and then rotting away and dying” (Syd Field).
Revision of Aristotle. Presentation of basic categories of Aristotle’s poetics: simple and complicated plot, peripeteia , recognition, transformation (“transformation of the hero’s fate – from
happiness to unhappiness or from unhappiness to happiness”).
Analysis of particular elements of the drama structure. Examples (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Little Buddha , a part of Murphy
Brown ).
5. Beginnings and endings of movies (I)
The place of a beginning in the entire movie, its most important
features and aims. Metaphysics of beginnings – the mysticism of
birth. Relations between the beginning and the ending. Events have
their beginning and their ending. Something is born and something
dies. If in the life of a human those two moments (birth and death)
hold such great significance, why should they not have a similar
importance in case of a movie? The ending summarises the sense
of a movie, the sense of human experience presented. While thinking about the beginning of a movie we should know what the ending
will be, we should know the destination of the trip that the viewer
will make with us in the course of the events on screen.
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It is worth suggesting the main mood of the movie and its main
motives like in a drop of water observed through a microscope, like
in a mirror. Sometimes the beginning is a sort of a miniature of the
future movie (almost a separate etude).
A solemn component in the beginning. Giving the entire movie a
poetical dimension. Elements of the sacrum in the prose of life.
Presentation and analysis of fragments of movies used as examples (e.g.: Sawdust and Tinsel, The Scarecrow, The Interview, Terms
of Endearment , Kola ).
6. Beginnings and endings of movies (II)
Dramatic analysis of the exposition of 101 Dalmatians (cartoon
version). Components of a good beginning: information, emotions,
beauty, something intriguing (e.g., a mystery), conflict, another
dimension. Information on the place and the hero; action formation. Beginning vs. definition of script writing (seeking the truth,
creating emotions, storytelling).
Discussion of the main function of a beginning which is beginning
the story in a way that will make the viewer want to watch on.
Illustrate the problem with appropriate examples of the beginnings
of various movies (videotapes) e.g. Four Weddings and a Funeral,
Green Card , Little Buddha (revealing the reality of another culture), Casablanca (documentary and educational elements in the exposition of the famous melodrama).
7. The hero (I)
Who is the hero of the story? A well-thought-out hero as an
idea for the entire movie. The content of a movie as an existential,
mystical, or other experience of the hero. The world created in a
movie and individuality of a hero. Creating a hero. A hero straight
from reality. Further “development” of a hero. Adding features.
Exaggerating them. Ways of creating an original character: documentary studies, searching a negative of a film. A hero as an
embodiment of energy. The significance of psychical energy. The
characteristic of distinguished actors is the ability to emanate
energy. Is it possible to foresee elements of a hero in a script
that may provoke the actor to emanate energy (features, details
of behaviour, ways of reacting) without knowing who will play the
part. Inventing the personality of a character. Formulating the
aim of the hero’s activities and inventing obstacles that lie on the
way to their realisation. Correlation of the action with the hero. A
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passive or an energetic hero? Spying on a hero (affirmative mode
of the story, the “keyhole” principle) or constructing conflicts?
What does it mean: the beginning of a drama is the hero’s drama?
Dangers encountered by a hero. The role of disaster and reaction
to it for creating the character and the type of action. A lonely
hero. A changing or unchanging hero? What is a transformation?
A stereotype vs. uniqueness of a hero. A type vs. individuality.
How to resolve the contradiction between the necessity of observing certain rules, principles, or even stereotypes by the script
writer (sometimes nicely called paradigms) and the necessity to
create new and unique characters and situations that differ from
those that a viewer knows well. The hero of a comedy, tragedy,
and a melodrama. A monolithic hero or a hero full of contradictions?
7. The hero (I)
A hero vs. drama construction (three acts, two turning points).
Surprising the viewer with unexpected behaviours or reactions of
the hero. A mystery (hidden by the hero), signalling it in undertones
and allusions and revealing it slowly. The hero and their adversary.
The topic and the anti-topic vs. movie characters. Analysis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet . Ways of enabling identification with
the hero. Should a hero be beautiful or ugly, good or bad, funny or
serious, skilled or a bungler, brave or cowardly, decisive or hesitating, having power over others or being subordinate? Presenting a
hero to the viewer in the exposition. Should the hero be confronted
with situations that are well known to the viewer or that are new
for them? Do we see the surrounding world and events through the
eyes of the hero or do we take the so-called objective perspective
or the subjective perspective of other characters? Creating a hero
vs. psychology. Psychical types: reflective and empirical type. Tempers as different combinations of two parameters: the speed of
developing emotions (type of emotional excitability) and the speed
of reaction to external stimuli (motive reaction). Sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic, and melancholic temper. Should one be consistent
in observing the clean division into psychical types and tempers in a
movie (when creating characters and confronting them wit the
action). Possibilities of mixing particular features in one character.
Example of a movie: a Disney’s cartoon with Mickey Mouse, Pluto,
Goofy, and Donald Duck. One main character, two characters (male,
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male and female, or female), several main characters – consequences and possible configurations.
9. Conflict as a basic drama figure
Basic conflict – defining the essence, sense, and character of
the entire piece. The conflict of particular parts. Mini-conflicts – of
a scene, a take, a frame. A conflict found in reality. Seeking conflicts in life. Dramatising a fact, an event or a real person as a way
of seeking conflicts. A conflict vs. tension. Building up tension: in
the action, in a scene, in relations between characters. Tension in
various movie genres (action movie, psychological movie, comedy,
melodrama, romance).
10. Scenes and sequences (I)
11. Scenes and sequences (II)
A movie consists of scenes – explain a deeper sense of that
seemingly obvious and banal sentence. Scene evaluation (verification). The sense of a scene. The whole and a part: a movie is built
from smaller, separate units linked by a disclosed or hidden logic.
Dramatic construction of a scene (exposition, development, and
culmination). Projection and analysis of 8 different scenes. What
does it mean to have an idea for a scene? A scene vs. the conflict
within the scene. Clashing scenes. A scene vs. an object. A scene
vs. a hero. Types of scenes (action, romantic, dialogue scenes). A
scene as capturing a unique moment. Building a scene from the
point of view of building mood and drama. A good movie has at least
one scene that is remembered for long. Show several examples.
12. Dialogues in a movie (I)
Basic principles. Types of dialogues. Dialogue forms of articulating the goal of a hero. The conflict and the resolution – in a drama
and in a comedy. The style of dialogues depending on the movie
genre. Paradoxes. The principle of contrast. Most frequent mistakes made when writing dialogues. The necessity of constant reduction. Dialogue vs. picture. The counterpoint principle. Undertones.
The lecture illustrated with fragments of finished movies and fragments of scripts.
13. Dialogues in a movie (II)
Analysis of the beginning of Pulp Fiction . An exception to the
rule or a new type of rule? What justifies introducing long dialogue
lines? Analysis of two scenes from a Woody Allen movie. Information placed in a dialogue: how to hide the intention of information?
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Dependence of the dialogue style on the background of a character
(social, ethnic, regional), their job, personality, psychical temper.
Reference notebook of a script writer. Concreteness of a dialogue
vs. its metaphoric surplus. Verbal refrains. Monologue. Internal
monologue. The lecture illustrated by examples (fragments of finished movies and fragments of scripts).
14. The space in a movie
Ways of creating space in a movie. Landscape, city scenery,
interiors as visual material of the movie and the point of departure
for stylistic uniformity. Seeking symbolic, metaphoric, dramatic,
psychological senses in those elements. Space vs. mood. Should
the script writer foresee a particular time of the day for the action
to take place? What results therefrom? Should the script writer
define the type of light in a scene? The space vs. the hero.
15. Time in a movie
How to use time in a movie? A movie is a picture of the world
persisting. The difference between photography and a movie. Motion. Motion in time (there is no other motion). Time categories in
a movie. Can one speak of the categories of the present tense
(there is), past tense (there was), or future tense (there will be) in
the “grammar of a movie”? There are no grammatical tenses in the
language of a movie. The proper tense is the present tense. Time
as a season or time of the day. Time of action (time span). Long or
short fragment of a character’s life. Consequences of an appropriate choice of the time span. What did Wajda achieve through
consolidating the time of action in Popiół i diament into 24 hours?
How to show the time passing? Different time plans. Is retrospection an obsolete figure? The past and memory as a part of the
truth about a human being. The object and the past.
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Sewer
yn K
uśm ierczyk
Seweryn
Kuśm
C inematographic institutions
“Cinematographic institution” (a term coined by Christian Metz)
covers various types of cultural structures mediating in the film
communication process. These institutions transform the film into
a product and its contents, convert cinema into the movie business and an institution modelling audience behaviour: ranging from
basic cultural models of individual and group reactions to repressive functions related to monitoring and supervision.
The goal of the workshop is the presentation of the core cinematographic institutions operating in Poland, their goals, types of
undertaken activities and funding methods.
The workshop is addressed to students who are interested in
cinema and contemporary audio-visual culture, who wish to explore
prospects for conducting independent activities and launching cooperation, identify organisations that would facilitate implementation of individual professional plans and practical application of acquired knowledge during university studies or upon graduation.
Institutions presented to workshop participants are potential
organisations at which final projects drafted by students of “Culture Animation” may be implemented in the future.
Workshop format: a meeting of the student group held at the
seat of a given institution, a visit to the institution as well as a
meeting and a discussion with its representatives.
Recommended Institutions:
1. The Cinematography Committee. A government institution
appointed to assume patronage over the Polish cinematography. The Committee subsidises Polish film productions and
deals with their promotion in Poland and abroad. This institution makes decisions on the selection of films to be presented at key international film festivals. The Committee also
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subsidises the non-commercial film press as well as film publications (scientific periodicals and books). Workshop participants will get an insight into the organisational structure
of the Committee, its practical potential and operating procedures. They will also learn the criteria applied by this institution to the critical assessment of titles and will investigate the problems related to its day-to-day operations.
2. National Film Library. The National Film Library stores copies
of all films produced in Poland as well as foreign titles distributed in our country. The Library also gathers all documents
related to the subsequent stages of film production (including scripts, camera script, set design documentation, still
photographs and reports of the presentation committee) as
well as various types of books and press publications (including Polish and international press clippings) focused on Polish and foreign pictures. It is the biggest film library in Poland and a genuine must-see for each and every individual
dealing with film issues. Students will explore collections of
the library, including its admission procedure. Workshop will
provide the occasion to get to grips with the operations of
the sole film museum in Poland – “Iluzjon” Cinema.
3. Polish Federation of Film Discussion Clubs. The Federation
associates all film discussion clubs operating in Poland, facilitating their standard activities. This institution organises
film reviews and film seminars which are also used to train
the future promoters of its activities. The Federation also
publishes “Film na świecie” periodical. Workshop participants
will get the chance to learn the history of the Federation and
film discussion club movement in Poland and to explore the
potential and types of activities undertaken by this institution. Students will also learn how to establish and run an
individual film discussion club.
4. Documentary and Feature Film Studios. A visit to the film
studios in Warsaw, currently the sole big film studios in Poland producing feature and documentary films. The studios
also produce a wide range of programming for various television stations. In addition, the studios also boast the biggest
library of documentary features in Poland. Students will get
the chance to learn the current profile of the studios and
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various types of productions. They will also get an insight
into its potential and the admission procedure introduced by
the documentary feature library.
5. Film Producer Agency. The Agency co-ordinates and supports
activities related to the production of Polish titles, deals with
protection of copyrights held by filmmakers and publishes a
series of video tapes featuring Polish pictures. Students will
learn the goals and operating procedures applied by the Agency, the profile of its activities on the film production market
as well as its position against other cinematographic institutions.
6. Film Studio. The current film studios and the former Film
Groups – collectives of filmmakers enjoying vast freedom of
artistic expression, which had produced one of the greatest titles of the Polish cinema. “Kadr ” is one of the most
acclaimed studios in the history of the Polish cinema. This
film studio witnessed the rise of the so-called “Polish school”, collaborated with eminent Polish film directors (Wajda,
Munk, Kawalerowicz, Konwicki), directors of photography
and set designers. Jerzy Kawalerowicz has been the Art
Director of the Studio since the very beginning of its operations. Students will explore the history of the Studio,
introduced work methods, aims of the art director and office manager. They will also get an insight into rules governing contemporary film production, relevant funding methods as well as reasons behind the transformation of Film
Groups into Studios. They will also get a chance to enquire
about all possible details related to the creative film production process and the terms of co-operation of the film
director with the production crew.
7. Film distribution company. Workshop participants will get an
insight into the procedures applied to film distribution and
the ownership structure of Polish movie theatres. They will
also learn how box office revenue is allocated and explore the
rules of thumb for professional film promotion. The workshop
will create an occasion to enquire about factors that contribute to the enormous popularity of commercial titles and
threats created by DVD for movie theatres, including then
damages caused by widespread piracy.
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8. Film Discussion Club (DKF). Workshop participants will explore DKF’s operations, its funding methods, getting access
to copies of good old movies, organisation of independent
cinema reviews, meetings with film directors and critics,
optimum communication vehicles for promoting DKF’s schedule, how many weeks in advance it needs to be planned,
and the optimum pricing of tickets. Behind the scene, students will get an insight into the operations of DKF they
frequently visit themselves. They will also get a chance to
take an active part in organisational efforts.
9. Film Academy. Established at the “Kwant-Riwiera” Film Discussion Club, the Film Academy has been operating in Warsaw for many years. Its mother-discussion club has established its reputation for inviting the most celebrated international filmmakers to Poland. Workshop participants will
learn how to organise such visits, get an insight into the
operating procedures and funding methods applied by the
Film Academy, which combines screening of outstanding film
titles with lectures delivered by celebrated movie critics.
They will also discuss the programme of the Academy, admission procedures for access to archival film copies and
technical standards essential for their screening.
10. Independent cinema. The goal of the meeting is the presentation of the activities of one of the leading independent
movie theatres in Poland. Workshop participants will learn
who is the target audience of the cinema which screens no
commercial titles, and how it managed to maintain its independent status in the free market economy. They will also
tackle such issues as how to acquire the rights for the
distribution of a foreign title in Poland? How to organise a
highly popular film festival in the country? Students will also
get an insight into the size of the Polish independent cinema market and the prospects for transforming a Film Discussion Club into an independent movie theatre.
11. Commercial cinema. A visit and a discussion about the operating principles of multi-screen commercial movie theatres.
What criteria are applied to title selection? Why a movie
theatre featuring several smaller screens is better than a
cinema with a single bigger screen? Have movies become a
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type of thrashy entertainment? What is the technical equipment of a sophisticated movie theatre – production requirements, sound technology. Does popcorn taste better during the screening of good titles?
12. Public Television’s Film Department. The terms and principles of the operations of public television’s film department.
Students will learn how to select the time slot and the date
for the broadcast of a feature film. What are the responsibilities of an editor in charge of television’s film policy? What
is the impact of GRP on decisions taken by editors? What
criteria must be met by a film project to be subsidised by
public television? What collections are available from Public
Television’s film and press libraries?
13. Editorial office of a glossy film magazine. Workshop participants will learn about the editorial profile of a popular film
magazine (“Film”, “Cinema”). What is the line-up of each issue? What is the starting point of work on each issue? Who
writes critical reviews? How are subsequent issues produced and what is their printing and distribution process? What
is “a good article”? Is there a set artistic standard for written works and professional standards for writers that cannot be broken, as readers would find the contents incomprehensible? Photographs versus contents – what dominates
the magazine? The role of advertising. The position of the
critical review during a film promotion campaign. What is the
salary of an editor and the volume of fees? Are film critics
dependent upon film distribution companies?
14. Editorial office of “Kwartalnik Filmowy” film quarterly. Workshop participants are to visit the editorial office of a film
periodical published by the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Science, the most prestigious Polish film publication. Students will learn the criteria applied to the selection
of the features to be published in subsequent issues of the
quarterly as well as the responsibilities of “Kwartalnik’s” editors. They will also get a chance to enquire about funding
methods and the amount of fees, the evolution of the publication’s profile in the history of “Kwartalnik”, subjects tackled in the forthcoming issues and finally, whether an article
written by a student has a chance to appear in print?
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15. Film publishing house. Workshop participants will get a chance to explore the profile of the publishing house and its
publications. They will learn about the criteria applied in the
selection of particular titles accepted for print and the
methods for seeking sponsors for low-edition valuable publications. They will also get an insight into the publishing process, terms of co-operation with editors, graphic artists,
setters, printing house and bindery. They will investigate
the contemporary book distribution market. How to advertise a book? Do critical reviews boost sales? What is current edition of books?
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M ichał W
ójtowski
Wójtowski
E DUCATION THROUGH ART
The term “Education through art” was spread by Herbert Read’s classic work Education through Art (1943). He developed
there the idea of an integrated personality, mainly formed by art
and affected both by aesthetic theory and the social sciences.
The idea, created by anarchist thought in the period of World
War I and completed during World War II, acquired some characteristics of utopia and prophecy. This vision gained in Read’s lifetime widespread popularity and a relatively strong institutional
expression in the form of the International Society for Education
through Art (InSEA). It aimed to include art in the education
process, and – according to Read’s views – in human life in general. The question remains if the situation of art is better today.
Apart from it, one should ask if Read’s and his followers’ cultural
vision might be an inspiration for contemporary culture animation. And if this “big utopia” might give rise to different “small
utopias”.
Our situation in many aspects resembles the situation in many
European countries twenty or twenty five years ago. It was then
that the activity arising from the assumptions of education through art in England, Holland, Finland, and Scandinavian countries
became a response to the sudden social degradation of large groups of people. It especially meant combating the high level of unemployment, an anomaly occurring in large urban areas (and becoming
more acute in apartment blocks) through intensification of educational and bond-forming work at the level of a local community, a
district, or an apartment block. It was art that became the medium of that work. The network of self-aid cultural initiatives that
was created at that time has survived until the present day and
gave employment to a large number of the unemployed including
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people who in the beginning of their activity operated on different
rungs of the social ladder and had various degrees of professional
preparation.
In contrast to the aforementioned societies, Polish society is
not wealthy enough to bear the costs of an immediate creation of
a network of culture houses realising the social mission through
art workshops, especially at the cost of the state budget. We do
have, however, a similar, if less congested, network which requires
urgent “resuscitation”. This would mainly consist in the change of
the way of thinking about the operation of the existing centres
which frequently function by way of inertia. This does not refer only
to the provincial cultural centres but also to museums and galleries. Not only do they suffer from a shortage of financial resources
but, as it seems, to a much larger extent from the lack of vision
and the awareness of the new opportunities created by the structural change in the ways of cultural management and financing. A
section of this area opens up before the people running and planning to take up the animation activity, including people able and
willing to speak the language of arts.
This is not a fallow land. An emblematic example thereof is the
Creative Education Laboratory (Laboratorium Edukacji Twórczej –
LET) at the Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Arts run by Maria
Parczewska and Janusz Byszewski. For the past twenty years they
have been running workshops of creative education based on the
language of art which have taken place in various milieus – in galleries, prisons, museums, and schools, in the milieus of the disabled
and mentally handicapped, in the environment of the poorest districts of Polish cities. The activity so profiled is applicable practically to any circumstances and breaks up the stereotype of art as
a language assigned to the area of high art. However LET does not
distance itself from it. It constitutes a comprehensive offer and
does not set forth any exorbitant terms of participation. It is not
artistic talents that give entry into LET workshops, and such a
conviction frequently discourages people from undertakings associated with art in one way or another.
This brings out an important issue of the Polish education model
which bears a clear literature-centred focus. It is literature that
enjoys most privileges, which is fine provided that it does not take
place at the expense of other areas of knowledge and sensitivity.
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Undoubtedly, the other arts suffer under the privileged position of
literature. Input in the area of arts history and theory takes a
rudimentary form and a sad aspect of that tendency is the inferiority of practical arts classes. An obvious result of this situation is
the limiting of artistic education to arts schools and academies
together with general ignorance in broad social circles. It is, therefore, obvious that apart from artistic events promoted through
mass media the offer of galleries and museums hits a vacuum. That
is especially the case with institutions of contemporary art. The
problem, however, is of a much wider scope, and is becoming more
and more perceptible, which might bring serious consequences in
the future. In the era of the growing dominance of electronic media
operating with images at an unparalleled scale and shaping our
perception of the world through images, a low level of artistic awareness and sensitivity can turn out to be a serious barrier demonstrating an inability to adapt to life.
This is an important reason for running classes that present
the language of arts, and especially fine arts as a part of the curriculum in “Culture Animation”. Different forms of training in creative thinking and acting should be the core of this part.
This function is realised by workshops run by Maria Parczewska
and Janusz Byszewski. Firstly, they have an open formula, in a twofold sense. They pose no high demands in the area of artistic skills
even if their result is the development of self-awareness and artistic sensitivity of the participant. Their openness consists also in
the participant acquiring skills of translating various problems into
the language of arts, which enables the practical application of
that language in any circumstances. This translating ability enables one to work in schools as well as in prisons. The road to achieving it is long, however, and requires the acquisition of interpersonal skills – group work, effective communication with class participants, clear definition of problems, and a certain psychological skill
which, however, has no therapeutic dimension as that would be an
obvious usurpation.
An extension and reinforcement of the program is Urszula Kochanowska’s workshop entitled “Reading pictures”. The aim of the
author is to prepare the participants for a conscious and in-depth
perception of the phenomena of visual arts – “starting with the
most important board and oil paintings through comic art, billbo-
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ards, and city plans”. Those classes bring out the aspect of education that consists in the ability to operate in the formal language of
arts history and theory which had been adjusted to the abilities of
the participants. The course joins together the theoretical knowledge with practical skills of talking about the form, content, and
history of works of art. As such it provides future practitioners of
education through art with a theoretical basis which, however, may
in the future need some enrichment.
The introduction to the programme not only meets its internal
requirements but also provides the possibility of training a group of
skilled “storytellers” whose shortage is felt in galleries and museums not just in the provincial areas. Tour guides in such places
are usually art historians that join a good theoretical background
with a total lack of skill of clear and accessible presentation of the
acquired knowledge. Therefore, the exam in the form of talking about a work of art can be treated as a sample of that kind of activity.
Furthermore, it may be worth considering the possibility of the
joint completion of the classes of “Reading pictures” with classes
from other “baskets” that train “storytellers”.
An effective team of such persons giving museum lessons was
created by Katarzyna Rokosz, manager of the Education Department of the National Museum in Warsaw. The internship with the
National Museum is an ideal opportunity for confronting young
animators with the situation in which they have to win the field for
activity, breaking through formal and administrative obstacles. In
order to cope with such circumstances in the future they will
become acquainted under the care of a tutor with difficulties of
museum bureaucracy, the petrified structure of co-operation between particular departments, space organisation, awaiting visitors. At the end of that process they will attempt to prepare
animation projects in the form of a single event or a short series
of events.
The aforementioned programme is of course a minimum; we are
now observing ideas and needs arise that in the future should be
given a more specific shape. They include the following:
1. Making educational films about art – the workshop based on
experiences gained during the training visit at the Bielefeld University and linked with the “audiovisual basket” of the curriculum.
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2. Janusz Byszewski’s idea to implement the institution of the
“artist in residence” within the structure of “Culture Animation”
and in the new seat of the Institute of Polish Culture. That person
would run workshops and arrange our new work space.
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M aria P
arczewsk
a
Parczewsk
arczewska
F ield extension
Creativity is not reserved only for the people
who pursue one of the traditional forms of art.
Joseph Beuys
The workshop is addressed to every interested student, regardless of the level of their artistic skills. The purpose of the workshop is to extend knowledge about contemporary interactive educational methods with the application of techniques stimulating
the individual creative activity of the participants. The workshop
programme will correspond to the specific needs arising from the
tasks of an animator in a museum, cultural centre, community centre, or other education or even therapy centres.
Duration of workshop: two semesters. In the first semester
Maria Parczewska and Janusz Byszewski will conduct a creativity
workshop in the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CSW) and surrounding space. In the second semester the Creative Education Laboratory (LET) team will co-operate with the representatives of
museums, galleries, and cultural centres, where the workshops
will take place. Furthermore, we foresee a one- or two-day trip to
a museum or centre chosen by the group and contact with those
representatives of that institution that perform the function of
directors, curators, artists, or that realise an educational programme therein.
The form of classes – on the whole, the major programme will be
realized through workshops. In the first semester these will be
creative workshops. In the second semester – they will include
museum workshops based in museums, galleries, cultural centres
that run particular educational or animation programmes connec-
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ted with their character. The workshop series will be complemented with the following:
– theoretical sessions based on activation methods;
– presentations of the Creative Education Laboratory’s projects
documentation;
– field activities (courtyard, school, playground, park, street);
– active forms of verifying the knowledge and experiences gained
which allow for revealing doubts, criticisms, controversial areas;
– checking own skills and knowledge through organising own workshop by each student with a group of their choice; that stage will
be preceded by the preparation of a scenario and concluded with a
comprehensive analysis of the entire workshop creation process.
The programme purposes:
1. to experience the creative process, i.e. to create own projects in conditions favourable for breaking through thinking
and acting stereotypes, aiming at obtaining solutions demonstrating an author’s individuality;
2. learning through own participation about various forms of
creative workshops involving various means of expression and
various languages of modern art: fine arts, music, body work
techniques, techniques of work with a literary text, visual
techniques employed in the production of video films, slides,
installations;
3. learning one’s own abilities and limitations, professional interests and preferences, and their development through the
possibility of choosing appropriate areas of activity;
4. extension of knowledge, including theorethical knowledge,
concerning:
– various methods activating work with a group;
– the conception of creativity itself and of creative education, with particular consideration to the issues of: process, result, evaluation, creative personality; the concept
of development; conditions stimulating unconventionality and
the appropriateness of an action; the role of an animator;
group relations; conditions fostering trust in one’s own
abilities; the meaning of satisfaction in the educational process, etc.;
– specificity of education through art and museum education;
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– structure and operation of a museum, gallery, cultural centre – as institutions realising an ever richer and broader
programme;
– learning about the forms of activity of a big modern art
centre;
– learning about various models of activity of educational
departments;
– learning about the possibilities of extension of an animator’s scope of activity in the museum itself and going beyond the building and structure of an institution into the
space of a school, street, park, playground;
– the specificity of working with groups with differing age,
intellectual level, psychical and motional possibilities, interests, and the specificity of the programme addressed at
families and individual receivers;
– the rules of creating a programme addressed specifically
at teachers co-operating with the museum;
– possibilities of a co-operation between an animator and an
artist;
– searching for ways of reinforcing the position of a culture
animator as a person forming an indispensable link between the art and its receiver and as an initiator of the creative activity of the usually passive viewers;
– designing modern, attractive, and interactive educational
publications, broadening knowledge, enabling focusing on
especially important issues that enable the very important
“stopping” in contact with art, which is conducive to choices, dialogue;
– the concept of a museum as a complex structure with the
various expectations and needs of all participants and considering those expectations from the following particular
points of view: a cultural institution, exhibition authors (curators), museum educators, exhibition room attendants,
schools that realise a part of their programme through
museum lessons, teachers, students, parents, artists,
ministries of culture and education which support or disapprove the activities of a museum.
One should define at this point what the scope of education
should be, not only of the creative or museum one, with reference
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409
to children, youth, students. The major aim of this programme is
fostering a comprehensive development of an individual, which according to the phenomenological conception of a person, which is
close to us, leads to becoming an independent personality, capable
of free self-definition and of a conscious responsible engagement,
of independent thinking, and self-realisation, in the conditions of
mutual respect of one’s independence and individuality, as well as
authenticity without losing the bond with the group.
The suggested programme assumes the occurrence of new questions about the shape of museum education, and the search for
answers will definitely take new forms in each subsequent series.
This is compliant with the rule of openness of a creative process.
That educational situation which we have opened up to a certain
extent guarantees the coherence of the acknowledged views with
practice and enables both the leaders and the students who soon
will become teachers themselves to activate their imagination, the
sense of satisfaction with the process of breaking through schemata in activity, as well as the joy and power arising from the
revealing of own potential, which was frequently previously unconscious.
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Janusz Byszewski
S pace and place
The “Space and place” project aims at preparation of students
for work in museums, galleries, cultural centres, and other centres where creative and educational activity is pursued or might be
pursued in the future.
“In an experience the m eaning of space frequently overlaps
with that of place. Space is m ore abstract than «place». W hat
is initially perceived as space transforms into place as it is known
better and gains value. [...] For the concept to be defined «space» and «place» need each other. The safety and stability of
place draw our attention to the openness, enorm ousness, and
peril of space, and inversely. M oreover, when associating the
space with m otion we perceive place as a pause: each interval
in m ovem ent enables transform ing a situation (place) into space” (Yi-Fu Tuan).
The “Space and place” field project is closely tied to the twosemester series of workshops preparing the students for running
classes in museums, galleries, and other cultural institutions. It
will be run at the end of the series as its conclusion and an opportunity for the practical verification of the students’ skills gained
during classes run by the Creative Education Laboratory at the
Centre for Contemporary Arts.
Project participants: 15-20 students of “Culture Animation”
and 5 artists.
Duration: six days.
Location: Kazimierz on the Vistula.
Field activity locations: Cultural Centre in Kazimierz, Natural
Museum, Kamienica Celejowska, streets and marketplace, areas
around Kazimierz.
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411
Teachers: Janusz Byszewski (LET/CSW), Maria Parczewska (LET/
CSW), Marcin Berdyszak (Poznań Academy of Fine Arts), Eugeniusz Józefowski (Institute of Artistic Culture in Zielona Góra),
Barbara Konopka (video artist, Łódź), Wiktor Kowalczyk (Natural
Museum in Kazimierz) and Rose Whyman (Art Link, England, specialist for creative training using the human body).
The suggested Kazimierz classes are to have the character of a
project. It means that for six days the students work on one issue
under the direction of the invited artists, investigate deeper into
it, focus on its various aspects (therefore several teachers are
involved), ask new questions, search for the best forms of expression, all in order to present the finished work on the last day.
The presentation of the ready project itself in the form of a
plastic installation or a performance, the choice of the artistic
means, the choice of place, the role of the audience, the time of
the activity, and many other important components are the responsibility of each project participant.
We would especially like to draw on the role of the audience in
reception of the developed works.
The project will be carried out in a particular space and in specific places that not only constitute the subject of analysis but also
an inspiration, a point of reference, and the area of plastic activity.
It is the genius loci that determines all creative realisations of the
project participants.
The area of activity will gradually increase and will first include
the historic interior of the Cultural Centre and then the Kazimierz
streets and marketplace, and the surrounding nature (quarries,
ravines, and fields).
The “Space and place” project has its own dynamics. It will begin with workshops run by Rose Whyman of Art Link, who in her
practice uses the human body, which will become an artistic component in the project and in the context of the space and places
chosen in the open air and the town. Such a form of intensive
training will allow for breaking through barriers and stereotypes,
and will encourage the participants to do their own exploration.
The place. Threshold, door, window, stairs – classes at Kazimierz Cultural Centre, which is located in a 16th century hospital
building. Creating installations inspired by the symbolic meaning of
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four chosen architectonic elements: threshold, door, window, and
stairs.
We act in the area of installations.
Important categories include: space, place, times, interrelations,
reduction, economy, cleanliness, expressiveness, communicativeness, message, thought, philosophical context, personal associations, meaning, rank.
We use various materials but they are usually reduced to one
material for a particular realisation, for example exclusion of ground or shade.
The next stage will be recognition of space, gathering materials,
documentation, ordering, learning various techniques of perception and retention of attention.
The students get acquainted with various methods of gathering
materials with a camera, tape recordings, collecting various ready
objects, mapping, and street work.
S IGNS
AND TRACES
I am presenting a more detailed scenario, so as to use this
example to outline the form and course of the project.
This workshop consists of three parts.
The first part takes place in the open air, where we use large
sheets of paper and glue to gather “the prints of nature”. Every
participant places a sheet on a chosen component of nature: a
tree, a rock, or a portion of earth, and presses it strongly against
the object to preserve the texture and then to use the glue and
other sheets to harden the thus created amorphous form. After
drying out, all sculptures created in this way are taken to the gallery.
The second part takes a similar course, only this time we take
“the prints of the town”: on stairs, underground passageways,
benches, or pavements. The form of the works created arises from
the geometric constructions of culture.
The third part is realised in a neutral room of Laboratory. Each
author produces two forms: “a print of nature” and “a print of
culture”, and out of these forms in “an existential space” (the term
used by Henryk Skolimowski to denote various aspects of human
IV. PROGRAMME
413
space: social, psychological, spiritual, and aesthetic one) they create a third form, which I call “the in-between form” (between nature and culture, sign and trace, geometric and amorphous form,
poetry and tact, integration and disintegration, and finally, holistic
and dichotomous perception…). The question about the “in-between form” is the question about the form arising from our thoughts,
emotions, experiences, and cultural context.
I place sheets of paper in front of the completed students’
realisations. The class participants are invited to visit the exhibition and write a title in front of every item, which is supposed to
express personal association and poetic complementation, and
not be an attempt at guessing “what the author had in mind”.
When the authors come back to their works each chooses the
title that allows them to see their own realisation from a different perspective and see its new meanings, which they did not
think about during its creation. That work method, which in Creative Education Laboratory we call “expressing meanings”, was
very accurately commented on by Robert Rehfeld: “Imagination
requires another imagination”.
Finally, each participant chooses their place that will constitute
the basis for further work and developing a plastic installation or a
performance. Symbolic meaning of that place, its history, but also
colours, sounds, tastes, smells, are the materials that become
subjects to analysis and as such constitute points of departure for
one’s own expression.
Plastic installation in contemporary art is a very important medium. The project participants will have the opportunity to learn its
essence and history and enrich the knowledge gained with the proper creative experience.
The finished “My Place” works will be presented not only to other
project participants but also to the guests invited for that purpose.
The entire process will be videotaped. Every evening we will watch
photos used as material for discussion and analysis. This will allow
the programme participants to get acquainted with what the others
are doing and simultaneously to observe the creation of an artistic
document of the entire process. Today, when documentary recording is frequently the only trace of creative activity, the presence
of video artist Barbara Konopka is fundamental.
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Apart from practical classes during the course of the “Space
and place” project there will be time for presenting documentation
(slides, pictures, video films, TV films, publications) of the projects
carried out by the Creative Education Laboratory and the people
invited to co-operate. Asking question is about the form of documentation and its way of presentation and propagation may constitute an important, practical issue to the future museum or cultural centre employees.
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Urszula K
ochanowsk
a
Kochanowsk
ochanowska
R eading pictures
T HE
PURPOSES OF THE WORKSHOP
To make the students sensitive of the phenomena of visual arts
(from major historical board and oil paintings through comics, billboards, and city planning assumptions).
To prepare young students to consciously receive works of art
and visual phenomena.
To develop the habit of formal analysis of the artistic language of
pictures and other works of visual arts.
To introduce major aspects of the history of arts through presenting changes in painting techniques and their influence on the
artistic shape of the works.
To enable confrontation with matter when developing own drawings and paintings.
To inspire students to personal development and exploration into
the world of plastic arts.
T HE
GENERAL OUTLINE OF THE WORKSHOP
Regular meetings will be based on the analysis of a particular
picture representative of its period, style, place of creation, au-
Urszula Kochanowska: painter, graduate of the Faculty of Painting at the Academy of
Fine Arts in Warsaw, she studied at universities in Bologna, Florence and Siena, her
art works were exhibited in Poland and Italy; engaged in activities of the “third theatre” in Poland and Italy, she had lectures on art at Warsaw University (Faculty of
Physics), Universita per Stranieri in Siena and Universita “La Sapienza” in Rome; the
co-founder of the private art school in Warsaw (1991), she founded and managed the
“Czytelnik” art gallery (1993-1996).
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thor, etc. The subsequent classes present chronologically subsequent or stylistically close phenomena. The work presented to the
participants is subject to a multidimensional analysis:
1. Compositional and colour structure. The concepts of rhythm, rhyme, contrast, stability, dynamics, the Apollonian and
Dionysian character, classicism, romanticism, etc.
2. Placing a work of art in the history treated as development
of ways of presenting a multi-dimensional reality on the platform of a picture.
3. Period characteristics.
4. Drawing from nature.
The so-presented analysis will constitute an excuse to showing differences between a literary and a painter’s picture description. It enables acquainting listeners with basic components
(“grammar”) of the language of visual arts. It creates a field for
developing the talk about historic transformations that the depicting means and tools (artist’s workshop) were subject to over
the centuries.
In order to provide the workshop participants with the broadest
possible perspective on the plastic arts, the regular meetings will
be interwoven with lectures on the psychology of creation. The
subject matter of the lectures are psychical issues connected with
the creative process in the visual arts and inherent in an artist’s
work. Exemplary topics include:
– the problem of preserving sincerity and openness towards
one’s own creative inspirations and intuitions during work;
– the necessity to make very clear choices – ruthless decisions when planning and realising a work at every stage of
its development; controlling impatience – an internal struggle of an artist to create a mature, finite result of their
work;
– the issue of error in arts and artistic development.
The lectures on the psychology of creation and “becoming of a
work of art” aim at a deeper analysis of the specificity of plastic
arts, showing the close relation between artists of all periods, and
– which is not without significance – breaking through the monotony of the main classes.
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T HE
STRUCTURE OF A CLASS
(EXAMPLE )
Task: In a dim corner of the classroom we place a still life consisting of a burning candle in a plain holder and a mirror reflecting the
candlelight. With pencils and water-colours the students try to
draw and then to paint the burning candle. When working they are
corrected and encouraged to draw what they see rather than what
they know about the objects they are drawing.
Comment: This exercise is an opportunity for the talk about
values – categories of Light and Darkness. One can refer here to
the descriptions of manifestations of those categories known to
the students.
Task: The analysis of Georges De la Tour’s Woman with a Flea
(1638) – reproduction, slide.
Comment: I choose that particular picture because:
– it is an example of a picture by an artist that is a master in
painting figures in interiors where the darkness of night is
lighted by only the flame of a candle or a torch;
– apart from its entire power of artistic expression it also contains an anecdote that weakens the “dramatic character” of
the conversation and makes it an easy example to remember; it is representative for the dark souls of the thirty-year
war;
– it is an extreme demonstration of one of the basic contrasts
used by painters: the one between light and darkness;
– it demonstrates the fact that in the language of painting
some things are described and underlined by others (e.g. in
Italy during early Renaissance the real “foreground” presence of the portrayed person is brought out by the depth and
space of the landscape in the background; in the Dutch landscapes the impression of vastness is reinforced by the contrasting vertical rhythm of a row of trees, etc.).
Lecture summary: The painting under discussion has a clearly
static composition. This is caused by the domination of complementary vertical and horizontal lines. The chair and the candle standing on it (obviously vertical), as well as the stool on which the
figure is sitting are located “in front” of the viewer without the
dynamic diagonal lines of perspective. The figure’s arms and hands
squeezing a flea are on one horizontal line with the flame. Together
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with the vertical folds of the sleeve they form the centre of the
picture. That is where the anecdote is told. The centrality of that
place is strengthened by the strongest (thus the most noticeable)
whites used for the flame and the reflections on the shirt. The light
creates an oval space and weakly lights the darkness around. The
figure’s body fills the picture with the “warming ” diagonal lines of
calves and shoulders, though, remarkably, the head is bend so that
the shape of the face continues the horizontal line of the top rim of
the chair.
The body is smooth, without wrinkles and details, as if it was
made of china. That is probably because it is not the topic and
object of the study.
The red of the chair (as it seems, the favourite colour of the
artist) reinforces the shades of brown, which dominate in the picture. It happens frequently in painting that browns are “enriched”
with red. Red is “deepened” by the neighbouring or underlying brown.
It is worth noting how subtle an operation it is that in order to
paint the entire picture the artist uses only the colours contained
in the burning candle. Blacks and browns – the colour of the wick,
bright whites and yellows – like the core of the flame plasma, shades of orange (through red), can be sometimes noticed on the very
top of the flame.
One should say a few words about de La Tour’s painting method
consisting in starting the painting process with a brown-red layer
put on its entire area and subsequently applying thin layers of paint
up to the deepest strokes with the clearest white.
Comment: These are the basic motives that should be touched
upon in a formal analysis of that picture. The description can, of
course, be developed in several directions depending on the degree
of understanding on the part of the students and the quality of the
contact between them and the teacher.
Plastic solutions to the problem of presenting a female figure in
a small frame lit by a candle flame can be also observed in the four
versions of The Penance of Maria Magdalene (about 1642–44). The
situations presented on these pictures are said to carry many
meanings not associated with art. Shortly speaking Woman with a
Flea is less important a picture than the representations of The
Penance of Maria Magdalene . The artistic solutions make no priorities in this respect.
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419
Example of a literary description: “Magdalene touches a skull
that symbolises the vanity of human life. […] We cannot see Magdalena’s eyes, therefore we cannot see if she is looking at the
flame or at its reflection. The candle is burning so the flame will
soon go out. But that is a real flame, light, and warmth. The second flame is a mirror reflection, an illusion in a black rectangle.
That candle burns out just like the life of a sinner. That is what the
woman with long hair, beautiful face and neck, broad hands, and
shapely fingers is thinking about. The arrangement details, such as
the skull, jewels, real and reflected light, carry a symbolic meaning”
(History of World’s Art , Warsaw 1998).
Comment: The Penance of Maria Magdalene is a picture saturated with vast symbolic and philosophical messages. Therefore, I
consider such a “literary” description as justified. However if a
painter would describe the same fragment of the picture in the
language of painting, they would use different names for certain
elements.
Example of a plastic description: The hands of Magdalene are
needed where they are right now, on the skull because they reinforce and vary (e.g. through the play of lights on the fingers) the
diagonal line created by the lighted arm, the oval of the skull, knees, the red colour of the dress folds on the feet. That line is placed
close to the picture’s diagonal and creates the basic arrangement
division of its area, a division that conditions the distribution of
other elements.
We cannot see Magdalena’s eyes, maybe that makes her figure
more enigmatic and universal, and because one cannot position the
face and the skull (two synchronic ovals) so that they should be
“looking” in the same direction, as from the formal point of view
that would be “boring”. In another version of the Penance of Magdalene we can see her profile much better, but then the skull on her
knees is “looking” clearly in our direction. The real candle and the
one reflected in the mirror exist more clearly thanks to that duality, especially that it is brought out by the golden frame, which in
turn is located on a completely dark, contrasting background.
The period (extract): At this point one should quote some encyclopedic information about the Baroque. It was a style that spread out from Rome and developed in the beginning of the 17 th century. It was substantially related to the movements of reformation
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and counterreformation in the Catholic Church, and to the huge
amount of gold that was brought into Europe since the discovery of
America. The restless art style was also influenced by the chaos in
the spirits of the inhabitants of Europe plagued by wars, hunger,
epidemics, and huge social contrasts.
Baroque is a style that aims at impressing and surprising, where what counts is movement, emphasis, free imagination, monumentality. It is a style that loves extremes, eccentricities, and
illusions.
Conclusion of the lecture: On that background de La Tour himself could be presented as a true son of his times; quote some
facts from his biography and ask the students to think about the
following question:
How do they imagine the internal life, thoughts, and feelings of a
man that paints such pictures – full of silence, intimacy, contemplation – and simultaneously is a genuine farmer; cultivates land,
buys and sells cows, takes care of crops, firmly represents the
interests of his family, ruthlessly turns down the starving people’s
requests for cereal, and in peace time unleashes packs of greyhounds, which damage the neighbours’ property?
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K atar
zyna Rok
osz
atarzyna
Rokosz
T raining at the National Museum
In the contemporary world and society museums are an important element of the system made up of broadly understood
cultural educational institutions; statutes of museums guarantee their educational character. The arts museum, through its
history, has radically changed its image both as far as methods
of exhibiting works of arts as well as forms of making them available to the public are concerned. Looking back at the 19 th century when museums had already been opened to the public but
still retained their very noble character catering to the tastes
of the so-called connoisseurs, and comparing them to today’s
institutions we can easily notice that the museum has changed
into an educational institution, open to public of all kinds, including specialists and “educated” public, school students and organised groups of aged people as well as children with parents.
In its offer, a modern museum has to cater to each of these
groups. This concerns both factual and plastic aspect of an exhibition (and also its technical aspect since there are also handicapped people).
Museums opened to the wide public already in the seventies,
mainly in the Unites States; European museums based on American reforms as a source of inspiration. In Poland the beginnings of
the new thinking about museum education date back to the nineties.
Katarzyna Rokosz: head of the Educational Department of the National Museum in
Warsaw.
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Polish museums have a traditional structure, developed system
of administration and generally poor technical facilities. There is no
efficient system of financing museums which are not state-owned
institutions (although sponsoring of museum exhibitions held by
institutions and foundations has already had its several-year-long
tradition). There is no organised system of teaching museum educators. In an arts museum educational activities require not only
art historians but also pedagogues, plastic artists and efficient
administrators with a degree in economy.
The workshop participants should have completed workshops
led by the Creative Education Laboratory. Demanded initial skills of
participants:
– ability to establish contacts with people of any age;
– basic knowledge of arts history;
– communicativeness (from the point of view of simplicity and
clarity of expression);
– responsiveness to events;
– creativity (from the point of view of use of an exhibition created by others).
The course should take one academic year.
The first semester will be devoted to learning about the institution – its structure, administration, principles of financing and research and educational activity.
Syllabus of the first semester:
1. Brief history of museums of artistic profile – transformations of the institution, structures of museum collections,
organisational forms and concepts of tasks to be fulfilled by
such an institution; the syllabus should also cover the history and collections of the National Museum in Warsaw.
2. Office and administrative structure of the National Museum;
what is arranged where, how to move between curators,
guards, etc.
3. Collections and galleries. Learning about the exhibitions, related publications and system of information about works of
art in the galleries.
4. Learning about the educational system – what a museum
offers and to whom (educational forms, materials for classes, brochures, posters and invitations to classes prepared
by educational officers).
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423
5. Expectations of all kinds of public with respect to museums;
expectations of curators with respect to educational officers; expectations of educational officers with respect to
other departments, etc.
6. What is allowed and what is forbidden – the formal regulations.
7. Financing of educational activity in the context of sponsoring
temporary exhibitions.
8. Temporary exhibitions – a form of presenting collections and
a challenge for educational officers.
Contrary to all appearances, this will not be a series of lectures
devoted to the subjects mentioned above; classes will be held in the
form requiring students to take an active part in them. In general, while
participating in the classes in the Museum, students will be encouraged to form “a community discovering the institution” and searching
for a method to carry out their own project in the museum. The meetings will be open to ideas; the above subjects are merely a suggestion which may be developed if students put forward any changes.
In the second semester the students will focus on preparing
their own project. This project will be the basis for obtaining credit
for the classes. The students will work in smaller groups. Each
group will have classes once a month – project consultations, with
unlimited access to galleries and library, unlimited as far as time
spent is concerned.
It will be possible to prepare activities for children run by the
author of the idea himself as well as to give a series of lectures
(e.g. focused on an important issue in art history whose subject is
connected with the temporary exhibition currently held). There is
only one limitation as far as ideas are concerned – they may not be
addressed at groups of school children visiting the Museum under
“museum-related lessons”.
Work in the second semester will include all the stages of the
preparations of the “educational project” from the idea to “bidding
farewell to the participants”. Thus, it will be necessary to prepare
a scenario (in writing), a cost estimate, and possibly an educational
form, poster or invitation and draw up contracts to be signed with
people invited to co-operate.
Depending on the subject of the meeting, classes will be run by
employees of the educational department of the Museum, experts
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in different collections, the director in charge of educational activity; there will also be activities in the form of meetings with employees in charge of the monument’s protection (museum’s guards,
guardians of the galleries).
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M ałgor
zata Litwinowicz
ałgorzata
M USIC IN CULTURE
Music has always been one of the most essential themes in the
workshops and internships offered to the “Culture Animation” students. They experience musicalness in its broad sense in such theatre centres as Gardzienice or Węgajty, where music is an integral
part of the theatre. At the workshops many students for the first
time had the occasion to listen to music which broke the patterns
adopted and followed in the traditional Polish model of musical education whose unintentional result was the conviction of many that
music is accessible only to the few. Whether you are the lucky
chosen one or not is determined by the inborn talent and the early
years of your life. The experience of a short internship at the aforementioned theatres or the Summer School of Archaic Music organised by the “Muzyka Kresów” Foundation or last year’s workshop
run by Mieczysław Litwiński entitled “Tuning oneself” promoted quite a different perception of the “music related issues”. There was
no miraculous revelation which overcame technical difficulties as
well as no assurances that strong will is enough to become a famous musician or singer. There was no division into “light” and “hard”
music. There were no suggestions that if it is too late to practice
classical music or this kind of music does not seem attractive,
then one should turn to folk music – as the source of “true”, “centuries-old”, “open” and “archaic” message and some other values
which seem to be at hand. For many students the first musical
explorations were really in the sphere of folk but not because it
was considered especially “easy”, accessible to everyone regardless of their skills and musical knowledge.
A very important part of this experience in folk music, archaic
songs and voice workshops (to realise the rudimentary, physiological truth that the voice does not originate from our throat) is the
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experience of being in a music making group. It is well known that
artistic schools are oriented towards education of solo artists. Of
course, such forms as the choir, school orchestra or cameral band
do exist. But they are of secondary importance and are meant to
support solo artists. The culminating moment of the long-lasting
education process is the concert, the show – also individual, when
the technical and interpretative merits are subject to evaluation.
The education’s goal is not the harmony created by the entire team
of people playing together.
The most important and first experience of everyone who enters the path of musical animation should be quite to the contrary
of what I have written above; music is a group act, it is co-playing
and all the participants involved in the musical event are responsible for its quality, regardless whether they perform huge vocal parts
or occasionally play some simple percussion instrument. However,
the introductory classes should not be the education in the “basics of playing” some instrument or elementary vocal training but
exercises which allow students to experience the true partnership
based, attentive music making, which is first of all a means of communication. This type of classes opens the potential for further
musical development – by learning essential parts of the musical
ABC: rhythm, sound, silence, voice – and are related to the idea of
animation in its broad sense, where animation is the attention,
openness and competence enabling communication between people who speak different languages.
1. As introductory classes which do not require either any special musical skills or instrumental and vocal training we propose
the workshop of Jacek Ostaszewski, the musician, co-founder of
“Osjan” band and composer, entitled “The Way of Sound”. The applied method, according to its author, helps develop and strengthen “musical awareness and openness to form”. The method developed by Jacek Ostaszewski in co-operation with Radosław Nowakowski draws on the Indian school of playing percussion instruments, where each beat has a corresponding syllable pronounced
(a special syllable reserved for a rest). The rhythms, which get
more and more complex, are never aimed at mastering perfect
individual skills. The sense of competition, so often considered “natural”, is replaced with the sense of partnership and attention. You
clasp/beat your rhythm to somebody to be understood and to get
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an answer. The special “test” here is not the correct reconstruction of the scheme or the unique performance and interpretation of
the work of art before the teacher but mastering of this skill to an
extent that allows the encoding and decoding of messages.
The training function is also to provide the co-ordination of the
body and mind – every exercise involves arms, legs, lips, memory
and consciousness. Rhythmical schemes are not left only to the
body which will “automatically follow” but every action should be
performed with full attention. Ostaszewski’s workshop covers also
the melodic exercises, which are based on the same principles:
attention, partnership and full individual involvement and personal
responsibility. The subsequent workshop stages are devoted to different music areas, the key is to recognise and understand the
music scale. The rich and interesting musical material performed
at the classes is not for the pure pleasure of singing. The acceptance of a person does not equal the approval of the lack of precision and attention, satisfaction is not a false self-contentment.
That is why performing of different harmonies must be always a
conscious and attentive process.
2. Even when we refer to our favourite recordings or a phenomenal concert, we can hardly find words to say more than “wonderful”,
“great”, etc. Absolutely beyond our capacity to name things are
Arabic makam , Indian raga or… Karol Szymanowski – since we find
ourselves helpless also when faced with classical or contemporary
music. We lack the simple aesthetic categories which could be used
adequately. The programme of studies in culture or culture animation so far has not included classes which would teach the students
terms applicable to music as a cultural phenomenon.
The programme of the seminar entitled “Music in culture” has
been developed to meet the needs of education in “Culture Animation” by professor Sławomira Żerańska-Kominek (Department of
Ethnomusicology at the Musicology Institute of the University of
Warsaw, for many years a lecturer and author, among others, of
Music in Culture. Introduction to Ethnomusicology ). The classes
conducted by the musicology expert are to introduce the students
to the cultural aspects of music and music making. What is proposed here is not the critical workshop offering formal tools and precise analyses of music language, but the anthropological workshop
focused on the “music making” man.
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The inevitable question is whether the two experiences are separable, or in other words: is it possible to carry out the anthropology of music (even on the most basic level) without the knowledge
of notation, basic rhythmic notation and the most general categories used in musicology? Does it not restrict the object’s autonomy – since the musical event is considered in terms of performance? Is it possible in our culture to discuss literature not knowing
the ABC? Questions like these are sure to emerge during classes.
It seems that answer is not to eliminate the language of musicology (as too hermetic and not applicable to culture) in favour of
anthropology but to combine the two in a skilful way. Though the
starting point of these classes is ethnomusicology, they will not be
limited to folk music because the elementary observation makes us
conclude that the music called “folk” or “ethnic” by Europeans is a
genre well codified, described, disciplined and belonging in the so
called high culture; so the “ethnic” turns out to be “classical”. The
elementary intercultural music experience starts from the abandonment of these categories, or at least from the conclusion that
these categories are not universal either. Secondly, the class’s
purpose is to restore the language which will help express music
related opinions typical of our culture. The anthropology of “classical”, “contemporary” or “light” music is equally justified as the
anthropology of “archaic” music.
3. Does this programme of music education provide any room
for practising music by the students? The workshop run by Maciej
Rychły entitled “Nominal music” is a proposal which allows the participants to experience the musical alphabet directly. Like other
classes devoted to music it is not aimed at educating maestros or
developing the dormant vocal or instrumental talents, but it provides an opportunity to practice music. But mere uttering the sound
or pressing fingers against musical instrument will not be considered the ultimate success (more psychological than musical) during
these classes. The classes are designed rather to teach some
musical code, the ABC, and provide such tools which allow students to perceive and perform music consciously instead of intuitively.
The classes will focus on different musicians, their life paths,
showing how complex and versatile the alphabet of the European
music is (this will be the material of the first series). But the clas-
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429
ses will not be devoted to the life stories of musicians. The individual biographies will be read not in the literary form but from the
music, which is considered to provide the symptomatic material
for a certain personality type (in European culture). These classes
will require the skilful use of the musical alphabet, otherwise the
reading of “individual texts” will be out of question. The musical
text as the text of culture is the most concise statement expressing the idea of these classes. It is therefore the proposal of musical practice in the profound cultural context. The students will also
read and interpret selected theoretical texts.
This is the initial, rather limited proposal for classes included in
the musical “basket”. Their arrangement should not suggest any
necessity to go through some carefully planned educational process – from the elementary workshop “The Way of Sound”, through
the initiation in the theoretic language and the workshop run by
Maciej Rychły at the end which is addressed to narrow group of
carefully selected enthusiasts (where the power of enthusiasm will
not be the exclusive criterion). We assume that the students will
be allowed to choose classes. The condition crucial to the musical
enterprise’s success is the students’ approach – seeking instead
of passivity. During the classes offered by us they will not manage
to make happen their dreams about a musical career or mastering
some instrument (“I have dreamt about it all my life…”). But contact with distinguished musicians and musicologists will help to
single out music as the autonomous subject of cultural studies and
an area of animation activities which are not meant as performance but as cultural mediation and dialogue.
Individual musical skills and awareness will be developed at internships at – among others – Summer School of Archaic Music led
by the “Muzyka Kresów” (“Music of Borderland”) Foundation, Dom
Tańca (House of Dance) in Warsaw, the Summer School of Old Music, the Ethnographic Museum (concerts in the series “Music at
Museum”), the “Lutnia Staropolska” (“Old-Polish Lute”) Foundation, Summer Academy in Scheersberg.
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Tom asz Dziedziczak
J acek Ostaszewski’s
“Sound and silence”
workshops
Jacek Ostaszewski’s workshops train permanent attention and
involve a never-ending search for a partner. The working materials
are sound, silence, rhythm, and their interrelations.
The first attempts of that kind were made by the first “Osjan”
musicians: Jacek Ostaszewski and Radosław Nowakowski; they tried
to find a method that would boost strengthening the “training of
musical vigilance and opening oneself to form” (this quotation and
the next ones from Jacek Ostaszewski) among group members.
That training was a process, it was not aiming at reaching some
definite form. In the beginning attempts were made at sorting out
the essence of rhythm, reduce it into the simplest units but simultaneously having a legible meaning in order to use those elements,
whose nature the group tried to explore, for building more complex
structures (whereby they are considered as complex and thus classified by the differentiating human mind). For that purpose a method used by the Indian percussion school was applied where each
strike corresponds to a particular syllable, whereby one syllable is
reserved for a musical rest. Particular syllables are assigned to
specific instruments, so that the rhythm of every instrument can
be uttered separately and jointly. Before a musician starts to play
Jacek Ostaszewski: musician, co-founder of the “Osjan” music group, lecturer at the
Theatre Academy in Cracow, composer, author of innovative music workshops.
Tomasz Dziedziczak: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University,
author of the study “The Road of Sound” on Jacek Ostaszewski’s production (a master’s thesis written under the guidance of prof. Zbigniew Osiński).
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431
they have to be able to recite the entire rhythmical structure of a
piece without mistakes. Sometimes there are a lot of syllables as a
given motive is written for many various instruments. Jacek Ostaszewski’s workshops employ three syllables: “ta”, which corresponds
to the strike of the right hand, “ka”, which corresponds to the
strike of the left hand, and “na”, which denotes a rest. The rhythms realised by simultaneous strikes of hands and uttering their
corresponding syllables correspond to the basic rhythm defining
the end and the beginning of a tact. That rhythm is beaten by feet.
Regardless of technical details this method serves the practice
of concentration and focusing attention on one object, which in
this case is rhythm, and more particularly, the sequence of strikes
of arms and legs, as well as their corresponding syllables. In that
unusual situation the mind has to be constantly alert and cannot
get distracted by casual thoughts. If attention is distracted for
one moment, the rhythm is lost and it is hard to get it back. Beginners often take some time to co-ordinate the activity of two seemingly independent centres: body and mind, but as time passes
everyone has a chance to learn that in reality they are not separate but constitute one harmonised whole.
An aid in becoming aware of that unity can also be work with
silence, which actually is a short meditation that opens up every
meeting. Focusing one’s attention for several minutes on constant
inspirations and expirations and also on other sounds coming from
the surrounding world relaxes body and mind, which frequently are
full of chaos and tension. The feeling of calmness and safety takes
over and perception is broadened. The sounds that we do not usually perceive or that we perceive carelessly and superficially as a
result of the cacophony of thoughts that attack our dispersed mind
suddenly appear in our mind with full clarity and show their endless
richness. Also other senses, remaining in the state of vigilant rest
and not being tormented by the necessity to constantly devote
attention to one object artificially exposed by the mind, receive
many surprising signals and stimuli constituting a whole that is
becoming more perceptible. We begin to realise that we, too, belong to that whole, that nothing really separates us from it.
The workshops are open for everyone and their main task is to
teach mutual awareness, plain communication, and that simple
forms can give joy. Although in this case music is the form, the
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ability to focus attention on everything and everyone around at any
moment (or only on one object) is a desirable one for our daily lives
and in that sense the workshop can help those whose attention is
constantly distracted to such an extent that they start having
problems with themselves and with interacting with others.
Jacek Ostaszewski’s workshops can be called spiritual training
as long as the spirituality in question “sets no limits, does not ask
you what faith you represent”, and is no religion with own writings,
dogmas, principles. That is a sort of spirituality that “does not try
to compete with any church but is a simple attention, and when
that attention is deepened, it can be called love”. That love, however, is deprived of any sentiments, it is not self-centred. The workshop, which develops every day and every hour, allows its participants to reach more and more consciously that exceptional state
of mind that expects nothing from itself and from others and does
not evaluate anything. Such an attitude is the perceiving of reality
as a permanent partner that one can come into contact with, avoiding plunging into the jungle of one’s thoughts. An activity consisting in immediate (without conceptual thinking) transmission of
rhythmical impulse through clapping one’s hands is a constant search for a partner that will be able to react immediately by repeating a given sequence and sending another self-generated impulse
to the next chosen person. “When I clap my hands at someone it
does not matter if they are Catholic, Protestant, or Buddhist – if
they are able to clap back I can feel the touch. That is the simplest
form of existence”. Exercises consisting in finding the right interval (i.e. the distance between sounds), of course, also rely on the
principle of mutual partnership.
This work provides a rare opportunity for the creative development of one’s own skills and extending theoretical knowledge in
that area – an opportunity for those who had no chance for education in musical schools but who still want to be musically active
within the scope of their abilities. The point is that those abilities
frequently remain hidden. The programmes of the traditional education system do not foresee a place for amateurs (thus lovers,
supporters that do something for pleasure and not professionally,
which need not mean without skill!) and train only individuals considered on the basis of arbitrary decisions as talented. This way
divisions are created – people are divided into capable and incapable
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of performing an artistic profession in a given domain (because,
unfortunately, it is not only music that suffers from that disease of
polarisation); harm is done to those also that passed all examinations and were eliminated as inappropriate, with no musical skill,
tone-deaf. At classes they are presented with only one model of
musical perception defined by a textbook convention, which does
not always remain open to an individual’s feeling and does not consider the deep influence it has on our psyche.
Jacek Ostaszewski’s open workshops, in accordance with their
name, open up new possibilities for treating music and oneself in
relation to it. The participants of the workshops can include people
from all walks of life who have different needs and motivations.
Those people, regardless of their profession and interests, are connected by the need for gaining new experiences and living through
something which goes beyond the practice of everyday life. Some of
them, usually after several meetings, will perhaps begin to find new
qualities in “everyday life”. This is an important goal of the open
workshop that could be labelled as raising awareness through deepening attention directed at what is inside and outside ourselves
and at the actual unity of those seemingly separate aspects of
reality. That is, of course, not the only goal of the workshops, which,
apart from a certain therapeutic training, are also a novel proposal
for teaching music addressed at the people who for various reasons cannot enter musical schools anymore.
The participants have a chance to gain a strong bond with music
or, generally speaking, with the world of sounds and silence that
surrounds them. Music ceases to be the goal – it becomes a measure enabling achievement of the internal harmony. Music is in a
position to restore harmony in a person and the unity of body and
mind as “it is able to fulfil the mind substituting thoughts with
sounds”. Simultaneously, in this ephemeral music, in the fact that
sound exists and ceases, Jacek Ostaszewski finds an analogy to
life, to the fragility of a moment: “Just like we are not able to see a
whole piece at the same time, we are not able to see the whole
day. There is always some memory of the whole but we experience
a piece from one moment to another, therefore music is a good
metaphor for what we call our own life. Using the example of music
I can explain much more, explain what we call our own barriers. It is
about becoming aware of those simple and sometimes stubborn
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obstacles that prevent us from functioning harmoniously in life. In
the open workshops that metaphoric side of music is very important”.
How are obstacles disclosed? Basically, an obstacle is demonstrated by structural resistance that we encounter when trying
to repeat some rhythm or interval – “if we are not able to repeat
something, it means that something withholds us from it. An obstacle is not named but we touch it somewhere”. Musical structure helps in overcoming one’s barriers through our constant attempts at repeating it. That structure changes together with the
developing process of mastering it – difficulties are applied gradually; the next work stage begins.
The workshops are thus of different difficulty levels as there is
nothing more dry, boring, and unproductive than a perfectly mastered structure. Initially we have a sense of achievement having mastered a given form which can be, for example, a song in the 6/8
rhythm but as time passes we begin to feel deficiency and a sort of
limitation. We crave for something new. That is the time to pass
over to the next level. However, we should never forget that the
purpose of our work is not mastering some form nor gaining a
specific effect – the major goal is mastering communication through process. Interestingly, however, in the workshop author’s opinion it is not about eliminating all resistance, moreover, overcoming resistance is not progress for him. Easiness and difficulty are
like sound and silence, day and night, male and female element, and
one cannot exist without the other. We would probably not feel joy
if we had no opportunities to feel sadness from time to time. Besides, as one Zen master would say: “The mind of a beginner bears
many possibilities, the mind of an expert – only few”. We should
thus always be beginners, only at various stages.
To sum up, Jacek Ostaszewki’s open workshops aim mainly at
mastering communication in interpersonal relations. The workshops
are based on the artist’s personal experience in the area of Zen
Buddhism restoring mind to the basic state, free of artificial products of culture and various emotional and mental dependancess,
and which use the methods of working with musical material developed by Jacek Ostaszewski and Radosław Nowakowski in the first
years of “Osjan’s” activity. They attempt at reducing the polarity
of body and mind, developing the attitude: “Do not reject anything,
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do not cling to anything, be maximally cautious and simply accept
whatever comes up”. Practising internal concentration allows one
to get to know oneself and one’s own conditions.
At one of the workshops Jacek Ostaszewski said it is worth
looking at one’s life like at a great concert and listen to it always
the way one listens to a workshop participant who discovers us as
a partner for conversation without words and whose readiness for
the conversation we become aware of. Although everyday we usually do not clap our hands at one another nor do we sing that way,
if we keep an open and sober mind at all times, we will be able to
hear the wonderful music of the Universe that is being played in us
all the time.
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M aciej Rychły
N ominal music
The workshop entitled “Nominal music” developed for the students of “Culture Animation” is a way to fulfil certain broader task
of “understanding culture and intelligent activity therein”, to “teach effective use of tools”, which in this case are musical concepts
in order to “understand culture and to create it”.
It got cheaper
Music is nowadays being pushed everywhere. You can close your
eyes if you do not want to see. It is hard, however, to plug your
ears if you do not want to hear. Music is cut up, attached to situations, assigned functions that it was not made for. It is often
difficult to put those consumable scraps together to obtain a whole picture.
Musical values develop in time. Music is a process-based art. In
order to arrive at the value of a musical work one needs to devote
part of one’s life to it and as much time as the work requires.
Compression is impossible here.
The faster pace of life has a devastating influence on the classic
music line and frequently a musical experience boils down to a threeminute song. This is the amount of attention that an average European is able to award to music, this is how much time they have for
Maciej Rychły: psychologist, musician and composer, co-founder of the “Kwartet
Jorgi” music group, involved in research work in archaic music of traditional cultures;
collaborator of the “Kana” Theatre in Szczecin, “Lalka” Theatre in Warsaw, “Wierszalin” Theatre in Supraśl; co-operates permanently with the “Gardzienice” Theatre (he
[re]constructed ancient music for the performance Metamorphosis ) and the Academy
of Theatrical Practices.
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437
it. This has a disastrous effect on the reception of extended musical forms, which, if looked at from the time perspective of a song,
are impossible to capture.
People think that musical sensitivity is an inborn feature and as
such needs not be trained. Therefore, they are not ashamed to talk
about all kinds of music unaware of their own incompetence. They
are “educated” by mass media, which promote cheap consumption
of “short messages”.
Living in the age of modern technology, which enables seemingly unlimited communication, they will have no access to the multiple stylistics and multidimensional music based on a different
time perception than that in case of a song. Instead of awakening interest, the multiplicity of various musical examples “lulls”
the audience, making the reception shallow instead of deepening
it.
Nominal music
The suggested form of meetings – a workshop – arises from the
conviction that practising culture, i.e. gaining individual experience,
leads to an inexpressible understanding. Talking about music or
merely passive listening to it frequently comes to an end not leading to a full understanding. Frequently, an artist gives up practising art for the sake of reflecting upon it. Then they become like a
philosopher. “Artistic cognition” means learning the physicality of
the material out of which a work is built. In case of music this
means learning the physicality of sound. One can listen to recordings at various rhythms, read about them and discuss them hoping that it will enable us to arrive at the essence of the impact of
a rhythmical structure and will explain the reason for existence of
a given rhythmical form; however, even a simple exercise, knocking
a rhythm against a table, can lead to a deeper understanding of its
meaning than merely talking about it. Proper activity makes sense
when it develops new concepts. Practising the living sound is important for understanding musical concepts. Of course, one can
develop reflection, teach “the juggling of names”, awaken an erudite who uses their intelligence for creating a fence that separates
them from experience and reception. The erudite’s body sleeps,
the stream of sound in music does not open up concepts, the principle of the resonance of reception does not work. A person who
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knows something about music is sensitive to the musicality of the
world. A person who “juggles names” may not know what the stream of music carries with itself, they are not a receiver, albeit they
can say a lot about music.
Concepts
The workshop is meant to “attack” chosen musical concepts at
every meeting. We “attack” and call musical concepts by musical
examples – etudes. The styles and epochs focus around certain
musical concepts – for example one epoch loves bringing out a broad melody, another one experiments with harmony or with rhythm,
or colour, etc. While working with concepts we will use a broadly
understood musical culture.
OPUS – NOMINAL CHARACTER OF A FORM
We are heirs of a culture that has developed concepts of a musical work.
Every “opus” is made up of basic concepts, it expresses its
unique sense. What does it express? That cannot be verbalised. If
it could, they would need not be played and sung. Every epoch tries
to pierce the living substance of music with words, it tries to label
and disable the tormenting, irrational phenomenon of music. Words,
however, live for a shorter time than musical metaphors resurrected by subsequent waves of musicians.
Opus – a stable point of culture. An approved opus lasts for
centuries. It is a value, an invariable that determines the identity of
a culture.
Opus – a unique value of European culture.
Opus – a musical Persona.
Opus – personal (nominal) character of music.
I created that – says a person and takes responsibility for the
shape of a work.
OPUS vs. WRITING
A written work can be erroreous or incomplete. In order to extend
or better express their will composers develop language defining
the ways of interpreting music.
Is the music written down in form of notes not a scenario of an
abstract movement, a sequence of gestures? Is a musical instru-
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ment not a playing sculpture? And notes – are they not a detailed
description of a dance awakening sounds?
If you want to get to know music, you have to know what constitutes it, you have to know what is invariable therein. The value here
is not creating chaos but the awareness and confidence of an ordering gesture that brings musical values. If you learn the invariable, you will know which interpretation is good and which is bad.
THE ROAD TO BE TAKEN – A SKETCHBOOK
(the process of a workshop, stages of work)
Subsequent workshop classes will be devoted to experiencing
the following elementary concepts:
INTERVALS – e.g. practising large and small steps through voice and movement. When making a step we get to know distance,
we measure distances with steps. Musical distances are codified,
they are strictly defined intervals having their (Greek and Latin)
names. You will learn what a fourth is and what secondary diminution is by practising, making the first musical steps. You learn the
“taste of intervals” and the proper effort needed for crossing them.
When you practice, the names of intervals – prime, second, third,
fourth, etc. – gain meaning, and you already know about them. Such
a meeting will also involve learning the opening steps – initial expressions, and closing formulas – cadence expressions. These are the
most conventionalised musical constants.
SCALE, TONALITY – exclamations, two-tone acclamations develop the sense of points-steps that we reach with our voice. Thus
the sense of structure is developed, practising sound with the
feeling that voice hits certain points. At this point the situation
gets difficult – the awareness of the musical scale reflected by the
voice is not a free wandering, it is ordered by the structure of the
scale.
MELODY – wandering around scales requires effort, and effort
imposes rest, and the need for rest discloses the rhythm of energy
outlay, rest, silence, are the experience of phrase, nature of musical
breathing of melody. The construction of melody has bodily roots, it
is derived from physiology. Through participation in the workshop,
the life of a melody line becomes the lifeline of your body and the
melody makes the body musical, makes it more “culture-bound”, frees and models it, as participation in the workshop means accultura-
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tion, making musical concepts inteligible. This is the space of culture.
SOUND COMBINATIONS / HARMONIES
SONORISTICS (SNAPS, MURMURS, GRATES)
RHYTHM, TIME, PACE – touches of discontinuity. Touch and escape, touch and escape – these short encounters make up a mosaic,
thus there is a purpose to it: rhythm. When rhythmical cycles are
always based on the same basic structure we talk about time:
rhythms are always countable in the same way. Practising “touches” leads to capturing concepts. Of course, those “touches”
can be realised by tapping, clapping, playing drums – that has a
minor importance for understanding the concepts of rhythm, pace,
time. By practising you will feel what grave , largo , andante , or presto playing is and you will understand that the same rhythm played
at different paces gains different meanings, just like when it is read
through at a different time. A live presentation enables hearing it,
and body dynamics – to feel it.
ARTICULATION / EMOTIONAL CODES IN MUSIC
SYNESTHESIA / EXTRAMUSICAL MEANINGS
HOT CREATION / IMPROVISATION (told in the slang of musicians):
“Did they play clouds or fish?” – they ask after the concert. Clouds
– are wallpaper images, which are pleasant in perception, something rather amorphous, deprived of drama, sense, and life. Just
to make everyone see that musical production is going on. A cloud
– air cotton wool, feathery filler, seemingly high and heavenly, yet
nothing special. A true improvisation is a fish, a deep-sea fish, and
if one aims high, a “flying fish”. The deep muse needs to be lured.
Improvisation means hunting a living impulse, an impulse from a
untamed, deep-sea drive.
How to assess students, give them a credit for the workshop?
Through participation. It means gaining competence. Compression
is impossible. Music is a process-based art. You have to devote a
big portion of your life and wait for a stroke of understanding…
V. INITIATIVES
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V. INITIATIVES
Agata Chałupnik
I. P ROGRAMME OF COURSES
IN “GENDER THEATRE, GENDER
IN THEATRE”
An ISTA session called The Female Role as Represented on the
Stage in Various Cultures was held in 1986. Teamed up with scientists, representatives of various theatre traditions from Japan,
India, China, Bali and Europe discussed the different types of the
female role as represented on the stage. This subject is so vast
and interesting that it may provide grounds for the development of
a programme of academic courses.
Draft programme:
1. The concept of cultural gender – cultural gender vs. biological
gender; gender as a social role:
a) Margaret Mead, Trzy studia , Warszawa 1986;
b) Simone de Beauvoir, Druga płeć, Kraków 1972.
2. Ritual transvestism as a stage of the rite of passage:
a) Bruno Bettelheim, Rany symboliczne , Warszawa 1989.
3. The myth of Androgyne; hermaphroditism, androgynism as
performance of the image of coincidentia oppositorum :
a) Plato, Symposion ;
b) Mircea Eliade, Mefistofeles and Androgyn , Warszawa 1997;
c) Jan Kott, Płeć Rozalindy , Kraków 1992.
4. Theatre and liturgy – females absent on the stage:
a) ancient Greek theatre;
b) liturgical theatre;
c) Karl Kerenyi, Dionizos , Kraków 1996;
d) Jan Kott, Zjadanie bogów , Warszawa 1999;
e) Jerzy Axer, Filolog w teatrze , Warsaw 1991.
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5. Elizabethan theatre and drama:
a) William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, King Lear ;
b) Jan Kott, Szekspir współczesny , Kraków 1990;
c) Jan Kott, Płeć Rozalindy , Kraków 1992;
d) Crossing the Stage: Controversies on Cross-dressing , ed. Lesley
Ferris, London 1993;
e) Naomi Conn Liebler, Shakespeare’s Festive Tragedy: The Ritual Foundations of Genre , London 1995;
f) Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England , Cambridge 1996.
6. Gender in European baroque opera and ballet:
a) En Travesti: Women, Gender, Subversion, Opera , ed. Corinne E. Blackmerband, Patricia Juliana Smith, New York 1995;
b) Judith Lynne Hanna , Patterns of Dominance. Men, Women, and Homosexuality in Dance , „The Drama Review”, vol. 31 no 1;
c) Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex and Gender: Sings of Identity, Dominance, Defiance and Desire , Chicago 1988.
7. Males in female roles, females in male roles in Asian theatre:
a) Japanese No, Kabuki and Nihon Buyo theatres;
b) Indian Kathakali theatre;
c) various genres of Chinese opera;
d) Jadwiga Rodowicz, Pięć wcieleń kobiety w teatrze No , Warszawa 1993;
e) Mikołaj Melanowicz, Historia literatury japońskiej, Warszawa 1996;
f) Joyce Burkhalter Flueckinger, He Should Have Worn a Sari. A „Fa-
iled” Performance of a Central Indian Oral Epic , „The Drama Review”, Vol.
32, no 1;
g) Carol Martin, Feminist Analysis Across Cultures: Performing Gender
in India, „Woman and Performances, Vol. 3, no 2;
h) William MacDuff, Beautiful Boys in No Drama: The Idealisation of
Homoerotic Desire , „Asian Theatre Journal”, vol. 13 no 1;
i) Poh Sim Plowright, The Birdwoman and the Puppet King: a Study of
Inversion in Chinese Theatre , „New Theatre Quaterly”, no 50, vol. XIII;
j) L’energie de l’acteur, Anthropology Theatrale (2), „Bouffonneries” nr
15/16.
8. Great stars of the European theatre in male roles – Sara
Bernhardt, Asta Nielsen:
a) Cornelia Otis Skinner, Madame Sarah , Warszawa 1981;
b) Tony Howard, The Rest is Silence: Asta Nielsen as Hamlet , „Women
and Theatre Occasional Papers” 2.
V. INITIATIVES
445
II. M AGDALENA PROJECT
Materials presenting the Magdalena Project inspire the establishment of a similar female network across Poland. The Magdalena
Project is a world-wide network of affiliated females involved in the
theatre: directors, actresses and writers holding regular meetings
during festivals, sessions and workshops. The group publishes its
own journal entitled “The Open Page” and a newsletter. Magdalena
has been operating since 1986, and according to Julia Varley who
is in charge of the project at Odin Teatret, participation in the
project bore a major impact on her work and development – as an
actress and as a female – as well as on the efforts of a wide group
of female artists involved in works conducted under the Magdalena
Project . The Magdalena Project was joined by two Polish actresses
– Jolanta Krukowska, a member of “Akademia Ruchu” theatre, and
Anna Zubrzycka, an actress of “Gardzienice” theatre, who runs
her amateur theatre in Wrocław.
1. Organisation of a Magdalena Project meeting in Poland may
become an exciting animation event. The first step to set up a
Magdalena network in Poland will be classes in theatre performed by Polish females (directors: Izabela Cywińska, Anna Augustynowicz, Agnieszka Glińska, Agnieszka Lipiec-Wróblewska) and
in the position of females in the history of the Polish theatre (no
historian of the Polish theatre has ever adopted such a perspective).
2. Organisation of a scientific session entitled: “Females in the
Polish Theatre” and a review of plays staged by female artists. To
such a festival of female theatre we should invite females working
in professional and non-professional theatres as well as females
dealing with the history of the theatre and theatre criticism. Failure to include females in studies focused on the Polish theatre as
446
V. INITIATIVES
well as theatre studies does not imply that such reflections are
unnecessary. It should be noted, however, that there is no forum
where such issues may be tackled. Organisation of the network
would undoubtedly contribute to the integration and activation of
this community.
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V. INITIATIVES
Agnieszk
a Sienkiewicz
Agnieszka
W ORKSHOPS EMPLOYING WORK
METHODS APPLIED BY ODIN TEATRET
The goal of work with Odin Week participants is the promotion of
all types of activities pursued by its actors, applied working methods and action procedures. I would like to present a proposal for
workshops employing the methods developed by the Odin Teatret.
They have been applied by the team to deliver theatre workshops,
methods practising usage of voice and body, while the proposal of
workshops I would like to describe will employ similar working methods, this time applied in a brand-new context – fine arts. The
method I will apply may be used to deliver workshops focused on
various subjects.
In March 2000 the Centre for Contemporary Arts opened an
exhibition called Lost and Found . A Critical Review of the Contemporary British Design . It is a collective exhibition of British artists,
visual artists, designers of applied objects and clothes. The venue
presents works from all fields of art: fashion, applied art and visual
graphics – illustrations of books, magazines and record covers.
Visitors can limit themselves to seeing an enjoyable and colourful exhibition. But it is often the case that creative works inspire
rearrangement of home furniture or certain ideas can be used to
make a spectacular lamp from a bottle or a rubbish bin. Objects
displayed at the exhibition were not selected from many fine examples of exciting design at random. While preparing themselves for
Agnieszka Sienkiewicz: graduate of the “Culture Animation” and the Inter-Faculty
Individual Humanistic Studies at Warsaw University, collaborator of the Centre for
Contemporary Arts in Warsaw.
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V. INITIATIVES
work, artists begin the creative process seeking answers to such
questions as: What are optimum ways for capitalising on the technological progress while facing the threat of environmental contamination? What is the role of the designer in the world haunted by
a production surplus? Should designers consciously capitalise on
the limited resources of our Planet?
Visitors to the exhibition also challenge the issue of artistic
limits: is the distinction between art, design, fashion, music, architecture, entertainment, marketing, high and low culture still relevant? Can objects presented at the exhibition, which are undoubtedly highly original and intriguing, be classified as “art”? Has originality, uniqueness, lack of utilitarian functions endured as the hallmark of art? Do, in addition to attributing created objects with
functional properties, artists want to express anything else by these
means? Can such an exhibition become an attempt at a diagnosis
of contemporary society?
The workshop I recommend will put those questions in the limelight.
Workshop duration: four classroom hours, which will provide
ample time to see the exhibition, complete individual work, see the
works of the other participants and run a discussion, if necessary.
Workshop location: part one – Lost and found exhibition premises; part two – in the classroom.
Target audience: high school students aged 15–18 years, not
necessarily a class, approximately 20 persons. It is important to
select tasks that students would find exciting and comprehensible.
Materials: workshop participants will be asked to bring an object
from their house – a used, unnecessary thing that may be thrown
away. They can also bring things they are personally attached to,
but which are broken – such as a broken pen, an old dress, a pot, a
broken basket, used notebooks, old shabby books or comic books.
The selected materials participants are to work with must be
diverse enough to match the right object to every person. In addition, the selection criteria must be limited enough to assure integrity of all works that have to correspond to the overall profile of
the exhibition. The limitations include such criteria as second-hand
objects, a selected colour, fabric texture etc.
Participants will also be able to use glue, string, nails and pins.
Should participants need to use other materials or objects – such
V. INITIATIVES
449
as for instance, candles, a lamp, paint, colour pens – or complete
their work beyond the delimited space, they must justify their need.
If application of new materials or change of space is actually necessary, the facilitator may approve it.
T HE
COURSE OF THE WORKSHOP
1. A meeting in the room being the venue of participants’ creative activities. Each participant places the object he/she brought
in three separate locations of the room, depending on its profile.
PAPER OBJECTS, FABRICS, APPLIED OBJECTS.
All participants receive a piece of paper with inscribed questions,
a colour pen and blank post it notes on which individual questions
may be written. Participants gather their materials and take them
to the gallery. Equipped with a set of post it notes, the facilitator
also goes to see the exhibition. He/she has previously prepared
several subjects falling into three categories.
2.Participants visit the exhibition bearing following questions in
mind:
Which work employed objects with a similar profile to those you
brought from home?
Find the most functional object.
Find an object which is totally useless.
Find a work you would never have at your home.
Find a work that you like for some reason.
Which materials employed by the artist in his/her work encourage your positive or negative feelings?
Why did the artist use materials that are seen as ugly, waste or
even thrash? Does application of such materials determine the profile
of the work and its image?
Participants are free to pose other questions, too. To do so, in
addition to post it notes with inscribed questions, they are also equipped with blank ones to note down questions that come to their minds.
They place post it notes under works referred to in the given question.
3. After the visit to the exhibition, which is more thorough than
it would be if workshop participants did not have to pay attention
to specific works, everybody comes back to the room in which they
left all the objects brought from home. Each one of them receives
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V. INITIATIVES
a piece of paper, on which he/she is to write a sentence beginning
with words: Contemporary art… on the basis of exhibited works. It
does not have to be a comprehensive definition, but rather a sentence confirming an aspect of art realised on seeing the exhibition,
which may come as a result of simple associations. If a participant
is not able to formulate his/her individual sentence, there are several ready sentences to choose from:
Contemporary art is to depict beauty.
Contemporary art employs all possible materials.
Contemporary art? There is no such thing.
Contemporary art is functional.
„Contemporary art” is no longer Art.
Contemporary art is about trying to be original at all costs.
Contemporary art requires talent.
Contemporary art is random.
Next, participants select one subject from a category of their
choice and focusing on the subject, try to present their individual
definition or a sentence.
4. Each participant signs the works of the other people. It is
important that participants should highlight a distinctive feature
of contemporary art, which, as they believe, was outlined in the
paper written by their colleague. Perhaps there are also papers
that can bear the same title as the work written by the student
himself? Or maybe there are some papers that encourage his/her
strong opposition? Maybe the student has learnt something important, or notices something that he/she used to not notice?
5. All students return to their work to analyse whether or not
any of the titles coined are important to them for some reason. All
participants assume a common approach to specific works, and
the author of the discussed paper can justify his/her choice and
title as well as respond to all questions posed.
Then comes the moment to take a break from individual work to
analyse what is important for other students. What does another
student want to say about art, what did the artist want to express?
We may disagree with other students’ opinions, but everyone holds
the right to express an individual standpoint.
6. From all the suggested titles we select only one for our study. We go up to the gallery to find another study that can bear the
same title.
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V. INITIATIVES
Agnieszk
a M aciejewsk
a, M agdalena Ur
ynowicz,
Agnieszka
aciejewska,
Urynowicz,
K arolina Plask
aty
Plaskaty
E LEMENTS (A TRAINING PROJECT)
1
“T HE P UPPET C LINIC ” T HEATRE
“The Puppet Clinic” Theatre was established in May 1998 at the
Faculty of Puppet Theatre of the Wrocław Theatre Academy. Since
1991, the theatre has been located in the village of Wolimierz,
situated in the Izerskie Highlands, in the heart of the region commonly called to by ecologists as “The Black Triangle”. The Theatre is
housed at an old railway station, which was thoroughly renovated
by actors and their friends.
“The Puppet Clinic” is a community of individuals who have devoted their entire life to the theatre. They live besides each other,
create performances together, and all of them may be considered
to be their authors. Not only authors of a theatre play, but also
creators of day-to-day reality. Creative work in Wolimierz is an organic element of the local lifestyle. It is the place where life achieves its artistic dimension and any day may become a festival – and
indeed, theatre does inspire celebrations.
The creative freedom of the individual is the driving force of the
entire community, adding a brand-new quality to common life, and
the entire group supports individual expression. Adults support
“Wieśmaki” Children’s Station Theatre established by their offspring,
and children appear in plays staged by “The Clinic”.
Agnieszka Maciejewska, Magdalana Urynowicz, Karolina Plaskaty: students of Cultural Studies and “Culture Animation” at Warsaw University.
1
The project was carried out in October 2001.
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V. INITIATIVES
Henryk Waniek wrote about Wolimierz and its vicinity: “The one
who fails to believe in the end of the world, should go and see it. Let
him see that the dead forest is not a tale from the Graal circle and
it was not T.S. Eliot who thought up the Waste Land. Let him see
how the world appears after its end”. These words are making a
reference to the landscape which was affected by an environmental disaster in the early eighties. But they also refer somehow to
the inhabitants of Wolimierz, repatriates from the East who have
continued to feel alienated in the area for fifty years and have never
created a strong local community. The ruins of houses which have
been standing there for several hundred years and have been wrecked by vandals during the past decade also marks a certain end of
the world. Puppet masters are striving to save its last scraps
from oblivion. And so this old world has endured in renovated cupboards, tile stoves, in embroideries decorating clothes sewn in
Przecznica.
“The Puppet Theatre” goes beyond its artistic activities. Established by individuals living in the area and associated with the theatre, the Foundation for Alternative Cultures has been operating in
Wolimierz for several years. The Foundation organised “Ecotopia”,
an international environmental festival, held in Wolimierz in the summer of 1995. The initiative of the Foundation has also resulted in
the organisation of a wide variety of environmental workshops and
lectures addressed to children and teenagers from the former province of Jelenia Góra.
A visit to the Interplanetary Kingdom of Art will create a unique occasion for students to experience an alternative community. Wolimierz is a place where a part of its inhabitants puts in
place utopian concepts of the counterculture of the sixties. Mere
emigration of young, educated people from big cities creates
inevitable associations with the “hippie era”. Life in harmony with
the rhythm of nature, non-repressive attitude to animals, development of a brand new friendly platform for interpersonal relations, defining art and ordinariness as an integral whole – are
just selected values that are being implemented in Wolimierz.
These values represent a criticism of “the paradigm of insatiability”, the dominant model of Western culture. It is not exclusively negative criticism advocating destruction of all that is evil, but
it also implies efforts aimed at the gradual improvement of the
V. INITIATIVES
453
world. The change is triggered in the mind and actions of an
individual and is projected onto their contacts with other people,
their attitude to time, space, environment, and all other aspects
of life.
T HE
GOALS OF THE TRAINING
Acquisition of artistic skills. The main goal of the workshops is
to present practical artistic skills which are highly useful in the
work of the culture animator. All the skills acquired in Wolimierz
(making puppets, creating set designs, organisation of open air
events, creating music and making instruments) may be applied
during future projects in many various ways.
Presentation of the rules governing the functioning of a rural
alternative community. For the majority of participants the visit
to Wolimierz will mark their very first intense experience of an alternative community which, in addition to its values, stands apart
from the dominant model of country life. Many groups and settlements similar to Wolimierz may be found in Western Europe and
the United States. Poland is home to few such communities, but
we should expect that their number will continue to grow in the
future. Moreover, as many aspects of the community associated
with the theatre resemble a subculture, experience gained in Wolimierz may become useful in the future, especially in the context of
work with young people.
Despite the fact that individuals associated with “The Puppet
Clinic” launch a variety of initiatives to support the entire local
community, they continue to be treated like outsiders or misfits.
It seems to us that it is worthwhile to analyse the results of their
activities and the actual feedback of the inhabitants of neighbouring villages. Jemiołka, Wiktor and their friends are, in a way,
culture animators, but their position is highly difficult in this respect.
Acquisition of interpersonal skills. Joint work on the performance will give participants an insight into the rules governing operations of the creative team. Good teamwork is the key to the
success of the project and all students will have to comprehend it.
In addition, the encounter with “Wieśmaki” Station Theatre cre-
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V. INITIATIVES
ates an excellent occasion to gain experience in work with bright
and independent children which obviously sets extremely high requirements.
Post-workshop exhibition. Selected examples of fine arts made
by students during the workshops will be transported to Warsaw.
Combined with photographs, these works will be displayed during
an exhibition organised by workshop participants at the Institute
of Polish Culture.
Reports – anthropological analyses. Participants are to write
reports after completion of the training. It is important that besides individual comments on creative work, reports should also present brief anthropological analyses of selected fragments of Wolimierz’s reality. It seems to us that the need to write such an
analysis will force students to make more in-depth observations
during their stay and adopt categories learnt during classes in
cultural anthropology, anthropology of performance and theatre.
Selected analyses may be published in “Uniwersytet Kulturalny”.
R HYTHM
OF WORK , ACCOMMODATION
Rhythm of work. The duration of the training is two weeks,
entirely devoted to everyday workshops. Students spend evenings
at private homes or at the Station. It is important that participants should be able to allocate some of their time individually.
Workshops may cover a major meeting with inhabitants, a discussion or a jam session.
Accommodation. Accommodation of participants in private houses through the duration of training seems to be the best solution. Mainly because workshops have been scheduled for the autumn (artists travel with their plays during earlier seasons) and
the building of the Station, which is the standard place for accommodation of all guests of the theatre, is not the most pleasant
location at this time of the year. Besides, it is important to initiate
a direct contact with the team. To become genuine participants,
not guests or observers, students should get to understand those people and get an insight into their lifestyle. It is obligatory to
become a participant of not only creative work, but also the local
day-to-day existence.
V. INITIATIVES
T RAINING
455
SCHEDULE
Day zero: Participants meet at Warsaw Central railway station,
departure.
Day 1: Students arrive in the early morning. First encounter
with our hosts, accommodation in private houses. A meeting at
the Station with the entire “The Puppet Theatre” team in the evening. A team-building session after the meeting.
Day 2: Induction, visiting the households of the artists, excursions by foot to the vicinity of the town or a several-hour long
excursion to Stóg Izerski peak. An organisational meeting at the
Station in the evening to discuss plans and guidelines for creative
work, drum workshop.
Day 3-5: Work in one group – team-building activities, body and
voice activities, development of the performance script. Work for
the local community – clearing the surroundings of the Railway Station. Drum workshops in the evening.
Day 6-11: Workshops in separate groups. Creative and theatrical workshops: making puppets, machines and set design for the
performance. Preparations of the event focused on acting: how to
move within the open theatre space, animation and display of big
artistic formats. Co-operation with “Wieśmaki” Children’s Station
Theatre. Music workshops: presentation of principles for developing music for open air theatre, development of the musical framework of the performance, building instruments.
Day 12-14: Joint workshops involving all participants, detailed
preparations for the final version of the performance; organisation
of the event.
Day 15: Final preparations for the festival, dress rehearsal.
18.00 – a performance staged during workshops. Summary of results, review of the performance. Closing the visit to “The Puppet
Theatre”
Day 16: Departure from Wolimierz in early morning.
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V. INITIATIVES
Sławom ir Piotrowski
T HE BEYOND
1. T HE
HISTORY OF THE PROJECT
“The Beyond” project was created in April 1998. The theoretical assumptions of the project were directly inspired by reflections and observations made in penitentiaries of north-eastern
Poland during the gathering of materials for my annual paper in
the cultural anthropology. The paper was focused on spatial relationships and their impact on artistic activities of convicted individuals in the context of ongoing cultural changes. In-field research covered specialist establishments, including juvenile prisons,
prisons for convicts serving their first sentences, prisons for
individuals subject to medical treatment and prisons for notorious criminals. I also visited restricted and semi-restricted prisons, such as establishments located in Kamińsko, Barczew, Iława and Olsztyn.
Conclusions drawn during m y visits were – to be straightforward – terrifying. I com prehended that the Foucault-style prison – the school of crim e – does exist in our country and “resocialisation” is far from its original assum ptions and guidelines. Prisons I visited housed a wide cross-section of social plagues and dysfunctional behaviours, for which the hopelessly dull
reality proved to be the perfect prey. M y conclusions and projections were presented in a paper entitled Cell-Bound Reality
Sławomir Piotrowski: post-graduate student of the Institute of Polish Culture, involved in research work in subcultures and anthropology of performance, and in animation activities in oppressive institutions.
V. INITIATIVES
457
(1998). The first stage of the project was im plem ented in October 2000. 1
2. C ONCEPTS
AND GOALS
My original project, which is set in a specific social background
and targeted at a specific human community, drew heavily on the
tradition of active cultural animation. It comes as a result of a
bottom-up initiative driven by the burning need to cope with one of
the major social issues in areas in which activities of State structures prove to be extremely insufficient and ineffective. The concept of the project is also rooted in the concept of “The Theatre for
Life” developed by Lech Śliwonik.
The core goal of the project is the development of an environment fostering efficient re-cultivation of moral and aesthetic values by aesthetic experience, which is the main goal of the re-socialisation of prisoners, carried out within the negative and destructive environment of the prison. It also aims to set out alternative
models of spending leisure time and initiate interpersonal relations,
especially relationships with individuals living “on the other side of
bars”. It is particularly important to stir the interest and gain the
commitment of prisoners, who tend to see “cultural and educational activities” as a necessary evil.
I believe that those goals may be achieved by exercising direct
impact on the prison community – by creating the audience and the
open air space for theatre performance or in fact, its very special
type – the open theatre. Performance should offer an extremely
vivid aesthetic experience which sends across clear-cut messages, can be identified with, encourages personal reflections, unleashes tongues and opens hearts. Performance taking place “here
and now” – within premises of the familiar courtyard surrounded by
the much-hated barbed wire. Performance that helps to re-esta-
1
The project was approved and appreciated by the Polish prison management authorities. It also won the support of prof. Roch Sulima, prof. Andrzej Mencwel (Institute of
Polish Culture), prof. Aldona Jawłowska (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the
Polish Academy of Science) as well as prof. Lech Śliwonik (Theatre Academy in Warsaw).
The Ministry of Culture allocated a special-purpose subsidy to the project in 1999.
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V. INITIATIVES
blish long-lost links with reality and experience of time. Performance that is moving, or even startling, considering the low sensitivity
of prisoners. The project focuses on no neutral, light and amusing
comedies, but living and committed or even cruel theatre. Theatre
that poses painful questions, because that is the only way to demonstrate that we treat those people seriously, respect them and
our lifetime.
An open air performance may temporarily transform common
day-to-day meaning, the perception and experience of the most
immediate space. Quite surprisingly, this vehicle may bring a breeze of freedom into this confined space. Anything is possible as the
performance stretches to endless limits. The place which prisoners usually associate with punishment and a dull reality is revived
by the performance. Prisoners realise that theatre is no sophisticated building in a far away town admitting exclusively snobs and
the crème de la crème of the society. Theatre is them and a handful
of actors who came especially for them, to capture their imagination and hearts; theatre is also the courtyard of their prison, with
the scene set in the middle of the yard; and finally they are the
theatre – they, an audience. And so, for a short period of time,
prisoners with long-term sentences are turned into an audience.
They will get a chance to assume a brand-new and unknown social
role, become someone else, experience a new set of values, a new
order of life choices and priorities.
Such performances – encounters of different worlds – should
have a many fold impact, constituting a form of therapy, presenting
the prisoners with the world of art, beauty and harmony based on
universal moral values in a very friendly way. All those activities are
to broaden their intellectual horizons, encourage questions, soothe the negative effects of imprisonment, and eliminate aggression and anxiety projected in different ways.
For many prisoners, this will be the first encounter with the theatre, live poetry, gestures and music. The world they are familiar with
– often since their early childhood days – is a world filled with hatred,
aggression and crime. Abandonment and homelessness are durable
and well-familiar issues to all individuals deprived of their own home, a
safe and secure shelter to which you can always return.
It is no coincidence that implementation of the pilot stage of the
project took place in prisons located in the most distant parts of
V. INITIATIVES
459
Poland, within wastelands abandoned by the former state farms or
in the trans-border zone, far away from communication routes and
cultural centres. Such locations are desperate for cultural activities. This is also the kind of effort prisoners will comprehend and
appreciate, richly rewarding artists as was the case in the prison
in Dubliny.
My theoretical studies are supported by a very thorough selection of artistic proposals. To date, best adjusted to the concept
are Poznań-based “Biuro Podróży” theatre and its play Carmen
Funebre II (an open air performance employing the entire variety of
street theatre incentives: fire, music from loud speakers and live
performed music, characters on stilts, which may be staged in
favourable weather conditions for an unlimited audience) as well as
Bogumił Gauden’s One Actor Theatre and its performance Żyłem
sobie po cichutku ...(I Once Lived Quietly…) based on H. Kipphard’s
Aleksander Maerz, a hall performance – to be staged in winter.
3. T HE
PROCESS AND STRUCTURE
While developing the programme, I decided to split it into three
different development stages corresponding to the project’s geographic range and the relevant scale of gradually introduced formats and measures.
Initiation, stirring interest – the first (pilot) stage. A series of
experimental plays with local coverage (2 prisons; the stage was
successfully completed in October 2000). Getting an insight into
the profile of prisons. Gifts for the audience, discussions with authors of plays after performance.
Presence – stage two. Expansion of the project, when subsidies
are granted, to other prisons (female and juvenile prisons). Over a
dozen large-scale open air and hall plays. Creative writing and fine
arts competitions entitled “My Encounters with the Theatre” (feedback on plays). Open air concerts (several ones) performed by
“Arka Noego” children’s music group. Additional activities – workshops for interested participants. Building focus groups, active
participation of prisoners in the development of the theatre play
(performance). Joint performance, developed and staged in one (or
several) prisons.
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V. INITIATIVES
No limits – stage three. The project includes plans of a tour
covering prisons located outside Poland (initiating new contacts,
promotion of culture that goes beyond political or geographical limitations).
Participation in the performance should be regarded as a visible
distinction for selected prisoners, whereas theatre education should cover both notorious criminals as well as, or perhaps mainly,
juveniles and prisoners serving their first sentence.
I expect that particularly interesting will be literary and artistic
accounts of encounters with art from “the other side of bars”,
which are to be created during competitions opened in the course
of meetings of prisoners and guest artists. Equally valuable will be
observations, reflections, commentaries and notes. Naturally, immediate achievement and assessment of measurable deliverables
of the project is not feasible. On completion of the first pilot stage
of the project, I’ve learnt that it is extremely difficult to initiate
contact with some prisoners (the so-called “jivers”). Key to the
comprehension of their attitude are traditional prison taboos which
ban (under the threat of being degraded) convicts from tackling
higher morality issues, discussing their experiences, internal doubts and eschatology, as these are seen as dangerous issues which
are a threat to the solidarity of informal groups and can result in
mental breakdown.
4. T HE
BEYOND OR SAVED TO NOWHERE
Considering the grim reality of Polish prisons haunted by the
never-ending shortage of funds for the implementation of their core
social and living goals and tasks, cultural, team-building and open
air events are an extremely rare sight. The range of the problem is
best illustrated by the fact that in the years 1998 and 1999, the
state budget allocated PLN 1 (one Polish zloty) per prisoner for the
annual implementation of cultural and educational goals. Very often
entertainment is the exclusive criterion applied to the selection of
artistic choices provided to prisoners (concerts of disco groups,
cabaret performances). There are few prisons that continue to
present more sophisticated cultural events (creative reviews, festivals, theatre performance) and this group includes prisons ba-
V. INITIATIVES
461
sed in Siedlce, Sztum, Kłodzko and Barczew. With the increasing
overcrowding in Polish prisons, massive unemployment among former prisoners and non-existent contacts with high culture, prison
communities are haunted by visible dysfunction in all areas of life.
Ethical relativity, deprivation, sensomotoric shortage, stagnation
and boredom encourage drastic disorders of interpersonal relationships. Teamed up with widespread social ostracism of current
and former prisoners, for far too many prisoners accumulation of
all those tendencies plus “secondary” adjustment to the prison
reality makes the time spent in the prison at the expense of the
entire society – time designed for reflection, re-education, reintroduction to society – nothing else but time inevitably lost.
Certainly, even the most perfect theatre will not solve problems
related to notorious crime and imprisonment. Many people believe
that theatre or culture animation activities launched in such a dysfunctional environment are quixotic; but then idleness or reinforcement of the illusive vision of “re-socialisation” by body-building, blue
movies and board games would be a major mistake. The project
was developed both for the benefit of prisoners – to create an
environment fostering their genuine internal moral revival – as well
as for the entire society, which sooner or later will have to welcome former prisoners shaped by everything they’ve gone through
and experienced behind bars.
462
V. INITIATIVES
T HE “PONIEKĄD” GROUP
Franciszek Str
zeszewski
Strzeszewski
N OW S OMEHOW U S
“Teraz poniekąd my” (“Now Somehow Us”) – was the title of our
first exhibition. For me this exhibition was a complete surprise. We
met with Juliusz Sokołowski in his studio in Swiętojerska Street,
we talked about photography, both refined and our own amateurish
attempts. We learnt some craft, sometimes we were taught how
to use professional equipment, but not often though. As far as I
remember, we spent the workshops talking about photography.
This is what it looked like then: we organised the meetings
ourselves (the majority of us were photo-amateurs), we brought
our photographs, which we discussed extensively… There were
more photographs and our analyses were becoming more insightful. The workshop was due to end and suddenly a proposal was
made to show others what we had done. We were to organise an
exhibition!
This was the way the “poniekąd” (“somehow”) Group was born.
Soon we began to organise other undertakings: subsequent outdoor sessions and exhibitions. Some had their photographs published in the papers. I started a tour with the “Wegajty” Village
Theatre. I was documenting a nativity-like play which is performed
by actors walking from house to house, at the same time portraying the inhabitants of the regions such as Suwalszczyzna, Beskidy. The tour with “Wegajty” was a kind of preparation for the later
“Portrait of a Village” . On St. John’s night I was photographing
the dances at the fire-station in Wegajty. At first, I was observing the people, keeping out of sight and waiting for a suitable
Franciszek Strzeszewski: graduate of “Culture Animation”, co-founder and member
of the Association of Photographers “poniekąd”.
463
V. INITIATIVES
moment to snap. I was not happy in this role. Therefore, I openly
began to ask people to pose for me. They did not mind, and the
result of this alternative way of documenting provoked me to continue my work. I started to go to Wegajty to photograph the people who lived there. This was the way my first exhibition “Portrait
of a Village” came into being.
As for the method I used to record the night of St. John’s in
Wegajty… I remember when we once set out as a group into town
to photograph people. There were different ideas: to take pictures
of passengers on the bus, of people eating in a Milk Bar… Juliusz’s
response to this was: “Don’t do this, always ask people for permission. Let the photographs be posed, perhaps such are more natural”.
I do not think that Juliusz Sokołowski’s workshops made of
us, their participants, professionals in the field of photography. I
still consider myself a photo-amateur as I use the simplest equipment, I sometimes feel embarrassed by light meters that are
more modern than those made in the USSR or East Germany.
Yet, certainly, those hours spent in the studio talking helped
many of us to find and shape our own style, to discover ways to
most fully express ourselves through photography. They also taught us to think seriously about our own work and to present it in
a professional way.
M onik
a Górsk
a
onika
Górska
Participants of workshops delivered by Juliusz Sokołowski at the
Polish Culture Department (currently by the Institute of Polish Culture) established the “poniekąd” Group, which during the four years
since its foundation has organised:
Monika Górska: graduate of “Culture Animation”, co-founder and member of the Association of Photographers “poniekąd”.
464
V. INITIATIVES
– joint exhibitions:
“TERAZ PONIEKĄD MY” (“NOW SOMEHOW US”), May 1997
(the building of the Faculty of Polish Philology, Warsaw University);
“SUSKIE OBLĘŻENIE” (“SUSKIE SIEGE”), December 1997 (the
building of the Faculty of Polish Philology, Warsaw University);
“MIASTO” (“CITY”), October 1998 (the building of the Faculty of
Polish Philology, Warsaw University);
“W CIĄGU PIESZYM” (“PEDESTRIAN PATH”), June 2001 (pedestrian path in Mariensztat, walls of St. Anne church);
– an individual exhibition of works by Franciszek Strzeszewski
“A PORTRAIT OF A VILLAGE”, February 2000 (Warsaw Cultural Centre);
– photographic plain-air venues – Zakopane, Sucha Beskidzka,
Bydgoszcz and Karwik, Zawadka Romanowska;
– a happening held in the Old Town Square in Warsaw, entitled
“Camera obscura”.
The “poniekąd” Photographers Association was registered in
October 2000. After several years of efforts, we were finally incorporated into the National Registry of Associations. This opened broader perspectives for the implementation of our programme and facilitates our operations, including educational and publishing projects. Many people from the “poniekąd” Group, including
those who joined our Association after the last exhibition, collaborate with the editorial office of “Latarnik” Internet portal and
Juliusz Sokołowski, the head of the photography department. We
create this magazine together. We write articles, place photographs, present our opinions in discussions focused on photography, comment and write critical reviews. “The Gallery” has presented photographs by: Iwona Grodzka, Przemysław Pokrycki,
Monika Górska, and Workshops 2000; works by Franciszek Strzeszewski and Konrad Pustoła are coming soon. The same people
write numerous features about photography. Implementation of
many projects developed by our Association is facilitated or joined
by “Latarnik” which expands our knowledge and prepares us for
future educational and publishing projects.
Several of our members were distinguished and garnered awards
during photographic competitions:
– Iwona Grodzka – awarded during a competition devoted to
Warsaw organised by the former mayor of the city, 1998;
V. INITIATIVES
465
– Konrad Pustoła – 1 st prize winner in the Press Photography
Competition 2000, category: “The World We Live In”; garnered an
honorary prize in the competition organised by the mayor of the
capital city of Warsaw “Warsaw from dawn till night” (jury chaired
by Ryszard Horowitz);
– Tomasz Drzazgowski, Aleksandra Mazur, Maciej Ostaszewski,
Wojciech Pustoła, Michał Puszka – first prize ex aequo in the competition held by the mayor of the capital city of Warsaw “Warsaw
from dawn till night” (jury chaired by Ryszard Horowitz).
466
V. INITIATIVES
M agdalena Górsk
a
Górska
T HE “GRUPA STUDNIA O.”
ASSOCIATION
The “Studnia O.” Group was established in 1994 by students,
mainly from the specialization “Culture Animation” conducted by
the Polish Culture Department at Warsaw University; in 1997 we
assumed the form of an association.
The starting point of our joint quest was the need to apply the
experience gained during exploration of such cultural centres as
“Gardzienice” Centre for Theatrical Practices, “Pogranicze” Centre, “Węgajty” Village Theatre or Odin Teatret combined with our
own artistic and scientific quest.
During the course of joint work it turned out that tale is the
format which facilitates integration of various areas of art and
combination of artistic efforts with academic discourse. This term
is understood within a very broad perspective, drawing heavily on
the ancient concept of symposium, a convivial meeting during which
intellectual discussions, drinking, music and dancing constituted
an integral whole.
The Association remains open to all individuals who wish to collaborate with us. In our day-to-day activities we strongly liaison
with the academic community. The Institute of Polish Culture at
Warsaw University is a long-term partner of our projects. Students from various departments have always been taking an active
part in our original events as co-authors, apprentices and the au-
Magdalena Górska: graduate of the Faculty of Polish Philology at Warsaw University,
co-founder of the Association “Grupa Studnia O.”, culture animator, vocalist of the
“Kontraburger” music group.
V. INITIATIVES
467
dience. Lecturers from Polish and foreign universities are mentors
and guest participants of our projects and are also invited to contribute to their ultimate formula.
G OALS
OF ACTIVITIES
Goals of the “Grupa Studnia O.” Association include:
• promotion of an active and creative attitude towards culture
and, in a broader perspective, towards social reality by launching
and development of various forms and types of oral culture as an
alternative option to mass culture, especially in academic, school and artist communities;
• continuation of traditional forms of story-telling, such as: legend, fairy-tale, epos, tale, story etc. as well as identification of
brand new forms corresponding to contemporary culture;
• expansion of the knowledge of story-telling forms and techniques;
• work on the enhancement of the culture of talking and verbal
communication to revive the tale as an autonomous area of art;
• practising theatre, music and story-telling as self-development
and creative education tools;
• establishment of a venue (“Tale Inn”) combining all aspects of our
work, which would be open to all individuals willing to take an
active part in cultural performance.
W ORK
MODEL
Activities of our Association combine story-telling workshops
with scientific research. Workshops delivered by the Group cover
several aspects:
• search for story-telling formats incorporating the word, music,
rhythm, gestures and movement;
• performing music to enhance music sensitivity and develop skills;
• training carried out to identify the potential of our own body and
develop its intelligence.
The Association holds meetings, story-telling and music nights
as well as scientific and artistic sessions (narrative performances)
which are open to the public.
468
V. INITIATIVES
P RESENTATION
FORMAT
Through seven years of its operations “Grupa Studnia O.” created its original work format. Our scientific research, music activities and training are always focused on the development of a unique type of an artistic and scientific event we call the narrative
perform ance
ance. All those events demonstrate various scales – ranging from small meetings focused on a single selected subject and
featuring a handful of guests, to big events hosting up to several
hundred guests (such as the anniversary celebration of the “Gardzienice” Centre of Theatrical Practices held at Mały Theatre in
Warsaw). Still, the format of the performance always remains similar.
A major inspiration of our activities is the concept of the Ancient Greek symposion . Our goal is to simultaneously link issues
seen as specialist theoretical research with artistic performance. We strive at creating an environment in which someone’s
tales, accounts of individual quest, sharing personal fascinations
or scientific conclusions would gain parallel intensity as the performance. We believe that it opens whole new prospects for a
meeting which, even though it isn’t a private encounter, is deeply
personal, being no theatre, has a certain drama, and being no
art, has an artistic undertone.
The nature of the narrative performance is such that it is made
up of scientific reflections, tales, music, theatre performance as
well as… culinary art. We strongly believe that the latter area
goes beyond the preparation of excellent meals, their skilful composition and serving. We aim at raising the culinary art to the status of an equally important element of the event, which builds the
right atmosphere and evokes “the spirit of the tale”. Therefore,
each time we seek for meals that refer to the theme of the narrative performance, the colour of the époque and the environment we
wish to depict.
M AJOR
ACHIEVEMENTS
Major achievements of “Grupa Studnia O.” Association in chronological order:
V. INITIATIVES
469
“
An Analysis of Lithuanian Song – dayny ” :
“An
a lecture delivered by Alvidas Cepulis of Vilnius University combined with a presentation held at the Faculty of Polish Philology,
Warsaw University and a music meeting with
a group of Lithuanian students of music from
Vilnius University.
Blues – music and lifestyle
20 December 1994
“Blues
lifestyle”: Wojciech Stasiak and Emil Szczepański’s music tale as
an introduction to “Diabolus in Musica” narrative performance.
Sym bols of Y
oung Culture: Jim m y Hen28 March 1995
“Sym
Young
drix
drix”: Wojciech Stasiak and Emil Szczepański’s music tale as an introduction to “Diabolus in Musica” narrative performance.
P olesie – a tale of dying. M y e
xperience
15 April 995
“P
experience
of «Gardzienice’s» Expedition
Expedition”: Magdalena
Jaworska’s tale.
Diabolus in Musica – The Devil vs. the Cre17-20 April 1996
“Diabolus
ative Process in M usic
usic”: three-day session
(a narrative performance and a music event)
devoted to the forbidden disharmony, plots
of the evil and devilish inspirations in medieval music as well as contemporary blues and
rock.
29 January
Two meetings devoted to the revival of the
art of stor
y-telling in France delivered by
– 5 February 1997
story-telling
Magdalena Górska who completed placement
at Centre Littérature Orale in Vendôme,
France.
“Is That W hat Y
ou Really W
ant?
7 May 1997
You
Want?
ant?”: a film
and music event featuring Marcel Łoziński
held at the Polish Culture Department, Warsaw University.
Discovering «Gardzienice» for 20 Y
ears
14-15 October 1997 “Discovering
Years
ears”
– the concept and organisation of an international seminar celebrating the anniversary of “Gardzienice” Centre for Theatrical
Practices at Mały Theatre in Warsaw.
25-26 April 1994
470
8 June 1998
25 June 1998
September
– June 1999
Since 1999
Since March 2001
V. INITIATIVES
M usic work
shops featuring the “Remus”
workshops
Theatre Association held in a Laboratory
room of the Centre for Contemporary Arts
in Warsaw.
Encounter of Cultures
Participation in “Encounter
Cultures”
held by the “Aller-Retour” Association and
“Remus” Theatre Association at Warsaw
Cultural Centre.
W arsaw M etam orpho Implementation of “W
ses
ses” project in collaboration with Primary
School no 34, located in Kruczkowskiego St.
in Warsaw.
Work on the art of story-telling inspired by
Arabian Nights including: a narrative performance “ When Sheheresade was once meddah ” ; “ Turkish Evening” at the National Muorld of Arabian Niseum in Warsaw; “ The W
World
ghts” – a narrative performance featuring
ale of
Prof. Ewa Machut-Mendecka; “ The T
Tale
the Flying Horse” – work with children from
the fine arts section of the Teacher’s Club
at Radomska St. 13/21 in Warsaw; “ The
Magic of Arabian Nights” – a narrative performance featuring Prof. Marek Dziekan staged at the University Library.
Work on tales of the north, including “M aainas – Lapp TTales
ales ” staged at the Museum
of Ethnography in Warsaw.
ACurrently implemented project “ THE CREA
CREATIVE
TA
TIVE POW ER OF T
LES”, focusing on the art of story-telling as the key to self-deveLES”
lopment and comprehension of other cultures, covers a series of
narrative performances emphasising two leading themes:
“ The W
orld of Arabian Nights”. To fight common prejudice and
World
stereotypes we want to explore and present the great traditions
of Eastern cultures to the participants of the project. The project
draws heavily on a wide number of oral accounts and a rich tradition of story-telling techniques with its finest culmination – the
Arabian Nights collection.
V. INITIATIVES
471
“ Tales of the Chassidim ” We feel the social urge to explore and
promote the heritage of Polish Jews as an integral element of Polish culture. As a result of tragic historical events this tradition
has been swept away from the Polish memory. Far away from politics and the common tendency to make historical settlements,
teamed up with the participants of our activities, we want to explore
this lost world, analyse both the eminent trends of Jewish thought
which were rooted in the Polish tradition as well as the tales related to the day-to-day existence of Polish Jews, their perception of
the world, customs, art and cuisine… In addition to experts on the
subject and artists connected with this trend, other participants
of the project include active representatives of Jewish culture in
Poland.
472
V. INITIATIVES
Beata Frank
owsk
a
Frankowsk
owska
T HE MYTH OF THE N ORTH –
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL TALE
(THE PROJECT FOR AN EVENT)
A project focused on a narrative performance to be produced
by “Grupa Studnia O.” Association during the “The Viking Festival”, a local educational event held regularly on the Wolin Island1.
“The Myth of the North – an Anthropological Tale” project draws
heavily on the concept of barter, much practised by Odin Teatret
group. This is a type of a cultural encounter focused on giving and
exchange.
Considering the prospective context of implementation of the
project, we may assume that substantial exchange of knowledge
and own experiences concerning, in this particular case, the world
of the Viking culture is set against a highly favourable environment
as the majority of the participants of the event will be aware of its
subject and hence expected to demonstrate a more or less personal attitude to the created historical and mythical reality. It should
also be added that the idea of the gift is traditionally rooted in this
culture – an Old Icelandic proverb says: “The gift always expects to
be reciprocated”, whereas the famous Gulathing Law writes: “The
gift is better than payment, as man remains indebted until the gift
is reciprocated, until as much as was given is received” (these
formulas may be applied to initiate the situation of exchange).
1
A similar project focused on Lapp culture was implemented by the “Studnia O.” Group
during an exhibition presented in the Ethnographic Museum in Warsaw in March 2001.
V. INITIATIVES
473
The core animation goal is to create a meaningful space which
would set the narrative framework for evoked tales. This particular
project will drawn heavily on the experience of the Odin Teatret in
the construction of space for its performance entitled Talabot . Wooden benches are arranged in such a way as to resemble the silhouette of a Viking ship. Such space makes a reference to two symbolic orders: on one hand, it reconstructs the context of Viking
marine voyages, and on the other, evokes their funeral tradition
(ships also served as burial sites facilitating transition to “the other
side”). A commentary explaining the symbolic meaning of the space
will be preceded by an Old Icelandic sailing song called “Krymme
swawi” (most songs presented in the project are a result of the
exchange and placement in Denmark).
In the middle of the space stands a stone circle symbolising the
image of the mythical Urd well – the meeting place of gods, the
source of all tales and the driving force creating a common language. In the middle of the circle lies an ash twig – epitomising the
cosmic tree: Yggddrasil Ash, which sets the time and spatial structure of the world construed. The main narrator explains the symbolic meaning of the well and the tree, uses words to recall all the
worlds and creatures gathered around them and like Ratasok the
squirrel which carries messages all across the ash tree, the main
narrator-cum-story-teller is to visit various worlds, evoking characters-narrators from different worlds, myths and stories by the
touch of an ash rod.
But before it actually happens, the main narrator spins their
own tale about making boots (red slippers) for the Northern Expedition. Told in fragments (also in Danish, which is a result of placement at Holstebro), this motif will serve as a thread that connects
the entire narrative performance; individual experience will be contrasted against the mythical, fairy-tale, and archaeological context. To live the myth, the tale, the story, it’s not enough to buy
oneself a pair of boots, they need a meaning to be added to them.
Bearing adequate symbolic objects, narrators-animators “evoked” by the main narrator clad in red boots, will construct their
individual tales, playing the leading or a supporting character in
their story to create tension between the reproduced tradition
(“Once upon a time...”) and the actual performance (“Here and
now...”), between alienation (“There was Hel...”) and temporary iden-
474
V. INITIATIVES
tification (“I am Hel...”), affirmation and deconstruction of characters. Hooked to a specific character, the tale develops in various
versions: featuring corresponding characters, different narrations
tackling the very same theme; various interpretations of the same
event. One of the functions of trespassing the border of time and
breaking away from the linear nature of narration rooted in the oral
tradition is augmentation and stratification of the spoken reality,
adding a specific touch to its image. Specific short narrative accounts will be combined with the meta-narrative context: Who tells
this story? From which perspective? What is the socio-historical
background? And what is the impact of the context on reception of
particular meanings?
RECOMMENDED MODEL PLOTS – NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
The first symbolic character is Nilfheimu, the goddess of the
underworld – entrance to the famous underground cave is located
in the far ice-bound North (the world of eternal ice, silence and
longing). Interactions between the leading female character and
the character-narrator (characters are animated by costumes,
make-up, presentation of symbolic offering, like a dawn pillow: when
Lady Winter is beating pillows, it is snowing on Earth). Tale variants: Scandinavian Hel – German Frau Holle – Lapp Ice Virgin –
Grimm Brothers’ Lady Winter – Andersen’s Snow Queen. Narrative structures of the myth, fairy-tale and legends are overlapping
and blending with each other.
Another symbolic character is the Giant who cooks something
in a huge pot (stirs, seasons honey or beer) and tells the tale of a
drink called Skaldamjöd (about how dwarfs captured gentle Kwasir,
drew his blood, mixed it with honey, and how Odin craftily stole this
potion away from them), a potion that unleashes tongues and is
the source of poetry and tales. Interactions with the audience: the
animator offers a chalice full of the potion to various guests, who
are expected to reciprocate it with a quickly composed Edda or
Skald-style poem focused on a selected theme and employing respective poetic construction, such as alliteration or kenning.
The third symbolic character is god Odin who tells about how he
was hanged on a tree during an act of offering and gained wisdom
(quotation of a fragment of the poem in its original Old Icelandic
V. INITIATIVES
475
language version – a skill acquired during the placement); the tale
of Odin’s eye (a riddle addressed to the audience: “Where is Odin’s
eye? – In the Mimira spring”). Interaction with the audience: the
theme of drawing runic characters – the secret alphabet of the
Vikings.
The fourth symbolic character is the goddess of love: Frey’s
variant (the theme of the quest, desire, longing – beguiling various
objects from guests); Idunn option (the theme of giving away apples which offer immortality – if you ask the goddess, the lucky one
may receive an apple).
The fifth symbolic character is prophetess völwa , foretelling the
future, seeing the past (a commentary on female magic practises
in the Nordic culture, chanting). The tale of Odin evoking völwa . The
symbolic object is a grinder from the Northern mythology and tales
(the Danish theme of the grinder which grinds salt on the bottom
of the sea; the Finnish theme of the grinder that grinds everything;
the motif of the shaman grinder in the Lapp tradition).
The sixth symbolic character is the Traveller, the Anthropologist, the Historian. The North seen through the eyes of an Alien,
constructing the world and the image of Vikings in historical and
anthropological narratives: construction of the “moral barbarian”
(as opposed to “the immoral Roman”) in Tacit’s narration; construction of “the wild pagan” as opposed to “the good Christian”
in Adam Bremeński’s narration; explanatory construction of “anticipation of Christianity” presented by the Icelandic historian and
researcher Snorry Sturluson, and the character of Kirsten Hastrup, an anthropologist from our contemporary times (the case
of “seduction” by a ghost originating from the Icelandic mythology).
Opening of the discussion space. Questions about methods used
for the construction of images related to the Viking culture; individual perspective and sources of fascination with this particular
cultural circle; a question about the source of willingness for taking
part in the northern version of the Avalon myth.
RECOMMENDED ISSUES TO BE DISCUSSED
The problem of narration in history, anthropology and ethnology.
Narrative tradition in history; the tradition of “little tales”, poly-
476
V. INITIATIVES
phonic diversity of perspectives and ways of presenting historical
narration. Researching ways of reasoning, constructing and expressing the world in the Viking tradition. An attempt at constructing
parallel narratives focused on the same theme. Seeing the past as
an overseas land – the historian plays the role of a foreigner who
tries to translate the language of the past into the language of
modernity. Oral sources of history – story-tellers talk about events
which they and a given community believe are worth being remembered and passed on to others (the issue of choice and selection).
Identification of moments when the cultural continuity in historical
narration is broken and various narrative layers overlap.
The role of the narrator in anthropological narration – the character of the author-anthropologist; constructing the “there” space, processing memorised images into a text; cognitive mythologisation.
The relationship between category and mythology and social
structure (division of male and female roles). Dynamics of interaction: What is reproduction of a common standard, and what is
subject to transformation, exceeding standards? Articulation of
desires or holding back longing? Emancipating discourse or conservative discourse? How can it be identified on the level of the narration and the narrator’s construction? Who is telling the story?
Listening to different voices, to different ways of speaking.
CLOSURE
Prophetess völwa foretells the end: “First the tree trunk shakes, then it breaks, pulling all worlds into unfathomable depths”
(Völuspa ). The journey has come to its end. Shoes are ready. Broken into tiny parts, the ash rod is burning.
TYPES OF NARRATION AS CORE ANIMATION STRATEGIES
The narrator positioned beyond the plot – the character of the
Editor, Researcher
Positioned beyond the plot, the narrator is able to assume various perspectives: he/she may be emphatic, satiric, malicious, didactic etc. He/she maintains relationships with “the event” and
“the audience”. Like an anthropologist, an objective narrator trans-
V. INITIATIVES
477
lates the investigated culture into categories of his/her culture.
Different positioning of the objective narrator: in front of “the action”; in the background; at the back of the audience; walking between guests – touching or animating characters.
When seated in the central location facing action, the narrator
tells the story, events that are taking place may be treated as a
reflection of his/her thoughts or dreams. Because he is seated
halfway between the audience and action, he also plays the role of
the translator or an intermediary. If seated on the left or right
hand side of the audience, he plays the role of the lecturer who
presents behaviours of all characters (in a precise but detached
manner) during an objective discourse. If he spins the story seated
at the back of the audience, his tale acquires a personal dimension
– suggesting possible interpretations of depicted events to the
audience; suggesting what they should focus on. If the narrator is
seated in the background of the action, his tale becomes more
critical and contains an assessment of characters’ behaviours. And
finally, if the narrator intervenes in the action, he/she touches and
manipulates characters, playing the role of “the puppet-master”.
The narrator involved in the action; first person narration
The narrator simultaneously takes part in and comments on the
story told. An account of the past, subjective narration.
Narrator/character
The narrator initiates a dialogue with the audience discussing
the behaviour of the character he/she creates – he/she describes
it in third person, and then acts as an another character. He/she
may spin the tale using the first person form and then personify
the character told. Identification and distance. Transition from the
narrator to the character should be sudden. The sense of simultaneity, duality. From narration to action. Work on words and sentences, which serve as the spring-board.
Model structures linking tales
Interwoven tales: the end of one tale becomes the beginning of
another one (types of links: a character, a recollection, the moral,
an example).
478
V. INITIATIVES
Long story interrupted by loose stories.
All-embracing story featuring tales containing tales containing
tales…
One story leads to another story, which then opens another
story; all of them are incomplete, featuring no end – to be completed by the final tale.
Tales told in the context of a trial or a conflict – all parties
present their story, which stands in opposition or contrast to the
previous version.
A contest led by groups of story-tellers: tell the best story; tell
the same story in the most spectacular way; illustrate the common theme with the best story.
Possible relations of animators / story-tellers with the audience
The narrator whispers the story which forces the audience to
approach him; the story-teller changes his/ her seat, moves around the audience and viewers make room for him/her.
Changed position: very near, in a distance, around the audience…
Narrators placed at different spots.
Division of the audience into smaller groups.
The audience becomes an integral element of the tale.
CULTURE
ANIMATION
ISBN 83 - 915675 - 3 - 2
C
ULTURE
ANIMATION
LOOKING BACK
AND FORWARD

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