13th International Performance Art Festival Interakcje (Piotrkow Trybunalski + Warsaw / Bielsko-Biala / Krakow)

One needs to admit that all in all, Interakcje was a very successful festival not only because of the high artistic level, and the opportunity to see a lot of the artists in Poland for the first time, but also because of the occasions that artists and spectators had to socialize. Each festival is not only an opportunity to meet with the audience but also with ones' friends and this aspect is never neglected in Piotrkow Trybunalski. It is also worth mentioning that also the audience in Piotrkow, part of which may not be necessarily considered particularly cultured, respected the artists work. Two days after the festival when Boris Nieslony (Germany) performed at the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow (MOCAK) the artist had to struggle for attention among chatting and laughing crowds.

Shiro MASUYAMA - Intervention

The Golden Thread Gallery in Belfast runs a small "project space", offering it in quick succession to emerging artists. After spending three months as a resident artist at the IMMA in Dublin in 2006 the art of Masuyama (born 1971), who studied architecture in Japan and calls himself a conceptual artist, is still known to a close knit group only. His current exhibition called Intervention (7 -23 April 2011) presented installation of objects and videos raising a number of issues. The following focuses on two projections grounded in performances with two different concepts of the artist: in one he is observed, in the other he is the observer.

CROSSING - Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston

CROSSING, performance, 2 hrs 30 min. Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston. Friday, 29th October, 2010, 12.00 -12.10 o’clock, a room in a disused Police Station, Queen Street, Belfast.

Two viewers allowed at the time into a dark small room for ten minutes only. High up on the blackout window pane two small sources of light turned the black darkness into shades of dark grey mist, in the centre two figures moving slowly clockwise held one tall glass filled with water with their right hand palms. Each palm attached to just one end of the vertically positioned glass at all times, while, in a synchronised movement, turning it 180 degrees at given intervals.

Bruce Barber’s reply to our projects: What is performance art? and Timeline of performance art

The verb perform and its associated words performer, performance, performing, performative, performatory, perlocutionary and [performance] have both general and specialist uses. Within the past twenty years some quite fine distinctions in meaning have been accorded the terms performance, performative especially in linguistic theory, art history and art criticism and the theory and practice of acting. Perform has been in the English language since the late 15th and early 16th century.

Present / absent or in other words: three and more women

It seems that women have equal rights in art. Masculine / feminine division has lost its meaning. Thinking this way we fall into a blissful mindlessness for why would we need any reflection on a problem that does not exist. Two exhibitions about women in Polish art of the 70s and 80s coincided in time and place in order to disturb this peaceful ignorance: an exhibition titled Three Women in the Zacheta Gallery in Warsaw and the Fading Traces exhibition by Anka Lesniak in the Lokal 30 Gallery presented for a short time. These two shows revise 40 years of women’s existence in Polish art.