WYKŁADY / LECTURES
W The Knot, Parcul Karol, Bukareszt 2009
CULTURAL ANIMATION
(tekst wygłoszony na Uniwersytecie Karola w Pradze w roku 2001)
Ladies and gentelmen,
My friends,
„Animation” meens to be active, to initiate the movement, to start the motion of all passive elements. Like static pictures when pushed to move create a film, the ideas and their expressions which circulate give life to the only culture we can accept, the culture of the changes and exchanges, the culture of dialog where senses change together with the forms of their expression. And vice versa. The roots of Cultural Animation have their ends deep in the theory and practice of XX century theater, in what we call the active culture. The thought performed in action, not necesarly radical, sometimes focused on small external efects. When you are passive you are easy to manipulate you, to push you to the position of an object. This kind of culture is only a repressive culture - you no longer live, you are cultivated. This can be expressed many different ways and leads to extreme: you would not even be able to say the word - foreign words will be talking through you.
Stagnation and conservation of empty forms ends with enormous misunderstanding dividing people and makes them feel useless and lonely. Everything that because passive forms of culture loose their meenings, ritualize and become empty. It’s a natural process. But how can we communicate in this situation? How to give a chance for natural human creativity to apreare, to bloom? Any alternatives?
Communication can be problematic, like in „How is it going?”- a blind man asked a criple man. The criple said: „As you can see.” Nothing in common can’t provide any communication. Because the ihe idea and the notion of „animation” is usually connected with moving picture, with film animation, let’s get into the area of art to show the essence of what we are talking about. In film animation every image is separate but if we put them together something miracleas happens. Jan Svankmajer, the alchemist of film, the master of film animation, showed us how hard it is to communicate with Other, when like in this Lichtenberg’s joke writen in his Notebooks. And so sometimes, when we can’t find similarities, we see the world of differences, multicultural, multilingual, the common base is still there - we are all human. And so the anthropology comes as a rescue.
Jerzy Grotowski, one of the greatest reformators of theater of the passed century, left the traditional theater for the theater of participation. He abandoned the effect, the show, and started to concentrate on the process, on work. His workshops inspired others to work together and with themselves. As you will see later, it has been the begining of Cultural Animation.
WYBRANE WYKŁADY
Sztuka akcji i film - Przestrzeń partycypacyjna Chłodna25, Warszawa (2009) - poster
Doing it. Art, magic and the paradox of the Real. - Center of Contemporary Arts, Tel Aviv 2011
Dlaczego Svankmajer (Towarzystwo Bellmer) Katowice 2010
Polityka DADA - Międzynarodowe Centrum Kultury, Kraków 2011