Stacja Pi.Stacja is not so much an artistic formation as a state of mind, or as they like to call it, a “document, an event and a tape”. They say that life is much more interesting than art. Art’s existence is stimulated by social situations, the absurdity of the surrounding reality of the budding capitalism of the 1990s and a neo-Dadaist sense of humor resembling that of Alfred Jarry’s. As Rzepecki said of their work together in an interview: “Whatever happens, happens. Or nothing will happen. We can just sit around and do nothing”. It doesn’t matter whether we call this sitting sitting or art.
Stacja Pi.Stacja is formed in 1990, less than a year after the political transition and three years after the Stypa Kultury Sztuki [Pitch-In Culture Wake]. Its first joint performance takes place at the Mandala Theater. Adam Rzepecki, Katarzyna Pochrzęst and Grzegorz Zygier carry out a series of performative actions here. They act simultaneously, staging the drama performance Guzik [Button] and initiating the Prannie w Wannie [Laundry in the Bathtub] action. Rzepecki shows Śmierć Ajschylosa [Death of Aeschylus] and Painting on the Floor with TVs creating a spectacle of abstract forms and colors on the floor, Pochrzęst hangs paintings in the theater space that she pulls out of an old trunk, and Zygier embroiders on a white canvas a tangle of lines resembling Burda sewing patterns. They perform in the auditorium, whereas the audience sits on the stage. Further actions, with juicy titles: Nie pie*dol kwiatuszku [Cut the C**p, Honey] and Ty idź żebrać, a my w trójkę cię wylansujemy [You Go Begging and the Three of Us Will Promote You], are shown during the Kraków Theatrical Reminiscences. During the first performance, they simply kneel for several hours in silence, looking as if they are praying. Although it is not planned, the audience talks back, lies down next to them, reflecting sunbeams on the their backs and spilling Pepsi which they are sipping from wet glasses. During the second performance, the artists initiate a show with a more elaborate structure – the three of them jump into a small tub and hug splashing the water, only to try to splash it back in a moment later. They treat art as an extension of life’s activities. Sometimes they act spontaneously – action demands reaction. Out of boredom they disrupt a performance by Dick Higgins, at the sight of Gruppa artists with carnation flowers in their bottoms they shout: ‘Bravo, encore!’. Moments later they are throwing cakes at the audience from the stage, while at the Linz festival they manage to persuade their artist friends to swap identities during an interview for the Polish television.
The exhibition will feature, among others, photographs of the group with Tristan Tzara, Mieczysław Porębski’s notes to Prannie w wannie [Laundry in the Bathtub] painted over with drawings, the slapstick films Kapeluszowisko and Every Dog Has His Day, questioning the existence of gravity and at the same time ostentatiously exposing the illusion of the glass screen, as well as a number of photographs and archival materials documenting the group’s performative activities. The central element of the exhibition, as in the Mandala Theatre, is the bathtub, the visual motif is the color pistachio green, and the strategy around which the narrative is constructed – trickster novel – which, like the stories told by Stacja Pi.Stacja, treats truth and fiction as equivalent parts of the same story.
Artists: Katarzyna Pochrzęst (Bober), Adam Rzepecki, Grzegorz Zygier, Paweł Filas and (guests) Tristan Tzara, Dick Higgins, Jerzy Beruś, Zygmunt Rytka, Mieczysław Porębski, Ryszard Grzyb
