Review and photos by Strona Tańca / Sandra Wilk – documentation and critical reflection on my recent performance in Warsaw, Lotna Gallery, presented during the festival Synchronie, curated by Sylwia Hanff
Performance Title: Face: Tribute to Günter Brus.
This year commemorates 60 years since Günter Brus’s Viennese Walk performance, which served as inspiration for this work.
(in English)
Depressive March Through Fire
Outside the window, another action is taking place. It is Josef Ka and her “FACE: tribute to Günter Brus.” The field of this nomadic performer’s actions is a vast terrace adjoining the Lotna Gallery, its stone slabs overgrown with quite large wild plants in the cracks. Here Josef Ka arranges survival fire-starting cubes in two rows and steps into this “tunnel” of hers, dressed in a black tailcoat and holding burning torches in both hands. Slowly, her fiery path ignites. It was clear that the performer made an effort not to scorch the beings that were just bearing fruit, but fire is an untamable element, so some burned nonetheless. At the edge of the terrace, she stretches her arms wide toward the sky. A blaze in the heavens. Ah, what a sight it was, as tongues of flame licked that unblemished, cloudless blue! [And what if she jumps?]
The return to the window is heavy. Josef Ka drags behind her something like a gong. The scraping of metal against stone shatters the peace, becoming the dominant element of the action. From a vital scene of the cult of youth and strength, we move into a time of suffering, of some unnamed hardship of existence. And when the performer once again stands right by the glass, I see the reflections of all those standing behind me mirrored in her costume. I see myself too, in her belly. That was something. The scene looked like a live dream fantasy: the spectators, whether they wanted to or not, entered directly into the artist’s body, were inside it, mirrored in it… This could not have been planned beforehand—it was simply the right time, when the outer and inner light reflected in the glass just so, at that very hour.
When I watched “FACE: tribute to Günter Brus,” I didn’t yet know the title of the performance, so I am not referring now to the artistic concept linked to this Austrian artist (1938–2024). At Lotna Gallery, the whole piece reminded me of the black-and-white paintings and photographs from the period of Europe’s postwar avant-garde, so the atmosphere was preserved by the performer almost perfectly.
A twist—and now Josef Ka shaves a bare strip on her head with a machine, onto which she pours black paint. It cuts starkly against her face, painted white. A black line, then a blot runs down in slow motion, destroying the familiar features… The sight was as if someone had just recreated, live, the onset of a depressive episode. You know, that time when the “tar” slowly, yet inexorably, floods the brain, swallowing with its dense dark matter all light and every joy. [I know that monster. I know the terrible dreams that come with it.] And Josef Ka smears that blackness onto the glass. Full deformation. Destruction of harmony. A provocation, even.
It was so vivid, so real… And when the performer leaves, a tangible trace of her presence remains on the glass. From my perspective, it was a black “cloud” on a clear, blue sky.
When Josef Ka reaches the second exit of the terrace, there, in the depths of the gallery, the next part of “Synchrony” begins…
camera: Maja Radecka
editing JK
photo: Sandra Wilk
JOSEF KA 