Conscious Consents

Cezary Bodzianowski’s action entitled Conscious Consents, which took place in the Akcent ZOO zoological garden in Białystok in 2009, was effected with the view to Bodzianowski’s individual exhibition in Arsenal Gallery (also Conscious Consents, 2009). The video recorded during this action was part of the exhibition. Dressed as a polar bear, Bodzianowski took on the role of a zoo keeper, assuming the gestures and special ritual of a keepers’ duties. Feeding a European bison was an element of the action: “Standing there dressed as a polar bear, I tried to explain the world beyond divisions to the bison,”* the artist commented.

Similarly as with his other actions, the location was carefully chosen: it is closely connected with Białystok, the city substance of which was treated by Bodzianowski as the context for the planned exhibition at the gallery. As locations for his actions, Bodzianowski tends to select places that are difficult and whose status is not entirely clear. Akcent ZOO is undoubtedly one of those: it is a temporary zoo organised in the 1960s in the Zwierzyniec Park to serve as a transitional stage before the true zoo could be established. It survives in this makeshift state to this day.

Works by Bodzianowski have often been described as one-man shows, poetic interventions upon the substance of reality. The subtly anarchistic character of his actions was emphasised, as they momentarily disrupt the rituals of everyday and create alternative spaces. These events have their own language of hermetic poetry that is nevertheless imbued with quotidian associations linked with the location of the action (like, for instance, the stereotypical associations between Białystok, the economic and cultural periphery, the bison and the polar bear). Even though Bodzianowski’s actions are not conceived as having a clear note of criticism, in the case of Conscious Consents it would be difficult to refrain from searching for such overtones, especially in reference to the dilapidation of the city zoo and the conditions of animals’ life in it. It is also worth emphasising that in the background to the action unfolds a warm tale about the autonomous world of an animal, constructed from observation of its behaviour, habits and the trust developing between the bison and the absurd figure of a polar bear.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz

*  Quoted after Cezary Bodzianowski. To miejsce nazywa się jama, catalogue of the exhibition at Muzeum Sztuki [Museum of Art] in Łódź, Jarosław Suchan (ed.), Łódź 2012, p. 169.