Frolic

Agnieszka Tarasiuk’s Frolic may be viewed in terms of an erotic text in both the literary and filmic aspects. The intimate life of frogs was recorded in a manner as poetic as it is literal. Tarasiuk’s approach to the observed phenomenon locates the video on a borderline between a perceptive documentary concerning the world of nature and a colourful, impressionistic report from the unobserved aspects of life in that world. If not for this double remove: the aesthetic approach on the one hand, and scientific curiosity, suggested by the extreme close-ups, on the other, the work might be perceived as an expression of extreme voyeurism.

It is difficult to resist the impression that the camera peeps into the very centre of the frogs’ underwater orgy. There is nothing romantic in the poetics of Tarasiuk’s perspective; the unconditional ferocity and instinctive aggression inherent in the act of mating is not subdued at all. Clusters of oval spawn, as well as frog anatomy, are shown by Tarasiuk with absolute naturalism, and amplexus, the basic copulatory reflex in which the male mounts the female and grabs her with his front and hind legs, is recorded in all its brutality. The mating ritual is often accompanied by fighting, sometimes fatal, between males. Yet the recording of these “blood weddings” in the underwater environment of the Siemianówka reservoir is undeniably, if oddly, lyrical. The camera’s impartiality makes the spectacle unfolding before the viewer’s eyes seem as sexual and erotic as metaphysical; the secret of fecundity and the never-ending cycle of life has a supernatural dimension. This interpretation is reinforced by the framing, slow-motion filming, and the recurrent contrasts of the out-of-focus and sharp image.

Frolic is founded on the fascination with the natural world, and on Tarasiuk’s matter-of-fact and humble approach to the autonomous animal world. The vision of this universe proposed by her is very far from commonplace raptures over the beauty of nature. Instead, there is scientific observation, thanks to which Tarasiuk has managed to accentuate cognitively valid aspects of the frog mating, as well as its sometimes abstract beauty. By the same token, Frolic constitutes a firm basis for locating Tarasiuk’s conception of art within the tradition, reaching back at least to the Renaissance, of artistic research founded on broad humanistic knowledge that includes also the natural sciences.

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translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz