Performance / Arsenal Gallery

Program:

Lada Nakonechna, Hail, duration: 15-20 min

Boris Nieslony, A feather fell down on Bialystok, duration: 30 – 40 min

Ewa Zarzycka, Artysta musi być gdzie indziej…, duration: 20-30 min

Lada Nakonechna is an artist who researches the notion of time and perception of space through the intersection of different media, such as performance, film, historical and everyday research, pedagogy and texts drawing, film, installation, performance, etc. Since 2005 Lada is a member of the R.E.P. (Revolutionary Experimental Space) group, an artists’ collective interested in the process of community building and in shaping a generation of politically engaged Ukrainian artists who stand on critical and experimental positions. Lada Nakonechna is also curator (member of curatorial and activist union Hudrada) and educator (co-founder of the Course of Art – an independent educational program in Kyiv). Within the Course she investigates through experience various ways to study and practice art nowadays. In 2015 Lada Nakonechna co-founded the Method Fund. She is interested in art as a communal activity and fragile instrument for social change. Her works, which often call attention to principles of visual cognition and expose the manipulative aspects of visual and verbal structures, are founded on a belief in the emancipatory potential of art. Lives and works in Kyiv.
She lives in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Boris Nieslony
During his career as a performance artist Boris Nieslony has also taken the role of event organiser and researcher, going this three activities very much together in its essence. He has been always politically and social compromised and his whole life has been, and actually is, really devoted to this artistic manifestation.

He was co-founder of the Kunstlerhaus Hamburg in 1977 and in 1978 of the Kleinen Ausstellungsraum, which was developed as a space to continually show installation and performance art in Germany.

In 1981 he created numerous live art situations such as “Das Konzil”, were 70 people were confronted with each other in a performance event, sitting around a big table and performing day and night in a 30 days period. In May 1982 he developed the performance event Das Konzil 2, also in the form of 30 days performance reclusion followed by an open live situation inside of two big overseas containers located in the middle of the street first and in a theatre space later. In this big performance event he developed the idea to create a Performance Art Network, which has last until today materialised in the sculpture ‘Die Schwarze Lade and the work with the association ASA- European from 1990.

In 1983 together with the company Bender & Nern, M. Kern, K. Shimono and B. Schwarz he founded the Projektkunst e.V. The most important work was the installation of overseas containers, which could be moved around as mobile live art situations.

After meeting other international artists such as N. Klassen, Jürgen Fritz, Z. Piotrowski, T. Ruller, J.van Poppel and Z. Warpechowski, they came up to create the work group Black Market International, organising Performance Art events around the world. Nigel Rolfe and Roi Vaara were incorporated in the group in1989.

In 1993 Black Market International invited 15 international artists for the performance piece Empedokles in the framing program of Documenta IX. Parallel to that, ASA organised the project 100 days of service, the Quantenpool Koeln.

In 1987 they created The Black Market International Philosophical Statement under the title “Network and its Structure”, which aims to enable performance art in every moment, away from all forces of habit.

Ewa Zarzycka

A performance artist. Also creates films, sound records, drawings and installations. The main part of her work is to keep notebooks, a sort of notes and dairies about which Zbigniew Warpechowski wrote: There is history of art, art criticism, comments, reflections, thoughts, letters to friends, jokes, prose, poetry and I’ve got no idea what else.

She was born in Szczecin. She finished Public Secondary School of Fine Arts in Lublin. She studied graphics at Public Higher Education Institution of Fine Arts in Wrocław (current Academy of Arts). From 2008 she’s associated with this academy, in which she gives classes of performance from 2009. A Scholar of Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Lives in Lublin and Kazimierz Dolny by the Vistula.

Ewa Zarzycka cultivates spoken performance. Grzegorz Borkowski commented: Of her numerous performances […] one can compose an outline of an intriguing essay combining seriousness and intellectual inquisitiveness with ironic distance. Ewa Zarzycka’s work is hard to comment and interpret. It’s a process of thinking, led in a dialogue with others and opened to what happens. In Zarzycka’s understanding, creativity is conjoined with private life, meetings, events, journeys, readings. It relates to art itself, but also to the artist, to the characteristics of creation process. According to Zbigniew Warpechowski, Zarzycka’s creativity is out of any definition but at the same time it’s strictly connected to her persona, way of being, personality. Her stories are confusing, they loop, they get lost and find their way again, they pass on to different ones. You can find some sense of humor but also much of authenticity, honesty and disinterestedness.

Ewa Zarzycka’s work comes from polish conceptual art. The artist was for years related to Galeria Labirynt in Lublin and to Biuro Wystaw Artystycznych ran by Andrzej Mroczek. Her performance in project “Grodzka 5” is closely associated with artist’s private history, related to Grodzka street, where secondary school that Ewa finished used to be.