Other Dances. Performance Turn in Polish Art of Twenty-First Century
Edited by Agnieszka Sosnowska
Edited by Agnieszka Sosnowska, Other Dances. Performance Turn in Polish Art of Twenty-First Century is a publication that recapitulates her celebrated exhibition that was presented at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art back in 2018. Featuring works by over twenty dance, theatre, performance, music, and visual artists, the show took on board one of the most significant phenomena of Polish art of recent years – referred to as the performance turn.
The volume documents the exhibition and the programme of accompanying events. The essays collected therein reflect to a significant extent, the transdisciplinary structure of both the phenomenon that is the contemporary performance turn, and the exhibition that showcases it. Agnieszka Sosnowska extensively explains her research assumptions and how she had presented them in the exhibition format. Joanna Zielińska lists examples of practices in which the artist’s engagement with the archive and documentation has produced entirely new works of art. Dorota Sosnowska reflects on the very act of archiving and ‘museumising’ performance, and explores the curatorial practices involved in presenting it at exhibitions, using the example of Other Dances. Meanwhile, Antoni Michnik analyses the intersections of contemporary sound art and performance. In the essay titled Institutions are OK, Piotr Morawski examines the possibility of overcoming the institutionality of the theatre and explores the ways in which artistic practices could influence its structures. Finally, Tomasz Plata summarises the discussions of the exhibition, and considers the necessity of changing the vocabulary used to describe performing arts – both contemporarily and retroactively, thus rewriting the history of art and theatre.
- Featuring essays by Antoni Michnik, Piotr Morawski, Tomasz Plata, Agnieszka Sosnowska, Dorota Sosnowska, Joanna Zielińska
- Graphic design by Tomasz Bersz
