Thinly drawn line between fiction and truth

Malgorzata Mleczko

Staff Journalist

Jacek Malinowski?s art balances between reality and the lie. He makes quasi-documentary films in which average people tell stories about their life and problems. The images presented by the artist are never authentic. We sense the discrepancy, but it is difficult to determine the edge of truth and the reasons for our disorientation.

Malinowski employs this favored strategy in his new project, the film The Celebration of Erwin Koloczek, now being presented at Nova Gallery. The main character is Erwin Koloczek, a fictional ?everyman? who represents the social status and position specific to an average coal miner. The artist picked this particular occupation on purpose. He feels it is the most difficult, most dangerous, least comfortable and worst paid job ever. Malinowski found its contrast in the life of celebrities. He mixes these opposing worlds, achieving a destabilization of the conventional roles arrogated to those professions. Erwin Koloczek and his friends talk about genius, satisfaction, talent, spontaneity, creativity, and success. It appears a normal conversation, but the dialogs are more typical of those conducted by celebrities: they always say how much they love their job and how nice is to work in general. In contrast to the stereotypical looks and lifestyle of miners, what they say in the film seems odd and artificial. The artist puts himself in the role of demiurge, playing a game with the observer, who must determine his own way of dealing with the divergent inconsistencies. His film is a mystification. It?s very difficult to identify why the contrarieties of the video image are so disconcerting. Maybe it?s because all sentences spoken in the film are realistic direct quotations from quite different personalities than those uttering them.

Jacek Malinowski?s video is accompanied by a presentation of photos made during work on the project.

Jacek Malinowski The Celebration

of Erwin Koloczek (April 27-May 16)

Nova Gallery, ul. Kochanowski 10

An ?in-yer-face? war between two loving people at the Stary Theater

Monika Kwasnieska             

contributing Journalist

Stary Theater in Krakow

?Blasted? by Sarah Kane

Director: Maja Kleczewska

Music: Maja Pietraszewska-Koper

Stage Designer: Katarzyna Borkowska

The first play of British playwright Sarah Kane, ?Blasted,? directed by Maja Kleczewska, was probably the most offing premiere in Krakow this season.

Sarah Kane (1971-1999) was a notable proponent of the mid-1990?s dramatic trend known as ?in-yer-face? brutalism. Her plays showcase love, sexual desire, cruelty, pain, torture (psychological and physical) and death. They accentuate the darker side of the world and the human psyche in shocking, though very poetic language.

Kleczewska?s work displays similar sensibilities. Her works are intensely emotional, focusing on human pathos. She is doubtless one of the most promising young Polish directors. This year, the Polish magazine ?Polityka? nominated her for their prestigious ?Passport? award.

?Blasted? is shocking theater. It is for those people who want more than just a light evening of whimsical fun.  

The action is set in the hall of an exclusive hotel. Everything -- leather armchairs, glass tables, silver hangings -- is new, expensive and in very poor taste.

In this setting, we meet Ian (Krzysztof Globisz), a dying, foul-mouthed, middle-aged and racist journalist, and his ex-girlfriend Cate (Sandra Korzeniak), an innocent and simple-minded young woman.

Ian, always with gun in hand, resembles a Mafia hitman. Cate, in a very short skirt and low-necked T-shirt, suggests a lady of easy virtues. Their relationship is a mixture of love and hate. They quarrel, make love, and fight again.

Between them, a private war breaks out. They are constantly screaming of their love to each other, but their words mean nothing -- they are incapable of love. Methodically, they destroy themselves. The sterile hallway is transformed into a battlefield landscape.

Suddenly Cate disappears, replaced by a soldier (Sebastian Pawlak). He is strange, wild and crazy. The atmosphere of fear and dread grows. At this point, it becomes unclear what is reality and what exists only in Ian?s imagination.

The text of ?Blasted? is couched in such obvious (yet clearly understandable) poeticism that no one can believe it may be true. This raises the performance to a metaphorical level, where violence and war are equated to the poor relations between individuals, citing this as the point from which all cruelty begins. The contention of love and hate, beauty and monstrosity, imagination and reality give this strangely fascinating and startling mixture its bittersweet taste. The symbolism of the piece is all pervasive; everything becomes intrinsically important: dialog, intonation and gesture, scenery, music and lights.