Bytom is a concept

My performance in Bytom created a folding and intertwining interpretations for the local audience. This was distinguished from my own folding path in a way, that no matter how we met in the event of performance, our paths were different in the length of folds. There was no direct contact, but folding. For Mikko Jakonen who interprets the elaborate articulation of the Baroque Fold by Delezue, a contemporary subject is a ‘cave man’, or a ‘miner’, who is digging his or her endlessly expanding tunnels which will never lead to outside, but produce a folded network, instead. (Discussion with Jakonen in Bytom, January 26, 2013) A city like Bytom resembles Swiss cheese, instead of a solid ground.

In the episteme of post-industrial capitalism each particular context is contaminated with heterogeneous, but localized refrains. These refrains can be found in other locales and contexts, but in each singular location, these relationships between the dominant and minor refrains have utmost significance. Radek’s story had a major refrain of transformation from industrial labour to post-Fordism and neoliberal economics in Poland. However, this is not the affective link, which passed on into the performance. In other words, there was a dominating coding of industrialism present in the material, which was the most discernible refrain, but following only this refrain my practice would have followed the route with repetition of the same abstract machines – not unlike the capitalist capture itself. However, there are refrains on the discursive level of Radek’s story, such as chimney-sweeping, mobile-antenna, the wheel of a mining tunnel, accidental death, labour and family, and so on, which are not fully overcoded with the abstract machine of capitalism. One of the ways for me to approach these minor refrains present in the story was to use physical incorporation of the memory; how the story was told and how I received it and embodied these stories. In a way, the physical practice and the modulations of the narrative preserved the potentiality of the minor refrains; in other words, my practice did not overcode the narratives of Radek, yet I was not fully aware what was the minor refrain in them. They travelled within the folding of the story and unfolding of the event.

The exhibition at the CSW Kronika, Bytom

Photos: Karolina Kucia