Nocturnal Activities — series of performances in the city
Artists:
Magda Franczak
Małgorzata Markiewicz
Mateusz Choróbski
Michał Gayer
Ola Kozioł
Adam Laska
Szymon Szewczyk
Kuba Woynarowski
Bownik
Szymon Kobylarz
Radosław Sirko
Filip Berendt
Sławek Pawszak
Bartek Buczek
Iza Łęska
Łukasz Rodziewicz
‘Nocturnal Activities’ — book summary of the project The publication is a documentation of a six-month-long project entitled ‘Nocturnal Activities’, which was a series of performances carried ...
Nocturnal Activities is a five month long series of performances in the city, combined with the realisation of ephemeral installations and guerilla gardening. The project-induced experiencing of the city aims to highlight the transgressive quality of actions proposed by the invited artists. These actions are supposed to function in the manner of urban legends, with individual works relating to tales told by witnesses about the said night activities. All actions within this project will have this lunatic, unconscious trait that is typical of activities which happen in the sphere of night-time — a supposedly dangerous zone, which culture relates with blurring the borders and with the abject; the very place where we get in touch with the taboo. It is mainly associated with the darkness that serves as a hiding place for plotters, thieves, murderers, arsonists, prostitutes, smugglers and such like, who take advantage of the situation in which they cannot be quickly identified by the day-time law-abiding citizens.
The cover of darkness makes it impossible to introduce a panopticon, wherein is hidden a model manifestation of the optical approach to the world, with an eye featuring as a symbol of supervision, discipline, and of society being kept on a tight rein of visibility and control. In darkness, which is associated with initiating rites, rules that govern human behaviour become suspended, just like at the time of carnival.
In this context, Nocturnal Activities which encourage receivers to take a series of risky walks in the city backstreets stand in opposition to contemporary strategies relating to public space, which involve keeping strangers at bay in order to escape danger in large populations, and succumbing to the obsessive visibility, according to which seeing is a guarantee of the ability to quickly identify the stranger, or rather — the intruder. Participants of Nocturnal Activities are supposed to come in contact with the undefined and the chaotic. Here, darkness acts against the order safeguarded by the geometry of Utopian cities, against the modernist grid and other planning attempts that urbanists have used in their war against strangers.
The invited artists, while presenting the audience with the experience of stepping into darkness, reverse the order of city as an alienating sphere of visibility, in which light is a guarantee of control and order. Paradoxically, this potentially hazardous situation is an opportunity to meet art which in this context symbolises acquaintance with a stranger who might not be dangerous at all.
