KwieKulik

Open Form - Game on an Actress's Face. A segment from a 1971 performance film by the Polish art collective KwieKulik, which uses the face of a famous actress as a canvas on which to experiment.

Działania (Activities) documents a four-day action in a Warsaw television studio which can be understood as a “visual free-jazz concert,” or an attempt at interdisciplinary, collaborative improvisation. In their work, KwieKulik often attempt to mediate communication through different forms: language becomes movement, ideas transform into objects, improvisation acts as another form of theory. The surprising trajectory of these improvisations in sound, sculpture, discourse, performance and movement show the open-ended outcomes that Przemysław Kweik and Zofia Kulik were interested in pursuing during this period.

During an evening meeting of the Young Creative Workshop Encounters (held December 1971 in Elbląg, Poland), an argument divided the group of artists. Przemysław Kwiek suggested continuing the debate the following day through a conversation of “visual tactics” between two teams who each had 1.5m long sticks as well as white and red canvas. Each team watched as the other made a move, and fourteen were made in total over three hours. Documented through photographs and text, Kweik and Kulik presented this material as a narrated slideshow in the 1970s-80s, and in 2006 recreated this in the form of a digital video.