2006, ORGANIC LIFE, TARDIS, Ipswich

BERGAMOT GROUP

ORGANIC LIFE

Action, delegated performance
2006
TARDIS International Performance Art Festival, Ipswich, UK

8 min

Quotes from a letter to Emma Jonson and Michael Lumb – organizers of the Tardis International performance festival, held in 2006 as part of the Irish Art Festival:

In collaboration with you, we would like to reconstruct the action that took place during the opening of the exhibition „Public rituals. Art video’s from Poland” at the CCA Mumok in Vienna.

I am sending documentation of this action on DVD by mail, and will describe it in a few words. After the curator’s speech at the opening of the exhibition, we started the performance without announcement. We were in the midst of a large audience, elegantly and formally dressed in black. We knocked each other to the floor and started squeezing and knocking each other over.

Surprised spectators thinking that they were watching an act of hooliganism tried to separate us, others covered us with a coat. After some time, due to the anemic nature of our struggle and the lack of reaction to their interventions, the spectators began to perceive us as artists and calmly continued watching the pre-performance. Still struggling, we rolled out to another room and disappeared behind a door. And now our request: dear Emma and Michael! We wanted to offer you to reconstruct the action from Mumok at the opening of Tardis International. We would like you to stand Bergamot for the duration of this action.

After this letter, we exchanged a few more emails with Emma and Michael. Eventually Michael agreed to take part in the event, but instead of Emma Jonson, English artist Mel Donohoe performed. It turned out that the artists did not recreate the performance, but mixed elements of various 4-5 actions, seen on the video documentation we sent them earlier.