CYCLES menu — BERGAMOT GROUP

CYCLES

Cycle is a series of performances designed and carried out by Volha Maslouskaya and Raman Tratsiuk, working together as the Bergamot group. At first, the artists focused on themes of power, interpersonal communication, gender, and violence. Their actions rejected the illusion of harmony and consensus often used to mask hidden mechanisms of domination. Unlike the advocates of “mechanical subordination,” Bergamot deliberately highlighted open conflict as a way to expose structures of power and dependency.

Performances in the Organic Life cycle, as well as in the later LOT cycle, were conceived as open forms. Although the concepts were developed by Maslouskaya and Tratsiuk, the realization was often partly or entirely entrusted to other people. This resulted both from practical circumstances and from an artistic decision to question established roles.

Over time, the group shifted its focus from themes of power and violence toward examining the relationships between artist and viewer, performer and author. Performances began to introduce the practice of “replacement,” where members of the group would be substituted by other participants—sometimes by chance or from the audience. The boundary between performer and spectator, between art and life, became increasingly blurred.
In this way, questions of fluid and negotiable status came to the fore: Who is the artist and who is the viewer? Who creates the work, and who merely receives it? Bergamot treated their actions as both social and artistic experiments that revealed and challenged these usually hidden hierarchies and roles, provoking reflection on the very nature of the creative process and the power relations embedded within it.

ORGANIC WORK

The “Organic Work” cycle is a series of performative actions carried out by the Bergamot Group but based on ideas submitted by other people. In 2010, Volha Maslouskaya and Raman Tratsiuk announced an open call for performance scripts and concepts, declaring their intention to realize selected, winning projects. From that moment, the cycle has developed as a communal artistic experiment in which creativity is shared and negotiated with other participants.

The name of the cycle deliberately refers to the historical concept of “organic work” — a 19th-century social and cultural program that promoted grassroots, systematic building of social capital, education, and national consciousness. In the context of Bergamot’s activities, this reference gains contemporary significance: instead of a unified vision of nation or culture, the group proposes an organic process of building community through art grounded in dialogue and collaboration.

Maslouskaya and Tratsiuk’s Organic Work addresses questions of social identity, self-definition, and shifts in awareness. The open nature of the competition and the realization of projects conceived by others introduce mechanisms of role fluidity — between artist, viewer, author, and performer. The Bergamot Group merely defines the framework of the “game,” within which complex interaction and negotiation of meaning occur among all participants.

BIOPHILIA

The term “biophilia” was introduced in the 1960s by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and means love of life and all biological, living systems. It emphasizes the positive connections between humans and the natural world, highlighting our innate desire for bonds with what is alive and organic.

The Greek word philia—meaning friendship or love—is the opposite of phobia. Fromm contrasted biophilia with necrophilia, understood as a cult of death, an obsession with destruction and violence characteristic of many social and cultural systems. In his view, biophilia has an affirmative and therapeutic dimension—it is a defense of life, beauty, sensuality, and relationship.

The Bergamot Group’s work in the “Biophilia” cycle resonates with this Frommian sense. The performances, video-performances, and photographs by Maslouskaya and Tratsiuk explore the beauty and sensuality of the body, its connections to nature, and the sensory experience of the world. An important aspect of these works is also sexuality, understood as a life-giving force—an energy that builds relationships, transcends boundaries between individuals, and challenges cultural taboos.

“Biophilia” not only aestheticizes the body and nature but also encourages their affirmation—an invitation to build attentive, intimacy-based relationships with what is alive.

FLIGHT

The “Flight” cycle is a series of actions and films by the Bergamot Group, inspired by the brutal arrests during the 2020–2021 protests in Belarus. The title metaphor of “flight” combines the idea of freedom with the experience of forced abduction.

The first edition took place in the summer of 2020 in a village near Brest, close to the Polish border. Participants reenacted a kidnapping in a field—four people carrying a fifth while filming everything on their phones, evoking images of violent detentions by OMON forces.

The second iteration happened in 2021 at the Zair Azgur Museum in Minsk. The monumental, socialist-realist interiors gave the action a dark, ritualistic character. The black-and-white film documentation focused on participants’ faces and heavy breathing, emphasizing the trauma and horror of the experience.

The third edition, staged as a flash mob during the Malta Festival in Poznań (2022), engaged the audience in the roles of both carriers and those being carried. The action relied on trust, physical contact, and role exchange, provoking reflection on the boundary between play and violence.

“Flight” is a meditation on violence and solidarity, on division and migration, on how art can evoke trauma and transform it into a gesture of care and shared experience.

BERGAMOT GROUP

CYCLES

ORGANIC LIFE

ORGANIC WORK

BIOPHILIA

FLIGHT