Tero Nauha
WYWROTKA / CAPSIZING
Galleria Huuto Jätkäsaari 2
2.–13.10.2013
NOTICE: New opening hours: tue-sun 12-17
This work on video is part of a larger project ”Life in Bytom”, which was presented at the Gallery CSW Kronika in Bytom, Poland from November 24, 2012 to January 26, 2013. This project was a research based on social investigation, which resulted on a work on video, printed matter and a live performance, ”Life in Bytom.”
This work on video is based on interviews, workshops, archive material and my personal experiences in Bytom, which is a post-industrial mining town in Silesia, the Katowice mining area. The result is not an objective investigation, but rather an affective reflection on the changes of the life conditions, which has happened in Bytom in past twenty years. It is part of my doctoral research in the Theatre Academy of the Art University, which will be defended in 2015.
The duration of video: 27 minutes
Camera: Małgorzata Mazur
Sound: Łukasz Jastrubczak
Script, direction and performance: Tero Nauha
Translation: Karolina Kucia
Sound mixing: Teemu Korpipää
Production support: AVEK, The Frame Visual Art Finland, Theatre Academy of the Art University, Live Art Development Agency, London, TAhTO Research School.
Aside from the above mentioned, I would like to acknowledge the following people, institutions or instances, which have helped me in various ways during the process of making these works.
The team of Kronika, especially the curator Staniław Ruksza and my assistant Radosław Ćwieląg; the workshop participants in Bytom; the research colleagues and professors of the TAhTO research school; the colleagues of the Performance Matters event, especially professor Gavin Butt; the research colleagues of the Theatre Academy; the technical staff of stage design, props, lightning sound and audio-visual design; my research advisors Annette Arlander, Akseli Virtanen and Esa Kirkkopelto. For the assistance in translation by Łucja Supron-Kucia, and for the help of installing the exhibition by Teemu Horto and staff of the HUUTO gallery.
LIFE IN BYTOM
Bytom is a former mining town in Upper Silesia, Poland. This area is famous for mining industry, which, however, has almost disappeared during the past twenty years of economic transformation. Bytom is an exemplary of the transformation, which neo-liberal politics produces. In 2012 I was invited by the curator Stanisław Ruksza from CSW Kronika to do a project in Bytom, and thus visited this city in several occasions. These visits were composed of workshops, interviews, field trips and other events, which produced source material for an affective interpretation of the situation. The final works presented at the Kronika from the end of November 2012 to the end of January 2013 were a scripted performance, installation and a video piece.
I encountered many individual and singular stories and events, which revealed things not particular only to Poland, but a general feature of neo-liberal Europe. My approach was at first theoretical, circling around the problem of economic transformation, which I call the mess of capitalism. The mess has no certainty of
centre – which is in straight dissymmetry with the previous, state controlled socialism in Poland. From the first meetings on with Ruksza, one aspect of Bytom became clear, when he called Bytom the “Detroit” of Poland. In other words, Bytom is not going through a controlled transformation period, but a series of arbitrary changes.
There is no straightforward answer, ideology or roadmap, but a mess of collapsing buildings, infrastructures where no one knows what the duration of this process is or what forms it will take. It is the precariousness of this mess, where my endeavour took place, and I had to ask myself what could a performance do?
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 – or momentary sharing of similar refrains. For Mikko Jakonen who interprets the elaborate articulation of the Baroque Fold by Deleuze, 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)
