(text published in the catalogue of the exhibition “Bereś”, Cricoteka, Kraków 2024)

A forest can, culturewise, be seen as a hyperobject. It is in the paradox of being always there, nearby and in plain sight but never in the main picture that the hyperobjectness of the forest,  an uncountable set of trees, plants and animals, becomes manifest, in being a constituent as much of nature as of aesthetics and capitalism, and in being an ecological litmus test. Originating in Timothy Morton’s ecocriticism, the concept of hyperobjects and hyperobjectness of things can be defined as a way of dealing with a situation when the language and notions we have at our disposal prove inadequate and insufficient to discuss phenomena and objects whose sheer scale defies the categories of time and place. Nonetheless, they are ineluctably pertinent to the account of human experience, the shaping of culture, politics and society. A hyperobject could be capitalism, it could be ecological crisis, and it could be trees.¹Anna Barcz, “Przedmioty ekozagłady. Spekulatywna teoria hiperobiektów Timothy’ego Mortona i jej (możliwe) ślady w literaturze”, Teksty Drugie 2018, no. 2, pp. 75–87.

A forest thus understood turns out to be mysteriously rooted (planted?) in Polishness t0 such a degree that it is, as a ‘meaning-assigning agent’, an inherent part of the founding myths and legends that constitute Polish nationality. Their echoes keep recurring in the idea of Poland as the “lungs of Europe” utilised in the construction of national identity. Forest, wilderness, woodland – once the patterns set by the Enlightenment had worn out – was were Polish Romantics fled to guided by the belief that solutions to political issues lay hidden in the uncanniness of the woods. These “trips deep into trees” reveal wishful thinking about nature interwoven with culture in a syncretic way. This fusion is by no means obvious, and the deeper you go into the forest, the more trees you find, as the saying goes. The more trees there are, the darker it gets, the darker it gets, the more blurred the boundaries become, contours evanesce, and all things blend together. One feels mud under one’s feet. We enter the world of dark ecology which is another term introduced by Morton to post-anthropocentric discourse. Morton claims that idyllically undisturbed nature is a mere cultural concept, and so they refuse to explore such a utopian idea as the return to pristine ecosphere that is separated from culture and civilisation which function in a harmonious dichotomy. Rather than advocating an ecological struggle to “purify the Planet” and set up a solarpunk civilisation of wind turbines stretching across green meadows swept through by the wind, they propose a melancholic, even dark ethics which involves acceptance of the horror of both nature and culture and their mutual connections. Morton encourages us to stop making the world meet our requirements and focus on finding internal contradictions and true shapes in it, to be open to other beings, non-human ones included.²Andrzej Marzec, “Jesteśmy połączonym z sobą światem – Timothy Morton i widmo innej wspólnoty”, Teksty Drugie 2018, no. 2, pp. 88–101.

Jerzy Bereś, “Oracle II” (1967), photo by Marek Gardulski.

A contemporary perspective on Jerzy Bereś’s body of work – which covered two mutually interlacing fields of activity: sculpture and action – within the context of post-anthropocentric approach and dark ecology reveals once more the artist’s prophetic power. After all, Bereś himself wrote that every authentic work, apart from when the work is one hundred percent creation and expresses no judgement, is effectually a prophecy.³Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd. Między podmiotem a przedmiotem, Kraków 2002, p. 46. He not only ‘foresaw’ the emergence of Solidarity and the fall of communism, he also envisaged subsequent social and political transformations. Using an intuitive private artistic vocabulary, he spoke of a different kind of the man-nature relationship, of decompressing this eternal dichotomy of civilisation, and of other (new) communities brought into being by this change. Should language be still inadequate, art is to take over the responsibility for expressing what remains unnameable. Tree, as Bereś kept calling the material he worked with that, was the main stuff he used to build his pieces since the 1950s. For him, to sculpt in wood was not to use or tool it. It was collaboration. Here the organic material and natural object that tree is becomes a partner in the artistic process. To me, a tree log is, and never ceases to be, a piece of nature, even if it helps me make a construction. The potentiality of a work of art being produced resides in the encounter between creative intent and a piece of tree, a piece of nature (…)  The tree log was itself and any attempt at smoothing it or applying artificial patina would kill the essence of it. It is not only anti-aestheticism I am rejecting, it is any style⁴Ibidem, p. 33. – Bereś writes in Wstyd. In an essay written for an unpublished catalogue meant to accompany an exhibition at the Centre for Contemporary Art, he stated: With the assistance of pieces of nature – I have never viewed tree as material – and simple tools I began bringing into existence Phantoms, Oracles, Altars… Each of them is in dialogue with the world around it in its own unique fashion – provided it is on display.⁵Jerzy Bereś, “Dzieło a doskonały produkt (1979)”, [in:] Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd, op. cit., p. 167.

It is meaningful that the artist uses the phrase “with the assistance of”, and not “by means of.” Assistance implies partnership, giving back subjectivity. It is the acceptance of tree as it is, without turning it into timber and polishing it to please humans, that puts Bereś’s attitude to nature in the category of dark ecological way of thinking. I and nature become “we.”

Jerzy Bereś, “Live Monument entitled Arena” (1970).

Bereś’s creative practice was parallel with the New Age movement of the 1960s and 70s which redefined our relations with nature. In 1972, The Limits to Growth, a report commissioned by the Club of Rome, was published that predicted climate crisis. Apart from specific sculptures, two works by Bereś reveal his (dark) ecological thinking that went beyond activist and journalistic gestures or emotional defeatism (both of which he opposed) and rested on an entirely different view on the relationship between nature and civilisation – their interconnectedness and mutual interflow, in an irreversible coexistence. They are Living Monument and Great Phantom. The first was designed (but not fully executed until 40 years later) for the 1970 Arts Symposium in Wrocław and involved drawing a huge circle of which one half was to be covered by grass, and the other by concrete. Young trees were to be planted in the grassy section, while a large oak was to be put upside down in the ground in the concrete semicircle. The whole circle was supposed to be surrounded with benches with one bench in the middle – to connect the halves. Each year in early spring the roots of the dead tree were to be painted green. Thus constructed “living monument” is an illustration of Wrocław’s war-ravaged cityspace, but not only that. The circular monument becomes a microplanet with a reversed order where the living and the dead exist side by side, beside the natural and the industrial functioning on equal terms and with a space for being together.

Produced during a symposium and open-air session that took place in Puławy in 1966, Great Phantom was exhibited as part of the show containing artworks created at the session, mounted in the highly modern and still empty industrial halls in the midst of forest; it was a young oak adapted to be a work of art. One of many trees felled to make room for the industrial works. This peculiar journey “there and back” made by the young tree – back to the place in which it used to grow that was now an industrial conglomerate as well as from the natural to the cultural order defies the simple definition of “ecological action.” Especially because of its – as the artist put it – “striking incompatibility.” It was the only work that was not gifted to the founders when the exhibition ended. Bereś referred to the event as manifestation and, by doing so, he not only pushed the limits of “sculptural work,” he also located Great Phantom at the crossroads with the other area of his artistic practice – actions.

Jerzy Bereś, “Great Phantom” (1966), photo courtesy of the Museum of Art in Łódź.

The first action, Prophesy I, performed in the Galeria Foksal in 1968, was followed by more than 100 manifestations. Bereś was reluctant to use the word “performance” seeing the seeds of convention beginning to germinate in it. He said: Performers tend to repeat. A performance act is prepared, it follows a plan and can be re-enacted many times. This is the first contradiction. Secondly, in many cases performance shifts towards theatre. This is something I decidedly and definitely keep away from. I do not want my actions to feature any acting. The point is each time to overcome the physical resistance created by a given situation. It can be more or less successful but that is of no importance. The actions I put on are unrepeatable. Most performance acts are inconclusive. A moment, short or long, light goes off and that is it. These are no-way-out situations. The viewers and the performer objectify themselves and there is no way back to a partnership of subjectivities.⁶“Jestem za otwarciem dialogu. Z Jerzym Beresiem rozmawiają Ł. Guzek i W. Bosak”,  Pismo Społeczno-Kulturalne “Tumult” no. 6, 1990, https://beresfoundation.pl/article/jestem-za-otwarcie-dialogu-z-jerzym-beresiem-rozmawiaja-l-guzek-i-w-bosak-1990/, [accessed 8 March 2024].

Jerzy Bereś, “Prophecy I”, Foksal Gallery, Warszawa 6 I 1968.

The consistent employment of his terms of choice, the unfailing uniformity of the structure and course of his actions, the reservoir of gestures and activities, the salience of Bereś’s body, and the subjectivity of his viewers steer his artistic practice towards queer theories of recent times. Additionally, independence, protest against the lack of it and solidarity seen as a remedy are among the prominent themes in Bereś’s oeuvre. Solidarity whose significance and inclusiveness extended beyond the trade union that dismantled the totalitarian system in Poland. Given the failure of the present-day Solidarity movement and current social tension, it is easy to think of a contemporary social context for Bereś’s actions – it is to be found in queer theory indeed, in the sense of a broadly understood struggle for individuality and personal autonomy, and objection to the oppressiveness of politics and economy. Queer practices display boldness, defiance of categorisation, codes and conventions, as well as the “weak resistance” strategy also present in Bereś’s work. Bereś, not unlike contemporary activist artists, did not resort to Molotov cocktails but chose having bonfires and pouring wine instead. The assortment of symbols and gestures was not designed to overthrow the system, but to give symbolic names to problems, to undermine the world around him, and to create microcommunities. That was a necessary stage in the process of transforming and doing away with systems. The fact that he insistently sidestepped the terms “performance” and “happening,” while sticking to his own nomenclature is another feature in line with the queer quest for an original language to challenge the established order with. Such an attitude brings to mind a figure of special importance to queer culture – the trickster. Ethnologists define the trickster as an archetypal being present in all cultures and religions. The trickster could be a human being, a god, a spirit or an anthropomorphic animal. Whatever the trickster does is done in opposition to the established order but not to scrap it; the trickster’s aim is to cast doubt on its apparent perfection, making it possible for others to introduce changes to it. The trickster is often described as a creator and a person who makes it plain for others that creation is a possibility. In stories, the trickster tends to be a wanderer, depositary for and teacher of art and culture, assisting other people in getting a place of their own in the natural world.

Jerzy Bereś, “Lap of Honour”, Market Square in Zamość, 15/11/1975, photo by Z. Dados.

In the light of queer practices that interfere with structures in a similar way, Bereś as a trickster bursting the communist reality and the neo-avant-garde back in the second half of the 20th century seems to have retained his relevance and remains revisitable. All the more so because every generation has to cope with a world torn by ever new issues. Bereś developed a ‘neo-romantic’ language to deal with them. They [Romantics] believe that reality – charged with extreme contradictions – calls for action which is to happen at the level of that antinomic character of reality⁷Maria Janion o tym, jak romantyzm dokonał wyzwolenia wyobraźni, broadcast Zapiski ze współczesności, Program 2. Polskiego Radia, available online: https://www.polskieradio.pl/8/380/artykul/3027247,maria-janion-o-tym-jak-romantyzm-dokonal-wyzwolenia-wyobrazni# [accessed 8 March 2024]. – said Maria Janion in an interview. […] Romantics were convinced that reality as it was – troublesome in political terms – could not be transformed in an enlightened way by implementing reform⁸ Ibidem. – she added. Seen this way, both dark ecology and queer theory have a romantic-revolutionary character. Since flowers are in bloom in Antarctica⁹https://pressglobal.pl/Nauka-I-Technologie/kwiaty-na-antarktydzie-zaczynaja-rozkwitac-i-nie-sa-to-dobre-wiesci [accessed 16 February 2024]. (which is both dark ecological and subversively queer as it combines delight and horror, life and death), it may be appropriate to quote another prophesy made by the artist: This seems to be the right time to appeal for careful consideration to be given to the politics of creation so that catastrophism which can only lead to martyrology does not prevail among humankind.¹⁰Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd. Między Podmiotem a Przedmiotem, Kraków 2002, p. 46.

Jerzy Bereś, “Transfiguration I”, Center of Art in Södertälje, Sweden, 6 X 1972, photo by Władysław Hasior.

translated by Monika Ujma

• 1
  Anna Barcz, “Przedmioty ekozagłady. Spekulatywna teoria hiperobiektów Timothy’ego Mortona i jej (możliwe) ślady w literaturze”, Teksty Drugie 2018, no. 2, pp. 75–87.
• 2
  Andrzej Marzec, “Jesteśmy połączonym z sobą światem – Timothy Morton i widmo innej wspólnoty”, Teksty Drugie 2018, no. 2, pp. 88–101.
• 3
  Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd. Między podmiotem a przedmiotem, Kraków 2002, p. 46.
• 4
  Ibidem, p. 33.
• 5
  Jerzy Bereś, “Dzieło a doskonały produkt (1979)”, [in:] Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd, op. cit., p. 167.
• 6
  “Jestem za otwarciem dialogu. Z Jerzym Beresiem rozmawiają Ł. Guzek i W. Bosak”,  Pismo Społeczno-Kulturalne “Tumult” no. 6, 1990, https://beresfoundation.pl/article/jestem-za-otwarcie-dialogu-z-jerzym-beresiem-rozmawiaja-l-guzek-i-w-bosak-1990/, [accessed 8 March 2024].
• 7
  Maria Janion o tym, jak romantyzm dokonał wyzwolenia wyobraźni, broadcast Zapiski ze współczesności, Program 2. Polskiego Radia, available online: https://www.polskieradio.pl/8/380/artykul/3027247,maria-janion-o-tym-jak-romantyzm-dokonal-wyzwolenia-wyobrazni# [accessed 8 March 2024].
• 8
  Ibidem.
• 9
  https://pressglobal.pl/Nauka-I-Technologie/kwiaty-na-antarktydzie-zaczynaja-rozkwitac-i-nie-sa-to-dobre-wiesci [accessed 16 February 2024].
• 10
  Jerzy Bereś, Wstyd. Między Podmiotem a Przedmiotem, Kraków 2002, p. 46.