25 VIII 1967

Łazy near Osieki, activity on the margins of Tadeusz Kantor’s “Panoramic Sea Happening”

Manifestation description:

Kantor wrote: August 25, 1967. B. hammers a wooden wheel deep into the sand, ties a thick rope to it, the end of which, in the form of a loop, throws around his neck wrapped with a piece of cloth, tethered in this way he walks around the wheel as if on a treadmill, is it a preparation for the actual process, is it the liberation of his own personality, disinterested pure exhibitionism, or an audacious and risky engagement in a situation extremely insulting to a conventional prestige. B. is to make something that will be at the same time a sculpture and a raft, and therefore will actually be neither one nor the other, something beyond the work of art and beyond the “object”, and therefore a pure fact, perhaps only an activity, an event, the foundation already built by others, as if he agreed to that, what remains is what should be the mast, the sail, the rigging. B. assembles and connects the segments, ties them with ropes and roughly edges them with an axe, finally all what remains is the very moment of lifting. (…) this unexpected event arose by itself, arose from the circumstances and predisposition of the artist, it was a pure, authentic event. (in “ The Score of Panoramic Sea Happening,” 1967).

Another account written by Hanna Ptaszkowska: Now the action moves further along the beach. Next to the raft, so fortuitously rebuilt, stands the sculptor Jerzy Bereś. With a rope around his neck – trapped by it – he circles around a post hammered into the ground. This extremely moving gesture is a kind of self-imposed preparation by the artist which he now completes meticulously and with poignant solemnity. The work that is about to be accomplished in front of the audience is the construction of a mast. On the raft will rise a mast that is a sculpture at the same time, constituting even more a work of art because it was created as a result of the artist’s action described above. (in: „Reportaż z happeningu morskiego T. Kantora”/“Reportage from T. Kantor’s Sea Happening”), “Ty i Ja,” No. 2(94), February 1968

Black and white photographs:  Eustachy Kossakowski