Work created in collaboration with Mikołaj Szpaczyński

audio-visual installation / 350 cm x 230 cm x 230 cm / 2018

The work Don’t Ask is an installation referring to the figure of a Chochoł (“mulch”). Inside it there is a stroboscope and loudspeakers, which play dreamy, trance-like music. The viewer is encouraged to go inside. The installation corresponds with dance motifs present in various texts of Polish culture. They generally reveal symbolic meanings reflecting various states of the national Spirit: they dance in Dziady, they dance in Salto, they dance in Tango. One of the most obvious references is, of course, the motif of the mulch dance (motiv from Stanisław Wyspiański’s “Wedding” play), which on the one hand can symbolize a collective falling into a state of insane numbness or vegetation resulting from powerlessness and the burden of tradition, but on the other hand and the burden of tradition, but on the other hand it can herald awakening. In this case, the mulch is a techno-tent. The question remains open whether being inside should be treated as a symptom of an escape from the prevailing reality caused by fatigue and helplessness, or whether it can rather be treated as a gesture of participation in a totemic ritual that precedes creative awakening.