Context
The site of KL Plaszow in Kraków, a former concentration camp founded on top of two Jewish cemeteries, today serves primarily as a public park and recreation area, without sufficient information about the site’s history and topography. The performance, Still Standing, was first created as a response to heated debates surrounding the potential forms of commemoration of the KL Plaszow site.
The performance was based on the choreography of Israeli choreographer Noa Eshkol, which was originally prepared for the 10th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1953,and performed in the Lohamei Hageta’ot (Ghetto fighters) kibbutz in Israel.
Description
Still Standing was created in 2020 by Weronika Pelczyńska (dancer, choreographer) and Aleksandra Janus (anthropologist and researcher) in cooperation with Monika Szpunar (dancer & choreographer), with the support of FestivALT. The performance with two female performers, shown for the first time on 3 October 2020 at the site of KL Plaszow, explores the body as a vehicle of memory and site-specific live sculpture. It was accompanied by an audio recording for the audience to listen to while watching the movements of the performers.
This performative piece was an attempt to raise awareness among visitors about the location of a former concentration camp and Jewish cemeteries, and aimed at engaging the audience and sparking conversations about the current status and the future of the site.
By placing the bodies in space—with its layers of history—the performance creates images for the observers to interpret. By exploring relationships turned into physical action it creates a constant shift from the past to the present, and from the collective to the personal.
From the start, Still Standing was foreseen as a performance that can be adapted to other contexts and shown in other locations. So far, it has been performed on several other occasions outside of KL Plaszow, with the goal to create a temporary monument for people to gather together outside and reflect and discuss.
In 2021, Still Standing was performed in Lublin at the Lubliner Festival – the festival of Jewish culture organised in this city in Eastern Poland in order to embrace its multicultural identity and Jewish past and history. The performance was produced by FestivALT in cooperation with the Centre for Culture of the city of Lublin. It took place at one of the main squares of the Old Town of Lublin, with the audience using their phones to listen to an audio recording about the Jewish heritage and past of the city.
Highlights
- Combining choreography and storytelling (audio recording) as another form of commemoration – a “monument in motion” in order to foster the audience’s link and empathy with the difficult heritage site
- Creating an ephemeral monument serving as a platform for people to reflect and discuss
- Raising awareness of a difficult heritage site among residents that pass it by on a regular basis
Challenges
- HOW can performing arts step into oftentimes intense debates around forms of commemoration and (lack of) memory?
- HOW to strike the right balance between the abstract form of performing arts and the concrete discussions and reactions of the stakeholders?
- HOW can a pre-existing performing arts piece be adapted to the specific context of various difficult heritage sites?
In 2023, Still Standing was performed on May 16th in Warsaw, as part of the commemoration of the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. On this occasion, it was produced by FestivALT in cooperation with the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Mazovian Institute of Culture and PERFORM Art Foundation. The three performers were accompanied by saxophonist Natan Kryszk.
The Warsaw iteration was a collective performative action, bringing two performers as well as eighty people including local residents and other interested individuals starting at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes outside of the Museum and ending at another nearby landmark. An audio track that the audience listened to on their phones provided a narrative for reflection and made reference to the destruction of the Great Synagogue of Warsaw perpetrated by SS troops exactly on that day 80 years earlier.
Again in the summer of 2023, Still Standing was performed at the Vilnius Biennial for Performance Art in Lithuania, aimed at reflecting, among other goals, on the multicultural past of the city. The performance took place at the site of the Piromont Old Jewish Cemetery, which had been closed down by the authorities during Soviet times, and is now a green area and the location of the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports. The performance was funded by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute of Poland.
Solutions
- Introducing a recurring performative practice to the space of a site that is an object of a heated debate to create an alternative platform for discussion – a type of a “third space” where various perspectives can be voiced.
- Drawing attention to the multilayered nature of the site, consisting of two pre-war Jewish cemeteries, the concentration camp infrastructure, killing sites and mass graves as well as post-war developments and the living vegetation.
- Reinterpreting a historical commemorative choreography and therefore broadening the understanding of what a memorial can be.
Lessons Learnt
- Outdoor artistic performance can help to tackle the issues of time, space, remembrance, and forgetting by closely linking the performers and audiences to the specific location and its history
- Minimalistic performance art forms can be more effective in letting people to reflect at their own pace, with their own feelings without being overwhelmed
- Context and embedding a performance is crucial – this can easily be done by providing the recorded narrative (the audience can also listen to it prior, or re-listen to it after the performance)
Funding
Still Standing was first developed thanks to the support of FestivALT, with the partners listed above cooperating and contributing financially to different iterations of the spectacle. Its various iterations were also supported by the Allianz Foundation, Paideia – European Institute for Jewish Studies and the Thinking Through the Museum project of Concordia University. Later it was performed as part of the NeDiPa project in Krakow in partnership with the POLIN Museum of History for Polish Jews and PERFORM Artistic Foundation.
Further Information
You can find further information on Still Standing on the website of FestivALT. The information about the performance in Lublin can be found here (in Polish), while the information on the performance at Vilnius Biennial for Performance Art (with audio recording) is available here. The information about the performance in Warsaw is available on the website of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. You can also read the review (in Polish) of the Warsaw spectacle here.
Photos Klaudyna Schubert