"The Refrigerium is a waiting room for souls. A place of cooling and temporary comfort.
Seekers of cleansing rituals, reassurance and escape from the overwhelming fever gather in the shadows. A tuner stands atop the volcano. When the fire stirs the silence, she awakens the matter to life with her call.
Seekers of cleansing rituals, reassurance and escape from the overwhelming fever gather in the shadows. A tuner stands atop the volcano. When the fire stirs the silence, she awakens the matter to life with her call.
At the foot of the volcano the burnt remains of everyday uselessness are dying out. In this frozen landscape female figures move. They have not noticed that time has moved to non-time, and waiting has become a practice of life.
The brewer loops hasty gestures to placate the newcomer. It offers a promise of abundance and attentiveness that cannot be fulfilled. The hybridizer creates signs-warnings. Light leads to the mother's belly. From everywhere beckon the whispers of frothers, doggies, dream-openers, preachers. In the guts of a worn-out power plant, a cloud rises in oil and metal fumes. Combustion relieves tired bodies."
text by Olga Cielemecka & Kasia Hertz
teaser
This performative event happened over the following 3 days, every day for exactly 6 hours, in the building of the former hydroelectric power plant in Bialystok. Using the architecture and topography of the existing space, its peculiarities, scars, and character - the whole "body" of the building, and treating it as such, (choreography and scenography) a specific ritual of purification, refrigeration was staged. By means of subtly and precisely arranged actions and interferences (e.g. using the smell emitted by the wooden floor in the main hall, which for years absorbed the oils driving the mechanism of the power plant, and mixing it with a very strong scent of cut lilies, working with light, emphasizing the structural elements of the interior, and the acoustics of the building and its dimensions), we managed to wake up to life an oneiric organism, in which the planes of individual and collective experience intersected. Each of the female performers was assigned a specific role and stayed in a closed fragment of space, however, their rituals and gestures took place in time synchronization based on sound signals (drowned audio tracks, voice signals, mechanical sounds). Guest-participant through his/hers active presence and decisions (to be an active or passive participant; which routes to choose), co-created the atmosphere of the common, shared „body”, and relieved his/ hers own tensions, expectations and habits. We hired female performers and artists, as well as craftswomen (like the nail specialist) mainly living or originating from the region of Podlasie.
