“Kx4l3ndj34r Katastronauci: How to Do Things with Worlds”
Kx4l3ndj34r Katastronauci: How to Do Things with Worlds approaches the 1986 Challenger disaster through a specific constellation of historical, fictional, and philosophical materials in order to reflect on contemporary creativity and world- building across the domains of performance theory, conceptual art, and experimental theater.
- Bartek Frackowiak (Poland): Katastronauci and the Dance of Disaster and Chance
Employing disaster and chance/alea as « travelling concepts » alongside the concept of ‘theoretical object,’ this presentation focuses on HOBO Foundations’ production of Katastronauci, in particular the dance sections, « Earth and Prof. Challenger » and « H.M.S. ‘destratification of memory’ dance cruise. » I will argue for the necessity of disruption, error, and passivity in creating politically significant gestures in the performing arts while suggesting a reconceptualization of the Body without Organs. This reconceptualization unfolds via a close reading of elements of Katastronauci that reveal important intersections between theory/practice and philosophy/performance.
Bartek Frackowiak is a director, dramaturg, curator, and performance/visual culture scholar. He is currently a PhD student and lecturer in the Department of Theatre, Drama and Performance at Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Warsaw. Frackowiak has directed Komornicka: An Apparent Biography (2012), a non-linear surreal documentary of Polish transgender modernist writer Maria Komornicka, and In Desert and Wilderness. After Sienkiewicz and Others (2011), based on an archive of Polish colonial fantasies, images, and projections. He served as dramaturg for Katastronauci (2013, directed by I. Ganczarczyk), an experimental theater work remixing Jon McKenzie’s Perform or Else and recontextualizing composer Witold Lutoslawski’s controlled aleatorism. Frackowiak is Program Director of HOBO Art Foundation, which seeks to develop performing and visual arts and bring down borders between art, technology, humanities and science.
