Akademia Ruchu
Akademia Ruchu (Academy of Movement) is an experimental theatre company founded in 1973 in Warsaw. It combines the genres of visual arts, theatre, and film in their performances.
Akademia Ruchu began creating performances in the 1970s and 1980s as part of numerous anti-communist activities in the spirit of social resistance, which ultimately led to the creation of the anti-communist solidarity movement in Poland. Presented as photographs and a video at the Artists’ Street, these performances manifest the mutually reinforcing relationship between public space and mass action, as if one depended on the other to reveal its full potential in and for civic action. Part behavioral theater, part theater of the absurd, this loose transdisciplinary artistic formation straddled a broad range of expressions, from visual to live art, eschewing the art gallery in favor of public space or other non-institutional sites.
Helmed by Wojciech Krukowski (1944–2014), Akademia Ruchu deployed strategies that would currently be deemed civil disobedience. Their peaceful methods of disrupting the typical flow of daily life and its pedestrian activities (pun intended) can be seen in Potknięcie, which consisted of Akademia Ruchu members repeatedly stumbling around before a public of unsuspecting passers-by. Attentive pedestrians may have noticed that this unfolded in front of the former Communist party headquarters.
Realized with stealth and speed a year before martial law, Sprawiedliwość jest ostoją mocy i trwałości Rzeczypospolitej involved performers lifting a banner bearing the motto of the Palace of Justice as a slogan for a silent show of popular support for the registration of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union “Solidarity” (NSZZ “Solidarność”). Krukowski’s closeness to Solidarność’s leader Lech Wałęsa would only strengthen the relationship between Akademia Ruchu’s respective movements and their common sense for making history.
Founded by Wojciech Krukowski. Members: Cezary Marczak, Jan Pieniążek, Janusz Bałdyga, Jarosław Żwirblis, Jolanta Krukowska, Krzysztof Żwirblis, Zbigniew Olkiewicz. Former members: Aleksandra Lompart, Andrzej Borkowski, Andrzej Komorowski, Gabriela Ligenza, Grażyna Skibińska, Hanna Tomaszewska, Jerzy Kapuściński, Joanna Krzysztoń, Jonasz Konderski, Maciej Skalski, Maria Pieniążek, Marta Sutkowska, Piotr Rypson, Ryszard Kawalec. [1]
- Publications
- Akademia Ruchu. Miasto. Pole akcji [City. The Field of Action], ed. Borkowska Małgorzata, Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Akademii Ruchu, 2006, 176 pp. [2] (Polish)
- Akademia Ruchu. Teatr, ed. Tomasz Plata, Warsaw: Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Instytut Teatralny im. Zbigniewa Raszewskiego, Instytut Sztuk Performatywnych, 2015. (Polish)
- Literature
- Tomasz Plata, A.R.: Akademia Ruchu, Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Przyjaciół Akademii Ruchu, 2003. (Polish)
- Monika Mokrzycka-Pokora, "Akademia Ruchu", Culture.pl, Aug 2003. (Polish)
- "Akademia Ruchu", trans. A.M., Culture.pl, Jan 2014. (English)
- Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Anda Rottenberg, Łukasz Ronduda, Karol Sienkiewicz, Akademia Ruchu. Miasto. Pole Akcji/City. The Field of Action, Warsaw: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, 2012. (Polish)/(English)
- Łukasz Ronduda, "Akademia Ruchu: Against the Marginalization of the Art Discourse", European Stages 1:1, 2014. (English)
- Zofia Dworakowska, "„Akademia otwartej aktywności”, czyli o ośrodkach Akademii Ruchu", Polish Theatre Journal 1, 2015, 10 pp.
- Ewa Matyczyk, "Power, Play, and the Everyday: Akademia Ruchu’s Cold War Street Performances", Public Art Dialogue 12:1, 2022, pp 24-42. [3] (English)
- Links
