Bitef

During ten years in Studio, hecreated his mostsignificant performances as a theatre director, in thè style that carne to be known as"theatre of visual narration", because of thè emphasis on visual expression. As opposed to many other directors of similar vocation, Szajna kept the actor. For his mostsignificant performances -such as Wìtkacyl, Witkacy 11, Replica, Gulgutiera, Dante, Majakovsky, Cervantes, Death on a PearTree - he wrote Scripts, designed thesetforthem, and directed them, creating a highly original "visual" theatre that was based on personal and general experiences of a man and artist in the second half of the twentieth Century. That is why his performances contain elements of informel and collage from the 1950's ( image-drama ), assemblages from the 1960'5, in which he emphasized the structural composition, applied fragments of existing objects, notably mannequins that he did not treat exclusively as fetishes, but rather as traces of traumatic experiences, especially in performances Character l/and Doubles.

Searching for thè most adequate form that will express the said experiences, in the 1970'5, he worked on applying the environmental technique (performances Reminiscences and Replica), and in using that technique he expressed his concentration camp experiences through "memories of the past", photographs, camp props and mannequins. He also used these tools in painting, which he was doing simuitaneously, especially in the cycles created in the 1980's and 1990's ( Anthill, Gnome). At the same time, Szajna was creating artwork focusing on the themes of totalitarianism and Contemporary barbarity, such as Drang nach Osten-nach Western, with which he represented Roland on the Venice Biennale (1970) and Sao Paolo biennale (1979,1989), For these works he received highly prestigious awards in Roland, italy, USA, Germany and other countries, and was regarded as one of the five greatest and most original artists of the twentieth Century.

In 1997, in his native Rzeszow, Józef Szajna was awarded a museum, in which the artwork from all the phases of his opus was exhibited, together with extensive documentation. After that, a collection of his artwork was exhibited in the STUDIO Art Centre that he had founded in 1971.

Although already 85, Szajna is still active. In his most recent work, he displays a very personal view of the world - the world that is disintegrating and self-destructive [Anthill, Snouts,Shadows, Genetic Engineering, etc), and these are best presented in his latest, huge exhibition in Berlin, opened in February 2007, on the space of 2500 m 2, as well as a number of art pieces that permanently represent him in the most famous museums in the world.

The Second World War, concentration camps, communism and totalitarianism left permanent marks in the authohs memory, and these are evident in his hypersensitivity and fear of cruelty and brutality of man and the world. His art as a whole is thematically imbued with decay, violence, humiliation, evil and death. The artist himself wouid often say that Auschwitz is "caesura of the world", although he is not trying to express his direct experiences in his artwork, but to present a distanced view on the world and history: a.bitter personal experience of a 20th Century man, the artist Józef Szajna experiences more powerfully and broadly through his visions of the destruction of our civilization and its valúes. That visión he materiaiized in his last theatre production Traces (Turkey, Israel) and in his latest visual artwork: Mound ofßemembrance and ReconciUation in Auschwitz, 30 meters tali, with the sculpture Opening -2005 placed on its top, the sculpture of super-national and superreiigious character, while an eternai fíame will bum in a rotunda inside the Mound. The idea for this artwork, proposed by the author in 1994, was supported by a number of Roma, Jewish and Christian organizations around the world, as a memory of over a million anda half people - members of those ethnic groups - who died in Auschwitz.

People of Serbia, especially Belgrade, know Józef Szajna, as an artist. He is known primarily because of Bitef. In 1979, for his production Majakovsky, he received the award of this, according to him, most significant festival of the 20th Century avant-garde theatre.

ABOUT "REPLICA"

After Replica I began, like Adorno, to ask the question: is it possible to write poetry after Auschwitz?

I haven't asked that question for twenty five years. I have lived through everyday routine, and neverfelt like I had a hunch on my back because ofthat: everything pushed me into a different world, different life.

In Replica, when I destroyed the theatre completely, when it was no longer about doing theatre of death, but about total death, I noticed something that I could cali the question of creativity.

Then my sight sharpened for danger, and today I don't see evil only in Mephistopheles, but in the unity of Faustus and Mephistopheles. I see that evil in politics, in aggression, because force becomes aggression, violence becomes terror. People become insolent then. And I feltthat I was through with theatre, and that I should search for it in other spheres. I asked myself howto express that - whether I should use words? But, words are subject to Interpretation. Or, as Dante wouid say: Words are disconnected, dissonant, only the facts are irrefutable. Water, fare, earth, air, weakness, violence. That is Replica.

Everything ends, only people live. There shall always be renaissance, only people live. There shall always be renaissance, and dictators will be killed by their power, It is about people. When we are related to people, then we have knowledge about the way of the world. We can understand one another. I know that we were all on the same line, in the same situations, and that we are meaningless. In relation to other people, in relation to ourselves. I am grateful to someone and someone is grateful to me. However, we only talk about trust and reconciliation when they are missing.

Whenever I gave speech - on different continents, in the USA, in Germany and elsewhere, 1 was always against the war. War never again.