An exhibition featuring dematerialized art works (performances, protocols, films, sound pieces) from the collections of Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Kontakt Collection in Vienna.

A Score by Pierre Bal-Blanc

»The Cynics Republic—Plac Defilad« provides an alternative vision of the history of performance art. The exhibition aims to offer a different framework for performative practices. Its starting point is the hypothesis that performance art—or at least the performative stance—has existed since antiquity and was especially influenced by one school of thought, namely Cynicism.

The ancient philosophy of Cynicism, with its most famous proponent Diogenes (413–323 BC), maintained that people should live in harmony with nature, reject social categories in favor of imitating animals, shun material possessions and strive for self-sufficiency (autarky). The philosophy was transmitted not so much through concepts as through gestures. It involved public attitudes, relating to others, words in action.

This exhibition seeks to bring such philosophical ideas into dialogue with the notion of performance. All the works on show can be productively considered through the instructions left to us by the Cynics.

The five-week exhibition is divided into five themes that relate to the philosophy of the Cynics:

1. Dishonor: a critical alternative to competitiveness
2. Shamelessness: anticipating a state of nature
3. Destitution: autarky, an ethics of animality
4. Ordeal: work freed from its negative, stigmatizing value
5. Disruption: an experimental method for the present

The artworks will be on view on the vertical exhibition, located in the center of MSN’s monumental staircase and as part of the »Kontakt Video Klub«, the performance and the cinema programme. Each component constitutes an integral part of »The Cynics Republic«.

»Kontakt Video Klub«

For »The Cynics Republic—Plac Defilad« at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw a Video Klub has been inspired by the MSN Warsaw Archives that provide a vast resource available online. The resources include a selection of films from the Filmoteka Muzeum – a collection of nearly 700 films by Polish avant-garde authors, presenting materials on key Polish artists and artistic life since 1945, recorded lectures, meetings and debates combined with a selection of films from the Kontakt Collection in Vienna. The films are visible on the vertical exhibition and weekly in the auditorium as well as during the time of the exhibition on the website of the »Kontakt Video Klub« online.

A cooperation between MSN Warsaw (Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie) and the Kontakt Collection in Vienna.

Header image: Dalibor Martinis, Open Reel, 1976