JANUSZ BALDYGA
Warsaw, Poland
"STEPS"
"STEPS-2"
2x15 minutes, 8(9)/09/2001atPall Mall Club

by Victor Petrov
Janusz Baldyga gave two performances in Minsk. Major elements of the performer's art are categories like measure, proportion, space and boundaries. One way or another, all these concepts are linked to gravitational and vital forces. This implies: movement through these boundaries and spaces; moving one's own body through these spaces; and measuring the interaction of step proportions and their inter-replaceability inside a "process" (the order of which is the correlation between a certain quantity, quality, length, height, depth, and other measurement categories as measures of art itself). The performer operates with all these categories "on the razor's edge", i.e. the process may stop at any time, may fail to occur, or may just not happen. It does happen, however, thanks to a fortunate coincidence of "adjusted" circumstances (measures, proportions, gravity), which allows one to see a process of pure creativity taking place beyond the boundaries of what would at first seem to be a normal action. This very aspect is the magnetic force of his art.