Clapping and stomping – two non-verbal behaviors that express the extreme emotions of mass criticism. They accompany all forms of cultural activity, especially those of a performative nature, whether in everyday life or in the theater. Is it not significant that approval and rebellion – in affect, an emotional gesture, or a ritualized action – result in rhythmic striking: palm against palm, foot against the ground, a body part against an object, each becoming a non-melodic instrument? The reaction is thus based on the same primal rules that underlie art: repetition, alternation, gradation – simply rhythm. The sound born of a blow held the army together in a steady march (also a strike), drove game during a hunt (as above), and induced a trance in those participating in the orgy-filled (...) Dionysia. It brought all these circumstances to the stage, imitating rain or a storm, but various acoustic sensations had a specific purpose: to evoke visual associations, to provoke the plastic imagination. Even then, the percussion and the stomping of choir members performing standardized patterns in unison mobilized the feet of the audience, who expressed both satisfaction and its lack in the identical way.
For the ancient Greeks, a drum was a tympanon (τύμπανον), the same name they gave to the triangular wall membrane filling the pediment of a temple. Its rhythmically spaced columns consisted of prefabricated stone "drums," so that the architectural construction took on a musical harmony that filled the entire world. This was noticed by the modernists: William Butler Yeats, Paul Claudel, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Adolphe Appia, and also Le Corbusier, who admired the work of the latter two at the Festival Theatre near Dresden while visiting his brother – a student of eurhythmics. Moments later, having embarked on a "Journey to the East," he was struck dumb at the sight of the ruins of the Parthenon. As a purist, he saw in them not a collection of ornaments, as the moderns did, but abstract laws of order and typification – more Apollonian than Dionysian: "Rhythm is a state of equilibrium based on simple or complex symmetries or on skillful compensations." However, contemporary expressionists became fascinated by this darker side of human nature. Their guides were the mad maenads, bacchantes tearing apart wild and domestic animals in a frenzy of festive elation.
The exhibition "Everyone Knows a Dog," inspired by a child's account of a tragic collision between a living being and a vehicle, stages – giving plastic and acoustic form to – the blows of everyday life and times of celebration. From the post-bacchanalian veduta of Przemysław Czepurko and the macabre nativity scene of Jan Płatek, through the bloodless hunts of Irena Kalicka and the black animal carnival of Jan Baszak, to the acoustic sculptures of Albrecht Fersch and the actor's bodyless dramatic mask by Mikołaj Małek: "Music exists if there is rhythm, just as life exists if there is a pulse" (Igor Stravinsky), but "The Rite [of Spring] is the life of stones and trees. There are no human beings in it" (Vaslav Nijinsky).
Szymon Piotr Kubiak
December 19, 2025
6:00 PM
opening of the exhibition "Everyone knows a dog"
Artists:
Jan Baszak, Przemek Czepurko, Mikołaj Małek, Albrecht Fersch, Irena Kalicka, Jan Płatek
Curator:
Anna Maria Karczmarska
Curatorial text:
Szymon Piotr Kubiak
Coordination and guided tours:
Tosia Pilinow
An exhibition about death, memory, and loss, starting from a child's drawing and a short report from the 1980s, written by a nine-year-old child about an abandoned dog that was hit by a car. The starting point – a simple, honest record of a traumatic event – becomes a pretext for a broader reflection on emotional recording, memory, and the lost image. The exposition is interdisciplinary in nature: it includes painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, objects, models, and musical performance.
