Weronika Trojańska
Stan Zanikania
Stany Dźwiękowe
Burden
Reading 26’1.1499
O Wschodzie we Wschodnim
Conductors Ensemble
Ein Schönes Bild
Untitled (Leo Amino)
Close (to) the Sky
I am Sitting in a Room
Conversation Piece
Maciunas Laughter
Perfect Journey
Study for Sturtevant Voice
Personal Archive
Event Swirl
www.eventswirl.com
About
Contact
Instagram
Stan Zanikania
Stany Dźwiękowe
Burden
Reading 26’1.1499
O Wschodzie we Wschodnim
Conductors Ensemble
Ein Schönes Bild
Untitled (Leo Amino)
Close (to) the Sky
I am Sitting in a Room
Conversation Piece
Maciunas Laughter
Perfect Journey
Study for Sturtevant Voice
Personal Archive
Event Swirl
www.eventswirl.com
About
Contact
MACIUNAS LAUGHTER (CHOIR EDITION), 2015 – 2022 “Fluxus was a joke!” – said George Maciunas on his death bed. He had a very unusual sense of irony in him, which was also a quality of many of Fluxus works. Despite their playful attitude, Fluxus artists were serious about changing the balance of power in the art world. They did not agree with the authority of museums to determine the “high art”. Constituted between human an animal world, laugh is an atavistic feature, both gesture and language. Maciunas considered it to be the only form of human expression which transforms the whole body into a ”corporeal concretism”. Laughter is a conceptual exercise, our unconscious performance, “an opening in which self unfolds”, and thus a way to evoke personality. Maciunas was a complex men, who until this day remains enigmatic and mythic. I decided to learn his laughter (to adapt it to my own rather than mimic) as I found it to be his feature that is the most constant, the part of his personality that hasn’t changed despite all of his – not always easy - life events (laughter is not a quality we learn over life, like speaking for example, but it is already embedded in our identities). ‘Storing’ his laugher in my body I can hand it down and share it with other people, meaning that the choir performs the laughter only after my tutoring (without hearing the original sound of Maciunas’). I have chosen to work with a choir as laughter never appears as singular act but always as multiplicity, and communicate what could not be said with words. Thus, laughing together becomes a social practice, but also, a musical and spiritual experience.
Selected documentation:

Emily Harvey Foundation, New York City (photo by Scott Walden)

Emily Harvey Foundation, New York City (photo by Scott Walden)
Maciunas Laughter (Choir Edition No.2), live performance at the Emily Harvey Foundation & Gallery, New York City, 2018, with Renée Badami, Anthony Castellano, Debbie Corwin, Jeffrey Perkins, Tina Scepanovic, Francine Shore, and others.

Photo by Toni Montana Studios

Maciunas Laughter (Soloist Edition), Port25 Mannheim (together with BWA Bydgoszcz), 2021, performance documentation (07’32’’) Photo by Toni Montana Studios

Maciunas Laughter (Fluxus Edition), performance online on Zoom, 2021 (performers: Eric Andersen, Alain Arias-Misson, Jeff Berner, Jacques Donguy, Charles Doria, Charles Dreyfus Pechkoff, Bartolomé Ferrando, Peter Frank, Ken Friedman, Coco Gordon, John Halpern, Kevin Harrison, Jessica Higgins, Bengt af Klintberg, Jarosław Kozłowski, Alison Knowles, Bob Lens, Patrice Lerochereuil, Billie Maciunas, Ann Noel, Jeffrey Perkins, Norie Sato, Joshua Selman, Wim T. Shippers, Weronika Trojańska, Frank Trowbridge)