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FIKCiA
in: SHAKE - Hamlet or (rather) Much Ado About Nothing, CCA Laznia, Gdansk, 2004
project: R. Dziadkiewicz
The project elaborated for the LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk is regarded as a possibility to establish new and to strengthen old channels of communication between the artists, art institutions and the audience. It foregrounds the audience (the public) and its active role and position in defining and receiving an art work and the artist himself/herself. The main issues that are going to be taken into consideration are focused on the specificity of contemporary spectatorship, art's reception and the ways of perception, especially the in-between of reception and perception. In the context of this project, art is defined primarly as a public service and art institution is interpreted in the sociological framework. Integrative aspects of artistic activities in both mental and topographic terms will be emphasised. Exchange is being considered and the main currency is a viewer's experience gained through the artist's gesture which aims at mediation. Artists are mediators - "Creation is all about mediators. Without them nothing happens" - and only thanked to them we are able to perceive creation "as the tracing of a path between impossibilities.
 For the Shake - Hamlet... Roman Dziadkiewicz prepared a particularly large project called FIKCIA (an epitome of the Polish sentence "Forum of the Integration of Private and Institutional Culture"). The Project - composed of over 10 parts and having an inter-medial structure - was rather difficult to experience in its totality. It's aim was to be an eloquent play/discussion on the question of relations between artist, institution and audience /participants, as well as a reflection on the fictional status of art in social reality. Every part of the project was based on an episode from the play "Hamlet" by W. Shakespeare, but it was also a critical reflection, observation and exploration of local, Gdansk "stage" (in artistic, social and also physical sense - the city enviromant as a stage for Hamlet play), where the author was investigating personal relations, real problems and hidden conflicts. The project included performances/events, videos, theme-specific installation, interventions in public and institutional spaces, photos and text.
 An example is the speech by the CCA Laznia director written by Dziadkiewicz (episode was realization of the "Hamlet" scene where the Prince writes parts of play for actors).
(...) You could, for a need, study a
speech of some dozen or sixteen lines which I would set down and
insert in't? could you not?
 Other episode (no. 1) was an oneiric video portrait of Grzegorz Klaman (a famous Polish artist, the "father"/co-founder of Laznia) - as Hamlet's father ghost (in the smoke of marijuana):
What art thou, that usurp'st this time of night
The discussion of guardians (first Act of "Hamlet") was taken as a metaphor of the relations between Laznia and the local audience and also of the current global psychosis of terror and security. In this episode-performance Dziadkiewicz appeared dressed as a bodyguard at the opening of exhibition.
Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows,
Why this same strict and most observant watch
So nightly toils the subject of the land;
And why such daily cast of brazen cannon,
And foreign mart for implements of war;
 
Julita Wojcik - artist from Gdansk and former professional swimmer - was a protagonist of Ophelia episode. A social action - creation of the garden with Ofelia flowers and the video
interview
with Julita-swimmer/Ophelia was both realization of the scene when crazy Ophelia hands out flowers and the grotesque gravediggers discussion.
And the last Scene - Hamlet duel...
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