Theatre Journal

Abstract:

This essay explores both the topological and historiographic dimensions of installation. Fully cognizant of installation’s transience, temporality, experiential character, or its political dimensions, the author wishes to add one more element to the current discourse: that is, spatial dialectics foregrounding contradictions in and of space, as elucidated by Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space. The essay takes the reader and the spectator through a recent exhibition/installation of Tadeusz Kantor’s objects and machines, Tadeusz Kantor: Widma/Specters, which the author co-curated at the Cricoteka, the Centre for the Documentation of the Art of Tadeusz Kantor in Kraków in April 2020; and by briefly referencing Kantor’s artistic journey in order to show how this exhibition/installation acquires a new dialectical dimension in the times of disquiet. The essay argues that spatial dialectics brings a new dimension to the current discussions about the nature and function of installation. Installation’s transience, temporality, and its political dimensions encounter in Tadeusz Kantor: Widma/Specters a different materiality—an object in the state of unrest perturbing the contemplative attitude toward history and demanding that it be seen within the critical constellation that explodes its reified museal presence.