ADRIAN PALKA UK

Адриан Палка  ВЕЛИКОБРИТАНИЯ

Lectures at Coventry University Performing Arts in the UK. �My performance work has been influenced profoundly by Central and eastern European themes and techniques from neo-Dada in the 1970s with performance group Bogdan Club (�the most imaginative group at the Edinburgh Fringe�, Glasgow Herald) and with the Cupboard Cabaret in the 1990s. It has also explored unusual interactions with audiences including converting a car into a theatre.

Since 1996 I have been working on performances which employ sound installations and engage audiences directly. I have been collaborating with German based artists Robert Rutman and Wolfram Der Spyra producing performances on musical sculptures the steel cello and bow chime culminating in a performance in May 2002 at Coventry Cathedral. In 1998 I co-curated an exhibition entitled �Le Jardin� on sound technologies and green experience in conjunction with British Soil Association at the ICA. At this event I exhibited work in a green house.

�Kick the bucket� is a performance installation comprising 7 oil drums wired to midi software and amplification. Spectators are invited to throw stones at the drums which trigger pre-recorded sounds on impact. The sounds drawn from various archives and explore the theme of the collapse of the communist system in Central and Eastern Europe and evokes some of the paradoxical emotions connected to this particular fin de siecle.

The work functions on a variety of levels. It excites the spectator and activates the gallery space with the aggressive joy of the coconut shy in cacophonous orgies of audience activity. It also produces soulful moments in which lone spectators painstakingly aim single stones searching for particular sounds. The piece deepens my work with amplified metal and direct physical interactions between audiences and sound.

The piece was premiered in Germany in July 2001 with great success and repeated in London in December and was shown at Kassel, Dokumenta XI �beiprogramm� in July.