STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
anticommunist slogans and Solidarity’s symbols, whose authors were being chased by police
and severely punished. In Katowice, after six hours of very surrealistic interrogation, the police
officer finally agreed to treat Major’s action as “juvenile fancy”. In Swinoujscie he was forced
to write an official declaration that a dwarf is an apolitical symbol.
In the following years Major developed and fine-tuned his strategy of street happening. He
undertook many trials on a smaller scale in 1986. His first big happening was organized in
Wroclaw on the occasion of Children’s Day, June 1, 1987. The principal characters of the event
were: dwarfs (young people with red hats on their heads) giving away sweets and candies, a
teddy-bear, some characters from the most popular fairy-tales and, of course, great Gulliversized
dwarfs - riot militia men. The scenario was easy to foresee: Swidnicka Street near the
street clock and Wroclaw Old Market Square were carefully watched by the secret police
(Security Service) as early as the night of June 1. Then, after the clock showed 3 p.m., whoever
was wearing a red hat (not including the great teddy-bear in dark glasses, an attribute of gen.
Jaruzelski, or Puss in Boots) or was giving away sweets or greeting children, was immediately
arrested.
The strategy invented and applied by Major and his friends is clear now, we believe. It shows
the surrealist quality of “socialist democracy” under Soviet domination. It was obvious, both to
Major and to the state authorities, that every street demonstration had to have the state's
authorization. Unauthorized celebrations, even as innocent as the one in Wroclaw had to belong
to the state communist power. If not, they were automatically defined as hostile to the regime.
This is the true nature of a totalitarian state: every piece of public life has to be subordinated to
the directives given by the authorities.
Major and his colleagues called themselves Orange Alternative to commemorate their
beginnings in the roles of surrealists in 1981. Their happenings were a mixture of art, children’s
play and political manifestation. But probably the most important aspect of Fydrych’s
happenings was the therapeutic one. The events on Świdnicka Street, Old Market Square and
their surroundings enabled their participants to overcome the fear, the most important and most
ominous effect of communist power, and especially during the period of Martial Law. After
hundreds of bloody street fights all over Poland (and in Wrocław in particular) it was not easy to
face once more the riot militia forces on the street, to be arrested and interrogated. It was
possible, however, and it turned out that the police were not as tough, severe and cruel as they
had been before. The times had changed, the powers seemed not to be as omnipotent as in 1982-
83.
The year 1987 was rich in Orange Alternative activities. After the celebration of Children’s Day
the inhabitants of Swidnicka Street, the Security Service and militia experienced several stormy
events: a demonstration against heat on August 1, a happening on the occasion of the
International Day of Peace (September 1), a happening to commemorate toilet paper (October 1,
shortages of toilet paper were very painful to Poles throughout almost 50 years of communist
rule; they “magically” disappeared in 1989, when communism collapsed); the celebration of
The Day of the Militia (October 7), the celebration of The Day of Polish People’s Army
(October 12); the ceremonial funeral of toilet paper (October 15), the Eve of the 70th
Anniversary of the Great October Revolution (November 6), a happening on the occasion of the
National Referendum for Economic Reform (November 27), and finally the celebration of St.
Nicholas Day (December 7).
In each of these events artistic and political aspects were inseparable and very well mixed. Let’s
quote first some fragments of Major’s reports confirming his artistic intentions. After the
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