STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
demonstration on October 1, commemorating toilet paper, a militia man interrogating Major
says: “Do you know that it was an attempt to change the social and political system in our
country?”. Fydrych answers: “I appeared on Swidnicka Street in a paper sack and with the
stocking on my head because I was creating art there. (...) I am creating dialectical art,
influencing people’s consciousness. I think everything is art, everything is an object of art. (...)
The interrogation is finished. (...) A Security Service agent, who is quitting the building,
confides to a colleague that he is going out into the city to create dialectical art” (58). Fydrych
was perfectly aware of the political dimension of his actions. In his commentary to the Peace
Day happening (Sept. 1st) he says: “An independent antifascist demonstration is not possible in
this country. It is forbidden here to organize anything which has not got the approval of the
authorities. Even an independent fight against AIDS would be treated as an attempt to change
the political system.
It is a funny situation when they arrest people who demonstrate against fascism. When you are
finally arrested you watch the legal antifascist manifestation on the TV in the militia
headquarters and you see what kind of hypocrisy all that official blah, blah, blah about peace is.
(...) I wanted to show this by organizing this demonstration” (54). In the surrealist report from
the celebration of St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 7th) Major wrote openly: “The struggle with the state
of torpor and separation, the struggle for the victory of unselfishness, the aspiration for the
smile, breaking sad alienation, all this pushed the united forces of good and joy into action” (72-
73).
The most spectacular event in 1987 was the celebration of the Eve of the 70th Anniversary of
the Great Socialist October Revolution on November 6 with the participation of battleships
“Potemkin” and “Aurore, cavalry of Budenny, real proletarians (workers from Wroclaw
factories) and the Angel of Revolution. About four hundred people were arrested that evening,
some of them only because they were wearing red piece of clothes, the “clandestine badge” of
happening’s participants.
The reactions of the communist powers were serious and they showed fear. In spite of the
joyful, carnival-like atmosphere at the feasts of Orange Alternative, their young participants
were being arrested, detained, interrogated, sometimes humiliated and beaten by riot militia
men. The culmination of repression came later - in early Spring 1988.
Then the situation in the country started to change. In May 1988 several strikes took place in
different Polish factories.
On August 19th Major organized his last happening in the Karkonosze Mountains, on the
Polish-Czechoslovak border, to commemorate the “brotherly help” of the Warsaw Pact to the
Czechoslovakian people in 1968. On the peak of Śnieżka Polish forces were supposed to meet
their Czech counterparts and to celebrate the anniversary together. Unfortunately, the Polish
forces were arrested long before they reached the frontier. Only a small Czech unit reached the
fixed meeting point.
The happening in the Karkonosze Mountains was the last important event organized by Orange
Alternative. The political situation in Poland began to change rapidly. General Jaruzelski, urged
by Summer strikes in many Polish factories, decided to negotiate with Solidarity. After few
months of preparation the Polish Round Table debate started in February 1989. The Berlin Wall
started to shake. Waldemar Fydrych, disgusted with the bad taste of political struggle in
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