Handy (1981)

Warpechowski speaks of Handy, originally performed at the Plein Air in Świeszyno near Miastko in 1980, as of a “performance for one hand” – marked and separated from the rest of the body with black and yellow stripes, resembling road signs. Grabbing objects like feather, leaf or dart, Warpechowski succumbs to their power, allowing them to “use” his hand and control its movements.

Given the “trait, property, function and ‘habit’” of the feather, the artist assumes that the hand that holds it will rise in the air, lifting the rest of the body, “just like the bird flies that carried the feather”. A similar mechanism works with every other object. Thus, the performer enters the domain of the search for the most immanent traits, constitutive of things being what they are – or what they are not, as the artist seems to prove, referring to the lack of a definite essence of each thing and its incessant act of becoming something else.