Until recently, almost all the works of the group Bergamot, a majority of which are performances referred to as “actions”, have been triggered by outside stimuli. With them as the starting point, the artistic duo, Volha Maslouskaya and Raman Tratsiuk, has aimed at an analysis of the relations between the artist and the spectator, between the artist and the creator—that is between the performer and a (sometimes) anonymous author—or between the artist and their artwork. The stagings of such situational “actions”, though experimental in nature, undermine the established status of all participants. The key element of this analysis is to end on an inconclusive note, to transfer the suspension of rules dividing social roles from the artistic sphere into the existential sphere.

In their latest cycle of actions titled Organic Work, which can be summarily described as a long-term project, the group has moved up to a higher level of their game-work with the announcement of a contest for a “performance idea or a script for Bergamot”. The main award in the competition, the “Intenso” prize, is an external 500GB hard drive, and the remaining prizes, “Super Talent” ones, are nine flash drives. Moreover, the artists will use the scripts of the finalists.

Undoubtedly, the similarity between the contest and popular plot-based role play games (RPG) is compelling. The similarity can be seen in the fact that the artists set the rules, spell out the terms of the contest in the regulations page (equivalent to the RPG books), take part in the game and, at the same time, remain the game masters. They use the codes and procedures of mass culture, such as advertising and casting, to create a plot out of the threads that emerge in the course of the project, and eventually assign the function of a metatext to the game. The ultimate prize for the contestants will be moving up to another level, which means acquiring the status of an artist, since Bergamot obliges itself to recognize the copyright of the winners each time their scripts or ideas are used. However, unlike in the RPGs, both the players and masters function in both realities—the virtual reality of the game and genuine social reality—at the same time.

The game is designed to trigger constant interaction. All emerging elements, in response to constant interaction or serendipitous developments, are instantly integrated into the game. Via a chain method, the creators of the game display it to more and more diverse groups—students of new schools of higher education, Internet users, or pub patrons. Some recorded excerpts of one performance, used in accordance to a script of one of the first finalists of the contest, were used by Maslouskaya and Tratsiuk to make a promotional material of their contest in the form of a short clip. The clip opens with a scene in which a finalist encourages others to take part in the competition and get a taste of this experience. The words he uttered, “Devote five minutes of your life and leave a trace in art,” though sounding familiar, are not a quote attributed to anybody famous.

As in their other works, Bergamot does not aim at forcing viewer to understand the influences others have on the duo, or how they “draw” from works of other artists or, not in the least, to resort to ready-made material (it is then commonly referred to as “nobody’s”). Rather, by indicating the common imagery shared by the artists and recipients of art, they highlight the problem of the homogenization of thought, subsequently adopting the model of a copyright as a strategy of artistic and private action. Out of all the repertoire of postmodern strategies, this model has become prevalent in Organic Work, but unlike most of them, in axiological terms it places the same value not only on materials that come from different sources but also on the status of the sources—their authors. In this more or less resultant axiologically-free approach, the idea of an artist is equally good or bad as that of an amateur. In such a light the professional does not differ from the amateur. Thus, one can also become an artist, the type that Bergamot promises.

The structure of the task, and at the same time, the structure of the game, is relatively simple. The task of the players is to submit a performance idea or a performance script, while the task of Bergamot is to select the most interesting submissions and then use them. The artists do not impose any formal or content-related limitations on the contestants, but instead impose a technical one: the performance must be doable. In fact, the artists present themselves to the contestants as people to hire, who have a lot of job experience (as “former artists” who can take up any “job”). On the Internet www page they reveal their physical parameters as if they were taking part in a beauty contest.

Though the latter may seem relatively simple and clear, the artistic duo’s endeavor sets our head spinning. What, actually, is the game itself about? Surely, it cannot be that the artists want to buy success or to obtain something via the submissions of others’ ideas, not to mention selling themselves out to a type of slavery, even though it resembles a situation where slaves are drawn to a market in search of a new master via the labor market, the latter being a “vanity fair”. Yet this is not about a trade transaction with an employer, a commissioner, an art agent or a patron. Furthermore, it is not about achieving some aim or winning against somebody, and it is definitely not an attempt to win somebody’s soul. Bergamot is not going to trade their souls, neither the human nor the artistic one, either.

Now and then a simple project provokes this type of interpretation. For instance, an artist Christian Boltanski, in connection to his latest work, has been accused of selling his soul to a “Tasmanian Devil”, and for a song at that. Indeed, Boltanski made an artistic-bookmaker deal with David Walsh, a professional gambler, a multimillionaire and a collector. According to the deal, he agreed to “sell” eight years of his life; as a matter of fact, not the whole of his life, but only its artistic part, or to be more precise, the fragment of the part which he devotes to work. Nonetheless, the principle pars proto toto applies to this deal, hence the project was named “Artistic Big Brother”. According to the deal, in the workshop of the artist, in Malakoff, which is near Paris, three mounted cameras record what is going on in the studio all the time. This is broadcast live to a certain cave in Tasmania. Access to this cave is theoretically unlimited, yet the public has not been informed about the location of this cave, so it is highly probable that nobody will visit it.

Yet the most disturbing element of this artistic deal, at least for the public, is the bet accepted by Boltanski: namely, if it happens that the artist dies in two years from the inception of the project (January 1, 2010), Walsh will win but he will have to pay the artist’s relatives for the broadcast of this documentary an amount—though at a discount price—equal to the number of monthly installments which are left till the expiration date of the project, still 10 years away. If, however, Boltanski stays alive for the remaining eight years, Walsh will pay him the whole price for the project. Moreover, the longer the artist lives, the more money he will get. The recorded material will be shown in the Museum of Old and New Art funded by Walsh in Tasmania. It will become Walsh’s property provided the artist dies before the eight year period of the contract.

Boltanski does not consider what he did as a pact with the devil. He believes he has taken up a challenge, whereas were this a pact, he would have to fight with all possible means, but the only means he knows is art. In his art he always raises questions about the role of memory, human destiny, and the connection between life and death. Till now he has explored these questions using shapes, sounds, light or a collection or assortment of objects—anything except for words. Yet this exploration has a different form – this is how he understands the commission of the Tasmanian eccentric. Since only the devil can state that it has been never defeated, Boltanski felt he had to challenge it. Once he took the bet, the game began; its result remains unknown in a twofold sense: artistic and moral.

As regards the Bergamot duo, it does not sell its collective soul, and the game it plays is not targeted against anybody or anything. In fact, they lease a body and talent to themselves by which they introduce a new element to the game – a persona.

The word “persona’ is derived from the tradition of ancient theater. In Greece prosopon, and in Rome persona, referred to a theatrical mask put on by an actor. The nature of the term is thus ambiguous since it encompasses many different meanings, such as “face”, “façade”, “character” and “mask”, which may be understood as different aspects of a role being played. What is visible—the mask—is identified with the essence of the theatrical character. It is thus assumed that the mask is reflective of this character and indirectly determines its behavior. Thanks to the mask, it has been easier for viewers to understand behavior, since the persona also embodies the motifs that drive the person hiding behind the mask (or actually the person personifying it) to act this or any other way. 

The image of a person that others perceive is actually the basis of the concept of persona in the psychological theory of Carl Gustav Jung. For him persona is the appearance that “I” presents and constructs consciously to the world and which is the essence of the “I” in the social dimension. It is tantamount to one’s attitude towards the world, the “exterior” character of a human. Primarily, it essentially boils down to the role and function one plays. On the level of perception a persona is a complex system of signs and signals through which a human communicates about oneself to the world. It can be said that the world cannot see us in our full complexity; it can only recognize us through our persona, for example, through our professional persona. The latter does not necessarily mean that this image is falsified. It is only when a human identifies his or her true “I” with a persona that the persona actually disappears behind a layer of deceit , and a mask ceases to serve its purpose of identification. 

Bergamot’s Volha Maslouska and Raman Tratsiuk’ Organic Work, in the narrative dimension, refers to the sphere of interaction between its initiators and recipients, while in its psychological sphere it touches upon the problem of social identity, self-identification and consciousness transformation as well as the border between creation and existence and the sphere in which this border is crossed. Bergamot mapped the framework of the game, within which the roles and levels of interactions are either mixed or reversed. The recipient, those knowledgeable about art—critics, curators and other artists who decide to enter the contest— and others who encounter art incidentally, agree to take on a professional persona different from their own, hoping to acquire a new one, at least temporarily. Such an exchange of roles is primarily meant to bring them satisfaction from acting out a new role, yet irrespective of whether they are satisfied with it or not, these recipients, each and every one of them, and their personae undergo a more complex transformation.

Some of the scripts submitted for the contest contain the element of the reversal of a set order or roles. This implies that the intention of their authors was to replace the duo and put it in a position of performers of their own ideas; in other words, to reverse once again something that has already been reversed by Bergamot. Such is the essence of Change of Identity authored by two young artists who have already dealt with the subject before and Labor Day or Artist for a Substitute Wanted, in which the author suggests that Bergamot substitute at work anybody who wants to take some days off; this stipulated unconditional submission to rules that are not known from the beginning. Irrespective of the suggested topics, up to now all contestants as recipients have taken on the role of artists, who have taken on the role of performers, while the initiators of the contest have taken on the role of performers, all while the original authors end up playing the role of spectators. Such fluctuations of persona do not cause anxiety since we do not see in them any threat to the autonomy and integrity of “I”. In this way we are prepared to accept the presence of a persona in art since on daily basis we accept both our own flexible identity and we allow for the constant transgression of borders, both within ourselves and in others. Bergamot has only highlighted this existential experience. 

In Bergamot’s actions, the reality of a game is as much a part of a social reality as the latter is part of the reality of the game. This is why none of the participants of the game have complete control over it. In Organic Work we encounter different types of interactions between two spheres occurring at the same time, whereas in reality these interactions usually take place separately. This evokes a feeling in the recipient that one can fully participate only in a small fragment of a reality (e.g., a contest) which is a fragment of another reality (the project Organic Work, under the patronage of the Polish Center of Culture), which in turn is a part of art and life, which in turn are part of the civilization cycle and henceforth. Hence, full participation is something which cannot be separated from the sense of our identity which imbues Organic Work with acute realism, additionally heightened by the intertextuality of the cycle.

Organic Work as a title evokes a historic and artistic context. Most of the previous actions of Bergamot, which were parts of a larger complex of works referred to by the duo as Organic Life, could not be viewed as its earlier stage, which naturally, i.e. biologically, gave rise to subsequent works, in particular Organic Works. Both cycles share a number of common elements, for example the “substituting” of artists with amateurs selected from the audience, reserving the artists exclusive right to select artifacts, establishing relations during a game or changing the perspective of perception a number of times within a particular work.

Through the concept of such an organic work, Maslouskaya and Tratsiuk evoke the tradition of Polish Positivism. The founding idea of this idea of Positivism was that societies are organisms, and their progress and well-being depend on the harmonious functioning and development of constituent “organs” of any society. The well-being of society thus depends on the “joint work” of all social classes for the sake of the shared community. In the Polish political and economic conditions during the 19th century, this meant abandoning the fight for independence of the Polish state by force of arms and instead it advocated taking up work for the future of Poland. The idea of such “organic work”, peculiar to Poland during such a time, in practice implied educational and economic initiatives and enterprises which would lay foundations for the cultural and material independence of Poles—an indispensable step towards eventually regaining the long-awaited reality political freedom. 

The execution of the process of selecting ideas or scripts in a performance is both subtle interpretation of all the aspects the ideas and scripts allude to and an introduction on how to critically interpret a work in its whole entirety. Taken holistically and literally, the performance is an organic work of Bergamot—it is an analysis of the process of how an individual communicates his or her needs in society and of the effort taken to emphasize communication across the group divide, communication which is indispensable regarding the execution of the rights of an individual. Execution of the idea is also an artistic organic work, as the idea is executed by the duo through the employment of the full repertoire of their artistic skills, with all its potential and limitations. The repertoire employs all the means of expression the artists feel familiar to, consequently making them familiar and popular to the spectators, who in turn use them as a means of their personal expression.

The main themes of the performance entitled Domination include a relation between sexes, the problem of voyeurism and the subjectification of an individual.

DoManAction was performed during the opening of the exhibition Living Scriptures in the Słodownia gallery. In a dimly lit space, against the backdrop of film featuring a male striptease, a man dressed in black rips open black tape that a woman is wrapped in, and then rips open subsequent layers of her black clothes and underwear. At the very moment the last scraps of her remaining garments start falling off, the lights go out and the audience is confronted with total darkness.

The subject of the video-performance Queer Bielarus acted out during an exhibition Ars Homo Erotica in the national Museum in Warsaw depicted the situation of sexual and gender minorities in Belarus.

In a television studio of an apparent Belarus news channel, two TV presenters with digitally deformed faces read the news in digitally distorted voices. The news concerns the history of the gay movement from the Soviet times till contemporary times. At the same time, in the “window” right behind the presenters, archival materials are broadcast, while at the bottom of the TV screen news captions show the same news in English.

The third selected performance, which still remains untitled, was first staged in Mescalina, a club in Poznań. Its apparent simplicity required the significant performance skills of the duo, since it involved extending a warm welcome to guests entering the club so that the welcome would evoke an impression that the guests are not only warmly welcomed patrons but also friends who have been both expected and missed for a long time.

In this way the artists made both “invited” patrons and uninvited patrons assume a very unambiguous attitude towards the essentially intimate gesture; thus they managed to engage even extremely passive visitors into their organic work.

A very powerful resonance of the actions of Volha Maslousky and Raman Tratsiu shall be mainly attributed to skillful merging of means of expressions characteristic of performance, happenings, social projects or film plots. This element of interactivity imbued in all of them is thus the common ground on which not only artists but also spectators freely interact, giving both sides an opportunity to be creative. In this way, these “actions” also become the material the Bergamot group makes artworks from.