Performances of "Bergamot" can be conditionally divided into 3 branches:
1. Cycle "Organic life" . These are performances conceived and realized by the artists themselves. At the very beginning, the participants of the group were interested in the topics of human communication, gender and violence. "... In contrast to the apologists of mechanical submission, who, in order to ensure the effectiveness of their actions, mask the desire for power with the illusion of harmony, the artists of the Bergamot group relied on an open, publicly demonstrated conflict, thus unmasking the mechanisms of power that are usually hidden ..." (Rainer Fuchs) .
2. Performances invented by artists, but carried out for various reasons by other people (or partially by other people). Over time, the group members moved from the problems of human communication to a narrower issue - the analysis of the variability of the status of "performer/artist/author" and "spectator": in the course of experiments, all roles are questioned. “…Subsequently, during the performances, “substitutions” of the group members by other people began to occur, the boundary between the performers and the audience, art and life began to blur, practically disappeared. From that moment on, in the work of Bergamot, questions of authorship, the relationship between the artist and the viewer, the performer, sometimes anonymous, and the author, creator and work, came to the fore .... " (Eva Hornowska).
3. Cycle "Organic work" . These are performances invented by other, often random people, and carried out by the Bergamot group. “... In 2010, Maslovskaya and Trotsyuk announced an open competition for an idea or script for a performance, and since that time they have been implementing the works of the winners. Scenarios are received from the participants in various ways: they announce a competition on the Internet, on the official website of the group and on the Facebook page, organize meetings with students and promotional parties in clubs. At present, the group has radically transformed its artistic idea, creating performances based on other people's scenarios, in fact refusing to authorize them... Olga Maslovskaya and Roman Trotsyuk's "organic work" touches upon the problem of social identity, self-determination and a change in consciousness. The group marked the boundaries of the game, within which there is a confusion of roles and levels of interaction between its participants…” (Ewa Hornowska).
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Selected dates:
1998
The duet is based in Brest.
2014
End of activity. Roman and Olga took up more solo careers.
2020
Resumption of joint activities.