For many women, the desire to give birth seems obvious. What if, however, this desire is impossible to fulfill, if it is restricted by legal regulations and restrictions?
In her work, Piotrowska-Auffret explores this area and looks at the relationship between personal and professional life. The artist relies both on her personal experience and on other women’s narratives. She examines this female yearning through a network of reproduction policies, numerous promises and attempts to exploit it.
Idea, choreography: Renata Piotrowska-Auffret
Performance and texts: Renata Piotrowska-Auffret and guests
Collaboration: Karolina Kraczkowska, Aleksandra Osowicz
Dramaturgy: Bojana Bauer, Renata Piotrowska-Auffret
Dramaturgy consultant: Magdalena Ptasznik
Editing assistant: Michał Kurkowski
Lighting: Monika Krześniak
Visual design: Aleksandra Osowicz
Music: Camille Saint-Saens, Ferenc Liszt, Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, The Kurws
Organisers: Fundacja Burdąg, Centrum w Ruchu
Coproduction: MAAT Festival
Partners: Nowy Teatr, Wawerskie Centrum Kultury, Instytut Adama Mickiewicza, Instytut Muzyki i Tańca, Centre National de la Danse
Producer: Performat Production – Karolina Wycisk
The pure gold is seeping out of me was selected to Aerowaves Twenty19
Photo: Aleksandra Osowicz
Reviews
Fragment from an interview Alright, I’m leaving now by Teresa Fazan with Renata Piotrowska-Auffret for Magazyn SZUM (January 2018):
TF: “Finally, you did not give up: you took advantage of the situation and decided to create a performance. This seems crucial to me, since motherhood is far too rarely the subject of art. Searching for literary descriptions of birth giving is fruitless, the problem is rarely presented in cinema, and if it is it is most often the victim of stereotyping and aestheticizing. In your piece there is a scene performed by Ola Osowicz, which is one of the most interesting portrayals of labour that I have ever seen.”
RP: “It is time to stop dividing life into the private and the political, into family life and work, because it is backward and harmful. Childbearing is not exclusively a woman’s private matter. A woman that decides to raise a child works towards developing his/her future abilities to successfully coexist with others, build society and work towards it’s development.” Read more
Fragment from a review When the ideology is seeping out of me by Paulina Trzeciak for taniec Polska [PL]:
“The performance The pure gold is seeping out of me skillfully elaborates on the subject of motherhood. Oscillating between the private and the public sphere, Renata Piotrowska-Auffret points out the complexity of the problem and considers it’s many layers (…) From beginning to end, one follows the events onstage with complete focus, unable to stop oneself from observing the constant emotional and corporeal transformation of the dancers.” Read more
Fragment from a review Questions about corporality on stage and in the audience by Hanna Raszewska-Kursa for taniec Polska [PL] (January 2018):
“The polyphony of voices is a very strong aspect of the performance and places itself within the public debate of recognizing women’s rights as human rights. In Poland this demand is still met with incomprehensible and scandalous resistance. The pure gold…. will, unfortunately, not lose it’s immediacy for a long time.” Read more
Fragment from a review on Styl.pl (December 2018):
“In the age of female manifestations and the labour’s market it seems that decision about planning the family should be free from political and professional considerations. The pure gold is seeping out of me reminds us that still women are in danger while being forced to choose between carrier and maternity.” Read more
Fragment from a review Motherhood. Exercises and Variations by Zuzanna Berendt for „Teatralia” Magazine (December 2018):
“In her performance, Piotrowska-Auffret goes beyond the oppositions related to maternity. She does not put at stake an affirmation of being a mother nor a critic of an imposed by social norms desire of procreation. Also, connecting the work with a desire to have a baby is not an result of mother’s obligations but a result of a will to work and need to provide stable economic situation. The heart and the core of The pure gold is seeping out of me are the individual perspectives, which in case of Piotrowska and her personal appearance in the frame of the show, is brave artistic gesture. This performance does not have a confessional character which might provoke making judgments, instead it makes visible the system of relations in which one needs to see its own agency and decision making.” Read more
Fragment from a review Dance during Divine Comedy Festival by Anna Majewska on e-teatr (December 2018):
“About great performance The pure gold is seeping out of me by Renata Piotrowska-Auffret I was already writing in the press critic from Malta Festival 2018. The pure gold is seeping out of me belongs to the wave of artistic manifestations and performances which uncover the artistic work conditions, not because, as Fabre thinks, they are too fragile and sensitive. On a contrary, they do it to make the whole body visible in its full range – as a performer’s body being present on stage and as worker’s body oppressed by norms proposed by cultural institutions.” Read more
Fragment from a review What costume shall the poor girl wear by Anna Majewska on e-teatr (July 2018):
“Piotrowska explores the relation between private and work and the way in which the law and economy interfere with what is intimate. The pure gold is seeping out of me brings back from non-memory, stories which were being ejected from public sphere and shows how the experience of maternity is being entangled in systemic conditions. The slogan of student’s movements from the sixties – private is political – sounds very actual in the context of dancer’s herstories.” Read more
Fragment from a review by Léa Poiré (Springback Academy, Spring Forward, Paris, April 2019):
“With two other dancers this documentary-like first part dives into fiction; the cast turn into alien creatures, crawling, prowling, rolling, whispering and breathing loudly. Piotrowska-Auffret’s piece acts as a scream, a gut punch.” Read more