Media performance art. Strategie artystycznego zarządzania mediami na przykładzie parateatru Jerzego Grotowskiego
Media performance art: The paratheater of Jerzy Grotowski as a strategy of artistic media management

Summary/Abstract: Jerzy Grotowski (1933–1999), an internationally renowned theater director, was one of the first Polish artists to pursue a conscious, original, long-term media policy, still waiting to be studied in detail. The main thesis put forward and initially proven in the article is based on the recognition that the main aim of this policy was not to create and transmit a specific image of the artist or relay information about him, but to establish a stage on which his experimental art could exist in a shape that it did not assume in the artistic praxis. A striking example of Grotowski's media strategies, and one representative of its general characteristics, are his actions following the discontinuation of his theater work, announced in December 1970, along with the initial phase of a new stage of his exploration—paratheater. Through the methodological framework of performance studies, this study depicts the efforts undertaken by Grotowski at the time as a process of establishing a new field of artistic endeavor. Grotowski's media performances, which are a unique example of artistic media management, allow to recognize a discrete, performative role that media play in the context of contemporary art—serving as its stage.

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