Przedmioty graniczne w teatrze Tadeusza Kantora
Border-like Objects in the Tadeusz Kantor Death Theatre

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the border-like object in the theatrical world of Tadeusz Kantor while going on the assumption that such objects divided the world into two spaces and are situated between reality and the imagination. They include funereal objects that conceal and camouflage death and tell about life after death as well as semiotically ambiguous objects possessing an obverse and a reverse. By applying the reflections of anthropologists of death and the image – Jean-Didier Urbain, hans Belting or Alfons di Noli – the author evoked examples of such objects and their role in the Theatre of Love and Death.Among Kantor’s border-like objects (door, window, photograph, ladder, grave, and coffin) the grave, conceived as the artist’s most representative object, and the window, envisaged as a medial one, were selected for particular analysis. The presented reflections demonstrate that in Kantor’s theatre border-like objects deprived death of its power to destroy the continuum and granted a conviction that there exists another side of reality by becoming a visible sign of life after death. In doing so, they provided a feeling of creating eternity in mortality.

• Details
• Contents