To sing in a choir, to make matches

    

           We meet two weeks before the Women’s Choir’s trip to India. Karolina Szulejewska spreads a collection of tourist brochures from the embassy, where she just received her visa, on the table. She came back from a month-long tour with 24 singing women. In the meantime, between performances, she appears at places like The Theatrical Institute as The Little Match Girl

                         

        I always wanted to perform on stage, but I had no experience. I only used to sing to myself and to my cat. That’s why, following my friend’s advice, I went to a casting for the Women’s Choir – Karolina recalls. I told and sang my cat’s story. They were looking for strong personalities and women who have  courage of voice, who aren’t afraid to articulate weird sounds. They took me in.

25 strong women

      

       The Feminist Choir is for Szu (which is what her friends call her) a developing experience, in an artistic and social way. There is 25 of us. The oldest one is 72 and the youngest is 22, so there’s 50 years of difference. It is an amazing experiment, you can’t recreate the social conditions in the Choir in any other social unit. This is a group of very different, strong women, who work hard and travel together. Last year we spend a whole moth on tour together. And we were doing good, we became even closer. This closeness takes form in unique circumstances. For example, we stand together on stage for 10 hours, we do a lot of exercises with our bodies, so there is intense physical contact. These girls are different from my friends outside of the Choir and they come from many worlds. I wouldn’t have heard so many life stories in different circumstances.

        The Women’s Choir turned out to be explorative in other ways as well. I developed my feminist consciousness, but not in theory, which I know quite well – claims Karolina. Reading about the oppressiveness of culture against women and learning about the examples is a completely different experience than singing it out. Singing means running those meanings through your body, quoting different stereotypical images of femininity and smashing them into pieces with our voices and our common language. This repetitive quoting, and in a way becoming Sleeping Beauty or Lara Croft, penetrates your mind, but in a physical way. It feels like an artistic performance, the experience is very strong.

                        

 From Tokyo to Berlin

      

       Thanks to the Choir Karolina travels a lot all over the world.  In September the women performed in Ukraine (Kiev), Czech Republic (Pilzno), Ireland (Belfast), France (Lyon), Japan and Germany. The 4 shows in Tokyo were the most difficult ones. In Japan you shouldn’t talk in public situations. So there is silence in the theatre, people clap their hands very reservedly, there’s no mimicry in the audience, it’s hard to read the reactions. It was like meeting with a slightly animated wall. It was a tough experience, because you don’t play to empty space, but to people – Karolina recalls. There were meetings with spectators as well. Some of them couldn’t understand the parody. For example, there is this scene in which we act like silly princesses, lolitas. And they didn’t notice that we were exaggerating. In Japan women act even more infantile. There were questions why we weren’t more gentile during the show, why we were screaming so much. Our way of showing the female body was astonishing to them. Women in Japan decorate themselves with gadgets, fancy clothes, make up, and we perform almost without it, barefoot, in simple t-shirts and trousers. This raw appearance was surprising. These shows were really difficult, it was hard to break through cultural differences.         

       The shows in Berlin were completely different. I had a fever, but I decided to perform - Berlin is my favorite city. The audience was great, it reacted spontaneously and positively. I was touched, especially because we performed in such a wonderful place that is HAU (Hebbel Am Ufer). The show healed me. Singing and physical effort cleanses the respiratory system, you simply recover!

The Little Match Girl

    

       During the last Theatrical Market many people noticed Karolina with her face smeared with coal, walking around, carrying a box full of matches hung on her neck. They told her that she was dirty. Not everybody understood this joke – Szu laughs.

                         

      She came up with the idea of decorating matches with her favorite people’s images in Croatia. I noticed matches with glued on images of Lady Gaga, Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. So only the most popular stars. You can see them all over the world on mugs and bags, so I just can’t stand them any more – Szu explains. I started wondering who could be called a star and in what sense. And I decided to decorate matches with  photos of my favorite, funny in my opinion, anti-stars. I mean the stars from our childhood or teenage years – Michael Jordan, Kurt Cobain or Dylan from Beverly Hills (laughter). I also glue on the stars of the slightly snobbish, intellectual society, to which I belong myself. Everybody loves Jelinek (she’s so unlike a star, her sinister glance, her Austrian coat, just perfect for matches!); Lacan, even if he has never been translated; everybody quotes Foucalt in their theses… I joke about snobbery like this, but at the same time I support it, it’s quite colorful. You just throw matches away, so you can exchange Lacan for Britney and admit to yourself that you listen to something more than indie-rock.

                                               

      

      Karolina summarizes her activity in a simple way: This is my original, noncommercial project. I’m don’t have manual skills, so thanks to this I feel satisfaction from doing something with my own hands. I made matches also because it’s a cool gadget. And a cool gadget doesn’t have to be an expensive iPhone!.

   

Correction: Martyna Trykozko