Piotr Skiba – Never is a very long time

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Anger occurs only on good days. The truth is that there isn’t much of it left. The truth is that the forms I see are slowly turning into empty shells. They keep no content. They’re but shapes. A train, a wall, a world. Or a human being. Something is hanging in pointless dismemberment in howling hollow. The existence of that something can’t be described in terms of senses. Its meaning. How should I seek connection with this thing?

Cormac McCarthy

I was just running along the river’s edge, an hour after a storm that had broken down rather large trees exposing light yellow, almost shining structure of the trunks. In the park two women looking at the damages caused by the wind said something. It was a comment or, better, a metaphor. An intriguing and simple selection of a few words that contained that event in its entirety. Later I was trying to recall that sentence, to recreate it, but in vain. The deeper I dug in my memory, the more the recollection of those hours after the storm became incomplete. Finally, it lost its light core, an almost shining one. Instead I felt a harrowing sense of fragmentariness. I repeat to console myself that the incompleteness is a trap; there’s nothing worse than a compulsive seeking of completeness. The formless promise in the distance is a lie. You want it but you know from the start that the path leads nowhere. So it would be much better if that word never existed; if “completeness” were crossed off and some other word put in its place, one that would accept dismemberment and incompleteness. The fallen trees were beautiful. I run there every day. I saw them in broad daylight at 1 pm, embedded in blue halo of a dawn. Even after dusk, lit by orange sky, the trees never looked so full of life as on the day of the storm that made them fall as if they had been sick or made with some breakable material. In breakages you could see expressive forms: sharp, shining bayonets pointing in all directions, spikes bristling with other spikes, spikes wet with juices, suddenly exposed to daylight. Some sections of the trunk bended under the weight of the falling tree crown and made soft, gentle semi-arches, something like bands polished to a shine. I couldn’t resist the impression that these trees, destroyed and doomed to be cut down as soon enough somebody with a chainsaw is going to turn up and tidy them up, were the most beautiful. Branches were strewn all around: the hit against the ground must have been hard; the ground must have made a rumbling sound. And leaves: wet, lifeless, as if already drying. I was running and clearing the way in the trees with my hand until I couldn’t run anymore: I was too weak to squeeze my way through the holes in the tree crown and gave up. Inhaling the smell of ozone, typical for a violent storm, I didn’t yet know that I would never be able to remember the words I had heard a moment ago; words that contained exactly what had happened. So only fragments will stay with me. Probably for a long time; if not for ever.
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Ero solo mentre correvo lungo il bordo del fiume, un'ora dopo una tempesta ruppe dei grandi
alberi dai quali fuoriuscì una luce gialla, splendente. Nel parco due donne stavano esaminando i danni causati dal vento e dissero qualcosa. E ‘ stato un commento o, meglio, una metafora. Una selezione interessante e semplice di alcune parole che contenevano tale evento nella sua interezza. Più tardi stavo cercando di ricordare quella frase, ma invano. Nel profondo ho cercato di scavare nella mia memoria, tanto più scavavo tanto più il ricordo di quelle ore dopo la tempesta diventava incompleto. Infine, ha perso il suo nucleo di luce. Invece ho sentito un senso di frammentarietà straziante. Ho cercato più volte di consolarmi pensando che in realtà l'incompletezza è una trappola; non c'è niente di peggio di cercare una “compulsiva” omogeneità. La promessa senza forma, in lontananza, è una bugia. Lo vuoi, ma si sa fin dall'inizio che il percorso non porta da nessuna parte. Quindi sarebbe molto meglio se questa parola non sia mai esistita. Gli alberi caduti erano bellissimi. corro ogni giorno da quelle parti. Li ho visti in pieno giorno all’una del pomeriggio, incorporati in un alone blu di un'alba. Anche dopo il crepuscolo, illuminati dal cielo arancione, gli alberi non sembravano così pieni di vita come nel giorno della tempesta che li ha fatti cadere come se fossero stati malati o costituiti da un materiale fragile. Fra le rotture si potevano vedere forme espressive: taglienti, brillanti baionette che puntano in tutte le direzioni, picchi bagnati con succhi di frutta, improvvisamente esposti alla luce del giorno.
Alcune sezioni del tronco piegato dal peso dell’albero che cade creando morbidi semi archi, qualcosa di simile a bande lucidate.
Non ho potuto resistere ho pensato che questi alberi, distrutti erano destinati ad essere abbattuti da qualcuno con una motosega.
C’erano dei rami sparsi tutti intorno: il colpo contro il terreno deve essere stato violento; ci deve essere stato un forte suono.
E le foglie: bagnate, senza vita, come se si stessero già essiccando. Io correvo aprivo la strada tra gli alberi con la mano fino a quando non ho più potuto correre: ero troppo debole per spianare la mia strada quindi ci rinunciai. L'odore di ozono, inalato, tipico di una violenta tempesta, io non sapevo ancora se mai sarei stato in grado di ricordare le parole che avevo sentito poco fa; parole che contenevano esattamente quello che era successo. Quindi, solo frammenti rimarranno con me. Probabilmente per lungo tempo; se non per sempre.

Mateusz Marczewsk

Piotr Skiba - Born in 1980. Creates films, objects and installations. His projects often revolve around the themes of exclusion, racial intolerance, and social alienation. He is interested in using different identities and periphery aesthetics. Often in his realizations he uses found objects. Areas of interests found in Skiba’s practices include orthopedic orthosis, insoles, sports accessories, fragments of found street waste, which the artist attempts to define anew, destroying our accustomization to their function, weight, or transience. Since 2014 he has been working at the Szczecin Academy of Art in the Faculty of Painting and New Media. He lives and works in Wrocław.