Meme Opera

Identity in the times of memes

Words: detached from thoughts and related to them, jabber, slogans, mottos, commercials, cult dialogues, popular jokes’ punchlines, words with and without context, affirmations, wellknown tunes, text messages, posts, memes. Memes surround us: on the internet, as large-format advertisements and stickers on jars, phrases mixed and endlessly repeated or even monuments to memory and graveyard inscriptions. We think words, phrases, fragments that others have uttered, sung, or shared with us. They scratch in our heads. We repeat them, and begin to believe in them. We are what others tell us: first parents, then teachers, politicians, personal coaches, colleagues, Facebook friends, and film characters. We share words, words squeeze into our memories, our identities. Identities? What is identity between my thumb on the smartphone and my Facebook profile? Between Krotoszyn and Warsaw? Between Senegal and Poland? Between A-levels and day job, nature and subculture? Who am I more: a profile or a person? Meme Opera is about human identity today: fluid, variously defined depending on the context...

Musically speaking, it is an opera–installation. Sounds attack us, lure, aggress, seduce, sneak and assault, creating a web of various aural experiences that compose the modern soundscape jabber—in which there is no valuation. Silence and noise do not exist as opposites but as reciprocal amplification of impulses. The meme becomes transposed into sound language and defined as repetition and reproduction of sounds together with slow transformation.

The work’s scenography and visualisation are the result of participative work of artists and audiences of the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle during nine summer creative sessions in July and August 2016, run by Konrad Dworakowski and Jakub Stępień Hakobo within the framework of workshops and performances around the El Hadji Sy. Initially I Thought I Was Dancing exhibition.

The literary layer of the play is based on memes sent in by young artists from secondary schools, working under the supervision of their teachers. The competition for a meme themed Change, The City, or Wanderer was launched by the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and Warsaw Autumn Festival in April 2016. The meme opera was directly inspired by the following competition memes:

• When you are a symbol of freedom stuck to a 50-meter pedestal by Class 2c team from Bilingual School no. 42 in Warsaw, tutored by Marzena Wiśniewska;

• That feeling by Class 3a team from Grammar School no. 1 in Swarzędz, tutored by Małgorzata Danielewicz-Plucińska;

• To change or not to change... by Class 2a team from Bilingual School no. 42 in Warsaw, tutored by Marzena Wiśniewska;

• It’s nice I can decide my own life... but can someone at least put an info board at the next crossroads?!! by Patrycja Opalińska from Electric Professional School in Białystok, tutored by Anna Łuniewska;

• Jars by Dominika Bąk from Secondary School no. 6 in Sosnowiec, tutored by Bożena Fulas;

• Super Old once, Super Old now by Mateusz Krzekotowski from Secondary School in Koźmin Wielkopolski, tutored by Michał Ryba;

• A month before A-levels in the library... I feel like a wanderer in a dark forest by Natalia Szalczyk from Secondary School in Koźmin Wielkopolski, tutored by Michał Ryba;

• Per Aspera ad Astra → I was in the stars by Piotr Bielas from Grammar School no. 7 in Wrocław, tutored by Bożena Bugajska;

• On the tracks of the past by Kuba Marszałkiewicz from Secondary School no. 1 in Swarzędz, tutored by Małgorzata Danielewicz-Plucińska;

• Doba’s paradox by Adam Błoński from Bilingual School no. 42 in Warsaw, tutored by Marzena Wiśniewska;

• A woman in the city by Agnieszka Galewska from Secondary School in Koźmin Wielkopolski, tutored by Michał Ryba.

Anna Kierkosz