Score by Pierre Bal-Blanc.
The Cynics Republic—Plac Defilad is an exhibition featuring dematerialized artworks (performances, protocols, films, sound pieces) from the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and Kontakt Collection in Vienna.
The Cynics Republic—Plac Defilad provides an alternative vision of the history of performance art. The exhibition aims to offer a different historical framework for performative practices. Its starting point is the hypothesis that performance art—or at least the performative stance—has existed since antiquity and was especially influenced by one school of thought, namely Cynicism.
The ancient philosophy of Cynicism, with its most famous proponents Diogenes (c. 412–323 BC) and Hipparchia of Maroneia (c. 350–after 280 BC) maintained that people should live in harmony with nature, reject social categories in favor of imitating animals, shun material possessions, and strive for self-sufficiency (autarky). The philosophy was transmitted not so much through concepts as through gestures. It involved public attitudes, relating to others, words in action. This exhibition seeks to bring such philosophical ideas into dialogue with the notion of performance. All the works on show can be productively considered through the instructions left to us by the Cynics.
Text from : Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
May 10–June 8, 2025
