Lives of the Orange Men - Minor Compositions

341 Pages·2015·3.04 MB·English

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Lives oF the orange Men
a BiographicaL history oF the poLish
orange aLternative MoveMent
Major WaLdeMar Fydrych
introduction By the yes Men
edited By gavin grindon
transLated By david French
Lives of the Orange Men: A Biographical History of the Polish Orange
Alternative Movement
Major Waldemar Fydrych
ISBN 978-1-57027-269-1
Introduction by the Yes Men
Edited by Gavin Grindon
Translated by David French
Cover design by Jed Carter
Interior design by Margaret Killjoy
All images courtesy of the Orange Alternative Foundation, unless otherwise
stated
Tis translation is funded by Te Book Institute: www.bookinstitute.pl
Tis publication is co-fnanced by the Minister of Foreign Afairs, Republic
of Poland within the framework of a cyclical program “Promotion of
knowledge about Poland”
Released by Minor Compositions 2014
Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson
Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing
from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of
everyday life.
Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomedia
www.minorcompositions.info |
contents
FOREWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CHAPTER 1: MAJOR WALDEMAR FYDRYCH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
CHAPTER 2: LIEUTENANT ZENON ZEGARSKI . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
CHAPTER 3: ROBERT JEZIERSKI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
CHAPTER 4: ANDRZEJ DZIEWIT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
CHAPTER 5: LIEUTENANT PIOTR ‘PABLO’ ADAMCIO . . . . . . . . 231
CHAPTER 6: CAPTAIN WIESŁAW CUPAŁA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
CHAPTER 7: JOZEF PINIOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
CHAPTER 8: KRZYSZTOF SKIBA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
APPENDIX 1: TIMELINE OF ORANGE ALTERNATIVE HAPPENINGS 291
APPENDIX 2: FOREWORD TO THE FIRST POLISH EDITION. . . . . 297
APPENDIX 3: THE MANIFESTO OF SOCIALIST SURREALISM . . . 301
APPENDIX 4: THE ORANGE ALTERNATIVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
ForeWord
Mischief and humour are ingredients in every struggle for
autonomy, yet they are constantly being erased. All too often, his-
tory is written by the terminally serious. When massive liberatory
shifts occur, there is a tendency to record the moments as straight-
faced, humourless afairs. History becomes a conspiracy (perhaps
unwitting, but a conspiracy nonetheless) that robs revolution of its
humour and humanity.
Tis book is the antidote. It is serious. It is about profoundly
meaningful actions during a profoundly meaningful period. But
it is about dwarves. It is about silly hats. It is about that which is
pear-shaped rather than that which is square. Tis hyperbolic, of-
cious, hilarious autobiography fnally tells the story of the Orange
Alternative in a way that does the movement justice. Our unreli-
able narrator in the story, our hero, is as a writer as he was as a revo-
lutionary: a shifting shape-changing trickster who recognizes the
power of humour. Te Trickster archetype appears in the indigenous
mythology of nearly all cultures. Characters like the Raven (Native
American) use mimicry, mockery, and mental judo to confound,
bamboozle and ultimately defeat much larger, more powerful op-
ponents. Our Major Waldemar Fydrych, of whom you are about
to read, carries the torch in a pantheon of unreliable characters
VI | Lives of the Orange Men
that autocracy has worked hard to forget. Loki, Prometheus, the
Raven, Eshu, Winnebago, Coyote. Hundreds more. Fydrych takes
a contemporary place in an old profession: changing the course of
history with humour.
Mikhail Bakhtin argued that mischief is a historical force. Te
feudal order, he suggested, wasn’t overturned by Enlightenment
thought and gunpowder, but by subversive humour. Peasants
turned power relations upside down in medieval carnivals, ridicul-
ing kings and princes in performances that refected “a continual
shifting from top to bottom, from front to rear, of numerous paro-
dies and travesties, humiliations, profanations, comic crownings
and uncrownings.” Tis is the antidote to serious. Bakhtin was
denied his doctorate degree, and nobody called him a historian, in-
stead bestowing upon him the much more namby-pamby, toothless
title “literary critic.” Alas, he died before Major Waldemar Fydrych
ascended, but perhaps he would have been proud of Major: he has
become part of a lineage of modern revolutionaries who vindicate
Bakhtin’s reading of history.
Most recently we have the case of the Arab Spring. In the
English-language press, Egypt’s 2011 uprising largely became a
serious story about technology triumphing over a despot. Tat
view of history is a hoax (Twitter and Facebook had large, very
well-funded PR departments opportunistically propagating it).
Missing, for the most part, from the media’s capitalist portrait of
contemporary revolution was the oldest and most subversive po-
litical tool there is: humour. Tere were people holding joke plac-
ards, giving mock speeches as those in power, and wearing bread
on their heads in an act of silly defance. Nonetheless, we must
read between the lines of the established press, we must dig deep to
reveal the full poetry of social movements like it, and the laughtiv-
ism that often acts as a spark in the tinderbox of action, but risks
burial under the massive heaps of media spun by the PR facks of
so-called “social media” corporations. Te steady stream of comedy
fowing throughout Tahrir Square built community and solidarity
for those resisting on the ground, not just in cyberspace as an il-
lusion for people thousands of kilometres away. Which brings us
back to the book you are about to read.
Lives of the Orange Men is a timely historical reconstruction
of the Orange Alternative, especially for a world outside Poland
Foreword | VII
that remembers a singular resistance that was called “Solidarity”;
a singular resistance that appeared on the cover of the New York
Times as moustachioed, always seriously angry men with a set
of clearly defned demands putting their asses on the line in tra-
ditional, humourless, black and white defance. Tat’s not the
whole story. Tere are many more shades to this tale. Without
the tricksters – and especially without the dwarves – the serious
men lack the lustre to become an alternative to the oppression of
the dominant system.
Read on, and laugh on, as you glean lessons for your own revolutions.
Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the Yes Men.