wideo, 2'30'
2010
A for-camera performance recorded in the artist’s characteristic format of a single-take video, showing him solemnly reciting the children’s rhyme Little Pole.
Probably Poland’s best-known poem for children, Little Pole was published in 1900 by Władysław Bełza, a neo-Romantic poet and patriot known as the ‘bard of Polishness’. Originally titled Polish Child’s Catechism, it functions in the same manner, recited by Polish children raised in the spirit of patriotism.
Always popular, even more so recently, the rhyme is compulsory reading in Polish schools, which shape national identity through history and patriotic-education classes.
By reciting the poem, the 71-year-old artist simply and unpretentiously ridicules the phantasm of national identity founded on myths of heroism, honour and homeland. In the 1980s, Robakowski made ironic references to ideological phantasms through grotesquely heroic gestures in Cinema Is Power! Today, in an era of growing nationalist tendencies, he mocks the fantasies of Polishness instilled in children.
‘Who are you?’
‘A little Pole.’
‘What is your sign?’
‘The white eagle.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘Among my people.’
‘In what country?’
‘On Polish soil.’
‘What is this soil?’
‘My fatherland.’
‘How was it gained?’
‘Through blood and scars.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘I love her sincerely.’
‘And in what do you believe?’
‘I believe in Poland!’
‘What are you to her?’
‘A grateful child.’
‘What do you owe her?’
‘I owe her my life.’
