from the Music Videos for Moskwa series, Jarocin, 4'
1985
In 1985, during the concert of the band Moskwa at the Jarocin Festival of rock music (the largest and most popular of its kind in Eastern Europe at the time), Robakowski stood in the middle of a crowd of pogoing punks, filming with a 16 mm camera. Less than three minutes long, this single-take film captures the extraordinary dynamism of the spontaneous and chaotic movement of dancing punk rockers. It is also a unique live recording of one of the most rebellious bands from the 1980s alternative scene. Robakowski was fascinated with Moskwa’s vitality and energy, qualities he also sought in art. Also in 1985, in the rented space of Łódź’s Cytryna cinema, he recorded the band’s for-camera rehearsal. Using found footage and newsreel materials recorded on video from a TV screen, he made four videos for Moskwa’s songs, referencing, for example, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. In 1986 he created a series of photographic portraits of the band’s members posing against the backdrop of Łódź’s run-down architecture.
