Pomarańczowa alternatywa Łódż.

[POLISH ANTI-COMMUNIST HAPPENING – ORANGE ALTERNATIVE] [Hyde Park]. Nowa inicjatywa ruchu kobiecego [Hyde Park. A New Initiative of the Women’s Movement].

Łódż: Galeria Dzialan Maniakalnych, 1989. Single leaf of mimeographed text and decorative header to recto, measuring 25 × 17.5 cm. Edges lightly worn and frayed; else about very good. Item #55214

An invitation for a mass performance event of Pomarańczowa alternatywa (the Orange Alternative), which took place on June 5th, 1989 in Łódż. The “Hyde Park themed event” invited the participants to bring their manifestos and speeches and promised “public orgasms of law enforcement agencies” and “screenings of pornographic films featuring Lech Wałęsa.” Staged a day after the first independent Parliamentary elections in Poland in 1989, the text of the invitation pokes fun equally at the leader of Solidarity movement Lech Wałęsa, and the communist authorities such as Mieczyslaw (Mietek) Rakowski, then Prime Minister of Poland, as well as former Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski. According to the museum of the Orange Alternative, the event featured a wrestling match between two performers, one wearing a sign that read “Solidarity” and the other with the sign that read “Communism”. The “fighters” eventually painted each-other in red paint, exclaiming “we are all Red!”

Pomarańczowa Alternatywa [Orange Alternative], was an anti-communist, quasi-political performance art movement which reached its peak of activity in 1985–1989. Its leader Waldemar Fydrych (b.1953), known as Major, initiated the mass happenings in Wrocław with the actions eventually spreading to Łódź, Warsaw, Gdansk, and other cities. The Orange Alternative resonated especially well with students and young people who were drawn to the humorous and anarchic mass happenings, installations, and stencil art organized by the local cells of the movement. The group is perhaps best known for painting little orange gnomes over Solidarity and other anti-State graffiti that had been painted over by the authorities. Never an explicitly political movement, the Orange Alternative instead fused elements of Surrealism and Dada with urban protest in the tradition of Dutch Provo and the kabouters. The Łódź branch of the movement was especially active, publishing a zine and staging numerous actions such as this one.

See also: Happening Against Communism by the Orange Alternative, Krakow: International Cultural Centre, 2011.

As of September 2025, not in KVK, OCLC.

Price: €450.00

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