“Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear”

In the cricotage„Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear” the artist does not use Witkacy’s work for the first time and constructs a performance without a prior literary text. The title of the cricotage is a quotation from the “Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times” from “Le Testament” by François Villon, a medieval French poet. The central object of the cricotage titled “Where Are the Snows of Yesteryear” is “The Trumpet of the Last Judgment”. Its final form was determined only when the cricotage was performed again in the 1980s. The original 1979 version involved a trumpet covered in black textile, mounted on a mobile tripod. In 1982–83, Kantor changed the structure of the object by suspending the trumpet from a metal frame (about 3.5 m high), which was equipped with a set of blocks and transmission with steel ropes allowing the instrument to be lifted or lowered with a crank. Kantor writes: “The machine brings a scaffold or a gallows to mind or perhaps a siege machine from biblical times. Numerous wheels, gears, belts, lines and cranks stir the Trumpet into motion in a black funeral emballage. The Trumpet goes up and slowly down.” The structure was placed on four metal wheels, so a cart with a shaft was created. Black pennants were attached to the frame to complete the picture.