Visit

Two pictures from the Visit series (2007/8) by Filip Berendt.
The idea is so simple and to the point that it is irritating. Berendt put an ad in a newspaper saying he wants to make installations in people's homes out of the things he finds there and take pictures of them. Some people answered. He went to their homes, and, well, did what he said he would do.
The series won him the Sittcomm award last year.

Visit

Two pictures from the Visit series (2007/8) by Filip Berendt.
The idea is so simple and to the point that it is irritating. Berendt put an ad in a newspaper saying he wants to make installations in people's homes out of the things he finds there and take pictures of them. Some people answered. He went to their homes, and, well, did what he said he would do.
The series won him the Sittcomm award last year.

The Song Is You

It might seem innocent.

Yes, this is innocence. It is the purity of what happens when the postmodernisms and the camps and the sooavantgardes have made their statements and played their anti-tunes, and yet, we are still there, trying to listen in to that something special.

Call us romantic. Call us Those Who Couldn't Stand The Progress And Stepped Back.Retrograded, taking the easy way out, exploring the (music's, world's, history's) feedback.

Yet feedback is not the sound that comes back to its source. It is not the echo. It is the echo used as an input.
Thus, what you call feedback is the mere beginning, the source material of the process of creation. As the world comes back crumbling to the imperfection of our ever-childish senses, our feeble gestures, breaking through our inherited self-irony, make things possible. Better, they give us back the light.


Too light? Too naive?
Would you prefer this?


The Gospel was right: The meek shall inherit the Earth. Actually, they've inherited it already. Along with the self-irony, they took what was most precious, and what many deemed lost - the damn aura. Yes, the damn aura still shining and glowing through all the mechanical reproductions. We still want their bloody flesh, we still want to know this is where it's at, right here, between the stage and you, between the song and you.

x x x
All this crossed my mind when watching the brilliant The Song Is You festival at Powiększenie in Warsaw recently.
The song that stayed with me the most was simple.
Here it is:

Do you get it? Beyond the gorgeous lyrics, can you feel how it was, listening to it in the club basement, with the grand piano behind Momus, the lights, the weekend dying away? Or can you imagine it? How different is the song you hear from mine?
More on the festival here. Don't miss tonight (12.03), the last part of the festival, with Kyst and AU.

Kyst

The Song Is You

It might seem innocent.

Yes, this is innocence. It is the purity of what happens when the postmodernisms and the camps and the sooavantgardes have made their statements and played their anti-tunes, and yet, we are still there, trying to listen in to that something special.

Call us romantic. Call us Those Who Couldn't Stand The Progress And Stepped Back.Retrograded, taking the easy way out, exploring the (music's, world's, history's) feedback.

Yet feedback is not the sound that comes back to its source. It is not the echo. It is the echo used as an input.
Thus, what you call feedback is the mere beginning, the source material of the process of creation. As the world comes back crumbling to the imperfection of our ever-childish senses, our feeble gestures, breaking through our inherited self-irony, make things possible. Better, they give us back the light.


Too light? Too naive?
Would you prefer this?


The Gospel was right: The meek shall inherit the Earth. Actually, they've inherited it already. Along with the self-irony, they took what was most precious, and what many deemed lost - the damn aura. Yes, the damn aura still shining and glowing through all the mechanical reproductions. We still want their bloody flesh, we still want to know this is where it's at, right here, between the stage and you, between the song and you.

x x x
All this crossed my mind when watching the brilliant The Song Is You festival at Powiększenie in Warsaw recently.
The song that stayed with me the most was simple.
Here it is:

Do you get it? Beyond the gorgeous lyrics, can you feel how it was, listening to it in the club basement, with the grand piano behind Momus, the lights, the weekend dying away? Or can you imagine it? How different is the song you hear from mine?
More on the festival here. Don't miss tonight (12.03), the last part of the festival, with Kyst and AU.

Kyst

Do You Believe In Magic? Grospierre vs. Radziszewski

a comparison of Karol Radziszewski's To Pee In a Bun and Nicolas Grospierre's Kunstkamera

The two recently* opened exhibitions at the main two contemporary art centers in Warsaw – Zachęta and the Contemporary Art Center – have some clear similarities.

Both exhibitions are witty, explicit dialogues with art history. They both play on the distance that separates contemporary art conventions from what has been somewhat recklessly left behind. Radziszewski exhibits works hidden in the depths of the national gallery’s archives. Some are excruciating to look at, others are curious discoveries or brilliant works. Grospierre goes back to the format of the Kunstkammer and does what he does best – plays with it.

They both focus on the structure of an exhibition, and make it an essential aspect, a sort of a meta-work which goes far beyond the classical idea of curator and uses the ambiguity of this function to the utmost. It is impossible to say where the curator’s role stops and the artist’s begins. This goes far beyond the inclusion of the curator’s own works in the exhibition, or his manipulation of the showing. We never know when the appreciation of the shown works is genuine, and when it is ironic. And because of the artists’ works being part of the selection, the self-irony is, as always, disarming.

However, each artist enacts the role of contemporary art trickster in a different way. Beyond questions of scale, budget and context of production, the two exhibitions are at two opposite sides of an old aesthetic debate. They present two different approaches to the question of value in aesthetics. But first, let me give you a brief description of each of the exhibitions.

Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition To Pee in a Bun, is grandiose. It is a personal take on the collection of Poland’s most renowned and respected public gallery of Modern Art (charmingly called The Encouragement for Fine Art).
In it, he acts “merely” as curator, and also as one of the numerous exhibited artists. Here is what the curator had to say in a conversation with himself as artist :

C: Curators are the ones who make the artists conscious of
‘what’ they have created and ‘why’; often, they also manipulate the
works being displayed, creating their own narratives from pre-existing
works, at the same time disregarding their previous context.
A: Like you did in this exhibition?
C: Yes. (laughs)
A: Why?
C: I treat other artists’ works as elements of a larger whole, like
tubes of paint, from which I have to squeeze out colours in order
to paint one complex painting.
A: That’s a very colourful metaphor . . .
C: Thank you.

We could say that Nicolas Grospierre creates a similar procedure of remixing curator and artist when in the Kunstkamera installation, (which is the size of one of the smaller rooms in Radziszewski’s exhibition), he hangs mainly pictures of objects and photos created by other people, and signs the whole as his piece.
Yet the vectors, here, point elsewhere. Instead of spreading the works and opening, if not exploding, them, he seems to move inwards, closing the space and folding it yet again. Upon entering the "room", we discover a game of images reproducing images reproducing the same space with other images. The game goes on, like a play with mirrors, ad infinitum. The "meaning" is still ambiguous - yet it concentrates, thickens, moves toward inhabiting the space instead of abandoning it.


So what does all of this have to do with philosophical debates?

In an article published in 1936, Stanisław Ossowski, one of Poland’s most notable thinkers from the famous Lvov-Warsaw school of thought, argued against aesthetics understood as the “construction of value systems”. The generalizing of arbitrary aesthetic feelings and opinions to the level of theory should, in his opinion, give way to a sociological perspective on art and the aesthetic, one which would embrace the richness of opinions and points of view instead of imposing them.
This bold proposal was answered the same year by another great mind, Henryk Elzenberg, who argued that no matter how weak and prone to error, our aesthetic judgments remain anchored in value systems that can and should be discussed – as we cannot speak of aesthetics without referring to value, and values are open to discussion.

To put it bluntly: in Radziszewski’s exhibition I see Ossowski’s distancing from aesthetics as a system of values, while Grospierre’s installation follows Elzenberg’s ideals.

These are really two different ways of approaching the world.

Ossowski claims that any discussion about aesthetic values comes down to a power struggle. And this overpowering does not go through a sharing of enthusiasm or disgust, but goes through the attribution of value. Why? Elzenberg explains:

Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have the authority, or the suggestive strength, or the capacity to contaminate others with his feeling. And he is overfilled with the will to rule. Thus, he tries to convince the victim that if this victim feels the same things he does, the victim will be right, he will be somehow objectively correct; and he will be wrong if he dares otherwise.

Hence the need for distance.
It seems Radziszewski claims it on every single step. On one hand, his collection is a moving away from an engaged position, it is rather a questioning of our aesthetic values, of their ever-astounding relativity and apparent insignificance. Who are we to say that this is pretty, and this isn’t? How are we to judge the works that a mere 30 years ago were judged outstanding, while today they’re hidden away in a museum cellar?

On the other hand though, Radziszewski’s approach differs from Ossowski’s philosophy in one respect: being an artist, and not a social scientist, he does not feel the need to eradicate the position of power. To the contrary, he exposes it by exploring it to the fullest. Why bring a porn film into the gallery? Because it’s shocking, and attracts audiences. The aestheticist’s position allows him to create values arbitrarily:

A: You’re a curator — does that mean power?
C: Absolute power! (laughs)
A: Most people believe curators are unfulfilled artists.
C: I think that does hold true for me. Besides, to quote Krasiński
yet again, ‘Art is too serious a business to be left in artists’ hands.’

Grospierre is at a very different point. He does not feel the necessity to question everything – art history has done it sufficiently. Instead, he looks for ways of exploring the place of art today while not undoing it all yet again. Romantic? Certainly. It is a self-ironic romanticism, one that takes great effort in presenting itself as distanced and eye-winking. No wonder Grospierre cites Italo Calvino and Borges: this is the romantic universe that leads the battle for saving beauty. It is not, however, an intuitive aesthetic experience kind of beauty. The Kunstkamera is all about unending layers of initiation. It is a dive into the possibility of image, the possibility of the reflection of things, of some sort of hidden and evolving harmony between the object and the subject.

It reminds one of Heidegger’s conception of art as a window to some other realm we can in no other way describe. Here, this realm always crosses first an image of the reality we know – and so, we never know if this is the level of work-of-art, or it is only a description thereof. Fittingly, the exhibition flyer (a photocopy with clear photocopy marks) explains it all, and more. It seems to impose its vision of the work before we even get to see it.
Take, for instance, the “Trophies” section.

Trophies represent four dog muzzles, belonging to the commonest of mongrels. Bolek, Majka, Eryk and Gucio are four doggies among thousands. In the old Wunderkammer we would find extraordinary or unique natural objects: the horn of a unicorn, huge crystals, stuffed reptiles and other monstrosities. The idea was to show nature in the most surprising forms. Today the world seems devoid of the mysteries and much simpler than in the sixteenth century: the monsters disappeared from biology books. Might it be that the world is less poetic, more prosaic? I don’t think so. Even if science discovered many of nature’s secrets, for me poetry and mystery are still present in nature – we can find them in the most common species, such as house dogs.

The two positions can be called “metaphisical” and “positivist”. Elzenberg’s metaphisicist is

quite aware that there are hundreds of traps on his way; that his individual chances of error are bigger than his chances of winning; he feels that his results are to the highest degree uncertain, endangered by others’ critique and by his own. He feels the constant risk. Yet this risk is also his joy, since, as a psychological type, he has in him – and indeed needs to have – a little bit of a man of adventure and his attitude towards the “positivist” is somewhat like the attitude of a sailor that knows he can drown, towards the landlubber, who has no such fiercely unpleasant risk awaiting. It gives him a sort of satisfaction, but that is not what decides about his behavior in terms of acquiring knowledge; the decisive factor is that he does not want to drown. And that is why he is first and foremost careful. The “Metaphisicist” – or rather, to put it in more serious terms, the valuing aestheticist – knows well that his subject is unclear and unattainable and that what he discovers in it flees any adequate descriptions. Thus, although he is a sui generis racionalist to start off, it is nonetheless easy to discover a trait in him that is the contrary of a strict rationalism: the tendency to treat concepts and judgments as merely a type of highly uncertain symbols of a reality that resists human thought. Thus, he will not suggest that the chiaroscuro in which he sees the thing is full light, nor will he bond himself till death due him part with this or that linguistic formula or even this or that discursive elaboration of his intuition. He – yes he! - has something in him of the spirit of empiricism, as he understands his moving into the subject as a multiplicity of attempts and returns, as the entering in contact, as a progressive bonding with reality. Hence, he has the quality of being critical towards his own achievements, he consciously softens the edges of his statements, and is ready for changes and corrections, and, generally speaking, is moderate and more moderate even.

So do you believe in magic? In the aesthetic wonder of art, that keeps evolving beyond all expectations, that is in some strange way always related to beauty, and maintains some sort of objective common ground, some platform of shared values?
Or did the whole building of aesthetics collapse, leaving us in a void where any new creation of value is so easily ridiculed, art may at best be looked from a great distance, with an ironic, witty, sensitive yet unaffirming stance?

I must say I prefer Grospierre's installation: it's discursive and communicative, inquiring and playful, desperately searching for beauty, or maybe: aiming at beauty. This is a work of a believer. And although I'm not exactly a believer, I can repeat after one of my favorite characters, Samuel Hamilton: I don't really believe in it save that it works.

*It took me some time to write this... and tomorrow is the last day of Kunstkamera! Hurry if you want to see it.

Do You Believe In Magic? Grospierre vs. Radziszewski

a comparison of Karol Radziszewski's To Pee In a Bun and Nicolas Grospierre's Kunstkamera

The two recently* opened exhibitions at the main two contemporary art centers in Warsaw – Zachęta and the Contemporary Art Center – have some clear similarities.

Both exhibitions are witty, explicit dialogues with art history. They both play on the distance that separates contemporary art conventions from what has been somewhat recklessly left behind. Radziszewski exhibits works hidden in the depths of the national gallery’s archives. Some are excruciating to look at, others are curious discoveries or brilliant works. Grospierre goes back to the format of the Kunstkammer and does what he does best – plays with it.

They both focus on the structure of an exhibition, and make it an essential aspect, a sort of a meta-work which goes far beyond the classical idea of curator and uses the ambiguity of this function to the utmost. It is impossible to say where the curator’s role stops and the artist’s begins. This goes far beyond the inclusion of the curator’s own works in the exhibition, or his manipulation of the showing. We never know when the appreciation of the shown works is genuine, and when it is ironic. And because of the artists’ works being part of the selection, the self-irony is, as always, disarming.

However, each artist enacts the role of contemporary art trickster in a different way. Beyond questions of scale, budget and context of production, the two exhibitions are at two opposite sides of an old aesthetic debate. They present two different approaches to the question of value in aesthetics. But first, let me give you a brief description of each of the exhibitions.

Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition To Pee in a Bun, is grandiose. It is a personal take on the collection of Poland’s most renowned and respected public gallery of Modern Art (charmingly called The Encouragement for Fine Art).
In it, he acts “merely” as curator, and also as one of the numerous exhibited artists. Here is what the curator had to say in a conversation with himself as artist :

C: Curators are the ones who make the artists conscious of
‘what’ they have created and ‘why’; often, they also manipulate the
works being displayed, creating their own narratives from pre-existing
works, at the same time disregarding their previous context.
A: Like you did in this exhibition?
C: Yes. (laughs)
A: Why?
C: I treat other artists’ works as elements of a larger whole, like
tubes of paint, from which I have to squeeze out colours in order
to paint one complex painting.
A: That’s a very colourful metaphor . . .
C: Thank you.

We could say that Nicolas Grospierre creates a similar procedure of remixing curator and artist when in the Kunstkamera installation, (which is the size of one of the smaller rooms in Radziszewski’s exhibition), he hangs mainly pictures of objects and photos created by other people, and signs the whole as his piece.
Yet the vectors, here, point elsewhere. Instead of spreading the works and opening, if not exploding, them, he seems to move inwards, closing the space and folding it yet again. Upon entering the "room", we discover a game of images reproducing images reproducing the same space with other images. The game goes on, like a play with mirrors, ad infinitum. The "meaning" is still ambiguous - yet it concentrates, thickens, moves toward inhabiting the space instead of abandoning it.


So what does all of this have to do with philosophical debates?

In an article published in 1936, Stanisław Ossowski, one of Poland’s most notable thinkers from the famous Lvov-Warsaw school of thought, argued against aesthetics understood as the “construction of value systems”. The generalizing of arbitrary aesthetic feelings and opinions to the level of theory should, in his opinion, give way to a sociological perspective on art and the aesthetic, one which would embrace the richness of opinions and points of view instead of imposing them.
This bold proposal was answered the same year by another great mind, Henryk Elzenberg, who argued that no matter how weak and prone to error, our aesthetic judgments remain anchored in value systems that can and should be discussed – as we cannot speak of aesthetics without referring to value, and values are open to discussion.

To put it bluntly: in Radziszewski’s exhibition I see Ossowski’s distancing from aesthetics as a system of values, while Grospierre’s installation follows Elzenberg’s ideals.

These are really two different ways of approaching the world.

Ossowski claims that any discussion about aesthetic values comes down to a power struggle. And this overpowering does not go through a sharing of enthusiasm or disgust, but goes through the attribution of value. Why? Elzenberg explains:

Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have the authority, or the suggestive strength, or the capacity to contaminate others with his feeling. And he is overfilled with the will to rule. Thus, he tries to convince the victim that if this victim feels the same things he does, the victim will be right, he will be somehow objectively correct; and he will be wrong if he dares otherwise.

Hence the need for distance.
It seems Radziszewski claims it on every single step. On one hand, his collection is a moving away from an engaged position, it is rather a questioning of our aesthetic values, of their ever-astounding relativity and apparent insignificance. Who are we to say that this is pretty, and this isn’t? How are we to judge the works that a mere 30 years ago were judged outstanding, while today they’re hidden away in a museum cellar?

On the other hand though, Radziszewski’s approach differs from Ossowski’s philosophy in one respect: being an artist, and not a social scientist, he does not feel the need to eradicate the position of power. To the contrary, he exposes it by exploring it to the fullest. Why bring a porn film into the gallery? Because it’s shocking, and attracts audiences. The aestheticist’s position allows him to create values arbitrarily:

A: You’re a curator — does that mean power?
C: Absolute power! (laughs)
A: Most people believe curators are unfulfilled artists.
C: I think that does hold true for me. Besides, to quote Krasiński
yet again, ‘Art is too serious a business to be left in artists’ hands.’

Grospierre is at a very different point. He does not feel the necessity to question everything – art history has done it sufficiently. Instead, he looks for ways of exploring the place of art today while not undoing it all yet again. Romantic? Certainly. It is a self-ironic romanticism, one that takes great effort in presenting itself as distanced and eye-winking. No wonder Grospierre cites Italo Calvino and Borges: this is the romantic universe that leads the battle for saving beauty. It is not, however, an intuitive aesthetic experience kind of beauty. The Kunstkamera is all about unending layers of initiation. It is a dive into the possibility of image, the possibility of the reflection of things, of some sort of hidden and evolving harmony between the object and the subject.

It reminds one of Heidegger’s conception of art as a window to some other realm we can in no other way describe. Here, this realm always crosses first an image of the reality we know – and so, we never know if this is the level of work-of-art, or it is only a description thereof. Fittingly, the exhibition flyer (a photocopy with clear photocopy marks) explains it all, and more. It seems to impose its vision of the work before we even get to see it.
Take, for instance, the “Trophies” section.

Trophies represent four dog muzzles, belonging to the commonest of mongrels. Bolek, Majka, Eryk and Gucio are four doggies among thousands. In the old Wunderkammer we would find extraordinary or unique natural objects: the horn of a unicorn, huge crystals, stuffed reptiles and other monstrosities. The idea was to show nature in the most surprising forms. Today the world seems devoid of the mysteries and much simpler than in the sixteenth century: the monsters disappeared from biology books. Might it be that the world is less poetic, more prosaic? I don’t think so. Even if science discovered many of nature’s secrets, for me poetry and mystery are still present in nature – we can find them in the most common species, such as house dogs.

The two positions can be called “metaphisical” and “positivist”. Elzenberg’s metaphisicist is

quite aware that there are hundreds of traps on his way; that his individual chances of error are bigger than his chances of winning; he feels that his results are to the highest degree uncertain, endangered by others’ critique and by his own. He feels the constant risk. Yet this risk is also his joy, since, as a psychological type, he has in him – and indeed needs to have – a little bit of a man of adventure and his attitude towards the “positivist” is somewhat like the attitude of a sailor that knows he can drown, towards the landlubber, who has no such fiercely unpleasant risk awaiting. It gives him a sort of satisfaction, but that is not what decides about his behavior in terms of acquiring knowledge; the decisive factor is that he does not want to drown. And that is why he is first and foremost careful. The “Metaphisicist” – or rather, to put it in more serious terms, the valuing aestheticist – knows well that his subject is unclear and unattainable and that what he discovers in it flees any adequate descriptions. Thus, although he is a sui generis racionalist to start off, it is nonetheless easy to discover a trait in him that is the contrary of a strict rationalism: the tendency to treat concepts and judgments as merely a type of highly uncertain symbols of a reality that resists human thought. Thus, he will not suggest that the chiaroscuro in which he sees the thing is full light, nor will he bond himself till death due him part with this or that linguistic formula or even this or that discursive elaboration of his intuition. He – yes he! - has something in him of the spirit of empiricism, as he understands his moving into the subject as a multiplicity of attempts and returns, as the entering in contact, as a progressive bonding with reality. Hence, he has the quality of being critical towards his own achievements, he consciously softens the edges of his statements, and is ready for changes and corrections, and, generally speaking, is moderate and more moderate even.

So do you believe in magic? In the aesthetic wonder of art, that keeps evolving beyond all expectations, that is in some strange way always related to beauty, and maintains some sort of objective common ground, some platform of shared values?
Or did the whole building of aesthetics collapse, leaving us in a void where any new creation of value is so easily ridiculed, art may at best be looked from a great distance, with an ironic, witty, sensitive yet unaffirming stance?

I must say I prefer Grospierre's installation: it's discursive and communicative, inquiring and playful, desperately searching for beauty, or maybe: aiming at beauty. This is a work of a believer. And although I'm not exactly a believer, I can repeat after one of my favorite characters, Samuel Hamilton: I don't really believe in it save that it works.

*It took me some time to write this... and tomorrow is the last day of Kunstkamera! Hurry if you want to see it.

After the Party

The duporet bujany (translating as something like "ass-rocker") was found at poor design. Poor is the author of several clever designs, the most known being the "peg" pendrive. The design is funny, unfortunately as the owner of one such peg I am less enthusiastic about its practicality.
I prefer when he creates poor objects in all honesty - like this "uncovering lamp".

Plexiglas object which gives no light but at least it does not shut off light either. Additionally, it can serve as a stand for a classical lamp with a clamp changing it in a traditional bedside lamp.

Or take this spike:
Perfect for hangovers.

After the Party

The duporet bujany (translating as something like "ass-rocker") was found at poor design. Poor is the author of several clever designs, the most known being the "peg" pendrive. The design is funny, unfortunately as the owner of one such peg I am less enthusiastic about its practicality.
I prefer when he creates poor objects in all honesty - like this "uncovering lamp".

Plexiglas object which gives no light but at least it does not shut off light either. Additionally, it can serve as a stand for a classical lamp with a clamp changing it in a traditional bedside lamp.

Or take this spike:
Perfect for hangovers.

Lapidating Modern Art

A few days ago I witnessed an excessively sad event. A huge group of merchants was thrown out (by the police) of a hall in the center of Warsaw (which they had been renting for several years), and the events turned violent and nasty, with throwing of stones and fights and tear gas and general havoc.
Although it did look like some sort of incomprehensible flash mob or other performative party, one could hardly squeeze it into the “new art” category, were it not for one significant detail: the commercial hall is to be substituted by the Museum of Modern Art. Of course, the city authorities claim the undoing of this most hideous hall is necessary for the construction of a second line of the metro, but the fact is: the temple of 90’s-style small, bad quality commerce will be replaced by the temple of contemporary art.
The obvious implication of this week’s events is: the Museum of Modern Art will arguably be the most despised building in Poland. So far, the only (extremely heated) debates about its character, name (Contemporary or Modern?), and, of course, its shape, interested only fairly elite circles. The building itself raised most controversy, with its austere, “modernist”, or, as some put it, uninspired look. But all this was nothing compared to what happened last Tuesday: the masses moved. There was naturally no talk of the museum. Yet sooner or later, the topic will appear. The Museum will be built, and the tens of thousands of people around the country who considered what happened an act of injustice will have a surprizingly clear symbolic enemy: Modern Art.

But the hundreds of people gathered at the hall entrance would not be customers anyway. Meaning, they don’t fit the profile. Not the current one, and not any potential profile of someone “we” seem to want to educate into (our) art, into (our) culture. Why? Because the social differences are so big, it is still unimaginable for the common art curator/cultural agent to think of these people as spectators, art amateurs, partners. Just as they were hardly a partner for negotiating a new commercial deal (they rejected several offers and refused to participate in further negotiations). We will hear: They are outside of the reach of... of us, the cultural people, the elites, the-educated-ones. They are a lost case.

This is obviously the moment when the conflict becomes helpless. Each party is convinced that the others are barbarians, their entire world is wrong, corrupt, and unworthy of any contact.

Do these people need us to defend them? I believe this is not a question of need. It is a question of true access to culture. Of initiatives, or rather, structures, which would allow for a potential integration of all citizens.
The Museum of Modern Art has already had many great exhibitions. But these initiatives are clearly focused on a prestigious audience, they are intellectually sophisticated, but beyond that, they don’t seem to reach out to a “larger” audience. This reaching out has been happening in many museums around the world (take the Brooklyn Museum, with their great program of interactive activities where once a month visitors can have a totally different experience of art, which includes, for instance, making their own art prints and parties with known DJs).
In Warsaw, we have a truly outstanding exhibition relating to the great Alina Szapocznikow, an artist whose work is largely unknown outside of Poland, yet here is already considered as a crucial reference for anyone interested in modern art (the exhibition ends Sunday). Her works combine eroticism with power, femininity with a great understanding of structure and drama. Possibly the most impressive among the works presented at the show is the huge female belly sculpted in marble (actually it's a double-belly), which impresses, attracts, scares, and ultimately leaves us at a (as always unbearable) distance. What is made to counteract this distance in terms of programming? Some lectures, discussions, guided tours, and a new documentary film. All this is great for me or you. Interesting indeed.
But what about the reaching out? The search for new, active audiences?
Well, many of the women present during the events at the commercial hall were convinced to join in the creative thinking about stone – they reached out, grabbed the pavement stones, and threw them at the police. I claim they did it not only because they were “part of the mob”, but also, because they were hardly ever offered any serious alternatives.
Isn’t it time we thought about those others as true potential consumers of culture, who can be sought just as we seek the already accustomed artsy amateurs?

A friend of mine suggested that the 2000 salesmen thrown out on Tuesday be hired at the Museum Store.
Beyond this ironic (and hilarious) take lies the feeling that something is going terribly wrong in the way we are approaching the idea of social change.
I have been often showcasing projects with social agendas. They were more out-going, accessible, they were social sculptures or other initiatives which claimed a different approach to the audience-connection.
But at such instances, I wonder: can't social sculpture strive for effectiveness? Isn't it terribly passé to hide behind our we-are-only-poor-artists shields?


PS. The Museum of Modern Art does attempt to create a social space of dialogue, as in the initiative of a Park of Sculpture in a poor part of Warsaw. One can see the idea. Yet paradoxically even an artist like Rirkrit Tiravanija seems to have transformed of his relational aesthetics here into a... well... esoteric sculpture.
Hopefuly, this cube, and tens of other artcubes, can make a difference. Yet for the moment its futuristic, mirror-like shape seems all but ironic.

Lapidating Modern Art

A few days ago I witnessed an excessively sad event. A huge group of merchants was thrown out (by the police) of a hall in the center of Warsaw (which they had been renting for several years), and the events turned violent and nasty, with throwing of stones and fights and tear gas and general havoc.
Although it did look like some sort of incomprehensible flash mob or other performative party, one could hardly squeeze it into the “new art” category, were it not for one significant detail: the commercial hall is to be substituted by the Museum of Modern Art. Of course, the city authorities claim the undoing of this most hideous hall is necessary for the construction of a second line of the metro, but the fact is: the temple of 90’s-style small, bad quality commerce will be replaced by the temple of contemporary art.
The obvious implication of this week’s events is: the Museum of Modern Art will arguably be the most despised building in Poland. So far, the only (extremely heated) debates about its character, name (Contemporary or Modern?), and, of course, its shape, interested only fairly elite circles. The building itself raised most controversy, with its austere, “modernist”, or, as some put it, uninspired look. But all this was nothing compared to what happened last Tuesday: the masses moved. There was naturally no talk of the museum. Yet sooner or later, the topic will appear. The Museum will be built, and the tens of thousands of people around the country who considered what happened an act of injustice will have a surprizingly clear symbolic enemy: Modern Art.

But the hundreds of people gathered at the hall entrance would not be customers anyway. Meaning, they don’t fit the profile. Not the current one, and not any potential profile of someone “we” seem to want to educate into (our) art, into (our) culture. Why? Because the social differences are so big, it is still unimaginable for the common art curator/cultural agent to think of these people as spectators, art amateurs, partners. Just as they were hardly a partner for negotiating a new commercial deal (they rejected several offers and refused to participate in further negotiations). We will hear: They are outside of the reach of... of us, the cultural people, the elites, the-educated-ones. They are a lost case.

This is obviously the moment when the conflict becomes helpless. Each party is convinced that the others are barbarians, their entire world is wrong, corrupt, and unworthy of any contact.

Do these people need us to defend them? I believe this is not a question of need. It is a question of true access to culture. Of initiatives, or rather, structures, which would allow for a potential integration of all citizens.
The Museum of Modern Art has already had many great exhibitions. But these initiatives are clearly focused on a prestigious audience, they are intellectually sophisticated, but beyond that, they don’t seem to reach out to a “larger” audience. This reaching out has been happening in many museums around the world (take the Brooklyn Museum, with their great program of interactive activities where once a month visitors can have a totally different experience of art, which includes, for instance, making their own art prints and parties with known DJs).
In Warsaw, we have a truly outstanding exhibition relating to the great Alina Szapocznikow, an artist whose work is largely unknown outside of Poland, yet here is already considered as a crucial reference for anyone interested in modern art (the exhibition ends Sunday). Her works combine eroticism with power, femininity with a great understanding of structure and drama. Possibly the most impressive among the works presented at the show is the huge female belly sculpted in marble (actually it's a double-belly), which impresses, attracts, scares, and ultimately leaves us at a (as always unbearable) distance. What is made to counteract this distance in terms of programming? Some lectures, discussions, guided tours, and a new documentary film. All this is great for me or you. Interesting indeed.
But what about the reaching out? The search for new, active audiences?
Well, many of the women present during the events at the commercial hall were convinced to join in the creative thinking about stone – they reached out, grabbed the pavement stones, and threw them at the police. I claim they did it not only because they were “part of the mob”, but also, because they were hardly ever offered any serious alternatives.
Isn’t it time we thought about those others as true potential consumers of culture, who can be sought just as we seek the already accustomed artsy amateurs?

A friend of mine suggested that the 2000 salesmen thrown out on Tuesday be hired at the Museum Store.
Beyond this ironic (and hilarious) take lies the feeling that something is going terribly wrong in the way we are approaching the idea of social change.
I have been often showcasing projects with social agendas. They were more out-going, accessible, they were social sculptures or other initiatives which claimed a different approach to the audience-connection.
But at such instances, I wonder: can't social sculpture strive for effectiveness? Isn't it terribly passé to hide behind our we-are-only-poor-artists shields?


PS. The Museum of Modern Art does attempt to create a social space of dialogue, as in the initiative of a Park of Sculpture in a poor part of Warsaw. One can see the idea. Yet paradoxically even an artist like Rirkrit Tiravanija seems to have transformed of his relational aesthetics here into a... well... esoteric sculpture.
Hopefuly, this cube, and tens of other artcubes, can make a difference. Yet for the moment its futuristic, mirror-like shape seems all but ironic.

Reconnaissance - installation view

Reconnaissance - installation view

The Actors - Reconnaissance, by Wojtek Ziemilski

This is a short fragment of my work called The Actors. The first volume - Reconnaissance lasts 50 minutes. You can see this excerpt in sort-of-HD here.
Any galleries interested in showing this work, write me, and I'll send you a DVD.

The Actors - Reconnaissance, by Wojtek Ziemilski

This is a short fragment of my work called The Actors. The first volume - Reconnaissance lasts 50 minutes. You can see this excerpt in sort-of-HD here.
Any galleries interested in showing this work, write me, and I'll send you a DVD.

My New Art

I've been very very busy with the opening of my video installation.
Today is the opening night
I won't tell you much, and will leave you with the small text that accompanies it instead:


THE ACTORS
Part 1: RECONNAISSANCE

reconnaissance. or: finding oneself. or: recognition. the recognition of someone else. someone is recognized. or: recognizing. you are (this) someone. this is (this) someone. or: meeting again. discovering again something one knew already. electra's paradox: electra knows, and does not know, that it is her brother standing before her.

reconnaissance. checking. how far. how far one can go. how far one needs to go to. where are the borders. when do i fall into something else. and whatwho is this something else.

i like knowing so little about them.
i like that they remain actors.
and that they are actors in a way no different from all the others.
i like what they're able to do because of how we called them: actors.

The Actors opens (link in Polish) at the TR Warszawa in Poland.
Hopefuly I'll be able to post a short excerpt of the video soon...

My New Art

I've been very very busy with the opening of my video installation.
Today is the opening night
I won't tell you much, and will leave you with the small text that accompanies it instead:


THE ACTORS
Part 1: RECONNAISSANCE

reconnaissance. or: finding oneself. or: recognition. the recognition of someone else. someone is recognized. or: recognizing. you are (this) someone. this is (this) someone. or: meeting again. discovering again something one knew already. electra's paradox: electra knows, and does not know, that it is her brother standing before her.

reconnaissance. checking. how far. how far one can go. how far one needs to go to. where are the borders. when do i fall into something else. and whatwho is this something else.

i like knowing so little about them.
i like that they remain actors.
and that they are actors in a way no different from all the others.
i like what they're able to do because of how we called them: actors.

The Actors opens (link in Polish) at the TR Warszawa in Poland.
Hopefuly I'll be able to post a short excerpt of the video soon...

A performance by Public Movement in Łódź

UPDATE (4.February):
Public Movement is an Israeli performance group. The action you see below was made by them in Łódź, Poland.
A short explanation: before WW2, Łódź used to have a very large Jewish minority. The Jews were, among others, the owners of a significant part of the textile industry thriving in the city. Today, there are practically no more Jews there - and no more industry as well (although the industry did go on until the 70's, I believe). It is a poor and degraded city, with a lot of social problems, and where antisemitism is still present (although the vast majority of the inhabitants have never seen a Jew).
It is one of the very few places I know where one can still find antisemitic slogans on the walls.
So here you have it: the Israelis arrive and correct the Star of David. They basically make a grafitti of how it should look like, and put the correct form over the incorrect one.

And a few little ideas:
- The grafitti they choose to work with are not openly antisemitic. They simply replace one of the letters of the name of a soccer club (ŁKS) with a Star of David. So this is a "neutral" correction on a "neutral" sign.

- The ritual. Ah, the ritual. Turns it all into an action of purity. Precious.

- Notice one other, much more hidden, interpretation: the Jews are back in town. They are here, after our land. They put their stamp on the walls. They claim what is theirs (the club, the building). They are tagging their city.

- But one idea I think is crucial, and might be overlooked in all this will to interpret every single aspect of the work. Public Movement seems to be saying "Yes, this is who we are. We see no reason to be ashamed of it. Do you? Are you not embarrassed to have thought this was inappropriate or even silly, in any way?"

This is some brilliant playing with street art, semiotics, identity and politics.
The one question that I find problematic is - yes, this is on the spot. But for whom? Who is the audience? Is it public art, or just private art in public space? Or maybe it is public art, only for the audience that is reading about it now? So where does that leave the people who walk by this daily? Do we expect them to have a surge of initiative and paint over the whole signs? Or are we, deep inside, enjoying the fact that it's still there, everything is just the same, while we, the smart ones, know and watch?
I really do not know. I do not have better solutions. This, of course, is not a solution either - it is highliting the question(s). But what are we to make of this insistent neutrality right in the middle of a political issue? Is it a curse, the curse of constant distance? Or the blessing of a delicately balanced gesture, for once?