Screening and Discussion

INTRODUCTION
James Hutchinson
& Lesley Young
The Salford Restoration Office
.
This exhibition brings together a selection of work made by the Polish artist Artur Zmijewski
between 2003 and 2009, taking the video Pilgrimage as its starting point, and ending at his latest video
works Two Monuments and the multichannel work Democracies. Many of the works in the exhibition
have not been shown in the UK before. The exhibition is not assembled in chronological
order, but this guide attempts to unravel the journey the artist has made . between the two
aforementioned works. In addition to the gallery show, there will be a screening of Zmijewski’s earlier
works on 6th January.
.
Artur Zmijewski is part of a generation
of Polish artists whose formative years
are embedded within Poland’s early
emergence from the Communist east, at
the end of the Cold War. Though hailing
from a family who remained conformist
within Polish society through
fear of
.
the Soviet regime, Zmijewski was
politically aware from an early age,
citing truancy as the most effective
protest against the system available to
him. By avoiding an education system
whose purpose was to.infect its students
with Soviet ideology, Zmijewski believes
that truancy protected him from
indoctrination and inertia. It was
not until later, first at teacher training
college and subsequently as a student
in Professor Grzegorz Kowalski’s studio
at the
. Warsaw Academy of Fine Art,
that Zmijewski began to find his public
voice, and began to develop an effective
mode of operation to protest against the
ideological frameworks that remained
(and emerged) in Poland as it attempted
to find its place within post-communist
Europe. As Joanna Mytkowska, curator
of the Polish Pavilion at the 51st Venice
Biennale describes, “a gap emerged
between a hastily and superficially
imported liberal discourse supposed
to explain the world, and native
traditions struggling with memory
and a description of a new identity.”1
It
. is somewhere within this gap that
Zmijewski’s practice, as we encounter
it today, was born.
Notes
1. Joanna Mytkowska, Too True Scenarios, 2005,
from If it happened only once its as if it never
happened, edited by Joanna Mytkowska.
.
2. From Truancy: A Portrait of Artur Zmijewski,
2009, an interview published by the Center
for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle,
Warsaw and in Obieg magazine.
3. ibid.
.
4. Artur Zmijewski, The Applied Social Arts, 2007,
published in Krytyka Polityczna no.11
5. From the interview with Sebastian Cichocki,
Stripping Off The Fantasy, reprinted in
this guide.
6. From a caption in If it happened only once
it’s as if it never happened describing the
work, Pilgrimage.
7. From a caption in If it happened only once
it’s as if it never happened describing the
work, Iztik.
8. From Let’s Get Rid Of Art, an interview with
Valentina Sansone in Flash Art magazine
(July – Sept 2009).
9. ibid.
10. ibid.
11. Artist’s statement on Democracies, 2009.
It was Kowalski who. had the
most profound effect on Zmijewski’s
methodology. “He treated his students
as
. subjects rather than objects”,
Zmijewski has said, “he never
force-fed us knowledge, but rather,
together with us, tried to work out
a means for operating in the public
sphere.” 2 Kowalski’s methods included
seminar groups in which works made
by students were allowed and
encouraged to be altered by other
students. Though antagonistic, this
methodology was intended to bring
about a greater understanding between
participants and to encourage an active
dialogue about how meaning is
produced. Kowalski did not place
himself above the students, instructing
and directing from the sidelines, but
took part fully, allowing his students
to oppose and argue with him.
The influence of this methodology
can be seen clearly in many of the
works in this show, most explicitly in
Them (2007), which can . be seen
in Gallery 2. However, Zmijewski
has a fundamental and ongoing
disagreement
with
Kowalski’s
method, namely that his teacher
created an “isolated enclave” limited
to the art school context - “where
people seek refuge
from the oppression
.
of reality.”3 Zmijewksi, on the other
hand, believes that art must operate
in the real world and address real
problems, saying that it must
“achieve a connection with reality
by producing useful tools: tools for
the implementation of power and
knowledge”, and only this way
will it “learn how to become
socially useful”4.
Throughout
his career to date,
.
Zmijewski has sought an art that
performs this function, an art that
admits to seeking answers, rather
than disguising itself as simply more
questions. This, he believes, is the only
way that art can take responsibility
for itself, and that progress can truly
be made. Such answers, however, are
merely propositions
rather than
.
endpoints; Zmijewski says “my films
are arguments; as such, they may
be overpowered by stronger, more
intelligent, or more convincing
arguments.”5 It is this approach that
results
. in the uncompromising work
that Zmijewski has become known for
– works that provoke a strong emotive,
and often negative, initial reaction in
his audience. His apparent suspension
of a moral or ethical framework a safety valve that Western audiences
have come to expect - frequently
draws accusations of exploitation,
most notoriously in response to the
film 80064
. (2004), shown in Gallery 3, in
which Zmijewski convinces a survivor
of the Auschwitz concentration camp to
have his prison camp tattoo restored.
Though the man initially agreed to its
restoration, he changes his mind in
the
tattoo parlour and we witness
.
Zmijewski insisting the man keep his
promise, which he finally does,
although in a later interview he conveys
his dissatisfaction with the process,
no longer sure whether the tattoo is
any longer authentic.
In this work, we find a number
. of the
artist’s hypotheses colliding. Zmijewski
posits that art has repressed its political
capacity for some time now primarily
because of its sense of guilt and
shame over its association with, and
endorsement of, totalitarian regimes
- art is afraid of its own power to affect
because of its implication in crimes of
the past (for example in the works
of Leni Reifenstahl or Arno Breker).
We also find an investigation of
conformism; the former Auschwitz
prisoner dismisses the possibility
of protest within the concentration
camp as only those who conformed
stood a chance of survival, and though
the artist expected a flood of
memories to come forth when placed
under pressure in the tattooists chair,
the man opts for conformism once
more. As with 80064, Poland’s
traumatic association with the
Holocaust is a theme that anchors
many of the earliest works in this show.
Pilgrimage (2003), also in .Gallery 3,
is a case in point. Here, Zmijewski
and his frequent collaborator, Pawel
Ałthamer, joined a group of Polish
Catholic pilgrims on a tour of.Christian
sites in Israel. For this work, Zmijewski
merely observes the proceedings,
videoing the tour guide as he coolly
explains how for Israelis Poland is
implicated in the Holocaust, how Jews
will not acknowledge the heroism of
the Poles who aided their ancestors
escape from the Nazis, how they
should hide their crosses
or be spat on
.
in the street. For Zmijewski, this trip
represents a fundamental conflict in
the minds of these pilgrims, that the
sites most sacred to them are located
in Israel, a land they have never
accepted, “a land stolen from Arabs,
its righteous owners…who [for them]
were the only ones to have suffered.”6
Displayed alongside . Pilgrimage are
two portraits of people Zmijewski met in
Israel that serve to further compound
the tension. Lisa (2003) depicts a
young German woman who believes
that in a former life she was a Jewish
boy who was shot in the neck by a Nazi
guard. After feeling lost in her own
country for some time, Lisa believes
that God told her to go to Israel,
where she now works as a carer, but
the offensiveness of her story to those
with whom she believes she shares an
affinity, means that she remains
lonely. Itzik (2003) on the other hand,
has constructed his theory from a
combination of religious and historical
stories and legend – a complex and
outrageous theory that uses the
Holocaust as justification
for his right
.
to kill Arabs. Says Zmijewski: “his
voice is a kind of voice of the hatred
which divides Israelis and Palestinians.
That’s why I recorded his mad
message.”7 Within these three
works
.
we see a distillation of Zmijewski’s
willingness to let people speak, however
unpalatable their words might turn
out to be. This would become a motif
in a number of works over the
following years.
09
01
08
06
The approach
adopted in Pilgrimage,
.
in which Zmijewski observes a ready
made situation playing itself out,
would not appear in a completed
work again until Democracies (2009),
in Gallery 1, where it would find a
new and more expansive potency.
However, the portraits would become
a staple of the artist’s work in the
following years. In 2006 and 2007,
a number of these portraits were
produced and they adopt a completely
different tone to the antagonistic
nature of the previous work, simply
representing
those
who
feel
unrepresented within the mechanisms
that control them. They are gentle
and tender depictions of workers who
perform repetitive physical tasks,
filmed over a single twenty four hour
period. Five of these films are shown in
this exhibition and we meet, among
others, married mother of three Dorota
(2006), who works on the checkout at a
supermarket; Halina (2006), who works
at a laundry and lives with her adult
daughter; and street cleaner Aldo
(2007), a young man who lives on
his own. These works benefit from
their quietness with the artist’s
oeuvre, representing as they do the
mechanisms which operate quietly in
the background, and
. those who are
subject to them. Zmijewski points
out that though the change from
communism to a parliamentary
democracy in Poland initially brought
euphoria, it soon became a nightmare
for the working classes as the ship
yards and coal mines were gradually
shut down, and that “a time of contempt
began”8 with the middle classes looking
down their noses at the ignorant
masses. The works are a celebration
of the people who have found
themselves invisible within the
contemporary West.
Returning to the aforementioned
trip
.
to Israel in 2003, Zmijewski produced
a third style of work, which he had
experimented with previously when
exploring the idea of the body as a
political site. Having spent the early
years of his artistic career working
with people who had varying degrees
of disability or people who were dying
(a selection of these works will be
shown in a screening
programme
.
on 6th January), Zmijewski visited
a nursing home where he met
a number of Polish Jews who escaped
the Nazi occupation when they were
very young. Here, he combined his
earlier interest in the body with his
more overtly political output, to make
the video Our Songbook (2003, Gallery
2) in which the residents at the home
are invited to sing songs they
remember from their youth in
Poland, from nursery rhymes to the
national anthem. Though this may
seem to harbour the potential to be a
traumatic experience for participants,
they willingly and sometimes happily
perform. Many begin well enough but
soon falter, struggling to progress
beyond the opening lines, but remain
good humoured, resulting in a work
as tender as the portraits.
.
This methodology, in whiewski sets up
a situation, invites specific people to
take part, films the results and then
edits the footage is perhaps what he is
best known for outside Poland. It
clearly has its roots in Kowalski’s studio, but has been. adapted to reflect
Zmijewski’s interests in how art can be
an important tool to bring about a
change, or to find answers to identified
problems. The most epic of these experiments is Repetition (2005), shown
in Gallery 3, in which Professor Philip
Zimbardo’s infamous 1971 Stanford
Prison Experiment is recreated. Zimbardo’s intention was to study the
psychological effects on twenty-four
participants when they were held in
the basement of Stanford University’s
psychology building for a period of up
to two weeks, performing either the
role of prisoner or guard. Though the
participants were initially screened
for psychological problems and past
criminal
behaviour,
the
experiment had to be stopped after
six days due to guards displaying
sadistic tendencies and prisoners
showing signs of extreme trauma.
Zimbardo failed to notice his own
complicity within the proceedings,
passively allowing the experiment to
get out of control until a student
pointed out his complete suspension
of research ethics. He stopped the
experiment, concluding that there
lies in man a fundamental desire to
dominate, and effectively prohibited
any recurrence of the event in the
name of research
due to the suffering
.
involved. Zmijewski, however, wished
to dispute Zimbardo’s findings and
criticised the prohibition, pointing
out that an experiment cannot be
considered conclusive if it happened
only once, something that is widely
overlooked in the psychology world
where the so-called findings are cited
to this day. The prohibition “did not
prevent the malicious knowledge,
malicious software for our
. minds”
spreading, knowledge that Zmijewski
sees as “a virus [that needed] treating
with
a vaccine.”9 For Repetition,
.
Zmijewski recreated the initial
conditions of Zimbardo’s experiment;
this time, however, using a purpose
built set and paying the participants.
We see the whole process from beginning
to end - selecting the participants,
entering the set, the day-to-day tasks
and confrontations, and finally the
concluding discussion involving all
the participants who took part.
Further examples of this methodology
appear the works Them (2007) in
Gallery 2 and Two Monuments (2009) in
Gallery
3, though in these videos
.
Zmijewski adopts an approach more
akin to a workshop, taking place in
short bursts over a number of sessions.
Two Monuments was made in Dublin at
precisely the moment when Ireland's
previously
booming
economy
floundered. In the film unemployed.
Irish and Polish men work together to
make one sculpture, with unemployed
Irish and Polish women making another
The participants speak candidly
about the situations they find themselves
living in, sometimes finding common
ground but frequently points of tension.
The men appear to get along; but the
women, despite producing a sculptural
tribute to equality, remain distant and
suspicious of each other. Them, which
was made in Warsaw, brings together
four groups - members of the nationalist
All Polish Youth, a group of young
Jewish liberals, an assortment of leftists
and a Catholic women’s group - and
invites them to create an emblematic
image that symbolises Poland and
their respective positions within it.
On completion of this task, the groups
are offered the opportunity to make
alterations to each other’s images.
The process starts amicably enough,
but soon increases in intensity, until
eventually .the participants become
exasperated by each other, and simply
begin asserting their right to perform
increasingly violent acts on each
other’s representations. Over four
sessions, the groups fail to find a way
to agree on how their multiple views
can exist in one space, and the problem
fails to resolve itself beyond the mutual
destruction. of almost everything in
the room. Zmijewski sees this as the
nature of democratic debate, and
describes Them as an “experiment
based on unleashing political urges,
expressed in a language not using
political correctness, but an ideological
subjective truth – confrontation,
antagonism”. He also repudiates the
word ‘destruction’ - suggesting, in
fact, that “in the end the whole
ideological landscape is reset.”10
A further meditation on this issue
can be found in Democracies (2009,
Gallery 1), in which we also see a return
to the detached
observational style of
.
Pilgrimage. Zmijewski was present at a
number of mass gatherings including a
Loyalist parade in Belfast, the funeral
of extreme right-wing Austrian
politician Jorg Haider, a protest
against Israeli occupation of the West
Bank, a Labour Day riot in Berlin, as
well as a staged re-enactment of the
1944 Warsaw Uprising for a watching
audience and street celebrations after
Germany beat Turkey at the Euro 2008
football championships. Displayed on
twenty monitors, the crowds generate
a cacophony, drowning each other
out. As with Them, the combination of
views set against each other from leftist to ultra-conservative serves to flatten
. the landscape out. We return to
Zmijewski’s observations about art’s
shame, and find him re-aestheticising,
re-invigorating, re-claiming even, the
image of the mass gathering from
Riefenstahl’s films of choreographed
fascist marches, asserting an equally
potent image within
. the visual language
of democracy. Zmijewski describes
these events as examples of the “critical
mass of democracy” and his
presence at them as the “ultimate
horizon of [his] political participation”11 - to shout slogans, to be
amongst the crowds, but all the time
remaining separate from those who
are at the epicentre of decision-making.
STILL OCCUPIED THOUGH YOU FORGET
Charles Esche
Director of Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven,
and editor of the journal Afterall (Antwerp,
London and Los Angeles). He is a judge of
the 2009 Turner Prize.
.
First published in Artur Zmijewski,
If it happened only once it’s as if it never
happened, Einmal ist Keinmal, 2005,
edited by Joanna Mytkowska.
The title is taken from New Dawn Fades,
a song by Joy Division.
I guess we have all experienced the National Socialism of the heart. Those moments in life when passion or
hurt takes over and when we can never permit sympathy for or imagination of the feelings of the other to
alter our actions. Brute desire dominates, and we commit many deeds for which we feel only shame and
remorse afterwards. Whether personal or the collective heartache of Nazism, the heart fully justifies its
evil intent in terms of its desire for compensation for the perceived evils done to it. Ultimately, it cannot
avoid its own destructive exclusion of other ways of thinking. So, to avoid the common Nazi instincts
in our being, we try to control these impulses by ourselves or we set up social contracts that do it for us.
Frequently these also fail and then we try, as the collective that can still unite around the term humanity,
to build the walls of civilisation back up again. Yet, in general, the heart serves us well as carrying the blame
for Nazism and other collective crimes. Identified as the prime Nazi organ in our bodies it helps to excuse
the motivation for certain historical actions, or at least balances condemnation with understanding.
More problematic is the concept
of a National Socialism of the brain.
A hateful ideology controlled by a
thinking and self-aware consciousness
is much harder to comprehend and to
bear. Partly, I imagine, that is because
it permits absolute evil into the
heart of the civilising project of the
Enlightenment. Partly because such
terms of engagement with evil are
much harder to control through
the traditions of discourse and
democratic accountability that we
have built up to defend ourselves
against its outbreak. Nazism has to be
on the outside looking in for it to be
accommodated comfortably in our
current worldview. It needs to be
the irrational other to the inevitable
superiority of the democratic free
market and the expressed will of
the ‘silent majority’. It can only
provide a choice in times of economic
desperation and wounded identity,
situations that can be overcome by
individual economic security and a
national vote every few years.
My guess is. that this is the worldview
that Artur Zmijewski wants to disturb.
As such, we can see that his productions
speak about the losers rather than the
winners of society, those that have
incomplete profiles and physical
dependencies. But he refuses to adopt
the classical response of guilty
liberalism towards those afflictions.
Instead of trying to alleviate them he
seems to wallow in their own qualities,
emphasising what is missing and
exploring the individuals’ inadequacy
to the full. That is why, after all, much
of the video and performance work is
so compelling. We want to see what
our art world liberal correctness
often forbids – deaf mutes singing,
paraplegics walking, guards abusing
prisoners, artists taking about God.
At its heart, this work is anti-consensus.
It breaks out from the often-stultifying
conformity of western social
democratic discourse. In its place, it
suggests that abnormality can be
represented on its own terms and
contemplated without a tired humanist
reflex to feel sympathy for the victim
or blind ourselves to what is lacking.
His work is at heart a challenge
to the aesthetic expectations of
certain
dominant
forms
of
American and western European
modernism from the middle of the
last century. That old struggle first to
do away with representation and then
to claim autonomy for the object from
its contextual production appeared
lost under
post-modernist revisionism
.
but Zmijewski’s videos bring some of
the background residual assumptions
of western modernism into focus. Are
we still secret idealists, searching for
a utopian social harmony, desiring
our own tolerant final solution
to society’s problems? To the
extent that is .raises that question,
I understand Zmijewski’s work to
be a provocation to the comfortable
liberalism that inhabits much of
the European art world these days.
It points out where social improvement
becomes another form of conformist
manipulation of our expectations
of human life.
Yet while it might seem out of kilter
with much of the socially positivist
art
.
made in the last 10 years, Zmijewski
plugs himself into a much longer
history of art. Seventeenth century
Spanish art regularly depicted the
dwarves, buffoons and jokers that
populated the court as entertaining
oddities. Those depictions of an
existence that can only be imagined as
cruel and
. exploitative trod a similar
path to Zmijewski’s. Take one specific
example, Velazquez’s Calabazas painted
around 1638. The image is a portrait of
a dwarf seen from above, emphasising
his size and the viewpoint of the average
adult. He is seated on a low stool with
his legs folded under him, nervously
wringing his hands together and
peering up with an uneasy grin or
grimace. This is not meant to be a
flattering portrait clearly, but neither
could it possibly be exploitative in its
apparent realism. It is neither filled
with sympathy nor with derision but
lets the beholder come to terms with
the court buffoon as an individual
and as a representative of something
other. than ‘normality’ – something
that Zmijewski offers also to us in
our own time.
In theory, the presence of such people
in the royal courts of the seventeenth
century was intended to serve as a
reminder to the monarchs of their
good fortune and worldly power.
However, in practice they could be
imagined to do rather the opposite,
reminding the court that perfection
was not necessarily always a desirable
aim of state policy, or at least that
it was a pointless exercise to pursue.
It is at this point that
. the substance
of the critique in Zmijewski’s work
challenges the contemporary world
of tolerant artistic speculation.
By depicting the awkwardness of
human existence without sympathy,
it questions the search for certain
utopian propositions, aesthetic as
well as social.
It is important that
.
none of Zmijewski’s work provides
a positivist solution to the problems it
pronounces. Indeed, his 2005 work
Repetition theatricalises the conflict
between the powerless and the
structurally empowered. In his work,
the positivism of the able bodied
and socially advantaged serves as
something of a categorical opposite.
He refuses it in order to find out
what it excludes, at the same time giving
action to those who would normally
remain the passive objects of
contemplation
for
the
able
bodied world.
Perhaps it is my own wilful misreading
but I would like to suggest a particular
contemporary reading of this work as
profoundly un-American. By that I
mean that it rejects the idealism
and optimism at the heart of the
overwhelmingly successful American
model. For those of us at least sceptical
of the current US government’s policies,
there is always the accusation that we
are opposing freedom and democracy
while siding with repressive, dystopian
regimes. At times opposition to freedom
and democracy in neo-conservative
terms can feel rather like being asked
to attack the desirability of being
physically and mentally complete.
Of course
that is not the point,
.
but Zmijewski’s work provides an
intelligent retort to that question by
presenting us with works that point
out something of the compromises
in lived reality for which the idealism
of the neo-cons often fails to account.
I could only wish that I would have
such a convincing argument to
present about the inevitable and perhaps
necessary
. differences in human society
that Zmijewski does for human
capability and physiognomy.
08
DESCRIPTIO
01
Gallery 1
01
Democracies
2009 / 20 channel HD video installation /
02:26:00
Democracies, is a series of 20 short documentary videos, that play simultaneously,
creating a cacophony of sound and image. Each video records a demonstration,
parade or re-enactment where people have gathered to express their opinion, or
allegiance or opposition to a cause. Filmed between 2007 and 2009, in cities and
towns across Europe, the films include a protest against the Israeli occupation
in the West Bank, a re-enactment of the Warsaw Uprising, a Loyalist parade
in Belfast and a crowd of German football fans.
Produced by DAAD, Berlin; Digital Art Lab,
Holon; and Fire Station Artists’ Studios Dublin.
Gallery 2
02
Our Songbook
2003 / Video projection / 00:11:00
The people in Our Songbook are Polish Jews who emigrated
. to Israel during or
just after the Second World War. Now elderly and frail, Zmijewski invites them
to recall the songs of their childhood and youth in Poland. With enthusiasm they
try to recall love songs, patriotic songs and the national anthem, but falter on the
lyrics and melodies, but also on the Polish language, which they have become
distanced from.
03
02
Selected Works Series
.
In 2006 Zmijewski made a series of videos that documented and observed ordinary
people living and working, in countries including Italy, Mexico, Poland and Germany.
The films are extraordinary because of their ordinariness. Basically the same length
and structure, they follow real people over a 24 hour period as they work for long
hours in low-skilled jobs, care for their families, socialise and endure boredom.
Aldo
2007 / Single channel video / 00:15:40
Aldo is a street-sweeper in a town on Sicily, getting up early to go
fishing, then sweeping and washing the street around the market.
Halina
2006 / Single channel video / 00:15:25
Halina works in a laundry in Poland, where her favourite job is ironing.
She lives with her adult daughter.
Salvatore
2007 / Single channel video / 00:15:20
Salvatore is a builder whose job, on the day this video was
shot, is laying a concrete floor. He has a wife and one child.
Patricia
2007 / Single channel video / 00:15:00
Patricia sells food and drink at a kiosk in a Berlin U-Bahn station,
and cares for her two daughters.
Dorota
2006 / Single channel video / 00:15:00
Dorota is a cashier in a Polish supermarket, living with her husband and
three children in a well-ordered apartment.
04
of
ON WORKS
05
04
Them
2006 / Video projection / 00:26:00
Them, brings together four groups in Warsaw with conflicting views - members
of the nationalist All Polish Youth, a group of young Jewish liberals, an assortment
of leftists and a Catholic women’s group – in a workshop situation. Invited to each
create a banner that represents their idea of Poland, the groups begin to discuss their
differences. When they are invited to alter and amend eachothers’ representations
patience runs thin and what was discussion becomes aggression.
Gallery 3
05
Itzik
2003 / Single channel video / 00:05:00
Itzik shows a man who has developed a theory from a combination of religious
and historical stories and legends, which he believes justifies his hatred of Arabs.
06
07
Pilgrimage
.
2003 (Artur Zmijewski & Pawel Ałthamer)
Single channel video / 00:29:00
.
In this film Zmijewski and his frequent collaborator, artist Pawel Ałthamer,
joined
.
a group of Polish Catholic pilgrims on a tour of Christian sites in Israel. Zmijewski’s
camera merely observes the journey, videoing the group and the guide as he explains
the history of the sites and what he believes to be the Israeli attitude towards the Poles.
07
Lisa
2003 / Single channel video / 00:11:00
This film depicts Lisa, a young German woman living in Israel, who believes that
in a previous life she was Jewish boy shot by a Nazi guard. This story is shocking
and offensive to many people she meets in Israel, leaving her lonely and isolated.
08
80064
2004 / Single channel video / 00:11:05
.
Zmijewski persuaded 92 year old Jozef Tarnawa, a former prisoner of the
concentration camp at Auschwitz, to have his tattooed prisoner number restored.
The video is set in the tattoo parlour, where Tarnawa has become unsure about
whether the number will still be authentic. After some negotiation, he goes ahead
with the restoration, but is ambivalent about the results.
09
10
Two Monuments
2009 / Video projection / 00:15:00
Working with Polish and Irish unemployed men and women at Fire Station
Artists’ Studios in Dublin, the film responds to the changing nature of Polish
and Irish relationships and the labour market.
Commissioned by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin
10
Repetition
2005 / Video projection / 01:15:00
.
In order to test the results of Professor Philip Zimbardo’s infamous Stanford
Prison Experiment, where volunteers where given roles of prisoners and. guards
Zmijewski repeated the project in a purpose built jail. After being psychologically
assessed for their ability to cope with the conditions of the experiment, participants
were assigned the role of prisoner or guard, and over a number of days Zmijewski
filmed their interactions.
All works courtesy of the artist and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw.
STRIPPING OFF
THE FANTASY
.
Artur Zmijewski
interviewed by
Sebastian Cichocki
First published by Krytyka
Polityczna magazine, and
appearing in English
in the
.
catalogue Artur Zmijewski.
Ausgewählte Arbeiten. Selected
Works, edited by Kathrin Becker,
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein,
Revolver: Berlin, 2007
Sebastian Cichocki: You’ve recently published a book of interviews with artists associated with the so-called
critical strand in art. What was the purpose of these conversations, what kind of knowledge does the spoken
word give you, and were the interviews necessary to understand the artists’ work?
.
Artur Zmijewski: Society sees artists as shamans, demiurges, flamboyant, slightly mad personalities, as
morbid and consumed by a fever caused by some chronic malady. That’s a fantasy generated by society, of course.
And it’s that fantasy which keeps society from having any real encounter with art. But it also stops artists
from assuming genuine responsibility for their actions. Such a fantasy gives art a kind of immunity protecting
it from verification of its claims and the knowledge it proposes. I’m using the word “protect” in a pejorative
sense here because the fantasy has a benumbing effect, society becomes inured to whatever art is trying to say.
Though it was created as a means of defence against art, the fantasy has also claimed its share of victims:
all the unfortunate characters that donned that contrived costume. Consequently, artists fall into the rut
culture has set aside for them, and stop considering themselves qualified to talk about reality. Then, it becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy and artists really do lose their influence over things. When you get rid of that
costume without having fundamentally redefined the sphere of art in culture generally, you’re left without a
distinct background to fall back on and that, coupled with the distorted belief that there are no “benchmarks
of perception,” makes the artist seem to be a tumour on the social tissue, someone capable only of “idiotic”
pretensions. And yet the “idiocy” of those pretensions is closer to the truth than any received notions of who
an artist is. “Idiocy” refers to the intractable vagueness of images: something society and its agents, such
as academia or the media, are unable to cope with. They either oversimplify it or consider it to be too
ambiguous to handle.
SC: What other uses can that
fantasy have?
.
Notes
1. Sławomir Sierakowski is editor-in-chief
of Krytyka Polityczna quarterly magazine.
`
2. Krzysztof Kamil Baczynski,
Tadeusz, Gajcy,
Tadeusz Borowski are Polish war time poets.
`
Baczynski
and Gajcy were killed during the
1944 Warsaw Uprising. Borowski, a survior
of Auschwitz, committed suicide in 1951.
All three represented the so-called
“catastrophic” movement in poetry.
3. Inexact quote from ‘Pie’ published in
Borowski’s 1942 debut Gdziekolwiek ziemia.
4. “The toy refers to the forms of social
organization, how children are modelled
with the aid of toys. The whole uproar about
the Lego concentration camp broke out
during the discussion of the Holocaust
memorial in Berlin. Some people in
Germany said that the mass production
of such a toy could be a kind of memorial.
Preserving memory is a problem.
The human hair in Auschwitz is falling
apart It’s a perishable substance”.
5. “Each moment was such an intense
experience that I almost fainted standing
there under those twigs. It was bliss. I felt
an incredible energy emanating from that
twig. I understood what trees were.
They’re nerves sticking out of the ground”;
from Bródnowska nirwana. .Z Pawlem Al
thamerem sozmawia Artur Zmijewski,
.
in Drzace ciela, Kronika, Bytom, 2007.
6. In 2001, Dorota Nieznalska showed a
cruciform lightbox at the Wyspa gallery
`
in Gdansk.
In the centre of the cross was
placed a photo depicting male genitalia.
The object was accused of offending
religious sentiments, and a lengthy
court case ensued.
.
7. Zmijewski’s film, Repetition, is a record of
the re-enactment of the so-called Stanford
Prison Experiment originally done by
Professor Philip Zimbardo.
8. Jacek Kaczmarski was a poet and singersongwriter supporting the anti-communist
opposition movement in 1980s Poland.
He died in 2004.
9. Parteitag
. (Party Conference) an exhibition
Artur Zmijewski mounted in 1997 at the
studio of Katarzyna Górna and Katarzyna
Kozyra concerned with the phenomenon
of evil.
AZ: We remember all the occasions
when people would say “that’s not art,”
and then stage a media campaign
against the work and its maker.
That was a game played with the fantasy
and its uses. Because it’s also a way of
legitimising artistic projects, it gives a
social mandate to make art. Artists, for
their part, (and that comes out in the
interviews I’ve done) want to overturn
that principle. They either don’t want
to be cloaked in any myth at all, or
they want a different type of myth.
They don’t want a fantasy to legitimise
their right to do what they do.
They don’t want status or immunity
because those are the instruments
of alienation.
SC: Tearing off the veil, seeing art
without this protective layer implies
some risk, though. That’s why it
frightens all those who find it more
convenient to keep the myth alive.
.
AZ: Seeing the real picture, not obscured
by a film of fantasy involves a certain,
albeit illusory, loss for viewers and
artists alike. Who does that make the
artist? A reflection of the identical
and the commonplace. In this light
artists would be just as helpless in the
face of the world as everybody else.
They’ll be a little ignorant and lacking
in basic knowledge, sometimes they
won’t know how to listen to others,
they might not understand all that
much. They’ll be a bit like office workers
filling in grant application forms,
they’ll be conformists toadying to
people of influence. They’ll be minor
characters living on the sidelines.
Why should we listen to them since
they themselves renounce the fantasy
that had made them out to be
formidable visionaries? Why do they
renounce the distinction that
established these hierarchies and set
them above other people? Why do
they want to assume responsibility
for their artefacts? Why are they giving
up their immunity? Why do we listen
to what they have to say? Are we really
listening in the first place? Listening to
somebody should mean hearing them
out: embracing the knowledge or
procedures produced by a given
discourse. My interviews are a way of
hearing these people out. Listening to
them when they “detach” themselves
from art.
SC: Who could artists be if their role
in the life of society were redefined?
.
AZ: Without valid understanding,
answers, art will lapse into colourful
fancies: if it is not recognised as
knowledge it can stop being knowledge.
But even then it retains the uncanny
way it acts on intuition, goes after
things that have been repressed and
that it can reinstate into public debate.
And then we all win. Art is, or can be
(that depends mainly on how aware
we are), an equal partner for other
discourses – it deals with the same
environment, takes up the same
subject matter – it operates in the
same world and addresses the same
things other discourses do. It can be
critical of those discourses but, then
again, science, politics and morality
can be critical of art. So we’re all talking
about the same thing: the world we
live in, its potential and limitations,
and how to build it together. That is,
we’re building it already but it’s an
unconscious process, and we think
disparagingly of our partners far
too often.
SC: How
be effected?
.
could
this
change
AZ: Art could stop insisting that the
answers it gives are actually questions.
I realise it’s awkward because when
you give answers you have to take
responsibility for the consequences
that follow from those answers.
So redefining the status of artistic
utterances can effect a change –
the question mark appended at the end
conceals their true status as statements
and answers. Sometimes artworks are
manuals – instructions how to repair
those parts of the body politic that
have been “changed by disease,” that
hurt or bleed.
Obviously, artists won’t change the
situation alone – they need to do so in
conjunction with people involved in
politics, science, etc. And not by coming
up with yet another school of “political
art” churning out exhibits to be shown
in the white cube, commodities
in political wrapping, but by
consciously engaging in a political
structure with the intent of offering it
their skills and taking part in negotiating
the nature of our common reality.
Let’s swap competencies. To quote
Sławek Sierakowski1: “Everybody –
science, politics, art – has their tools
(systematic scientific research, the
political skills of organising influence
and rhetorical effectiveness, artistic
means of diagnosing and acting upon
the world), but it’s the same battlefield.”
Art’s involvement with power has led
to atrocities – since then we have been
nurturing a sense of shame that hinders
common action. The body politic was
sorely wounded here and it still
nurses unconscious fears and holds
grudges. But art, too, can be lethal when
`
it formats social fantasies. Baczynski,
Gajcy, Borowski2 formatted the
fantasies of future victims, leading
them to embrace death. And “they left
behind them iron trash; the stifling,
morbid purple sky”3 Let us not kid
ourselves that writers and artists
today are free from the influence of
ideology. The conviction – as widespread
as it is naïve – that we have lived to see
“the end of ideologies” is proof sufficient
that exactly the opposite is the case.
Social reality is ideological a priori: you
either serve the status quo, or oppose it.
04
SC: Let’s get back to the present.
What sort of knowledge did your talks
with artists give you?
.
01
AZ: Art is a reflective analytical device
operating in the realm of intuition and
premonition. Take Zbigniew Libera’s
work for example: his maternity beds
for pre-teens, the concentration camp
out of Lego bricks4, etc. are more than
just objects d’art – they are debatable
social facts and experiments conducted
by an artist-anthropologist. Those works
are a record of knowledge in the form of
images while also being active devices
to generate new knowledge. Why hasn’t
the knowledge Libera has generated
by way of such experiments become
part of anthropological knowledge?
Why do we still treat it as cultural
entertainment? Why don’t sociologists
invoke the knowledge art produces?
Science wouldn’t even be allowed
to carry out experiments such as
marketing a Lego kit you can make a
Nazi death camp out of. But such an
object actively penetrates the space
of social convictions and tells us
something about these convictions.
Not to mention that it constitutes a
kind of anthropological and sociological
discovery in itself. I guess the problem
is that it’s “an image” and experts
in other fields are illiterate when
it comes to dealing with images.
The recurring question concerning the
ethics of artistic action boils down to a
discussion on “widespread application”
of the cognitive procedures posited
by artists. Art is also a device for
decentralisation and the diversification
of sources of knowledge.
SC: Did your being an artist encourage
your interlocutors? Were they willing
to tell you more than they do critics
and journalists?
.
06
AZ: I suppose so. I too am one of
those handicapped people who try to
experience the world through images.
Two things are important here.
First there’s the mistake of disdaining
images. Why should that be a mistake?
Well, because as Peter Sloterdijk
wrote in The Contempt of the Masses,
“the masses are governed with the
aid of images.” Getting a handle on
this situation is a form of “necessary
self-defence.” What helps me relate to
other artists is that I never disdain
images because I realise how powerful
they are. Second, art, or images actually,
is a form of speech. A pre-articulation.
Artists can’t help thinking and speaking
in images, and that’s a severe handicap
from the standpoint of this civilisation
– for the time being, at least.
Even though this civilisation intuitively
realises that, in the continuum that is
cognition, artists’ faith in unwitting
associations of things that slip past
the threshold of consciousness is the
first step towards knowledge. And that
can be expressed with the aid of images.
The image is therefore a visible product
of intuition and premonition, of placing
trust in chaos and in mistakes: of those
things that are the fist stage in the
production of knowledge – the
first obscure moment of knowing.
Knowledge isn’t usually a vehicle for
desires and feelings, it’s not an outlet
for flaunting ecstasy or shame,
knowledge usually isn’t an outburst of
extreme subjectivity – but in art it is.
And that’s the merit of this proposition:
The inter-subjective does not refer to the
objective as distorted by the point of
view of individuals, but to a relationship
of subjectivities made up of individual
illuminations, revelations and insights.
I take the illuminations and insights
my interlocutors have experienced
seriously and treat them as their
contribution to a common body
ofknowledge. When Pawel Ałthamer
says that trees are nerves sticking out
of the ground5, I take that as an insight
into his world. When he says he spoke
to God like a friend, I don’t get sceptical
and tell him God doesn’t exist. I know
he really spoke to God. I take that as a
genuine fact of his subjective being.
And I appreciate that subjectivity and
reaffirm it as something truly distinct,
not as a distortion of the objectivity
we all know through the filter of
his individuality.
SC: I recently noticed just how
important language is in your actions.
You write a lot, take part in numerous
discussions, publish manifestos, but
apart from all that the essence of your
works often seems to be what is said
about them. When you record images
on film, that side effect grows,
branches out, and entwines with others.
It’s as if your films were meant
primarily to inspire discussion and
could just as well only exist in
the telling.
.
AZ: That’s one of the desired effects
of images: when they serve as
arguments in a discussion. As arguments
they are subject to the rules of
discussion; they provoke answers and,
like any argument, can come up
against a stronger argument. And so
they can be defeated in a discussion.
My films are arguments and as such
are verifiable. They can be defeated
by an opinion that is stronger, more
intelligent, more convincing. I think
that the artefact, the image, is the
equivalent of text, it is an opinion like
any other and really lends itself to
discussion, and as such can be rebutted.
A spectacular and extreme example of
such discussion is the clash between
the rationale of freedom and the
rationale of indoctrination in the case
of socialist realist art. Such “validation
of art” could also help us “strip off the
fantasy.” It would also be good if art
gave up its immunity and stature.
Ironically enough, such attempts at
stripping art of its immunity were
made during the Nieznalska affair6.
Her indictment was a fairly blunt
manifestation of the desire to deprive
art of its cultural inviolability.
The people bringing charges against
Nieznalska were demanding legal
recognition for their way of defining
reality. But then they were labelled
opponents of free speech and all
communication with them was
precluded. I’m bringing up that situation
because it’s exemplary and extreme at
the same time. The scandals around
art in the 1990s and in the early 21st
century testify to ambivalence in the
reception of what art is trying to say.
On the one hand outrage was a
protective mechanism against those
statements, on the other it
demonstrated the awkwardness people
fell when exposed to art. The message
here was that the immunity is so
strong that we have to use strong
language in order to be heard. To be
on a par with art in terms of stature,
to offset this asymmetry, the language
of debate had to be excessively strong
from the start. In the public sphere
such excessively violent language took
the form of scandals and lawsuits.
So one can “strip off the fantasy”
by depriving oneself of cultural
inviolability, by making the artefact a
refutable argument in a real-life dispute.
And also by delivering on the offer
made to other discourses – we offer
you our skills and meta-skills. That is,
art will not convert its politicalcommitment into something that can
only be expressed in gallery space but
into something that can be part of
political debate, and agrees to give up
its autonomy in favour of political or
scientific discourse.
SC: What about the knowledge artists
have? How does it originate and what
makes it different from other types
of knowledge?
.
AZ: Imagine a university graduate.
His/her knowledge is arranged in a
network of cross-referenced concepts,
definitions, analyses, etc. Such a network
will naturally have its empty spaces –
like loopholes in a net – where all new
knowledge is inserted. You could say
that this network of reference actively
structures new information by placing
it in the right spots and incorporating
it into a system of reference. Artists are
handicapped by the fragmentary nature
of the theoretical knowledge they were
taught in art schools, and so have
arranged these things differently.
They have no network because there
are no conceptual nodes that would
refer to one another. New knowledge is
simply poured into an area that either
has no structure at all is made up of
localised swirls where fragments of
knowledge converge. Perhaps such a
construing of knowledge for the benefit
of artists is in the interests of society.
Since elements not restricted by a
structure can move freely from place
to place, the manner of association is
not determined by any universal rules
either. The effects of such unorthodox
associations can be interesting
precisely because of these “impossible
associations.” What distinguishes
such a system from rank stupidity are
the “excessively intuitive” faculties
of artists and a certain social
hypersensitivity. That is the adjunct,
the meta-skills with the aid of which
they make up for shortcomings in their
classical education. I have already
said that artists, like pickpockets,
zero in on places of social “inattention”:
of indifference. They see the empty
spaces, those parts of the body politic
that have succumbed to anaesthesia,
that lie dormant. Which means that
artists see the places Žižek called “the
ones we don’t know we know about.”
What’s interesting is that an entire
such system of association exists in
society but society lacks the courage
to make use of it to the full.
SC: In your research interviews,
have you noticed themes of suffering,
martyrdom or messianism that
would place art’s experience in
the last decade in a typically Polish
continuum of attitudes and motives?
.
AZ: I don’t want actions that are free
and meant to safeguard freedom to be
stifled by the tangle of Polish clichés
that reduces us to executors of the will,
or rather the paranoia, of generations
past. We’re the great-grandchildren of
Witold Gombrowicz, we like political
solutions, we like cunning and
cleverness, we enjoy being a bit weak,
a bit opportunistic and ostentatiously
unethical. We suffer, but we do it like
people queuing at the post office.
Messianism is also a foreign concept
now: have you ever known an artist to
say things like “the spark that will
transform the world, it will from
Poland come”? A Promethean myth
might be more fitting but how can it be
reconciled with a denunciation of one’s
questionable behaviour? The meanness
in art? The shameful practices?
Getting back to messianism – can the
concept of salvation be applied to art
today? Maybe it’s present in the shape of
a desire to achieve redemption/salvation
through knowledge, as liberation from
the mainstream complex of denial
and repression. The kind of art my
interlocutors practice wanted to relieve
social pain by means of confession.
But confession is, in a way, impossible
– it assumes identification with guilt
and the guilty. And it also brings pain
because knowledge involves seeing
“the real” – the unobscured essence
of being, the truth about existence, its
ramifications
and
its
cost.
Paradoxically, the fact that we have a
judiciary shows that we are unable to
find the culprit. The court system
demonstrates that guilt “does not
exist.” No one ever pleads guilty – guilt
has to be determined, apportioned at
random. I’m not saying that art should
be a prosecutor, simply that art has
described social mechanisms that
conceal “the real.” But unlike the
impartial observer that science
strives to be, art tries to find a “culprit.”
That culprit is not any one person or
group, naturally, but the mechanisms
that society falls prey to. The culprit is
the unwitting acquiescence in
the working of those mechanisms.
Art exposes the arbitrariness of
the mechanisms that sway us by
incorporating them into the structure
of artefacts. That way it often becomes an accessory, it is complicit – it
denounces itself. It makes itself part
of social transformation. It can be
the cause of the mechanism under
investigation when it is part of the
apparatus of social repression, the
mechanism of exclusion. A good
example here is the work of Spanish
artist Santiago Sierra that has been
used in racist campaigns against
those who are different, those who
have darker skin, or as a tool for the
exploitation of the poor. The difference
is that art acts openly: Repetition7
denounces itself at ever stage of its
activities. That obviously does not
diminish the extent of its guilt,
especially as art never denies its guilt.
What’s more, it admits to being in cahoots
with cultural violence. It is the power
wielded by the untouchables.
Operating in the realm of culture,
Sierra shows how that culture justifies
violence, how culture lends stature
and value to meanness such as his.
SC: Your film Repetition has
been interpreted as a touchstone of
civil
obedience
according
to
national standards…
.
AZ: In Repetition I was primarily
thinking about the universally valid
image of obedience without taking
national peculiarities into account.
I thought that conformity was what
kept groups together all over the
world. Even if it was the conformity of
a thug with respect to his gang.
Infringing the rules laid down by a
social majority can be a mark of
allegiance to a smaller group.
SC: Does the experience of so-called
critical art tell us something important
about Poland?
.
AZ: Yes, it tells us that a critical
and self-aware Poland is possible.
That one can attain the degree of
cynicism that enables seeing and
knowing. Critical art was about constant
awareness, obstinate self-scrutiny.
It inspired self-scrutiny in art; you
don’t get much of that anymore, but
that’s because art doesn’t keep its
powers forever, it acquires and loses
them depending on factors like pressure
of the marketplace. When the market
promotes painting, for instance, it
discourages art from producing ideas:
the “ideological harmfulness” of
painting is practically nil. Pressure
from the art industry can subjugate
artists in their capacity as producers
of culture.
SC: What makes artists in this
country [Poland] tick, apart from the
international rules of the game laid down
by the art market? Whatever happened
to the revolutionary element, the historic
dissident, all the plotting?
.
AZ: Poland is not a site of revolution,
but rather a producer of stagnation.
Consider the right wing’s victory in the
2005 elections – they realised their
main campaign promise: to discipline
society, to inculcate patriotism and
religious sentiment, to enforce mutual
control. It’s being done in small steps:
a patriotic agenda in the school
curriculum, the call for a total ban on
abortion, etc. The threat is then watered
down, transformed into medium, a
“things won’t be so bad” attitude.
What’s more this administration is
“training” society to accept minor
concessions. People get tired of being
alert all the time, they don’t want to
have to protest all the time. And then
the authorities take it one small step
further. Critical art-with its constant
01
readiness to participate in commenting on reality - was a phenomenon in
this country. In was like a flash of
enlightenment. Of course it had its
roots in what has been done for years
by artists and organizations like:
Przemysław Kwiek, Zofia Kulik,
`
Grzegorz Kowalski, Elzbieta
and Emil
`
`
Cieslar, Oskar Hansen, Łodzka
`
Kultura Zrzuty, Wyspa in Gdansk, etc.
It was a way of thinking, of mustering
resistance
through
knowledge.
They began in hard times; after 1989
things opened up, and such thinking
ceased to be sidelined, came to the
fore, and gained pre-eminence.
Now it’s losing that pre-eminence.
Artists have discerned hesitation in
the gaze of the other: the reviewer.
And in the face of hesitation the
narcissist bolts. But in art it’s especially
important for the narcissist inside
every artist constantly to be reflected
in the approving gaze of the other.
That’s also a tool to control the
contents of art.
SC: In a number of your films (Lisa,
Itzik, and even 80064) you employ the
traditional documentary device of
talking heads. Do you feel the need to
bear witness, to play the documentary
filmmaker? Those situations are
not staged like the quasi-scientific
experiments, your audience has come
to expect, you just let your heroes tell
the truth (or what they think
is the truth).
.
AZ: What we consider to be a dialogue,
in a conversation for instance is actually
two monologues. People don’t listen
to one another, they just define the
social image of themselves by proving
that they take part in the interaction
and incidentally shape their self-image
for their own benefit. That’s what
often happens with art: artists produce
images that everybody, artists included,
believes can only be interpreted in
one way. Meaning, the work has only
one canonical interpretation – that
proposed by the artist, naturally.
Other interpretations are expunged
or compromised. And that makes it a
monologue rather than an invitation to
dialogue. The canonical interpretation
is a manifestation of symbolic power
and a perpetuation of violence through
art. That’s why I sometimes give my
heroes the possibility to speak outside
the scope of symbolic power and
beyond the reach of my censorship.
Their testimony becomes more
important than my assumptions and
interpretations. By letting them speak
I also renounce the power over canonical
readings. I already lack that power
when I record what heroes of my
films say.
SC: Were you transformed in any way
by the knowledge your encounter
with the blind alleys of art, with the
unpredictable outcomes of your
explorations? By listening to the artists,
or eye witnesses as you call them?
.
AZ: The alleys of art are by no means
blind – they are the twisted paths of
the body politic investigated by people
with uncommon cognitive faculties.
They’re uncommon because they’re
like the cognitive apparatus of the
palm-reader - visions are knowledge,
dreams, hints, intuition a path of
knowing. Does hardcore behavourism
seriously address the question asked
by Jacek Kaczmarski 8 “ Why are people’s
faces all so cold? Why do they dig dark
burrows in the light?” Art treats such
questions seriously. What’s more, it can
answer them because it take a holistic
approach- things excluded from other
discourses, like feelings, errors, fear,
contradiction, are all used as tools
here alongside rationality and analysis.
If you’re clever and stupid as the same
time you have more than someone
who merely knows or doesn’t know.
And in art you can be stupid – because
your “knowing self” uses you as a
transmitter, a medium, it resides
within you. I’m not speaking out in
favour of stupidity, I just want to say
that art potentially contains more
kinds of freedom because it has not
repudiated stupidity, error, fear,
contradiction, absurdity, emotionality,
etc. That gives you more room to
make associations, and weakens the
domination of the rigid cognitive
procedures that orthodox rationality
inevitably produces.
SC: It also leads towards regions that
are dark, bizarre and bordering on
obsession. When putting on the
Parteitag exhibition9 you said you
wanted people to “go over to the dark
side” if only for a while, to place
themselves in the role of oppressors
and executioners.
.
AZ: Art is this dark region in the body
politic – the artistic is and has to be
nameless, obscure, both revered and
despised. Not because of any
supernatural forces but because it’s in
the public interest to maintain such a
zone in the body politic like in Roadside
Picnic by the Strugacki brothers, the
book Tarkovsky’s Stalker was based
on, where the laws of physics do not
apply, everyday objects are terrifying,
and nothing is safe. It’s a cubby–hole
for madness, error, hysteria, oddity,
etc. And the rift in art – the schism
that has occurred - has to do with a
betrayal by those who look after that
zone: the artists. They have pronounced
images to be a language and are looking
to give it a place in the rational and
the irrational, yet they no longer want
to be high priests tending the holy
flame. The rift is a fact and the only
thing still keeping art together is the
economic
hegemony
of
the
marketplace. The market is covering
up this rift and doesn’t let artists quit
the priesthood because it is profitable
to keep up the social fantasy of artistas-priest. That is the reason behind
the fetishisation of artworks and
their
soaring
prices.
SC: What else have the artists
taught you?
.
AZ: They convinced me of the power
of images and imagination. Žižek says
that the next revolution will take
place in virtual reality. It will be won
by whoever manages to win over the
people’s imagination.
SC: Is art able to join that revolution?
.
AZ: Well, is does know how to organise the
imagination. That might be the answer the
question on what the use of art is nowadays.
Czesław Miłosz once asked: “What is the use
of poetry if it cannot save nations or people?”
By the same token what is the use of art if it
cannot save nations or people? If we can’t put
it to real use in the real world – then what is it
good for?
09
10
Events
Tour
Sat 14 Nov /14:00 / FREE, Booking required
Join curators James Hutchinson and Lesley Young from The Salford Restoration
Office for an introductory tour of the exhibition.
This tour will be BSL interpreted by Siobhan Rocks.
.
In Conversation / Artur Zmijewski & Sebastian Cichocki
Wed 18 Nov / 19:30 / A Foundation, Liverpool / FREE, Booking required
.
Artur
Zmijewski and curator and sociologist Sebastian Cichocki will discuss
.
Zmijewski’s previous work and current projects. Since 2008, Sebastian Cichocki
has been the chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. In 2007
he was curator of the Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
A complimentary coach will pick up outside Cornerhouse at 18:00 for those
wishing to travel from Manchester to this event, and will return for 22:30.
Biographies
.
Artur Zmijewski was born in Warsaw in 1966. From 1990-95 he was a student in
the Faculty of Sculpture at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, and in 1999 studied
at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. He has had solo shows at MOMA,
New York; Kunsthalle Basel; BAK, Utrecht; and the Polish Pavilion at the 51st
Venice Biennale. His work has been included in major international exhibitions
such as the 11th Istanbul Biennial; Documenta 12, Kassel; The 2002 Liverpool
Biennial; and Manifesta 4, Frankfurt-am-Main. British audiences will have seen
his work in exhibitions at the ICA, London; Modern Art Oxford; and Collective
Gallery, Edinburgh, this is his first major solo exhibition in the UK.
Run by James Hutchinson and Lesley Young, The Salford Restoration Office is a
curatorial practice that develops projects with cultural institutions in Manchester.
They worked with Dan Shipsides to make Radical Architecture for Castlefield Gallery;
with Katya Sander and the Research Institute of Cosmopolitan Cultures, University
of Manchester; Centrifuge with Manchester Metropolitan University; and initiated
Reading Capital, a reading group dedicated to reading Karl Marx’s Capital.
In 2009 they curated Jeremy Deller’s Procession: An Exhibition also at Cornerhouse.
It is run by James Hutchinson and Lesley Young.
Screening and Discussion / Democracies
Fri 27 Nov / 14:00 – 18:00 / FREE, Booking required
.
A chance to see a full screening of Zmijewski’s recent work Democracies, and
join a discussion with an invited panel including artist Imogen Stidworthy;
Jackie Stacey, an academic specialising in screen studies, feminist studies
and globalisation and curator, artist and writer, Paul O’Neill.
Discussion / In Production
Wed 2 Dec / 19:00 – 21:00 / FREE, Booking required
Liz Burns from Fire Station Artists’ Studios
will reflect on her experience of making
.
the new work Two Monuments with Zmijewski in Dublin, and Mark Waugh from
A Foundation, will discuss the new commission underway in Liverpool.
Tour
Tue 8 Dec / 18:00 / FREE, Booking required
Join artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung for an interactive tour of the exhibition.
Screening / Selected Early Works
Wed 6 Jan / 18:30 / Running time: 1hr 18mins / FREE, booking required
.
An opportunity to see some of Zmijewski's earlier works including Temperance and
Toil (1995), which he made in his final year at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts;
Karolina (2002), a portrait of a young girl with advanced osteoporosis and The
Singing Lesson II (2003), in which a choir of deaf children perform works
by Johann Sebastian Bach. Includes a 15 minute introduction.
Tour
Thu 7 Jan / 18:00 / FREE, Booking required
Independent curator Bryony Bond will give and introductory tour of the exhibition.
Between 2003 and 2007 she was Alchemy Curator at The Manchester Museum and in
2007 she curated Goshka Macuga’s exhibition Sleep of Urlo at A Foundation, Liverpool.
This expanded exhibition guide has been made possible by the Consulate General
of the Republic of Poland in Manchester.
Thanks
Cornerhouse and The Salford Restoration Office would like to thank: Foksal
Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, especially Aleksandra Sciegienna; Remco de Blaaij,
Christiane Berndes, Perry van Duijnhoven and Charles Esche at Van Abbemuseum,
Eindhoven; Mr Piotr Nowotniak, Consul General at the Consulate General of the
Republic of Poland in Manchester; Liz Burns and Clodagh Kenny, Fire Station
Artists’ Studios, Dublin; Sebastian Cichocki and Joanna Mytkowska, Museum of
Modern Art, Warsaw; Mike Carney and Mark Waugh at A Foundation, Liverpool;
Bobby Newall from bobby&sophie design limited, and Bryony Bond.
The curators would like to express their sincere thanks to all at Cornerhouse,
especially Rosie Farrell, Tomas Harold, Emma Leather, Dave Moutrey, Sarah Perks,
Dave Petty and Rachael Salt in the offices; Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Duncan Hay,
Amelia Hodgson, Joel Nicholson, Lucy Ridges, Sarah Shelley, Cherry Tenneson,
Marshall Trower and Hannah Wiles on the installation team, and Tom Antel,
Tim Denton, John Egan and Mark Haig who provided specialist technical
knowledge and skill.
.
Artur Zmijewski’s exhibition, commission and related events are a partnership
between Cornerhouse, A Foundation and The Salford Restoration Office.
This exhibition will tour to Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art,
Sunderland 30 July – 9 October 2010, and to Tramway, Glasgow 29
October - 19 December 2010.
.
A major new commission by Artur Zmijewski will launch in June
2010 at A Foundation, Liverpool.