Cocain 5

No. 5

CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE IN THE MINIATURES SKANSEN IN POBIEDZISKA

quarterly • March 2014 • www.cocain.pl • edition 500 copies • ISSN 2299-6893

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Ewelina Jarosz MINIATURE ART .......................................................................................................................3 Resident Ewelina Jarosz CONVERSATION – SCALE 1:20 .............................................................................................4 Comments Roman Kubicki SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL ............................................................................................................14 Izabela Kowalczyk POLISH TOY ART ...................................................................................................................20 Agnieszka Maria Wasieczko PEOPLE – TOYS ......................................................................................................................26 Paweł Sosnowski THE GENRE SCENES .............................................................................................................34 Filip Lipiński COLLECTING NEW YORK ....................................................................................................38 Territories of art Richard Shiff BLUR AND FUZZ ....................................................................................................................42 Marta Smolińska KUNSTHAL 44 MØEN ..........................................................................................................44 Magda Wróblewska UNIVERSE IN MINIATURE ...................................................................................................48 Interviews Daria Kołacka BBLACKBOXX – PRACTICAL THEORY & COMPANY .....................................................52 Interpretations Leszek Brogowski MEMORY AND TIME OF HISTORY ANNE AND PATRICK POIRIER ............................56 Agnieszka Gryska THE GREAT MINIATURISATION .........................................................................................64 Andrew Mazursky IS ART A GAME? .....................................................................................................................68 Art Archive Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski THE MODEL OF A HOUSE – CAPTURING THE IDEA ...................................................74 Krystyna Piotrowska BOÎTE-EN-VALISE: THE SHORT STORY OF THE ‘POLISH EPISODE’ ........................78

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MINIATURE ART Ewelina Jarosz This issue of CoCAin magazine focuses on miniature art. This topic is particularly interesting in a range of aspects, starting with the inner tensions between artistic and institutional contexts. Marcel Duchamp managed to capture their idiosyncrasies when he produced his work Box in a suitcase (Boîte-en-valise) and, although his intention was to always keep this miniature catalogue of his collection by his side, it eventually ended up in a museum – as Benjamin Buchloh points out. In this issue, there are several interviews referring to this seminal work; examining both the advantages and challenges which come with a small scale. As we find out, the mini-scale exhibitions also have a potential to implement internationally acclaimed programs which are just as impressive as the regular-size arrangements.

So, the new issue of CoCAin boldly stands up to the challenge of Duchampian heritage and asks some provocative questions about miniature art.

We try to show this subject in a historical and modern context, without shunning from potentially subversive meanings and interpretations. We also

include toys as an example of miniature art in its own right. We present some unusual media, like the New York metro pass cards. The dramatic change of scale occurring due to the ubiquitous electronic displays and devices which have made an important mark on visual art and culture also comes under the microscope. Let’s not forget about the prolific art of historical props and simulations, like models and architectural mock-ups.

This issue is not about the semantic potential of a miniature work! Instead we are determined to bring back the famous motto that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe adapted from the minimalists that “less is more”. In principle – the minimalist movement wasn’t at all the response to the huge scale of works produced by their predecessors – the abstract expressionists – but to their formal concept as such. With this issue, we would like to turn our conceptualized thought toward miniatures, as doing so could be art in itself.

Have an inspiring read!

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CONVERSATION – SCALE 1:201 An interview with Joanna Tekla Woźniak, director of the Contemporary Art Centre in the Old Market Square in Poznań at the Miniatures Skansen in Pobiedziska.

Ewelina Jarosz: In May 2010 in the Old Market Square in Poznań in the grounds of the Miniatures Skansen in Pobiedziska, the Contemporary Art Centre was erected. Would you tell us how it all started? 1

Ewelina Jarosz

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: It was Wojciech Hoffmann who was the original director and founder of this enterprise. It was his idea to set up a miniature art gallery as part of the Skansen’s display. In 2010, he was awarded a grant from the National Cultural Centre “Młoda Polska” (Young Poland). The money he received allowed him to design and execute the construction, to produce advertising posters and invitations, and the rest was spent toward the organization of the first exhibition preview.

The original concept was developed under the auspices of the Cultural Centre in Pobiedziska – the formal owner of the Skansen. They had to grant their permission for the whole thing to go through and the foundations to be laid. The management of the Centre was extremely helpful. We even received some financial help toward the first couple of exhibitions from them. They’ve also supported our marketing campaigns. When I say “we” I mean Wojciech Hoffmann and myself, since we were collaborating on that project.

Ewelina Jarosz: So what part of this project were you responsible for?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: Originally, I was the socalled Program Director, and I was involved in a range of things: like organizing exhibitions and artist residencies but, at the beginning, it was really getting everything started; getting proper exposure and promoting the initiative through various media.

The grant contract we received assumed we would last for about one year, but I think Wojciech always wanted this thing to go on for much longer than just one season. Later in 2012, he made me MD while he acts as an Honorary MD. If I were to describe with just one sentence what brought me to this place and why I got involved in it, it would simply be: because I found the whole idea enchanting… To create a miniature Art Centre was to some degree a revolutionary and courageous act, maybe even a little cheeky. Here is someone who single-handedly creates an institution. He chooses a place, erects the building, calls himself a director and hand-picks people he wants to co-work with.

It’s all one big DIY project and this kind of process is always slightly subversive, even rebellious. In my mind, it was also a poetic gesture, surreal and with a tinge of black humour.

The scale of the mockups in The Miniature Skansen in Pobiedziska

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Wojciech Hoffmann and Joanna Tekla Woźniak preparing the building for the next season exhibition, May 2012. Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak’s archive

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Opening of the exhibition ‘Everything pretends to be something else’. From the left: Aurelia Nowak, Wojciech Hoffmann, Joanna Tekla Woźniak, Barbara Matuszewska-Biniszkiewicz, Robert Kuta, Maciej Stachowiak. May 2012. Photo: M. Ciesielski

Admittedly, it was also out of pure desperation and frustration caused by the inertia in the local art circles or rather the absence of the above. I was also led by a strong need to accomplish something that would be marked by my own individuality from the start to the end.

Ewelina Jarosz: It’s a long and complicated name, quite confusing, too...

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: Yes. The Contemporary Art Centre in the Old Market Square in Poznań at the Miniatures Skansen in Pobiedziska initially suggests that this institution is located in Poznań, somewhere in the Old Market Square. It’s the second part of the title that shows it’s really trickier than that. Misunderstandings happen from time to time as a few people have got confused and misinterpreted our intentions.

This long and confusing name serves a certain purpose in my opinion. It instigates curiosity. Still, we do not intend to mislead anyone. The name, in fact, says it all. It gives full information as to what the location really is. It is a sort of puzzle and you need to read carefully to get it... this and a little sense of humour perhaps.

Ewelina Jarosz: How does this unusual location affect the Centre?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: It’s been over three years since the Centre was first opened. It stays open seasonally; from late spring to early autumn. There is a winter break due to the weather conditions.

That’s when we take it apart. We put it back together around May and have an opening ceremony that we prepare together with the Cultural Centre in Pobiedziska. That’s the way it’s been so far, anyway.

The location has a direct influence on who is visiting us. It’s not just art lovers but also random visitors, tourists visiting the Skansen and school trips. It personally makes me very happy. There are but a few art centres as popular and as frequently visited as ours.

Ewelina Jarosz: When it was first opened, what was the reception like from the Poznań art circles?

I think there was a lot of curiosity and possibly appreciation, although there wasn’t a huge amount of congratulatory letters coming from them, as far I can remember, still, no surprise there! That’s the way things are with them. We’ve received, however, a great deal of appreciation from other cities, even from abroad, congratulating us on the great idea. We’ve got some really wonderful feedback.

During the grand opening in May 2010, the guests included representatives of several Poznań galleries, people involved with Poznań Art University, critics and a string of artists that we are friends with.

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View of the CAC building, integrated into the model of the Old Market Square in Poznań in the Miniature Skansen in Pobiedziska. Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak’s archive

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Wojciech Hoffmann, founder of the CAC. Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak

This group of, and I think it’s OK to call them, “art professionals” made up a peculiar social mix upon meeting regular folks from the local community of Pobiedziska, the local folk-dance group and the brass band, not forgetting the random tourists. In the end, they were all having fun dancing together to the music played by the local band. Let’s be honest, that’s not something you can often see in Poznań.

Ewelina Jarosz: It all makes me want to go and join you at the next available opportunity. So, how do we get there?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: You are very welcome.

There will definitely be more than one opportunity coming up. You can get to the Miniatures Skansen in Pobiedziska by taking National Road 5, in the direction of Gniezno. It takes up to 40 minutes by car when you drive from Poznań and only 20 minutes if you decide to go by train, then you need to disembark at Pobiedziska Letnisko station, from there it’s only a short (5-10 minutes) walk to the Skansen. If you really want to see a particular work or a particular exhibition it won’t be difficult.

I guarantee that. And the previews can be a lot of fun, too.

Ewelina Jarosz: So all you need is the will to participate…

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Joanna Tekla Woźniak: Yes. Obviously, first you have to learn about us and consider us worth visiting but that’s the same everywhere else, it also applies to the regular galleries in the city centres.

Our location is attractive for tourists who come throughout the summer, organized coach tours as well as independent people that pop in every day while hiking the so-called Piast Route (the trail of the first Polish rulers – translator’s note); we get school children, too. Many people come to see us with the intention of seeing other miniatures, like the opera house, churches or the International Poznań Fair mockup, etc. The unexpected encounter with our miniature Contemporary Art Centre, not mentioning the difficult and demanding abstract or conceptual art presented inside, can be quite a surprise.

Ewelina Jarosz: Architecturally, the building of the CAC (in Polish: CSW) is impressively contemporary.

Whose idea was it? Are there any similar initiatives that provided an inspiration for the final form?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: The designers come from the Poznań studio Projekt 11:11. It’s a six-storey “high-rise” made of transparent and black Plexiglas.

The façade is see-through, so the view of the works of art remains unobstructed.

There is a practical restriction of 30 cm in height for every work; all of them are displayed over five

out of the six floors. The whole building is 2.5 metres high and stands next to the Old City Hall scaled 1:20 and among the other houses of the Old Market Square mockup. It’s the first and the world’s only Contemporary Art Centre 1:20 scale and it naturally attracts interest and generates curiosity, putting Pobiedziska on the map, together with other cities like Warsaw, Wrocław, Toruń, New York, London or Paris boasting of their own contemporary art centres.

Obviously, the visitors can’t step inside; one has to circle the building to be able to see the works of art looking through the transparent Plexiglas. It is a different type of experiencing art. We were able to arrange some outdoor activities, too. For example, Michael Schmacke conducted a performance in the summer of 2010. The cost of arranging exhibitions in such a miniature ambience is another plus point.

This doesn’t mean you have to lose any of the impact you would get in a standard institution.

Ewelina Jarosz: But by the same token there is a great deal of difference…

Ewelina Jarosz: Alluding to the recent situation and the uncertain doom of the Arsenał Gallery in Poznań (aka BWA) which has been acting as a substitute for the Contemporary Art Centre in this city, would you say that organizing a miniature version of this institution was a way of escaping the whole red tape humdrum, political and financial complications you would normally have to plough through in order to set up a “real” CAC? Were there any other or similar problems that you’ve encountered?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: The model in itself is very interesting and aesthetically pleasing. When viewed from a distance it is rather intriguing. It definitely stands out from the rest of the miniatures which make up the Old Market Square complex. It happens to be positioned near the entrance so you simply can’t miss it. Wojciech has come up with the idea to create a building and art-object in one go, the inspiration came from some of the best examples in the same field, like the Jewish Museum in Berlin or Kunsthaus in Graz. I say the miniature scale has its advantages. The cost of producing such a model is relatively low, yet it is executed in a way that allows regular exhibitions to be run just like it’s the case with regular-size galleries.

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: When opening our miniature CAC, we had no choice but to take part in the ongoing debate on the current situation of cultural institutions in this city, including the lack of professional equipment or the generally poor management. Around that time, and as a result of my delicate persuasion, Gazeta Wyborcza published

Work of artist Nam Yar form the exhibition ‘Everything pretends to be something else’, May 2012. Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak

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I must admit there were a lot of emotions involved, we had tensions and that was quite surprising.

In such a tiny place all the problems specific to a cultural establishment get a microscope-like exposure. I had to re-evaluate things like power, control and pecking order…

I don’t currently live in Poznań, but I do keep up with the events regarding Arsenał and feel deeply saddened by what is happening there. Our centre has been going strong for 3 consecutive years now and in the wake of the Arsenał’s problems, one may say “it could be much worse”.

Ewelina Jarosz: What is the wider purpose of having a miniature art centre? It can be taken as a joke but, at the same time, you could take this joke seriously.

If you take it seriously you need to ask the following question: Is there a potential for a serious art critique in this sort of institution?

Artists: Konrad Smoleński and Paul Kowzan, the exhibition ‘Scale’, May 2010.

Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak’s archive

an interview with Wojciech Hoffmann titled “Size doesn’t matter”, where he takes a stand in the discussion on the lack of a real art centre in Poznań and the whole region, really.

And let me say one more thing in answer to your question. It’s unfair to say that our Art Centre is not quite real, that it is just a hassle-free plaything.

From the beginning, our intentions were to do it for real, slightly tongue-in-cheek perhaps, but it wasn’t at all a joke. Quite the opposite, it was often hard work, you know.

Our mission was to run a serious artistic program, arranging exhibitions, organizing previews, residencies, outdoor sessions, artist’s talks, creating a permanent collection and, at the same time, creating a people-friendly place tailored for meetings, education or simply to chill out. We had to go through the same motions and tackle the same problems as any “regular-size” institution – be it interpersonal issues, transport, marketing, organisational or technical difficulties. And, even though financing or transporting objects that are no bigger than 30 cm is normally less complicated than with works that come to 3 metres high, you still need to be willing to compromise and to communicate with other people, while considering the artist’s and the curator’s points of view. It’s always about good teamwork at the end of the day.

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Joanna Tekla Woźniak: In my opinion, yes, there is.

I can’t imagine working and investing my time and efforts into something that lacks this priority.

I wouldn’t see any point. So, at first, when you come into contact with the name: Contemporary Art Centre at the Old Market Square in Poznań – you promptly take it at face value and only if you carefully read it to the very end will you realize what it really is and how it works. A prestigious, full-monty art centre functioning as part of a Skansen display in a – let’s say it bluntly – rather provincial town.

Ewelina Jarosz: Is the Centre subsidized in any form, or do you have to rely exclusively on private funds?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: At the moment, the only financial help we get are small donations from the owner of the Skansen, the Cultural Centre, to cover our most basic needs. In this way, we have money toward organizing the exhibitions, but there is nothing left to pay the wages. Still we are quite happy with what we get. Fortunately, Ms Barbara Matuszewska-Biniszkiewicz, who is the CC’s Director has always been very kind to us and to this project, even though we often present thorny or difficult pieces that may not necessarily appeal to the so-called general audience. To me personally, it was always a supplementary and non-profit activity.

Obviously, we would very much appreciate any additional source of financing, which is why I intend to apply for funding that would allow me to execute my own curatorial ideas here in Pobiedziska. It could be that I find a sponsor or possibly someone else will be heading the Centre… We shall see.

One thing is pretty clear, though. Wojciech and I need people to support us and to work with us.

We both have our own busy careers and lots of other professional engagements and therefore we can’t spend as much time here as is necessary for this place to thrive. We are open to new ideas for this place and will look into any offers of cooperation we may get.

Ewelina Jarosz: This particular scale incurs certain limitations and conditions onto the curators. Can you tell us what exhibitions you have accomplished so far? What differs them from the exhibitions in other art centres in Poland? And finally, given the context, does small always mean: limited?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: As I’ve mentioned before, the pieces that go on display are bound to have 30 cm or less. Occasionally, you come across an artist that regularly works with small-scale, like for example small-size installations, however, the majority of the works we’ve presented so far were small and custom-made specifically for our site. At the end of the day, the only limit is the scale. Funnily enough, this particular restriction was also a subject of the exhibition curated by Jakub Czyszczoń. It took place in 2010 and the artists invited to exhibit their works were: Konrad Smoleński, Paweł Kowzan and Piotr Łakomy.

The Centre consists of 5 floors suitable for exhibition purposes. Their content can be viewed due to the transparent glazing covering the construction. Each floor was taken by a different artist alternately. Their art was chiefly made of ready-made objects such as: a beach ball, a key ring, burnt toy cars. There was also a brick chained to the fence of the Centre which, by the way, very much resembles this simple, rectangular shape of the former. How about that for a hint?

to it and put in lots of effort to keep it in good shape. Is there a pending doom in the form of “institutionalization”? What I mean is, what’s going to happen to the miniature scale when the “real” Centre comes to life?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: This is an interesting and quite a relevant point considering that a real bonsai tree was involved in the first exhibition titled “Scale”, where Konrad Smoleński incorporated one into his installation. To obtain a perfect bonsai tree takes years of patient care, sometimes it also takes more than one generation of bonsai enthusiasts.

Only several species of long-living trees give good results, they are those with lignified shoots, like oaks, fir trees, junipers or pines. Trees with a short lifespan, as for example a poplar tree, don’t make great bonsai trees.

Ewelina Jarosz: Thank you very much for the interview.

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: Thank you, too.

Ewelina Jarosz: Are you at all interested in collaboration with other similar institutions? What are your plans for the future?

Joanna Tekla Woźniak: Yes, absolutely, we are happy to consider any propositions from people who want to get involved. Those who are interested need to simply get in touch with us. In the first year we had plans to do a winter tour during which we would visit various European cities. We’ve never actually got to do it, but the idea and will is still there. The size definitely allows transportation and various set-ups. Our Centre is not just 2.5 metres of a building, it’s also an idea. Perhaps it’s a good time to start functioning within a different environment under the same auspices.

Ewelina Jarosz: The Centre is bit like a bonsai tree. It is visually pleasing but you have to tend

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The work of Michael Ciesielski and Rafał Bujnowski on the upper floors of the CAC, exhibition ‘Everything pretends to be something else’. May 2012.

Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak’s archive

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SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL Roman Kubicki

Charles Gaines, ‘Newer Older’, 1998. 52th Venice Biennale Arsenale.

Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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Two infinities accompany human fate. One entangles human beings in great matters, the other – in small ones. Blaise Pascal warned humans against the vastness of the universe, which can crush and totally annihilate them at any time. If he had been a contemporary biologist, he would have known that the most dangerous threat to human life is posed by microbes which we cannot see or feel with our hands. What is great becomes greater, what is small – smaller. Millimetres add to make centimetres; centimetres make metres (I leave decimetres out because nobody seems to be using them any more); metres combine into kilometres which can be divided into regular kilometres and light kilometres (whose correct name is actually light years) that consist of 9.5 billion regular kilometres. Millimetres not only swell hazardously; they are also capable of dividing into equally dangerous smaller parts – for instance, into one thousand micrometres or one million nanometres. There is no need to name all units as they can easily be found on the Internet.

My alluding to them is designed to help me land at complicated nuances of human fate. The face of infinity awaits us at the bottom of the well of smallness as well as at the bottom of the well of greatness. Passing away, the awareness of which is a major drive behind human fate, presents a similar case. Humanity could have been born in the hope of infinity as it is an ambitious response of thought to the mortality of every life.

Art is a trusted ally of both these infinities.

Understandably, man-made art can only support them in a finite fashion. On the one hand, we observe a need for monumentality satisfied by humans with their imposing artistic creations.

Depending on the genre, artworks impress in space or in time; it is highly possible that they may enrapture both in space and in time. Although I cannot name the greatest sculpture (first and foremost, I have no idea how the greatness of a sculpture is to be measured – by its height, breadth or, perhaps, cubature) or the biggest painting, I have no doubt that such a sculpture, as well as such a painting, exists. It seems to me, however, that wrappings by the famous duo Christo (JeanneClaude and Christo Javacheff) must be the most spatial. I do not know which piece of music is the longest or which film takes the most time to watch, but there is, undoubtedly, such a composition and such a film. Greatness inspires our respect.

Monumental figures do not have to keep asking us to kneel down in front of them. We need humbleness to be human, and they provide us with it most generously.

No person wishing to try and take decisions regarding their own lives – now and then at least, is made exclusively of humbleness. There is also

Charles Gaines, ‘Newer Older’, 1998. 52th Venice Biennale Arsenale. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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Morrinho Project, 2007, 52th Venice Biennale, Giardini. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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Maaria Wirkkala, ‘Found a Mental Connection II’, 1998. 49th Venice Biennale, 2001. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

self-esteem and pride which has a tendency to develop into vainglory. I am afraid that, apart from greatness in front of which we could frankly and honestly kneel down, we also need the sort of otherness that would want to or – at least – sometimes have to kneel down in front of us. If small things are the reflection of great things in the mirror of humanity, then the reflection of things not so great are things not so small. We kneel in front of massive pyramids or sturdy oaks because they define the standards of mutual relations – for instance, because they refuse to travel and it is us that have to get on a plane if, obviously, we want to see them, touch them and admire them. The nature of our coexistence with small things is decidedly different. We do not have to be loyal to them, they have to be loyal to us. This might be why we keep testing their loyalty: are they standing by us or not?

Miniatures may accompany us on our many voyages and peregrinations. The portrait of a beloved person on a chain round the neck keeps giving us advice and helping us in a gale, in heat or in a snowstorm.

It might be that it is entirely up to us whether it leaves us before its death. The term ‘miniature’ has more than one meaning. In aesthetics, it tends to signify a small painting, usually a portrait, on vellum, ivory, metal or porcelain. If we are to believe textbooks, miniature portraits were in their prime in sixteenth-century Europe and remained popular throughout the next two centuries. Wealthy people, aristocrats, noblemen and affluent burghers

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frequently used them to show their own likenesses in faraway cities and lands. Many marriages would have never taken place if a man had not been able to scrutinize a deftly executed (though not necessarily faithful to the original) portrait of the woman ready to wed. The first miniaturists – according to textbooks – painted in watercolours; later on, miniatures on ivory or glaze grew in popularity.

The invention of photography in the nineteenth century marked the end of that form of painting.

However, even today there are many artists who create artistic miniatures with great skill. It is enough to google the word ‘miniature’ to find very contemporary painters whose works rest on easels made of matches. It would be worthwhile to know why they choose to paint on such small canvases.

I suppose, nonetheless, that when it comes to miniature art, there is still a lot to come. The final word in this matter will surely rest with bio artists, as soon as they manage to reach the abovementioned microbes.

The aesthetic meaning of the term ‘miniature’ is not the most popular nowadays. According to Google, the dominant concept of a miniature is the one defined as a small copy of a real object.

As Plato would put it, they are their incomparably less perfect shadows although – contrary to the philosopher’s intuition – not necessarily less durable.

Unlike the WTC Twin Towers, their miniatures are still perfectly fine. Boys drive small cars to the end of the world; if they are audacious enough, they are accompanied by girls with dolls who are dead shadows of real children. As they go, they pass scale models of cities which their fathers are still incapable of leaving, as well as miniatures of wellknown buildings and places where their mothers are fruitlessly trying to have at least a single cup of coffee. In the world of miniatures, there tends to be no order or hierarchy. The Leaning Tower of Pisa may lose the duel over the import of the history it represents; it may win it as well. It loses when its opponent is the Pyramid of Cheops; it wins when it is opposed by the Eiffel Tower.

A small world may be as alluring as a great one.

This might be because it is not there so it can be anything, it can be anywhere. This might be principally because we are sure that we will soon be able to tame it and make it one of those beings that will be faithful and obedient to us till our death. It is a paradox that life can recognise itself in a painfully long poem as well as in a frivolous ditty composed of very few words.

Maaria Wirkkala, ‘Found a Mental Connection II’, 1998. 49th Venice Biennale, 2001. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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POLISH TOY ART Izabela Kowalczyk

Toy Art – artistic production inspired by children’s toys, mostly miniature figures, materials for modelmaking and building blocks assembled to create forms completely divorced from the untroubled world of childhood. Scenes of violence, wartime atrocity and horror are the most frequent appearances in these works. The result is a clash between serious, adult or dangerous content and the form of a plaything which triggers associations with carefreeness, security and creativity. Questions about the boundaries of our monstrosity or preoccupation with evil and violence arise. Most of all, however, this is about all sorts of fascination fuelled by culture and, consequently, toy-inspired artworks often contain references to historical representations, horror films (which frequently feature murderous toys like, for instance, the famous series about a doll named Chucky), films about the living dead (both such films and related artworks may be interpreted in the context of cultural cannibalism), documentary photographs as well as pop culture icons, including Barbie dolls and Lego bricks. The British duo named The Little Artists (John Cake and Darren Neave) create Lego versions of well-known contemporary works of art, a practice which may be described as meta-toy art.

The term ‘toy art’ was coined by Ernst van Alphen, a Dutch arts researcher, who discussed artworks by Zbigniew Libera, David Levinthal (in whose work an

Paweł Łubowski, ‘Plastic Soldiers’, plastic toy soldiers bought in a toy store, and specially made in their likeness figurines painted with a non-toxic paint, 1984.

Photo: courtesy of the artist

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Zbigniew Libera, ‘Lego. Concentration Camp’, 1996, (detail). Photo: courtesy of the artist

erotic aspect can also be observed), Ram Katzir and Roee Rosen in an article on art and the Holocaust1.

Zbigniew Libera’s Lego. Concentration Camp (1996) is one of the most famous, even canonic, works of this kind. In this widely known piece, a concentration camp made of Lego bricks, the artist highlights the problem of the Holocaust being commodified and treated as a “source of entertainment”. According to van Alphen, both Lego and the other works he analyses flout the cultural taboo of the Holocaust.

They not only refuse to address the matter in solemn tones but also violate the traditional model of teaching about it, which promoted indifference and boredom. Their provocative nature results from the lack of customary identification with victims which, although necessary to realise the horror of the Holocaust, produced no pedagogical effect on learners, while their sense of fundamental innocence was reinforced. Being a victim entails the impossibility of controlling the future, while identifying with murderers – Libera’s work implies that viewers could construct their own concentration camps – makes them realise how little it takes to become an accomplice2. Lego is an accusation against modern culture with its penchant for order, harmony and rationalisation.

1 Ernst van Alphen, ‘Zabawa w Holocaust’, trans. by K. Bojarska, [in:] Literatura na świecie, no. 1-2/2004, pp. 217-243.

2 Ibid., pp. 234-235.

It is also typical of Lego bricks that elements which do not belong to the system cannot be incorporated into it; they not only don’t fit but are also useless, unnecessary and have to be eliminated as well.

Libera’s piece lays bare the mechanisms that laid the foundation for the Holocaust. Van Alphen wrote: “In contemporary art, toys have been considered to be weird and dull but they turn out to be provocative or even scandalous when they are used to represent the Holocaust”3. However, the Toy Art movement embraces not only artworks related to the Holocaust, or related not only to the Holocaust, raising questions about the reasons behind the drive to look at war scenes or images of dead bodies. This can be observed in the work of the Chapman Brothers, Dinos and Jake, whose famous piece Hell (2000) features display cases filled with thousands of tiny figures of Nazis in scenes presenting the terrifying eponymous hell where images of war-time atrocities (the reference to Goya’s cycle is very much justified here as the artists have openly alluded to prints of the Spanish creator on several occasions) mingle with depictions of cannibalism, which are almost directly taken from films about the living dead and icons of contemporary consumerism (some of the scenes take place by McDonald’s restaurants, the mascot Ibid., p. 223.

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clowns are also there to be crucified in one of the arrangements). Criticism of consumerism can also be found in other Toy Art works, for instance, in miniature pieces by Dongwook Lee, a Korean artist showing human figures in a variety of oppressive situations, oscillating between references to fairy tales and fantasy and allusions to horror and dread.

Drawing on cultural cannibalism, artworks by Czech artists, including Radovan Čerevka and Jiří Černický, could be mentioned here as well. It is also worth naming some Polish creators not directly associated with Toy Art, though they can be regarded as its representatives or even precursors. These include Władysław Hasior, Paweł Łubowski and – more contemporarily – Jerzy Kosałka and Magdalena Popławska. Obviously, the best known Polish artist is Libera, not only because of the discussed Lego piece but also because of the dolls he created, for example Ken’s Aunt (1994). However, I wish to draw attention to less popular artworks here which seem to be of central importance for the movement.

Władysław Hasior frequently used toys in his works, mostly dolls, which were “mutilated” and maltreated in various ways. One of his best known works is Embroidery of Character (1974): a little

doll pinned down by the presser foot of a sewing machine. Hasior is best known as the author of assemblages; however, he also made films. In a film titled Bitwa ołowianych żołnierzyków [A Battle of Lead Soldiers] (1982), the battle takes place on a hot hob. Soldier figures change because of the heat, they fall over and melt, thus being annihilated.

The artist takes on the role of a demiurge here, giving life to toy soldiers, but they only revive to die4. This principle can be applied to any war and the way human material, sometimes referred to as cannon fodder, is used in them. Many artworks in this movement emphasize the fragility of life but they also demonstrate how easily death or killing turn into images in our culture. This is what Paweł Łubowski’s cycle Egzekucje [Executions] (1984) is about. Little figures are posed to imitate the ghastliest photographs our culture has produced, those depicting executions, for instance, Eddie Adams’ Vietcong Execution, Saigon (1968) in which a gun is pointed at the head of an absolutely terrified man, a moment before his death. Another scene shows a soldier aiming his rifle at a woman huddled Paweł Sosnowski in a private conversation at the exhibition Big Boys Games, Galeria Appendix2, Warsaw, 4.09–4.12.2008, curated by Paweł Sosnowski.

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Jerzy Kosałka, ‘Reconstruction’, from the ‘The Germans have already come’ cycle, 2008. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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in an attempt to protect her baby. Łubowski, as does Zbigniew Libera in his later works, including Positives (2004), addresses the issue of our visual memory as well as images of violence that are stored in it. These works arouse anxiety, posing questions about the mediasation of reality, including history.

Historical representations, as well as deliberations on alternative history (“what would have happened if…”), are also present in Jerzy Kosałka’s work. In Reconstruction from the The Germans have already come cycle (2008), little figures, a model of a German tank and other modelling materials serve the artist to demonstrate how consecutive owners of “official memory” changed, pulling down old monuments to set up new ones. A peculiar sort of historical fiction is presented here: Germans have returned to Wrocław (or Breslau as they call it) and are reintroducing their order of things. They destroy the monument of Bolesław Chrobry, a Polish king, and prepare to replace it with one to Wilhelm I, which was pulled down by Poles after the war. Kosałka points out that a programmed change of history always entails the replacement of symbols as they provide a foundation for national/communal identity.

This is related to the creation of official memory which serves as an ideological base for those in power and involves deleting unwanted facts. More often than not, historical facts are erased not only by means of clandestine and awkward activities but also pompous demolition of monuments. This process has its own rituals, exposed as spaces marked with symbols, inscriptions, monuments and buildings. By using toys, the work encourages viewers to think of alternative histories, thus constituting a specific historical game.

Another significant work by Kosałka is Chłopaki, mam go! [Got Him, Guys!] (2001), a miniature piece referring to the Iraq War. It is a small figure of an American soldier holding a rifle in one hand with Osama Bin Laden’s head impaled on it. There is a bloodstained knife in his other hand, and bloody traces can be seen in the sand by his feet. Kosałka demonstrates that the war is, in fact, nothing but fighting with myths, also bringing its cannibalistic dimension to the viewers’ attention. The head of the leader of Islamic fundamentalism sticks like a trophy on the rifle; the humanitarian significance of punishment is out of the question here. What happened to the rest of the body is unknown, and judging by the cruelty of the work, it could have been eaten. Or, perhaps, it never existed? After all, the media kept showing exclusively Bin Laden’s face which came to stand for evil and justification for the violence committed during the war in Iraq.

Christ Off Deadstar, ‘Kasia W. Mama Madzi’, 2012.

Photo: courtesy of the artist

The piece also reveals the functioning of war as a media image which is always constructed and inevitably ideological. By the way, Kosałka was ten years ahead of reality with his work. In 2011, Bin Laden was tracked down by American commandos in his hiding place and, even though he attempted to defend himself, he was killed by two shots to the head; photographs of his battered face were published by the media.

The gender question seems interesting in the context of the discussed artistic movement as it is mostly represented by men. This might result from the kind of activities little boys tend to engage in, like staging war scenes with miniature soldiers, making models of military vehicles and playing war games. One of the few women artists active in the Toy Art movement is Magdalena Popławska.

In her work Let’s Play, she arranged scenes in a Barbie house and photographed them. There are miniature pieces of silver furniture, a plastic spitroasted chicken, a tiny hairbrush, and silver and red shoes there. Nevertheless, what happens here is completely different from what we associate with children’s games. The narration constructed by consecutive photographs is full of violence and cruelty. A red-headed female is waiting, a chicken is on the table. He is probably late. She (another she, perhaps?) is tearing her hair out in anger (or despair). When he finally comes, a hot sex act (or, perhaps, a rape) takes place as they are standing by the table. Then someone gets murdered and the whole interior of the little house is covered in blood. There is a knife – possibly the murder weapon – and hair left on the table. A bloodied doll falls on the table top or rises up to make more stabs. Many things remain unsaid. The piece may be interpreted in a variety of ways – as a work about domestic violence occurring in secret – in a seemingly secure space; about children pretending to be grown-ups; about the alleged innocence of

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Jerzy Kosałka, ‘Reconstruction’, from the series ‘The Germans have already come’, 2008. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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childhood (a child’s imagination is, in fact, capable of coming up with such cruel and bloody stories); or about popular culture and its inclination for all sorts of horror stories.

All the discussed works can be seen as criticism of cultural cannibalism or necropolitics, related to cultural preying on death and suffering, on a traumatic history full of violence and mass deaths.

This cannibalism also uncovers the preoccupation of the media and their audiences with sensational stories revolving around death. In the context of the problems discussed in this text, it seems interesting to mention a work, whose author uses the pseudonym of Christ Off Deadstar at Deviant Art, which appeared on the Internet in November 2012. I mean Kasia W. Mama Madzi [Kasia W. Madzia’s Mum], a doll looking like the well-known infanticide from Sosnowiec, sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2013. There are three versions of the doll, wearing different costumes (imitating those Katarzyna W. was presented in by the media, including the black bikini she had on while sitting on a horse in one of the photographs), each packed in a pink box like the one Barbie dolls are sold in; one of the versions is accompanied by a smaller doll – baby Madzia. The series exposes the thirst for sensation that turned a woman who had killed her little daughter into a media star. The work uncovers the habit of trading in tragedies, human misfortune and death which has become a source of entertainment and fun.

Interestingly enough, it was this piece that was criticized and condemned, rather than the media hungry for sensation…5

At the website FaktySosnowiec.pl we read the following: “The photograph depicts toys – dolls that are similar to Katarzyna W. and ‘baby Madzia’ who died a sudden death, with an additional element called ‘a smooth blanket’. This is so outrageous and unfair to Sosnowiec and the people living here that many have become appalled. And rightly so. Since the tragedy, Sosnowiec has been perceived pejoratively. […] Below, you can see a picture which should have never been made or uploaded to the Internet.

The only reason why we are showing it is to demonstrate how low one can sink wishing to gain popular acclaim.” Krzysztof Derebecki, ‘Szok! Katarzyna W. i mała Madzia jako zabawki’ [Shock! Katarzyna W. and Baby Madzia as Toys], http://faktysosnowiec.pl/news.php?readmore=8314.

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Paweł Łubowski, from ‘The Executions’ cycle, 1984.

Photo: courtesy of the artist

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PEOPLE – TOYS Agnieszka Maria Wasieczko

In the Summertale (2008), which crowns the multipart film project In Art Dreams Come True, executed

by Katarzyna Kozyra since 2003, the main characters – Maestro, Gloria Viagra and the artist styled on Alice in Wonderland – meet in fabulous scenery, getting to know five female dwarfs, who are leading an idyllic life in a house with a garden. But who are the dwarfs, for centuries held for the merrymaking of their owners?

The Summertale – a contemporary, colourful fairy tale ends up with a bloody tragedy, in which all of them, besides Kozyra herself, become the victims of female dwarfs1. For the artist, it was also a moment of parting from her masters, extricating herself from their influence, and delivering her statement on the role of men in (her) world. The construction of the story, in which pastoral merges with horror and thriller, resembles a patchwork. Although the inscription at the end of the film suggests that there was no specific fairy tale to provide the basis for it, the scaffolding of the Summertale resembles the story of Snow White. The dwarfs become female dwarfs, and the princess appears as three characters: Maestro (Grzegorz Pitułej, Kozyra’s teacher of singing), Gloria Viagra (Berlin-based drag queen) and the artist in the guise of Alice in Wonderland. The arrival of that trinity of characters disturbs the tranquil and idyllic atmosphere of the female dwarfs’ world, so, regardless of the means employed, status quo needs to be restored.

1 See also: A. M. Wasieczko, ‘Każdy może tańczyć, śpiewać i grać’, [in:] Artluk, no. 1 (15) 2010, pp. 38-43.

Diego Velázquez, ‘Francisco Lezcano, El Niño de Vallecas’ (1643-45).

Courtesy of Museo Nacional del Prado

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Katarzyna Kozyra, ‘Summertale’, DVD projection within the project ‘In Art Dreams Come True’, 2008.

Photo: E. Białkowska. Courtesy of the artist and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

Who actually were dwarfs? The epoch of the Renaissance, and later the Baroque era, brought out not only the desire to have beautiful gardens, residences, numismatic or jewellery collections, but also – quite a special group of sought-after curiosities, known as “human menagerie”. The ensemble, in which next to dwarfs and jesters were animals and crippled or mentally ill people, was intended to testify to the splendour of the court, attracting and pulling everybody in just like a magnet. They were kept for amusement as people–toys, having the same status as animals, caged parrots, slaves from Africa, Moors, the disabled and the insane. No one doubted that the dwarf is an intermediate being between man and domestic animal – as Maurice Druon wrote in The Accursed Kings. The dwarf fashion reached its apogee in the Baroque era, which indulged in all bizarre, alien and unnatural affairs. The interest in dwarfs was initiated by the Italian courts of the Medici in Florence, the Gonzaga in Mantua, and the Este in Ferrara, and then, through Catherine de Medici, dwarfs arrived in Paris, where the new fashion blossomed quite quickly. It corresponded with the fascination for everything that is understood by the term barocco, so with any irregularities of forms and shapes, natural phenomena, and various types of anomalies.

Catherine de Medici, called the “dwarf-fetishist”, was really fixated on them. She dreamt of dwarfs giving birth to other dwarfs, and that in this way a new breed of small people would come into being.

She ordered a special moat to be built in the French court, where naked dwarfs bathed and indulged in fancy caresses in front of everybody. The ladies and chevaliers accompanying them were extremely excited by these scenes. Hardly anyone noticed that dwarfs think, feel and love in the same way as people of normal height. At the court of Catherine de Medici, in addition to the “moat of love”, dwarfs had special suites, teachers, medics, shoemakers, tailors and laundresses at their disposal. Dressed in beautiful outfits, furs and jewels, treated like living dolls, they were used for fun, but not necessarily a sophisticated type of fun. In the archives of the Medici, there is a record of merriment provided by a duel between a dwarf and a monkey, and clashes with turkeys are mentioned as well. In the seventeenth century court of the Turkish sultan, the “human menagerie” fed on scraps thrown by revellers from the master’s table, and the master himself zestfully distributed kicks and shoves among the dwarfs. Meanwhile, Tsar Ivan V, during the wedding of his daughter, arranged a dwarf wedding, drafting sixty small people from the whole territory of Russia, and 14 years later he organized an

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Katarzyna Kozyra, ‘Summertale’, DVD projection within the project ‘In Art Dreams Come True’, 2008.

Photo: E. Białkowska. Courtesy of the artist and Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

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impressive burial ceremony for his favourite dwarf.

There were twelve pairs of dwarfs accompanied by a specially selected priest of short posture, petite ladies of the court, ponies instead of horses, and little boys singing. However, not every dwarf agreed to be part of a living cabinet of curiosities.

Jan Krasowski, a dwarf of Catherine de Medici, never entered the “love moat”, he called himself “kasztelanic podlaski” [“chatelaine of Podlachia”] and earned an eminently high position in her court.

Endowed with great intellect, strength of character and unusual wits, he was fluent in French and his correspondence with de Medici was conducted in Italian. He was the one who was sent to Poland in order to convince the Polish gentry to elect Henry of Valois as king. His effigy is preserved in a tapestry, which today can be seen in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Catherine de Medici supports herself on the arm of a nicely shaped dwarf dressed in court robes and with a sword at his side.

The fashion for collecting dwarfs, highly soughtafter goods – lasted nearly 200 years. While in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the interest was aroused by dwarfs very strongly affected by fate: hunchbacked, deaf, dumb, with numerous defects, harmoniously built small people later came into fashion. The smaller they were the more expensive and more desirable, therefore as an unexampled phenomenon against this backdrop became the artificial induction of dwarfism. It was believed that it could be achieved by feeding the newborn baby a minimal amount of food. Infants were also tied with bandages to prevent them from physical development. Another method was making babies drink vodka and fermented drinks, and sometimes bathing in alcohol, causing the shrinkage of joints and muscles. However, the closing of children in special containers, which prevented them from growing, was exceptionally cruel. The little child was forced into a vase without a bottom and remained there for several years. The container was opened only at night to allow the child to sleep. After some years, the vase-shaped child was sold for a substantial sum. But the most popular method for making dwarfs of children was rubbing their spine with the ointment of moles, bats and dormice. In Russia, children that did not grow underwent the “bread treatment”: they were wrapped in dough and then slid on a shovel into a hot furnace, which could not produce the desired effect.

The Habsburgs for centuries remained devoted to the tradition of keeping court dwarfs. The Spanish court was as populated with them as the French court of Catherine de Medici was before. The court of Philip IV – perhaps the most peculiar in Europe, bureaucratic, bigoted, dissipated, and not without a tint of exoticism and fabulousness – abounded

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with dwarfs, jesters and people with disabilities, surrounding the royal family. Alongside the dwarfs of both sexes, in Spain they were distinguished as los enanos, there were also jesters (las bufones), juveniles (las simples), giants (los gigantes), Negroes and Moors (los Negros y Moros), palace children (los niños palaciegos), the insane (los locos) and acrobats (las truhanes). José Moreno Villa, a researcher of this subject matter, while analysing the court’s accounts detected as many as 123 dwarfs, and their presence in Spain was already witnessed in the 1580s. It became the binding custom that dwarfs were handed as gifts to each member of the royal family and sent to other courts as presents from the monarch, such as the two dwarfs of Charles V, Sebastian Guzman and Estanislao (Istanyslao), who were given to the Polish king, Sigismund II Augustus.

Dwarfs also had the status of gifts for the Infantes – Spanish royal children. And so, the successor to the throne, the daughter of Philip II, Isabella Clara Eugenia, received on her birthday the dwarf Bonami, imported from Flanders. A similar “gift” was Soplillo, who was presented to Philip IV by Isabella Clara Eugenia together with the Archduke Albrecht.

Lezacanillo came into the hands of the Infante Balthasar Charles, and depicted in the famous painting Las Meninas – Mari Bárbola and Nicolasito – Infanta Margaret Theresa. Dwarfs became a property of the mighty, and the institution called La Sociedad de Compraqueňos handled in Spain the search for small people and their sale. They also used to belong to the monastic convents. Besides those imported from regions of Spain, such as El Nino de Vallecas from Biscay, or Eugenia Martinez Vallejo from Barcelona, the famous La Monstrua, dwarfs were imported from other Habsburg territories, e.g. Reich, Flanders, Portugal and Milan, as well as from England and France.

According to the contemporary custom, these creatures acted as servants and were initially employed in the administration of the court or as manual labourers: shoemakers, tailors, cap-makers and weavers. Only later did they become the companions of monarchs and court entertainment. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at royal palaces in Escorial, Aranjuez, El Pardo and Seville, one could meet dwarfs and jesters in the king’s entourage, dwarf assistants participating in children’s games and female adult dwarfs serving as valets to the queen.

Just like jesters, they also assumed the role of “lookalikes” of various characters or celebrities. In theatrical performances they wore special outfits, travestying their progenitors. Since no one took them seriously, they could ridicule the stiff court etiquette without restraints. The historian Marcel Defourneaux has written like this about the role of

dwarfs in the Spanish court, where dwarfs were a separate element, not subordinated to ceremony: “Jesters and dwarfs live familiarly with the master and at this severe court, where everyone has a strictly designated function, they could be found everywhere, in halls, royal suites, reception halls and everywhere they play the role of farceur: they have to entertain with their physical monstrosity of dwarfism and hydrocephaly, which is even emphasized by their outfit, amuse by the contrast between human misery, which they incarnate, and the splendid names they were given, and cheer everybody up with constant chatter, mingled with jokes in more or less good taste, which sometimes can pierce the shell of seriousness covering the king and his family”2. The end of interest in dwarfs occurred in the times of Philip V of Bourbon at the beginning of the eighteenth century. During the reign of successive Spanish Bourbons, the “institution” of court dwarf slowly began to decay, which is evident at least by their absence in the iconography of this period.

2 M. Defourneaux, Życie codzienne w Hiszpanii w wieku złotym [Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age], Warszawa, 1970, p. 43. The source used: Jarosław Pietrzak, ‘Karły na hiszpańskim dworze w epoce nowożytnej’, from: www.histmag.org, access date: 27.07.2009.

In Spanish art, a unique place is occupied by a set of portraits showing the dwarfs with their royal owners, who are putting their hands on the heads of their subjects. This gesture is shown in a picture

by Cristóvão de Moura with the image of Joanna of Portugal, sister of Philip II, who affectionately pats a small dwarf – a woman with dark skin; The Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia and Magdalena Ruiz by Alonso Sánchez Coello, as well as the painting by Frans Pourbus the Younger showing the same character with another dwarf. A later painting by Bartolomé González y Serrano presents the pregnant Queen Margaret of Austria with her hand on the head of a female dwarf. Philip IV was portrayed with the dwarf Miguelito “Soplillo”, and an unidentified dwarf, possibly Francisco Lezcano “el Niño de Vallecas” – was depicted with Infante Balthasar Charles by Velázquez. This type of portrait, called “buffoon services”, not only testifies to the “royal philanthropy”, but above all – to the patronizing attitude of a master toward a dwarf, which would most unlikely go beyond indulgence and avuncularity and become more familiar. In these pictures, we encounter both types of dwarf – nicely shaped and smart, or awkward, clumsy, and ridiculous. It is no wonder that these characters also appeared in the

Katarzyna Kozyra, ‘The Midgets Gallery’, 2006, film of action in the process at the 4th. Berlin Biennale, deposit of Zachęta – National Gallery of Art

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art of Diego Velázquez de Silva (1599–1660), whom King Philip IV appointed as his court painter (pintor de camara).

This artist, restricted by the lavishness of court ceremony, and its extremely rigid etiquette, did not stop revealing the psychological characteristics of portrayed characters. He was able to recognize the individuality of each model and disclose the depth of his experiences. Besides this, not all of these pictures were created according to official order.

Velázquez painted probably “for himself” a series of dwarfs and jesters, because he became interested in the contrast between the deformation of the body and intelligence and sensitivity written on the faces of the models (e.g. The Dwarf Sebastian de Morra, Prado, Madrid). He could examine their features at any time and in any light condition, which he could not afford while painting princes, Infantas, or ladies-in-waiting, because lighting their faces from the side would put years on them. Thus, standing motionless in rigid vertugados dresses, they are oddly impersonal and devoid of deeper emotions.

The artist’s particular interest was aroused by figures of dwarfs and indisposed people with their clumsy movements and distorted physiognomies so different from the silhouettes of dressed up Infantas. Full of compassion for their suffering, Velázquez wanted to engrave it also in others, who brushed against it living among people exposed to the mockery of a heartless environment. One of the earlier images of the dwarf appears in the portrait of Infante Balthasar Charles, accompanied probably by a dwarf assigned to him for play, Francisco Lezcano, called El Niño de Vallecas (1630–1631). His distorted figure contrasts with the fine silhouette of the nearly two-year-old prince. Another portrait, full of

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the drama of Francisco, shows him as he sits alone against the Castilian hills. The big head with a stray smile of a small child is here clashed by the painter with a small torso and the helpless hands with playing cards. While painting the figure of Francisco Lezcano, called El Niño de Vallecas, the artist achieved a poignant effect of portrait immediacy. As a result, we receive the impression that Lezcano is alive and aware of himself, in contrast to Philip IV, who in all courtly portraits by Velázquez appears as dull, self-righteous, not devoid of buffoonery, and arrogant (ca 1637, Prado, Madrid).

In the years 1632–1633, Velázquez painted the portrait of the royal jester Pablo de Valladolid, called Pabillo (little Paul), who at the royal court served as a comedian. His gestures and lively movements suggest that the painter captured his image during the staging of one of the shows, which in the life of the Madrid court were commonplace.

Theatrical staging is suggested by the undefined background with clouds. Don Juan de Calabazas, called Calabacillas, a dwarf and also the royal jester, was portrayed as sitting on the ground next to the lying pumpkins; they are an allusion to his name (Spanish calabaza means pumpkin, a gourd).

The painter picked up on his misshaped body and deformation, manifesting itself in the composition and the curving of hands. Accenting the “absent” facial expression of the dwarf Juan Calabazas, as well as emphasizing his errant eyes and unnaturally wide smile, Velázquez interestingly elaborated light (1637–1639, Prado, Madrid). The pathos of this character, as though suspended in limbo, is magnified by deep shadows around his eyes. With this picture, the artist announced, and perhaps directly influenced, the establishment of Goya’s

Rusłan Waszkiewicz, ‘Studia Velazqueza’, 2000, 6 paintings, oil on canvases, 100 x 80 cm. Photo: courtesy of the artist

painting technique 160 years later. A pose similar to Calabacillas was assumed by the dwarf Don Diego de Acedo, sitting on the ground at the Madrid court, patronizingly called El Primo (Cousin). It was to be a relative of a knight, Juan de Acedo Velázquez, who remained in Flanders in the service of Philip IV’s brother, the Cardinal-Infante Don Fernando. The portrait of El Primo, who was employed in the royal office, among the attributes of his work – books and folios, and who was immortalized against a background of the lunar landscape – was made during the royal trip to Fraga in June 1644. The piercing sadness of the dwarf’s look corresponds with the black outfit and the hat painted later on.

On the ground, Don Sebastián de Morra was also depicted in the sitting pose. He was a dwarf in a green outfit and red vest (1644, Prado, Madrid). His suspicious, poignant gaze reveals an extraordinary depth of feelings. Perhaps Velázquez in all his portraits of dwarfs reveals the tragic fate of the helpless creatures, cursed by society, ridiculed and taunted. At the same time, the artist explores their inner life, recognizing their individual features and the diversity of psychological states. As a great humanist, Velázquez, while immortalizing his models, avoided the cruel realism, in which painters from the North excelled.

Some of those people wronged by fate were able to gain, through their intelligence and wisdom, a reputation, and sometimes – even affection and fame. And, although it had lasted for two centuries, the fashion for dwarfs was over, the world one more time embraced for a moment the fascination with this distinctness. The last “living toy” was the 25-inch (84 cm) tall Charles Sherwood Stratton, who was as much cherished as humiliated. When

he was a child, a distant relative taught him to sing, dance and mime. In 1863, America was agitated by his marriage with the equally tiny Lavinia Warren.

Stratton, who chose the name General Tom Thumb, mostly played the characters of Cupid, Napoleon Bonaparte, and just for a laugh – Hercules. When he was 10 years old, he was hosted by Isabella II of Spain, Queen Victoria, and the King of the French, and on his wedding day he was invited to the White House by President Lincoln. The career of Tom Thumb ended when, at the age of 45 years, he died unexpectedly of a stroke. His funeral was attended by 10,000 people. Katarzyna Kozyra returns to the dwarfs, realizing The Midgets Gallery, a project centred on a gallery conducted by them, the smallest in the world, and devoid of a back-office.

This makes a commentary on the functioning of the contemporary art market. Being in itself a unique creation, the small gallery faces the same issues as the commercial ones: it takes part in fairs, looks for works of art on behalf of collectors, has to negotiate prices, and eventually organises its own biennial.

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THE GENRE SCENES Paweł Sosnowski

Some cities, especially those without major tourist attractions, such as Klagenfurt in Austria, endow themselves with “mini-worlds” – parks with miniatures of famous buildings. The visitor feels like Gulliver there. One can crouch near the Vatican, or look down on the Eiffel Tower. Klagenfurt has treated itself additionally with the European Championship in football. The fans came in and left, the mountains of garbage have been cleaned up and the equipment which was torn down – repaired.

Tranquillity has returned to the city. The European Championships would never be held in Wolbrom, a provincial town in southern Poland, but there are also supporters in the town. The fans behave like everywhere else. They create warring factions. *** “Brazilian fans clash in hideous fighting during a football match” Russia Today *** Tomasz Kulka (33), the artist, is an attentive observer of everyday life in his town. He scrutinizes the deepening social degradation, which goes hand in hand with the degradation of urban fabric.

He knows that he is not able to prevent this, he knows that interference cannot give a positive

Tomasz Kulka, ‘WC’, 2011/12, the object / ceramics, 19 x 15 x 25 cm – exhibition in the Propaganda Gallery. Photo: courtesy of the Propaganda Gallery

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Tomasz Kulka, ‘Store Container’, 2011/12, the object / ceramics, 14 x 12 x 40 cm. Photo: courtesy of the Propaganda Gallery

result either. However, in order to give something back, he embalms in clay the perceived situations, and small architecture destructs. Concurrently, it is very interesting that while bringing out unobvious, moving and disturbing things, which usually in the collective consciousness of society are suppressed, he uses a scale that might bring to mind the perspective of Gulliver. He creates his own parallel world in miniature. The miniature garages, booths on the market, ramshackle sheds, all of it dotted with inscriptions, signs and slogans. Their surface becomes a peculiar kind of book, a record of urban and small-town jungle. Kulka is distinctly attracted by what resides outside the area of visibility in culture, the problem of degradation and devastation caused by the youth subcultures, drunks and the homeless; devastation, which becomes simultaneously an expression of serious social problems, such as racism, hatefulness, intolerance against otherness or anti-Semitism. *** “Russian football hooligans – worse than the English?”

Les Observateurs *** For the exhibition in Warsaw Propaganda Gallery, the artist has created a monumental battle scene composed of over a hundred ceramic figures of football fans. Although the primary source of inspiration is regular fighting at the devastated marketplace in Wolbrom, it could happen anywhere.

The artist’s message is a universal one. The impetuousness and inhuman cruelty of the local fans is not an individual characteristic. Intolerance and evil seem to be a common hallmark of the football subculture in the world. Headlines, although printed in different languages, always emit the same content. *** “Egypt football stadium riot: over 70 dead and hundreds injured as fans clash” The Telegraph *** It took the artist almost a year to create this ceramic scene. Ceramics is a tedious pursuit, a labour-intensive and time-consuming one. It takes hours to burn objects in the oven and cool them down. The artist does not use any templates, each figure is different. He creates his characters with great reverence, giving each one of them individual features. The same goes for every situation, every gesture and pose. The whole is arranged in a comiclike narrative typical for the battle panoramas of nineteenth-century artists. But the motivation is quite distinct. Those panoramas were in general meant to bear witness to patriotic uprisings, while Kulka captures a ghostly apocalyptic vision, which is an alarm signal for our times.

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Tomasz Kulka, ‘Street Fight’, 2011, installation / ceramics, various dimensions – an exhibition in the Propaganda Gallery. Photo: courtesy of the Propaganda Gallery

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COLLECTING NEW YORK Filip Lipiński

Thomas McKean, ‘MetroLaundry (small version) – 2 1/8 x 3 3/8 x 3/8’, MetroCard bas relief, 2013. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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The material which Thomas McKean’s miniature collages/mosaics are invariably composed of are MetroCards: small plastic tickets used when travelling on the New York City subway. They are cut into tiny pieces, some of which are given the original shape of a rectangle with one corner removed.

Others take on independent forms of varying, mostly small, formats; they may even become threedimensional as a relief or a mini-sculpture. The range of colours tends to be limited to those typical of the ticket: yellow, dark blue, black and white, although special edition cards may add variations.

The aesthetic style brings toys or children’s book illustrations to mind. And, indeed, it would not be wrong to talk of games or fun here – of playing New York – as it is dominantly this city, which I am going to focus on, that provides inspiration: its architecture and landmarks, such as the Washington Square Arch, the Empire State Building, the Twin Towers, or what has remained of them after the terrorist attack, the New Museum, rooftop water tanks, fire escapes on façades or yellow taxi cabs. All this belongs to the artist’s immediate surroundings; in order to see most of these things he only needs to look out of the windows or to climb up to the roof of the house where he lives in the East Village, a Mecca of the New York independent art scene of the 1980s, whose atmosphere can still be sensed in spite of the many changes that have since taken place. What crystallises in Thomas McKean’s collages is a sort of immediacy, the artist’s environment and time – some of the pieces are occasional, others may constitute a memento (Twin Towers) or a reflection of what changes in the cityscape (The Rise and Fall of the New York City Taxi Cab). The area of experience, not only that of the artist, and the extended spatial-temporal dimension of these seemingly straightforward works consists of the stuff they are made of – tickets as a medium of travelling in New York City.

However, what we are dealing with here is more complicated. McKean collects MetroCards which he finds, buys and, above all, receives from friends and acquaintances. As a consequence, they are marked by the experience of others and, importantly, by the duration and distance of a given trip. The card makes it possible for people to move around New York City through the thick network of subway or other means of public transportation. MetroCards provide an opportunity to broaden one’s experience, to meet up with other people, visit places and see New York City from various perspectives and at different times. The ticket travels with its owner and – in a sense – remembers the route which is encoded in the magnetic strip. Collecting the cards then is collecting potential, dispersed views, shreds of someone else’s time and impressions. Collecting MetroCards is, in fact, ‘re-collecting’ – collecting and

Thomas McKean, ‘Cold Beer & Pizza – 10 1/2 x 7 1/8’, MetroCard collage, 2012. Photo: courtesy of the artist

recollecting New York. While a subway card gives access to the subway, to move and to disperse, McKean highlights this aspect by cutting it into pieces, by diffusing or fragmenting it to reunite the tiny fragments in a similar or dissimilar form. Within the context of the work of the New York-based artist, the MetroCard is, as a matter of fact, a figure of New York, a pocket condensation of the city, which results in concrete, collected and recollected, or recrystallised objects of seeing. Cards assembled

by McKean are no longer useful – they have already served their pragmatic function. The artist collects these ‘scraps’ not to restore their function but to recycle them in a most specific fashion, to distil a fragment of the potential of past trips, the New York network of visibility that would give an explicit form to a memory and inject a hue into a misty afterimage not only of the cards owners, some of whom he knows, some of whom he has never met, but – first and foremost – his own.

It is tempting to look for a biographical theme in the peculiar process of collecting New York carried out

by McKean – a network made of potential images located in space and time. It is connected with the famous photographer and arts advocate Alfred Stieglitz was a close cousin of the artist’s greatgrandmother. (The artist told me an interesting story related to the illustrious relative, which provides us with some narrative substance, even

if it is possibly of marginal importance in this context. Ida, the great-grandmother, was married to a hat manufacturer who died a sudden death in his own limousine when a piece of glass from a nearby building hit him in the neck. One day she announced, without giving any particular reason, that she would go up to her bedroom; through her unbelievable willpower she stayed in bed for the next thirty-eight years and never got up again, not even to attend her husband’s funeral. It should not be surprising that when the family, worried by her behaviour, invited the famous cousin to tea to lure her out of the room, she refused to come down.

The maid conveyed the message that she was ‘indisposed’). Stieglitz’s photographs belong to the most important images showing New York City’s shaping modernity; on the one hand, this is because of the aestheticization of the form of observed objects and, on the other, because of photographic unification of the metropolis in the form of iconic pictures of Manhattan, such as The City of Ambition (1910) or the later series of views from the Shelton Hotel. The photographs are not only records of a specific view, moment or its aspect; what happens in them is a standstill which consolidates dispersed seeing, a sort of iconisation, or thickening of the city’s visibility into a temporally fixed form that reaches beyond this fixation into the future at the same time, constituting a kind of matrix of how the

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city is perceived. If Stieglitz, as he walked around New York City, collected and selected views to be carefully edited in the darkroom, McKean collects the network of the city virtually inscribed into the MetroCard and employs its potential. This potential unifies and condensates the city into a field of action, movement and vision to make use of the matter he receives to select a particular aspect and to construct those easily recognisable mini-icons of New York from shreds of the experience of a metropolis. In this sense, McKean, whose life has always been connected with New York City, joins a long list of artists for whom the city constitutes the matter of their activities. He has succeeded in finding a miniature scale which very accurately captures the character of this hardly miniature city and transcends its colossal and ungraspable nature without negating it.

Visual generalisation or simplification made by McKean in his choices of what is typical of New York City is, nevertheless, combined with the utmost attention (described by Michael Fried as absorption), necessary in the process of constructing miniature works of even smaller pieces. In this case, a successful synthesis requires a meticulous analysis to result in an iconic dimension of the city, which can be organised consistently with the adopted perspective – from the general view to the detail. To begin with, a work of a comparatively large format depicting the map of New York City, whose shape is highlighted by a sharp contrast between yellow and blue, can be considered. In a sense, this map determines the field of operation of the ticket/material. Another New York City

collage decreases the distance to show Manhattan’s coastline with black silhouettes of buildings against a dark blue sky. Sticking to the macro-to-micro order, consecutive works include views of one of New York’s bridges, the spectral presence of the WTC Twin Towers or roofscapes with various colours and geometrical shapes, a closer view of the famous spire and dome of the Chrysler Building and a set of light decorations at the finial of the Empire State Building. The artist’s attention, however, seems to be first and foremost compelled by typical New York City tenements, executed both as flat and three-dimensional pieces, emphasizing to some extent their architectural volume as well as certain aspects of their appearance, including, for instance, clothes lines stretched between blocks, a view typical particularly of the East Village. The artist’s magnifying glass comes even closer when he combines images and text, for example, to present the history of yellow taxi cabs; and finally, the MetroCard bulges with its shuffled pieces to create a perfectly three-dimensional yellow car the size of a Matchbox vehicle. It is here, as well as in the entire body of McKean’s “ticket” work, that the idea of fun and miniaturising, travelling and communication is fulfilled as a complex process of transition and remediation, rather than simple representation.

The subway ticket becomes a medium of action that makes it possible for New York City to be distilled “in a portfolio” that contains a collection of scattered looks and views, places and times, and even if it does not reverse the relation of human vs city, it definitely makes it handier and closer.

Thomas McKean, ‘MetroCar – 2 1/3 x 2 x 1’, MetroCard construction, 2011. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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Thomas McKean, ‘MetroSkyline – 6 1/8 x 4’, MetroCard collage, 2011. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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BLUR AND FUZZ Richard Shiff

TV test pattern with no interference (image in the public domain).

Photo: Richard Shiff’s archive

TV test pattern with interference (image in the public domain).

Photo: Richard Shiff’s archive

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Before the advent of photography, the market for images rewarded painters and engravers for their ability to work with clarity on a miniature scale.

Portraits by miniaturists offered the advantage of portability; they could be carried like banknotes, which also depended on the skills of miniaturists for their design. Like many other visual practices, those of the portrait miniaturist became obsolete with the advent of negative-process photography.

The camera generated miniatures quickly and economically, creating such social conveniences as the carte-de-visite or personalized calling-card, as well as modern devices of control, such as photographically detailed passports. Commercial practices soon expanded the imagistic stretch of photography: what was small became large. This was especially true of the early development of cinema, where it seemed proper for the projection screen of a moving picture to assume the width of the traditional theatrical stage. Viewing a movie became a collective, social event. Through the early decades of the twentieth century, photographic filmstrips were projected at ever increasing size with correspondingly enhanced resolution, so that large images could be seen with clarity analogous to that of small images.

The early years of television brought a new form of dramatic miniaturization. Movies entered the private living room. In the United States, it became customary to refer to the “big screen” of cinema and the “small screen” of television. Over several decades, the latter became much larger; and the apparatus now conveys a high-resolution, digital projection. While television increased the size of its film image, cinematic effects found a new outlet in the miniature screens of cell phones, where low-resolution representations appear as if highresolution. When the same imagery is projected at such radically different scales, we lose the sense that a representational image is itself an aesthetic, material construction and must have an internal scale that relates to the conditions of its human creation. A miniature portrait was once a miniature painting, that is, a painting that had been created on a small scale with a brush or stylus, not a diminished projection of something that also existed at a much larger size. The painted miniature remained specific to its conditions of fabrication. But a film image that can be scaled either to a theatrical environment or to a hand-held electronic device no longer possesses this material specificity. A simple movement of the fingers against the screen of a cell phone increases or reduces the scale and resolution of the image.

Electronic technology seems to have lifted imagery out of its base in materiality, where the unaided eye could detect the limits of refinement inherent in the

use of any particular material, such as an oil medium conveying fine granules of mineral pigment in the process of painting.

What are the consequences of this loss of specific scale, which now seems to be the normative condition of viewing? For one thing, we lose the tension between our perception of the whole of an image and our perception of its constitutive parts, its inherent materiality and physicality. Analogously, we no longer sense a conflict between the “meaning” of an image — its identity as an entity in abstract, linguistic discourse — and its sensory, aesthetic composition — the physical cause of its “feel.” The feel of the image ought to relate to what we perceive when we probe how it was made, the conditions of its “construction,” which are not only physical but also cultural. If we fail to differentiate meaning from feel, we are all the more likely to regard images as either entirely natural (the equal of anything else identified in nature) or entirely artificial (having no meaningful material foundation).

To take either one of these extreme positions is ideologically dangerous.

Modern painting, like modern photography, developed an incommensurability problem. When Cézanne sought to coordinate the strokes of his brush with his visual exploration of nature (whether a close-up of apples or the panoramic view of a distant mountain), the images that resulted displayed a pattern of interference, the insistent presence of his medium of paint; his strokes appeared coarse, even blurred. Art critics of the time, those who applied traditional standards, concluded that Cézanne had made marks too large for the scale of the image, causing pictorial imprecision. His painting exemplified a tension between its “meaning” — the view of a mountain — and its “feel” or sensation — the perception of a rather strident pattern of colored marks that resisted coalescing into a “mountain.”

We can understand the apparent imprecision or incommensurability of Cézanne’s imagery by comparing its features to flaws that appear in fine‑grained, paper-print photographs, even on a miniature scale. Photographic blur occurs with movement in the model or scene relative to the camera, and vice versa. There might be movement of an object fast enough within the visual field to escape the shutter action of the camera; or there might be movement of the camera itself, caused by a photographer’s attempt to track something in the scene or the result of an unsteady hand.

Some pictures blur a moving object, whereas others blur unmoving features of a foreground or

background. A second kind of blurring also occurs, known as fuzz: It appears when the grid or grain of the medium, its resolution factor, is inadequate to the representation of some quality or detail in the model. By the principle of representational incommensurability, there will always be a point at which a photograph fails its model and becomes fuzzy in this respect, since it can be no more than a projective mapping, never a completely adequate substitution. The problem that electronic imagery presents is this: its point of failure lies well beyond what the human eye normally detects. Hence, we lose the critical tension between meaning and feeling. There may be little to feel in opposition to the conventional meaning.

Blur and fuzz: blur refers to disjunctive movement and has a temporal foundation; fuzz has a spatial foundation because it results from a disjunctive distribution of material elements (the constituent marks of a representation — the particles of pigment in painting, the particles of emulsion in conventional photography, the electronic grid of pixels in television and digital photography). Every representation, even miniature ones, has fuzz, however slight this factor may seem. Similarly, blur or temporal incommensurability occurs in every representation, even as the conventions of both still and moving compositions seek to disguise or compensate for it. Lived time and represented time (the memory of lived time) do not align.

Should I rely on the principle of incommensurability I just asserted? Perhaps not. What may now be necessary to admit is this: we understand the lack of alignment between image and time or between image and space as a point of theory; but this is no longer obvious in experience. Blur and fuzz are experiential reminders of the arbitrary cultural codes in operation for the assessment of degrees of realism (truth in representation). When photoelectronic imagery eliminates blur and fuzz, we lose all experiential sense of the cultural construction of identity and meaning that our prevailing theoretical models indicate must be the case. The medium no longer determines the scope of the image and skews its significance; it seems neutralized. And the image has become too mobile: large and small, fast and slow. Must we redesign our theory of what constitutes a medium of representation, the essential features? The displacement of material miniaturization by electronic miniaturization — the substitution of a rigid, physically limited mode of presentation by one that seems infinitely flexible — contributes substantially to this theoretical dilemma.

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KUNSTHAL 44 MØEN Marta Smolińska

Occasionally, important and interesting art institutions emerge through unusual channels, in the most surprising of circumstances. Their appearance is a result of the passion and commitment of a single, commercially independent individual. This was the case with Kunsthal 44 Møen (www.44moen. dk) which is a privately-owned, non-profit initiative of the renowned German art curator René Block, who has been consequently producing internationally acclaimed exhibitions for the past 5 years.

It was 2008 when Block acquired a former tractor garage situated on the Danish island of Møn. He has conducted all necessary works to rebuild it and adapt it into approximately 350 square metres of exhibition space. It is called Kunsthal 44 Møen after the street number of its location. In 2012, he purchased an adjacent house together with some farm buildings which now serve as a separate gallery where he presents the body of work and the archives of the Danish artist Henning Christiansen (1932-2008). Both the island and the showrooms are relatively small, and every year the institution is partly subsidised by the Danish government.

It was largely due to Block’s friendship with Christiansen – who was involved with the Fluxus collective at the time they met – that the former visited and became acquainted with the island of Møn and its cultural topography. He witnessed and

Joseph Beuys, ‘7000 Oaks’, 1982, one of the 7000 pairs of oaks and basalt stones (in a field close to Kunsthal 44 Møen). Photo: Marta Smolińska

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Kunsthal 44 Møen. Photo: Marta Smolińska

became fascinated with the Fluxus performances that often took place in the St Nicholas Church in Copenhagen. Christiansen was friends with Joseph Beuys, with whom he collaborated on several occasions (for example, in 1969 when they jointly performed in Rene Block’s Gallery in Berlin). In 1987, one of the major Danish artists, Bjørn Nørgaard, who was friends with both Block and Christiansen, reportedly announced: “Henning isn’t a member of Fluxus. Henning is Fluxus.” The unique mood of those days still lingers in Block’s artistic initiatives.

It is present in all his endeavours, particularly in the program of his exhibitions held in the gallery devoted to Christiansen. Every year he intends to arrange one show revolving around this artist and his archives. Those annual shows will present artists who combine art and sound effects, which is something Christiansen – the author of the “Music as Green” slogan and a man fascinated by the sounds of nature – was famous for. He would often dress in green and paint one of his ears this colour.

In actual fact, Christiansen couldn’t tell life from art.

For years he used a hammer as a motif and as an instrument, turning it into his artistic trademark.

This is why the very first exhibition in Kunsthal 44 Møen was a sort of homage to his attitude. The title read: The Hammer Without a Master: Henning Christiansen’s Archive (curated by Chiara Giovando;

with the following line-up: Leif Elggren, Andreas Führer, Jacob Kirkegaard, Claus Haxholm & TR Kirstein, Johannes Lund, Gordon Monahan, Vagn E. Olsson, Marja-Leena Sillanpää, Society for the Disorderly Speaker, and Tori Wrånes). The small house, together with the unassuming farm buildings, has turned out to be a great setting for these particular site specific works. The latter relevantly uphold the tradition of Fluxus, joining in a dialogue with its legacy and Christiansen’s oeuvre, subsequently determining the future purpose of the attic rooms in the gallery. Chiara Giovando – a New York curator has spent 3 months on the island digging through the voluminous archives accumulated by the green-eared artist only to handpick those artists who would best resonate with his heritage.

René Block is already planning the attic conversion of the building purchased in 2012 which is to become the permanent location of Christiansen’s archives.

He wants to make this collection accessible for the next generations of curators and biographers. It will be a starting point and an inspiration for future exhibitions. For now, the archives are stored in the vicinity of Kunsthal 44 Møen, in Christiansen’s house, which is still inhabited by Ursula Reuter Christiansen, who is also an artist and a former apprentice of Beuys.

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The former tractor garage cum contemporary art gallery stands out from the surrounding landscape of Askeby village if anything due to the “sinuous”, flame-like neon sign on the top of its roof. It’s the work of a German artist, Hans Peter Kuhn, made specifically for Kunsthal 44 and commissioned by Block. In front of the entrance to the gallery, the visitors are welcomed by the work of the local artist Till Junkel. It’s a boulder with golden letters inscribed on it: ARTIFICIALLY BUSY, it reads. It happens to be not only an apt introduction to Kunsthal 44 Møen but also makes a poignant reference to René Block’s own attitude. On the back of the building, visitors will find another work by Junkel – stones with words IT IS WHAT IT IS inscribed on them.

Those who have seen the exhibition may now have a sweeping look at the natural beauty of this Danish island surrounding them and appreciate a perfect opportunity to see art and nature coming together, hand in hand. The location of Kunsthal 44 Møen presents this rare opportunity to unite both elements: art and nature, thanks to the over-sized windows inside the gallery which open up to a vista of endless fields stretching outside the architectural confinement. There is an oak planted by Joseph Beuys at the other side of the street as part of his 7000 oaks action initiated in 1982 during the 7th edition of Documenta in Kassel and finalised in 1987 at the following edition of the same event.

Kunsthal 44 Møen remains open from May till September and two exhibitions are arranged each year. In 2008, during the inauguration, René Block invited Danish artists (Lene Adler-Petersen, Henning Christiansen, Sabine Glaßer, Erik Hagens, Till Junkel, Sine Lewis, Ursula Munch-Petersen, Bjørn Nørgaard, Ursula Reuter Christiansen and Ane Mette Ruge); the miscellany of works amassed together were given a joint and facetious title: Imagine MØNHATTAN, employing a little wordplay that alludes to the name of the island and the famous part of New York – also an island. The theme of the following exhibition was much to do with Block’s personal interest in contemporary Finnish art (2009: Fly me to the Møøn with the following artists invited to participate in the project: Adel Abidin, Lauri Astala, Elina Brotherus, Aino Kannisto, Elena Näsänen, Anni Rapinoja, Jari Silomäki, Anu Tuominen, Salla Tykkä and Maaria Wirkkala). In 2010, it was time for Turkish art (Not easy, to save the world in 90 days the featured artists were: Halil Altındere, Fikret Atay, Köken Ergun, Ali Kazma, Servet Koçyiğit, Ahmet Öğüt, Erkan Özgen, Şener Özmen, Cengiz Tekin and Nasan Tur).

Kunsthal 44 Møen was also home to numerous individual exhibitions, with a particular consideration for international artists. For example, Maja Bajević (Bosnia), Kimsooja (South Korea), Mona Hatoum (a Lebanon-born Palestinian and a

Henning Christiansen Archive at Kunsthal 44 Møen, ‘The Hammer Without a Master: Henning Christiansen’s Archive’ (curated by Chiara Giovando) - exhibition view.

Photo: Marta Smolińska

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Kunsthal 44 Møen, installation by Hans Peter Kuhn. Photo: Marta Smolińska

resident of London), Maria Eichhorn (Germany), Lene Adler-Petersen (Denmark), Alicja Kwade (a German born in Katowice), A K Dolven (Norway) and Ursula Reuter Christiansen (Denmark). The Turkish artist Nasan Tur is scheduled for 2014, and after that the Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles will be curated by Julie Rodriguez. A customary show inspired by and devoted to Christiansen and his archives will be arranged by a German – Nico Anklam, who was the residing curator in Kunsthal 44 Møen in 2013.

Møn is quite a small island and the exhibition facilities are inconspicuous, but it turns out this is not an obstacle when it comes to planning and executing ambitious international programs. Rene Block is a one-man institution and a Spiritus movens of the whole endeavour. His witty exhibition titles are carefully thought up in order to promote Møn, advertising it as Mønhattan or the Møøn. To amuse himself, Block simulates inner tensions by checking local against global, and on a good day maybe even against lunar-cosmic.

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UNIVERSE IN MINIATURE Magda Wróblewska

Mark Dion constructs peculiar cabinets of curiosities in museums. Display cabinets and showcases abound in objects from the worlds of nature and art, and are arranged in accordance with the classification systems adopted by the author, making reference to the Aristotelian division into Naturalia and Artificalia, and differing from the categories widely applied by museums. By returning to the modern orders implemented, among others, in the form of Kunstkammer and Wunderkammer, his installations develop a reflection on the idea of the world in miniature. The universe is represented on a smaller scale, thus being more easy to access, submitting itself to an effortless cognition, and therefore also a carefree ruling. It is not by accident that creation of the first cabinets of curiosities coincided with the beginning of overseas expeditions and colonial conquests. They were supposed to constitute a new image of the world, widened by the previously unknown territories, but ultimately subordinated to the centre, which is Western civilization, and seen from its perspective.

Thus, the collectors’ cabinets were places for constructing systems of knowledge. Created by a mass of modest-size objects, they referred primarily to the two creative elements: nature and man.

Nevertheless, at this time, these have not been regarded as completely different or opposite. Both in the realized Kunstkammers, for example the one of Rudolf II in Prague, as well as in the theory explaining them, especially the one by Francis Bacon, objects of nature and art (in the broad sense of the Greek ars) were parts of the same “natural history”. Here, the most important feature of knowledge systems created in the cabinets of curiosities reveals itself, and also the significant distinction in relation to the later positivist paradigm, which gave shape to modern science, among other things, by establishing discrimination between the disciplines of natural sciences and the humanities.

The second important difference between modern and contemporary systems of knowledge concerns just the objects collected in Kunstkammers, the tiny items or the parts of greater ones, and sometimes the small replicas of excessively large or difficult-toobtain originals. The carefully selected rare minerals, the exotic species of plants and animals, tools and instruments, and finally a variety of antiquities, artefacts and works of art, were meant to represent universal phenomena, referring to the external world on the basis of pars pro toto. The foundation for it was the conviction in the correspondence between the universe and its smallest elements, and therefore in the possibility of gaining knowledge

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Mark Dion, ‘Cabinet of curiosities’, installation at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota (collaboration of museum staff, students and collection curators), 2001. Photo: Magda Wróblewska’s archive

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about the general laws through the individual components, little parts of a bigger whole.

However, the vision of the universe was created in a way remote from the one encountered in the Enlightenment encyclopaedias and atlases of knowledge, containing systematic descriptions and taxonomies of all known phenomena. The principle of typicality representative for nineteenthcentury science was preceded by its opposite, the apotheosis of uniqueness, aberrations, deviations from the standards. Thumbnails and fragments of specimens, collected according to the principle of exceptionality, created an image of the world as if in a distorting mirror, à rebours. The aim was not to create a complete image, generating the illusion of full knowledge of the universe. It was rather about a careful insight into the small curiosities, seemingly unassociated by relationship and accidentally collected in an assemblage, in order to find clues among their multitude, merging them against the obvious discrepancies.

Re-entering the concept behind the cabinet of curiosities in the installations realised in museum spaces by Mark Dion could thus be perceived not only as a manifestation of the critique of institution, which builds its authority on clear distinctions and categories, but at the same time as searching for an alternative solution. While turning to the past seeks a model, which goes beyond the structures enmeshed in the positivist ideology, it is legible on the exposition level. The classification systems still present in museums, gradually imposed on private collections and museum exhibits since the Age of Enlightenment, in the times of Linnaeus gained a dogmatic dimension, as seemingly very facilitating, but in fact, strongly restricting cognition. The rigid taxonomies defining permanent places and a stable order of the mass of innumerable minute things are, for instance, perfectly illustrated by the exhibition Enlightenment, presented since 2003 in the British Museum, indicating a transition from Kunstkammer and Wunderkammer into rational and specialized modern collections and museum expositions.

Mark Dion for his installations, such as the Cabinet of curiosity (Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, 1997) or the Cabinets of curiosities (Weisman Art Museum, The University of Minnesota 2001), liberally selected individual objects from different parts of museum and university collections and then made new constellations out of them, which elude the established constructions of knowledge and the categories of museum exhibitions. These orders, as he indicated himself, are never something universal, given to us once and Mark Dion, ‘Cabinet of curiosities’, installation at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota (collaboration of museum staff, students and collection curators), 2001. Photo: Magda Wróblewska’s archive

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for all. By revealing their arbitrariness, Dion has also pointed out the possibilities offered by the method of miniaturization of the world. While operating on the miniatures and modest fragments of the greater entirety, it is easy to make movements, and thus create alternative solutions in the system of knowledge, which nevertheless should make no claims to universality and completeness.

Dion, by creating his cabinets in accordance with these systems of classification, to some extent grants autonomy to their individual elements and unshackles them from the imposed meanings. He uses Kunstkammer as a sui generis tool of critique, and does not literally re-create its scheme, in which the objects were surely not yet completely free, for the system has always been owner-defined, both by his horizon of knowledge and by the ideology which he represented. In the work of Dion the imagination of recipient is meant to be a source of potential meaning, allowing for the establishment of references and associations of the objects. They have been selected and arranged in such a way as to arouse the astonishment and curiosity of the viewer. Each of these curiosities, abstracted from its deceitful universe, and their unexpected sets, has a subversive, critical potential. They stimulate the viewer to raise questions, despite the ready-made answers provided by the museum classifications.

Mark Dion, ‘Cabinet of curiosities’, installation at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota (collaboration of museum staff, students and collection curators), 2001. Photo: Magda Wróblewska’s archive

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BBLACKBOXX – PRACTICAL THEORY & COMPANY Interview with Almut Rembges Daria Kołacka

Bblackboxx is an off space in Basel, placed close to a reception center for people who request asylum in Switzerland, which is combined with a deportation prison. Bblackboxx was found by a graduated art historian, Almut Rembges, in 2007 and is run by an open network of artists, activists and theoreticians.

They want to create a place where art and theory can have a practical political impact.

Daria Kołacka: What does the name bblackboxx mean?

Almut Rembges: The name refers to the boxes which are found after a plane crash. It is a metaphor for collecting knowledge in the context of a catastrophe: In bblackboxx, anybody can collect knowledge about precarious migration gained not by experts from the university but through life experience – through meeting and exchange with people in conversations.

Daria Kołacka: Does the name “bblackboxx” also comment on the idea of a gallery as a white cube?

Almut Rembges: I did not really think about it. We have an indoor and an outdoor space. The indoor space is sometimes used by different artists as a white cube.

Daria Kołacka: How do you see bblackboxx in the context of art institutions?

bblackboxx Painting Circle by Aquarellclub sans frontières. Since 2010.

Photo: Sabina Otterwald

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bblackboxx-Erweiterungsbau. Project by Jan and Moritz Bachmann, 2012. Photo: Jan and Moritz Bachmann

Almut Rembges: Before bblackboxx, I used to work in museums and galleries and I always found it unsatisfactory that the artists invest a lot of time and energy in the preparation of their exhibitions and then the main event is the opening, which is rather a party where art does not play the principal role. And, after the opening, only few people come to see the work. So I felt a need to rather go to a place, which is already occupied by people, to a place which has socio-political significance in the urban context.

Bblackboxx basically joined the park community, which consists of both – refugees from the reception centre and joggers coming from the city.

Daria Kołacka: Would you call bblackboxx “an intervention”?...

Almut Rembges: “Intervention” is a difficult word for me because it reminds me of military or psychological top-down operations. We don’t really have that kind of power. It would be more precise to describe our practice there as an ongoing manifestation or as hacking.

Daria Kołacka: What was the initial idea of bblackboxx?

Almut Rembges: In the beginning, seven years ago, I was a casual jogger in this area and one day I discovered that some hundred metres away there is a deportation prison connected with a reception camp, where refugees are kept in semi-prison conditions. So the initial idea of bblackboxx was artistic research about this area, which is a shared space of the city inhabitants and people from the refugee camp. For the first project, I asked some dancers, a musician and people who use this space to create a public documentary show about this place. After that project, the refugees who were our main audience stated that bblackboxx should be continued. So, step by step, we started to develop a curriculum, which covers all kinds of activities from coffee drinking to conceptual art and community art workshops. In general, the organisation process is very informal. I don’t see myself as a curator and the participation is open to anybody who is interested in this context.

Daria Kołacka: What about finances? Do you have any fund-raising?

Almut Rembges: There is no basic funding and if sometimes artists need a fee or travel expenses or

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money for the material, I try to organise funding if there is time. Most of us are volunteers and we are organised in a way that we hardly need any money.

Also, it would not feel right to invest big amounts of money in material, whereas most of the people visiting us have been facing poverty.

Daria Kołacka: How many projects have you realized and which ones are most important for you?

Almut Rembges: We have realized more than 70 projects in the past seven years. One of the most popular of them was called “bblackboxx expansion building”. The concept was very simple: two students, Jan and Moritz Bachmann, brought a lot of wood, some hammers and nails and people visiting the park just started to build a structure without any plan. This project covered many levels of creative practice at the same time: game and community crafting but on a conceptual level it was also a political statement as we published a text against gentrification processes in the city.

Other important projects were T-shirt printing with Manon Bellet, adventure workshops with Heath Bunting and James Kennard, the cooking event “Cook the Rich” by Celia Sidler, Child Animation

Programs and the “Picture Service” initiated by Barbara van der Meulen. In the last one, we offered the cameras on loan, so people from the refugee camp could take souvenir pictures of themselves.

The goal was not to have an exhibition of the pictures, it was really a service for them, so they had something to take with them on the road.

In this project, we were trying to find out what we can offer to the refugees, which does not just cover “help” in the sense of primary needs. Helping is important, but for many people it also feels degrading to be perceived just as individuals who need help. In the camp, people are kind of framed between control and charity and at bblackboxx we have the chance to do something else, outside of this frame.

Daria Kołacka: Do you use any form of publicity to invite people here?

Almut Rembges: The dominant group coming here is from the asylum camp, but there are also events which attract people from the city – lectures, performances and exhibitions, so both groups share the space. This is important but it is not about playing “United Colours”, however, it offers

bblackboxx Painting Circle by Aquarellclub sans frontières. Since 2010. Photo: Sabina Otterwald

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bblackboxx – interior. Project by Manon Bellet, 2009. Photo: Piotr Dzumala

the chance for mutual exchange and can create an awareness for people from the city about this increasing isolation and incarceration of asylum seekers or other precarious migrants by European migration politics.

Daria Kołacka: Is bblackboxx a kind of political statement? Does it criticize the famous Swiss democracy?

Almut Rembges: Yes, of course. Bblackboxx is a model of how to undermine the intended segregation of a discriminated group from the public. It keeps signalling a critical position about current border politics, also in public talks and tours around the prison. It is about anti-exclusion, antidiscrimination, anti-racism. We support the idea of open borders, but this would also need a radical change in the economic politics: as we all know the current migration movements are to be seen in a direct connection with conflicts and exploitation in the home countries of sans-papiers and asylum seekers, where European and Swiss companies also make their profits.

Almut Rembges: We call ourselves “Practical Theory & Company”. “Practical Theory” stands for studying via practical action and self-learning.

“Company” means in a way that this kind of gaining knowledge is based on the informal gathering of people who try to talk to each other and to do things together. Many organizers of bblackboxx feel close to anarchist ideas about self-organization. So we try to live and practise this model as a counterperformance against a context, where control and charity are the dominating factors.

Daria Kołacka: Is that why you use the word “company” as a description of bblackboxx? To criticize this kind of business?

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MEMORY AND TIME OF HISTORY ANNE AND PATRICK POIRIER Leszek Brogowski

Archaeology, the book The collaborative work of Anne and Patrick Poirier, at a first approximation, could be seen as art that made scientific studies (archaeological, ethnographic, historical and sociological, etc.) its matter, and which, following the f o r m of scientific reconstructions of cities fallen into ruin or civilizations buried by time, overbuilds facets of imagination, poetry and myth characteristic to art on this compound of matter and form typical for science (cast reliefs, material traces full of legends, photographs of the ruins, notebooks, etc.). “We have appropriated the pseudo-scientific area, where archaeology, history, and psychoanalysis come across each other [...]”1 – they say in an interview with Sylvia Couderc. Although the artists liberally, depending on the project, withdraw from this scheme, it allows the identity of artistic methods used by them to be captured. Their work takes the form of an installation or an artist’s book, but constantly reflects on the problem of memory as a struggle with time. Is it really so that imagination, poetry and myth are specific only to art in its reconstructions of the past, and its labour on the forms of memory? For history – as a science – is indeed a creation of knowledge and a reproduction of the past, so it is a memory itself. But therefore, does a historian, philosopher or archaeologist not poeticize his object of study when interpreting the story? Does he not impose his own fantasies, projections and unconscious desires on scientific reconstructions?

The book by the artist occupies a special place in the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier, and this is because it enables the meeting of literary art fiction and plastic art fiction, writings and visual documents.

Hence, in books by artists these questions can gain their full meaning. In 1975, working on Domus Aurea, the loose reproduction of Nero’s departed palace in Rome, they described the procedures used in the project as follows: “Thanks to its structure (the underworld, the labyrinth) and colour (blackness), we have adopted this as a mental image of the unconsciousness, not the one where the wellspring of personal fantasies is, but rather the one of a communal nature, where from a long way back forgotten dreams, myths, fantasies and reminiscences find their source, the unconscious belonging to a common cultural memory, lying deeply within each of us, which would be disclosed in fragments and phases 1 An interview with Sylvia Couderc, Anne et Patrick Poirier.

Fragilité, Amiens, 1996, quoted after Évelyne Toussaint, Anne et Patrick Poirier. Vade-mecum, Bruxelles, 2007, p. 84. This book is an outcome of the 2002 PhD Thesis – the doctorate in art history containing an exhaustive bibliography concerning the activities of Anne and Patrick Poirier.

Anne and Patrick Poirier, ‘Exotica’, 2008. Photo: Archives of Poiriers

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Anne and Patrick Poirier, ‘Exotica’, 2008. Photo: Archives of Poiriers

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during the course of this wandering through the basement. [...]

Parallel to wandering across the visible, and at the same time, we are going to write a book that should be printed and presented together with its spatial illustration. This will be the kind of story that would recreate a peregrination through the variety of halls and describe everything one can encounter there. In this way, the book is a literary and fictional description of the implementation of the sensual and the exhibition is an artistic illustration of the text.

Both aspects of this work are inseparable. They constantly refer to and mutually motivate each other, both in the process of realisation and in the final perception.

The method does not rely on writing a story and then adding illustrations to it, but on writing a word that brings to life an idea, which creates an image, and so forth”2.

Anne and Patrick Poirier are among the few couples, in the recent history of art, whose works have categorically disavowed the idea of the artist as a genius, and this is due to the fact they work together and use a conjoint signature. The process of creation reveals itself in a new light; it is a field of exchange and negotiation, which, outside all specializations, takes place in the reality of life: “We do not separate our activities from our lives, and were never going to treat art as a profession”3 – the artists say in an interview with Sylvia Couderc. In this example, one can clearly see the difference between the book by artists and the practice of bibliophiles, especially in its French release, in which the book becomes a meeting place for a painter and a poet, a “dialogue” of two narcissistic egos4.

In the case of the book by artists, dialogue serves a joint project, so Anne and Patrick Poirier replace the artist’s narcissistic “I” with a united “we”, that becomes ​​the subject of their art. In addition, the relationship between words and images has nothing to do here with bibliophile practice. Words and images in their work mutually excite and intensify 2 The book Domus Aurea. Archéologie-fiction, whose title on the main page converts into Domus Aurea. Fascination des ruines, was published in March 1977 by Presses de la Connaissance in Paris (144 pages, 9 black-and-white illustrations, 4 in bichromy). A few months after this release, the method of work applied in Domus Aurea was disclosed in Domus Aurea. Fascination des ruines II, published by Maison de la culture in Rennes, 5th April – 3rd May 1977 (24 unnumbered pages, 8 black-and-white illustrations), where the text from 1975 cited above is printed.

3 The interview with Sylvia Couderc, op. cit., p. 83.

4 Yves Peyré writes about the bibliophile books as follows: “one is burning with a desire to engage in this primary yearning, because of which two people, a poet and an artist, with the entire consciousness have decided to permanently materialize the strength of this appeal”, Peinture et poésie, le dialogue par le livre, Paris, 2001, p. 30.

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each other (“a word that brings to life an idea, which creates an image”), but the aim of this activation, both intellectual and sensual, in which Kant indeed saw the source of specifically aesthetic pleasure, is not the “dialogue” of two “eminent personalities”, but the studies on memorising and forgetting that bind the past, present, and future together, in a word: research on the meaning of History.

“We are going to write a book that should be printed and presented” – highlight the artists – together with a spatial illustration of the peregrination around the ruins of Nero’s “golden palace”. The choice of book for the work on memory draws attention to the specific status of scripture emerging in the context of the visual arts. If the book is the ideal medium for a simultaneous presentation of text and image, then the art gallery and exhibitions presented there are not – as such – so well-adjusted for the reading of the text, which requires a peculiar organization constructed around the book. This difficulty could be easily traced in conceptual art. Short texts, such as the poetic formulas of Robert Barry or language equivalents of Lawrence Weiner’s works, can sometimes acquire expressiveness due to their presentation in the gallery. But the texts which are longer and more difficult to read, such as the early works of the Art & Language group, and even the purely informational texts by Hans Haacke accompanying the photographic documents, are not suitable for reading in the gallery. Visitors view rather than read them, as though the text has become an image, as though being exhibited in a large format has focused the attention on its form, while the reading should transcend the form in order to get to the meaning.

In order to understand this phenomenon, we should perhaps consider the social codes and types of behaviour triggered in such places and contexts as the art gallery on the one hand, and the library on the other. But, in the case of Anne and Patrick Poirier the adoption of the book has been imposed by the very nature of their work. The texts written by them are actually intended for reading, and their function is to clarify the “sensual realisation”; whereas the art forms are essentially designed to be viewed, and their function is to bestow the writing with a tangible content. That is why they so often use the form of book. Évelyne Toussaint gives a list of nine publications5, and Domus Aurea. Fascination des ruines II, and two new publications of Éditions Incertain Sens should be added there.

Les Réalités incompatibles, Copenhagen, Martin Berg and Daner Galleriet, 1974; Les Paysages révolus. Notes et croquis de voyage.

Sélinunte, 1974, Paris, Galerie Sonnabend, 1975; Évelyne Toussaint, op. cit., p. 87.

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Domus Aurea. Fascination des ruines, Paris, Presses de la Connaissance, 1977; Domus Aurea. Fascination des ruines II, Rennes, Maison de la culture, 1977; 140 Notes around Utopia, Paris, Galerie Sonnabend, 1979; Memoria Mundi, Rome, Galleria Valentina Moncada, 1990; Anima Mundi. Lettres, Montréal, Galerie Samuel Lallouz, 1991; Mnémosyne. IVe campagne de fouilles. Fragments, Paris, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, 1992; Mnémosyne. Ve campagne de fouilles. Fragments, Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, 1993; Ruines sur ruines, Caen, Regard, 1994; Dangerzone, Rennes, Éditions Incertain Sens, 2004; Petit guide. Exotica, Rennes, Éditions Incertain Sens, 2008.

Art, science, meaning of history The transition from an installation to the book by artists seems to be particularly significant in the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier; it could be traced using the example of the Petit guide. Exotica. When, in 2000, a maquette of this poetic reconstruction of a city in ruins was exhibited at the 5th Biennial of Contemporary Art in Lyon, the status of the form which faced the audience was already predetermined. The recipient was not placed in a situation where he would have to cast doubt on the meaning and status of the items presented in the museum, namely the work of art intended for contemplation. But the book and, in particular, the artist’s book, does not permit the resolution of questions about its meaning and status of its content easily; and without having its place clearly defined by artistic tradition, it leaves the viewer–reader with incomparably greater freedom of interpretation, allowing all possible plays upon meanings and their ambiguity. In fact, published as the book by the artist entitled Petit guide. Exotica, the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier retains some ambivalence associated with the form of a tourist guide that by means of printed and spoken word (registered on the CD belonging to the book) leads the reader–tourist through the spots of the archaeological site images. The text is maintained in the poetics of objectiveness and persuasion. It would be no surprise, while searching in the library, to find Petit guide. Exotica on a shelf with tourist guides; just as, for example, coming across the book

by William T. Endicott about mountain canoeing when looking for the Dangerzone.

Petit guide. Exotica represents well our own civilization – or at least a city that possesses all its distinguishing marks – as fallen into decay, and then preserved as cultural heritage and visited,

just as we, people of the West, are visiting the monuments of already perished civilizations. During reflection on the condition of the world today, Anne and Patrick Poirier introduced there a perspective of the “bygone future”. City of Exotica experienced its peak in the mid-twenty-first century, and then underwent an eclipse due to a variety of external threats, in particular environmental ones, such as a lack of water, which turned out to be calamitous for the city. So, is it subsequently a book from the science fiction category? The other interpretative hypotheses seem to be more interesting, for example, one that in this operation of imagination discerns a reflection on the meaning of the modern world, a reflection that takes into account its fragility, weakness, vulnerability, and finally its transience. Such a reflection on the Western world began in the early days of the twentieth century, at the time when Karl Jaspers issued Psychology of Worldviews, Martin Heidegger – Being and Time, and Oswald Spengler – The decline of the West, etc. Jaspers encouraged the radical rethinking of history, starting with the “borderline situations” such as the twilight of humanity, the collapse of culture, and even all cultures. Heidegger wondered about the historicity of man, as a finite being, which should recognize himself in the perspective of his own death. Spengler compared civilizations to living organisms, whose fate is atrophy; he evaluated that the West has reached the final stage of its development and that its decline would manifest itself as merely technological and political expansion.

Today, however, the meaning of “bygone future” has changed; scientists are warning against the dangers of uncontrolled economic development, the heads of governments elaborate strategies for economic, military and cultural conquest, and writers invent technological utopias (improving of the brain performance, the unlimited extending of the life of individuals, destroying enemies with the help of invisible weapons, etc.). The “bygone future” assumed solely a form of science fiction, whilst the fragility and transience of culture have been expelled from the consciousness of Western man to an extent not known before. The voices which remind us about them, as Anne and Patrick Poirier do, are obscured by the noise of fireworks celebrating the ultimate denouement of conquering the world by the overweening western culture.

In fact, the impotence of Western culture against the time of history, as well as the work on memory attempting to remedy this impotence, are the recurring motifs of Anne and Patrick Poirier’s art.

It is true that philosophers, scientists or historians also embrace the services of imagination in their research, and that it happens on different

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levels. For isn’t the comparison of civilization to the plant a figment of poetic imagination? To come up with a world in which a piece of flint, found by archaeologists, whose form suggests that it could serve a vague goal, becomes a tool invented and manufactured by man, serving some practical purpose – isn’t it a task for a fantasizing imagination? The saturation of Middle East archaeology with the spirit of colonialism, which invented the key concept of Mesopotamia as the cradle of humanity (i.e. Europe!) – isn’t it selfish poetry or a malevolent fiction, namely just an ideology? But when the historians, aiming to establish the historical truth, are wondering how this or that historical event happened, and how to define the conditions that led to it, the attitude of Anne and Patrick Poirier seems to be more adjacent to the philosophers of the early twentieth century, who have pondered whether historical truth itself is possible and what its meaning is. Does not the very epistemological attitude deform the historical truth and meaning of the scientific studies on history, the attitude that does not take into account the fugitive nature of history? In this manner, one could define the tension between art and science present in the works, which since the seventies have been conducted by Anne and Patrick Poirier in the territory, which they themselves have described as “pseudo-scientific”.

Although not without surprise, one must conclude that the artistic intuitions manifesting themselves in the seventies in the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier corresponded to the new scientific awareness in the humanities, which began to emerge at that time in the English-speaking world. Especially because of philosophers who – like Arthur C. Danto, W.B. Gallie or Louis O. Mink – have noticed that the historical narrative – a story – is primarily a literary genre, and only secondarily is burdened with epistemological function, becoming a form in which history reveals itself. Epistemology has finally understood that historical knowledge, having been given a literary form, becomes the subject of aesthetic elaboration, and that aesthetic categories are thus a priori forms of learning history6. We must therefore “nuance” the proposed above prefatory description of the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier, where it was presented as m i m i c k i n g the forms of archaeological reconstruction. A paradoxical inversion of the art and science relationship takes place there, for aren’t the artists working rather on a territory which science has appropriated in some way, without 6 See for example David Carr, Épistémologie et ontologie du récit, in: Paul Ricoeur. Les métamorphoses de la raison herméneutique, Paris 1991, pp. 205-214. However, similar insights can be traced earlier, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the oeuvre of Benedetto Croce.

Anne and Patrick Poirier, ‘Exotica’, 2008. Photo: Archives of Poiriers

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even really realizing this, and within which science itself imitates art somehow? Both in art and science, if the reality appears, it is not a neutral and entirely transparent, additionally appearing in some miraculous way, “reflection”, but it is painstakingly constructed in the process of presentation, which is probably the most ancient of artistic prerogatives and involves a whole range of measures ministering the formal development of data, such as literary devices, the whole range of rhetorical effects, not to mention the role of the imagination in the production of fiction. However, while the research effort consists of creating a fiction that would give the best account of already non-existent historical reality, awareness of the aesthetic nature of the historical narrative merely allows a critical look at the meaning which history attributes to the story of past times. Nevertheless, do we not find the insufficiency of imagination involved in the historical process, since history completely ignores the fragility and brevity of culture, and the blistering pace at which the past times are sinking into oblivion? This is one of the fundamental questions relevant to the establishing of historical meaning in the study on history and, as we have seen, one of the questions addressing the arduous, and the constantly embarked upon, work of Anne and Patrick Poirier on memory. Of course, contemporary historians are more than ever attentive to these new, critical aspects of the epistemology of the humanities, but the historians of books and libraries may have a greater sensitivity to the precariousness of memory and culture, because, even today, entire civilizations vanish from the face of the earth, along with libraries, which are still burning. In the book Livres en feu. Histoire de la destruction sans fin des bibliothèques, Lucien X. Polastron writes: “The plundering of Baghdad and Mosul museums in April 2003, under the ingratiating, to say the least, supervision of U.S. Marines, brought about the loss of thousands of the clay books, including the Library of Sippar, only slightly less ancient than that of Ashurbanipal, and discovered in 1986, such a short time ago that only two dozen of its eight hundred tablets had been analyzed, translated, and published [...]. The toppling of the country’s regime authorized any kind of misappropriation and destruction: the ten thousand archaeological sites in Iraq were transformed into «self-service» establishments, Nippur and the Temple of Enil, and even Isin were devastated within a month. Thus was the sacking of Iraq.”7 “It took scarcely five days to confirm everyone’s worst fears: vanished from Mosul and Baghdad were the physical elements Lucien X. Polastron, Livres en feu. Histoire de la destruction sans fin des bibliothèques, Paris, 2004, p. 275.

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of the texts – both Assyrian tablets and Ottoman manuscripts – and the memories of an entire civilization.” 8 In Domus Aurea, Anne and Patrick Poirier described the fire of the Great Library. “The charred maquette of the Great Library was found in the ashes, an eye could ramble on its nooks, and it connoted the brain removed from the skull, whose meanders could be walked by. The brain crippled, with stigma of anomy and amnesia. / Careful excavation allowed the reconstruction of few features out of the countless halls of the Great Library.”9 Domus Aurea enumerates eleven of the seventy-two... When the traces of material memory are disappearing, a violence of discourse goes wild in the ensuing void. For history is not only knowledge, but also memory, and between these two poles the drama of using history by modern society is taking place, the drama, which has already been indicated by Nietzsche10: When, on the one hand, more accurate knowledge of the past is being constructed, it is, on the other one, followed by the manipulation of historical memory. Because knowledge is constructed during the transition from the material evidence to the discourse. Now, Anne and Patrick Poirier are cultivating the memory of history, positioning themselves precisely in the space between the image and the discourse, between the silent trace and the articulated knowledge. They try to capture the tacit language of debris and ruins (imprints, castings, trails, relics, fragments, etc.), but never submit it to the exclusive reign of discourse. Their artistic work explores precisely this pre-discursive realm, where forms seem to reveal their original sense, and therefore penetrates the very sources of meaning, penetrates to the places where the reading of documents and the interpretation of material traces begins. The subtlety of the method applied by Anne and Patrick Poirier is founded indeed on choosing this crucial position for approaching the issues of meaning, position inscribed in the field stretching between learning and memorising, between the historical narrative and the historical existence, between the possibility and the reality, between aesthetics and epistemology, between beauty and truth... “In their case – Lóránd Hegyi wrote in 1994 – it is about the reverse utopia: in the place of utopia projected for the future, the artists are trying to design their utopian ideas and poetic-metaphorical hypothesis aback, into the past, and are attempting to examine inside this field of forces – extending between Ibidem, p. 278.

Domus Aurea, op. cit., p. 31.

10 Friedrich Nietzsche, Rozprawa druga. Pożyteczność i szkodliwość historii dla życia [Part II On the Use and Abuse of History for Life], in: Niewczesne rozważania [Untimely Meditations / Thoughts out of Season], translation of Leopold Staff, Warszawa-Kraków, 1912, pp. 95-199.

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«primary matter» of history and archaeology on the one hand, and the effects of sovereign artistic imagination on the other – the foundations of our systems of values.” 11 The series of works entitled Dangerzone, where the book with the same title published ten years after by Éditions Incertain Sens also belongs, seems, however, to get liberated from the rule of designing the poetic reconstructions of cultures into the p a s t . The video films included in this book (the Night, the Suburb: Night, the Nightmare) bring images of the twilight of a self-annihilating technological world, which makes the body a target and a merchandise item (the Amnésie, the Supervising camera, the XXI Century, the Dangerzone). These titles do not imply as much the ruins of the past as today’s or tomorrow’s ashes. For whilst since the eighteenth century, the ruins pictured by painters or constructed by architects remained at the service of imagination, and allowed it to elude towards the distant and idealised past, there are plenty of elements in films by Anne and Patrick Poirier, which refer to the destructive aspects of currentness: “Hello Mister Bush. The planet is choking”, “Save what can be saved”. Is it therefore a negative utopia or a catastrophic utopia? Reading these works with the aid of a possibility category seems to be a lot more interesting.

Possible, actual But admittedly, as it is assumed from the times of Aristotle, science in the strict sense cannot be about that what is merely possible, but only about that what actually exists. “Usually we gain knowledge about things already existing. It very rarely or even never happens that knowledge arises simultaneously to its object.”12 Therefore, for a long time it was believed that science deals with reality and, meanwhile, art deals with imagined possibilities, which are unrealistic. Now, this ancient concept did not hold good when it faced the scientific revolutions of the twentieth century.

Since the famous publications by Gaston Bachelard and Georges Canguilhem, there has been no way to defend this type of belief. It became obvious that a scientist also imagines and constructs possible worlds, even though they are not the culmination of his work yet; because a scientist is trying to bind the possible with the real, using for this purpose the material traces and the remains of the past, assuming that they belong to this reconstructed,

possible world. However, it is known today that these attempts are often cursed with chance, and the resulting knowledge has only a hypothetical value. While Bachelard said about art that due to dreams and imagination it prepares the encounter of the individual with reality, Canguilhem argued for his part that art formulates hypotheses about life.

So today, one cannot claim that science is interested only in reality, and art is drifting away from it in the realm of imagination and possibilities created by it.

One might even suggest that while science is the art of matching possibilities with reality, the art of Anne and Patrick Poirier is the search for capabilities hidden within the reality itself. The stake of this confrontation with the possible as the very component of reality is enormous. The work of Anne and Patrick Poirier reveals its consequences as aesthetic (the rhetoric of a museum as a form of collective memory), scientific (the aesthetic elaboration of historical knowledge), philosophical (the issue of meaning and truth in history), and finally political, since raising the question of possible as one of the components of reality is the precondition for political freedom. Reading the art of Anne and Patrick Poirier in this sense allows the understanding that history continually evades what it used to be, what it is believed to be, and what it would like to be. Their art is not an alternative to science, but there is legible pronounced opposition against the stubborn determinism of science, and against the reductionist realism of politics.

The cultivation of memory is not a cult, but an expression of love. In the work of Anne and Patrick Poirier on memory, a new element has recently appeared, certifying the existential rooting of their artistic experiences. The subject of the realisation entitled L’Âme du voyageur endormi [The soul of a sleeping wanderer] is the memory of a deceased young man, someone very close. There is no issue – cannot be – about a possible, but only about the culture of memory. When memory is left untilled, it shrivels as poppies do. In the community, oblivion means giving up the hope that the world could be different from how it is; because memory teaches us in the best way that a possible is possible, since the world was not always as it is today. Without the culture of memory regarded as an individual act, one could not talk about collective memory. Love is fidelity to memory.

11 Lóránd Hegyi, L’imitation de la reconstruction. Réflexions sur l’attitude esthétique d’Anne et Patrick Poirier, in: Anne et Patrick Poirier, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1994, p. 13.

12 Arystoteles, Kategorie [Categories], 7b24, in: Dzieła wszystkie [Corpus Aristotelicum], volume I, translation of Kazimierz Leśniak, Warszawa, 1990, p. 46.

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THE GREAT MINIATURISATION1 Agnieszka Gryska

In a little time I felt something alive moving on my left leg, which advancing gently forward over my breast, came almost up to my chin; when, bending my eyes downwards as much as I could, I perceived it to be a human creature not six inches high, with a bow and arrow in his hands, and a quiver at his back. In the meantime, I felt at least forty more of the same kind following the first. I was in the utmost astonishment, and roared so loud, that they all ran back in fright; and some of them, as I was afterwards told, were hurt with the falls they got by leaping from my sides upon the ground. However, they soon returned…

(Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels)1 The scaled-down representation of fragments of the space surrounding us has served cognitive functions since the first trials undertaken in ancient times.

Minimisation allows an accurate overview from different perspectives, an exploration of a structure and each of its components, and even a simulation of changes of the represented subject, generally impossible to be grasped as a whole.

Putting a maquette or a map to the display also renders the actual object, which often eludes the abilities of perception, itself more trivial in the minds of onlookers – it becomes the knowledge subject, provided with a distance. If the elaboration of a maquette, for example, an architectural one, increasingly being replaced by an electronic visualization, precedes the creation of the real object in the aimed scale, it serves as a test object, the spatial simulation that allows the detection of possible errors, and the implementation of necessary adjustments already during this elaboration. Jerzy Kosałka in his works often uses this very feature of a maquette arranging zoomedout situations, which are potentially possible, although shown in a grotesque manner, situations grown out of literally understood fears of society, nurtured by populist slogans of politicians. There is a direct answer to the question: what would happen if the Germans would come in again – the exact reproduction of Silesian monuments, wellknown by the audience, surrounded by German soldiers. And there is no way for “the Germans” to be unrecognised – they are dressed in Wehrmacht uniforms of the World War II period.

The dominant item of the first maquette in the series Niemcy już przyszli – Dekonstrukcja [The Germans have already come – Deconstruction] (the first version 1 Some of the topics approached in the article were examined by the author in the text Kosałka w krainie Lilliputów, which deals more broadly with this artist’s oeuvre, and was published in the exhibition catalogue Jerzy Kosałka po raz pierwszy w Poznaniu, Poznań, 2009, pp. 3-6.

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from 2003) is the model of a Wrocław spire made to a 1:35 scale. In order to appreciate the fidelity of the copy and the great care for details, the viewer should get closer and lean to be able to see miniature rivets, joints or an orange inscription painted supposedly by the vandals on the basis of the spire model, and to notice the variety of poses and gestures of the figures of German soldiers.

Divided into small groups around the spire support, they are disputing, climbing the ladder, installing chains hooked to the tank shell, or trying to loosen, with the aid of surreally rescaled wrenches bearing the flashy Lidl company logo [sic], giant screws that secure the mast support. Among them, there is a small group unaware of the importance of the motto scribbled on one of the spire legs (which in fact has never appeared there): “Wanda dobrze zrobiła, że się utopiła” [“Wanda did well to drown herself”], posing for a photograph, maybe the last one before the structure will be knocked down.

Street. The miniature German soldiers are again presented as bustling about, climbing ladders and mounting chains, hooking them up to a tank standing by, once more posing for the last souvenir photograph.

This time, however, it is not about a total dismantling. For a group of officers on the side looks at the plaque placed on an easel. To understand the undertone of this work, the viewer has to look over their heads – at the archival photograph of the Kaiser Wilhelm I statue, which until 1945 was situated in today’s location of the monument to the first Polish king. The statues of both rulers portrayed as riders belong indeed to a certain type of sculptural form – the equestrian monument.

Therefore maybe instead of reconstructing the figure which was destroyed in 1945, it would be sufficient to change some of the details only in order to have Bolesław I the Brave converted into Kaiser Wilhelm I?

From the same series originates Rekonstrukcja [Reconstruction] (2008), also seated in Wrocław scenery. Here the action unfolds around the model of another monument, the statue of Bolesław I the Brave, which was built six years ago on Świdnicka

Scenes depicted in the maquettes strike with their absurdity, but also with realism in the capturing of alternative minute versions of the slices of history.

But weren’t the actual circumstances of erecting both of these two monuments just as ridiculous?

Jerzy Kosałka, ‘The Breakfast’ from the series: ‘The Germans have already come’, 2011. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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Jerzy Kosałka, ‘The Breakfast’ from the series: The ‘Germans have already come’, 2011, detail. Photo: courtesy of the artist

After all, the towering spire was designed in 1948 to celebrate the Regained Territories Exhibition.

But, more than demonstrating the capabilities of Polish engineering, it was supposed to surpass the irritating – literally – symbol of the German art of construction, Centennial Hall. In turn, the memorial of Bolesław I the Brave – the contemporary monument, aroused controversy, both because of its archaic form, and of the content of the inscription on the pedestal, praising in three languages alleged efforts of the Polish king, made together with the pope and the German emperor, to unite Europe. The extensive socio-historical context, accompanying Rekonstrukcja [Reconstruction] provokes reflection on the community and the repeatability of procedures associated with historical change: regardless of the faction that wins, adaptation of the annexed space begins with the destruction of overriding symbols of the bygone power and replacing them with the proper ones, which become a base for the identity of citizens to be built on.

In the third work of the series – with the title Śniadanie [The Breakfast], a scene with the participation of German soldiers was transferred from Lower to Upper Silesia – and located in the

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surroundings of the Silesian Insurgents Monument in Katowice. However, in this case, the Germans have not been portrayed during the action of dismantling the monument, but in a moment of rest – while they are warming themselves up by the flames of the remembrance torch, between sculptural wings, one of them is frying a sausage impaled on a stick over the fire, another one holds a pan with scrambled eggs over it, yet another one lures a cat that happened to be around with a titbit, the next one is observing the countryside through binoculars. So, it’s simply a military genre scene. Is it really that the reminiscence of the three Silesian Uprisings, which were fought in order to detach a part of Upper Silesia from the Weimar Republic for the benefit of Poland, became so blurred in the memory of Katowice’s citizens that the monument commemorating them has turned out to be a lifeless symbol? Or is it a rather sarcastic remark on the contemporary tendency prevailing in Silesia to efface the sense of a national affiliation with any of the states?

The motto Niemcy już przyszli [The Germans have already come] was most accurately embodied by the artist himself, who at the same time has proved

his detachment from the arts – expecting the same from the audience. The work Niemcy są już wszędzie [The Germans are already everywhere] (2004), juxtaposed with the works depicted above, takes even the characteristic of an auto-pastiche.

In the corner of one of the BWA Gallery exhibition halls in Wrocław, an ordinary aluminium ladder was placed by the artist. It looked perhaps more like a piece of forgotten equipment, not removed after installation of the exhibition, than an element of artistic design. Nevertheless, every now and then one of the visitors decided to climb up its rungs, perhaps intrigued by the plaque with the title hanging on the wall. At the highest level, while raising their eyes up, there was only a security camera lens, with an attached figure of a sizeable (for this species) cockroach in a German helmet. Of course, the insect was not a real one (as opposed to the camera, which constitutes part of the gallery’s monitoring system), but before the spectator realized this, and picked up the situation’s comicality, the camera had already recorded the expression on his face in the moment of contact with the “German cockroach” and displayed it on one of the monitors located in the gallery’s gatehouse.

Kosałka genially lampoons the persecutory delusion – the only “Germans” who are already everywhere are Blatellae germanicae (Latin) – the most ordinary cockroaches. This species of insect has served the artist not only as a tool to ridicule historically rooted phobias but also to parody the work Ceiling Painting (Yes Painting) (1966) by Yoko Ono.

Jerzy Kosałka, ‘Chłopaki, mam go! [Got him, guys!]’, the object, 2001.

Photo: courtesy of the artist

The obvious conclusion resulting from a contact with miniature simulations presenting the fulfilment of xenophobic fears in Jerzy Kosałka’s rendition is ironic. THESE “Germans”, whose coming in is still dreaded by many, are no longer present. Naturally, this is not the only reflection that flows from experiencing this set of works by the artist. For Kosałka dispatches the viewer on a journey, just like Jonathan Swift did with the sailor Gulliver – to a land similar to his own country, but a miniature one, which because of that seems more facetious and grotesque in struggling with its absurd problems.

However, it’s just a difference of scale, since in the prose of Swift, as we know, the kingdom of Lilliput turned out to be the literary equivalent of eighteenth-century England. Also, our contemporary reality is repeatedly gaining on the most absurd artistic confabulations.

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IS ART A GAME? Andrew Mazursky

There are two aspects of combining playing with art. The first one involves use by the artists of the theme of children’s playing and games. The second one can be reduced to the question – “Is art a game?” or “What do they have in common?”.

The theme of children’s games has often re-emerged in the arts. However, each time it had a different nature and justification. We could attempt here a brief analysis of the history of toys and games on a background of contemporary art and its roots. The symbolists, and later the surrealists, while searching for subconscious reasons of human behaviour, have returned – as Freud in psychotherapy – to childhood.

This introspection and stepping back in time were of crucial importance for many artists seeking the truth about our lives. The world of children became for them a miniature and symbolic equivalent of the reality of adults. In the games of children or objects designed to be played with, one could see our fears, phobias and anxieties about the life of adults. Are the images of Tadeusz Makowski and Witold Wojtkiewicz a great parable of our existence?

The more extreme attitude of Hans Bellmer shows the, enchanted in impotence, world of deformed puppets-dummies, as if waiting for the apocalypse.

This reaching directly to the subject matter of games of little girls and of sexual deviants is an anticipation of contemporary art – a prevision of artistic

Maurizio Cattelan, ‘Charlie (self-portrait)’, the remote controlled tricycle with a doll, 2003. The 50th Venice Biennale. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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Zbigniew Libera, ‘Lego. Concentration Camp’, the box of bricks, 1996. The ‘After the Wall’ exhibition, Berlin, 2000. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

accomplishments of others, subsequent artists, in whose creation the theme of children’s toys gains its place. Although, in the case of such artists as Jasper Johns, Józef Szajna, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Władysław Hasior, this transgression of an object has always quite a different artistic justification, it serves the same effect – a message dealing with our tragic destiny. The avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century, looking for an alternative to the ubiquitous academicism and traditional art, became interested in the specifics of children’s creativity.

Paul Klee or Joan Miró, and later Jean Dubuffet, created whole epopoeias with the aid of children’s picture stylistics, presenting from a distance – with a little bit of humour and a little bit of sarcasm – the world of adults. But in post-modernism, the motives discussed above have changed their character. With Jeff Koons, playing gets an autonomous nature – in his work it begins to exist for its own sake. It’s a game with the audience revealing itself on several levels of perception, and at the same time it’s the artist’s strategy towards reality. The two aspects mentioned at the beginning: the theme of playing in art and art as a game, are here merged into one.

But the question is: does art as a creative human activity not have something to do with playing or a game? Maybe artists are big kids, and art is a game for adults? There are a lot of similarities between art and playing. Art demonstrates a significant semblance to a game – it is selfless. Participation in

both could be rewarded, but it is a symbolic profit and the reward, in another way than in reality, is not meant to serve survival in a world of jeopardies and the struggle for existence.

Similarly to a game, art is an imitation, the equivalent of reality. It’s a reflection of the world in the mirror of our consciousness, full of fears and cultural restrictions. One of the particular features of a game is to have specific rules. After all: “Every game has its rules”. They determine what holds in the temporary world circumscribed by playing. The rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt. Paul Valéry once in passing gave expression to a very cogent thought when he said: «No scepticism is possible where the rules of a game are concerned, for the principle underlying them is an unshakable truth…».

Indeed, as soon as the rules are transgressed the whole play-world collapses. The game is over”1.

On the other hand, the world of children’s games and toys might be the last territory where the artist, taking vengeance over his fate of romantic apostate, has the opportunity to reign easy and without any scruples change the course of the established “history” of the game. He can unreservedly trespass the existing order of a paradise lost, so willingly visited by us, adults in dreams and just the art itself. Maybe that’s why Zbigniew Libera so willingly employs this strategy in his works. Matching our Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1949, p. 11.

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idyllic and safe world of childhood with the cruelty of reality is of, indeed, quite a rebellious nature.

What are the works of Annette Messager, in which our favourite toy-pets during infancy are copulating?

These are the threats and fears of adults covered with the stuff of plush teddy bears and rag dolls.

A similar strategy is used by other artists. The seriousness of recent history and phobias related to the Polish-German conflicts, so much awakened in the regained territories, were squeezed by Jerzy Kosałka into scenes looking like the games boys play, in arranging wars with miniature soldiers.

A distinct nature, unlike those productions full of humour, characterises the miniature scenes of war atrocities by the brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, which are grim in their expression. For these artists have just reached to the “heart of darkness” in the world of toys, showing the apocalyptic visions of our existence. Paweł Łubowski uses documentary photographs, and the scenes of the execution captured in the frame turn into toys – plastic toysoldiers. An artist of the youngest generation, Izabela Chamczyk, in her evocative installations feeds dolls like Madonna, in order to restore them to life. There are whole stacks of them lying around, evoking the images of Auschwitz-Birkenau immediately after liberation. All these artists have chosen a similar strategy. “The combination of the cruel adult world with its idealization in the toy (toyful) image creates a specific game, based on psychological, often unconscious sensations. Antinomies, which are apparently coherent statements consisting of remote codes, create images stimulating the ambivalent emotional experiences”2.

Does the same mechanism of playing taken seriously also control our behaviour in the sacred rituals?

Game, art and worship definitely have a common ancient source in the cultural behaviour of our ancestors, as well as modern people. They are manipulated by similar motives and principles.

2 Joanna Pokorna-Pietras, ‘Artyści to duże dzieci’, Arteon, no. 6/2004, p. 30.

It is also the world of magical behaviour, where the imaginative senses help to understand the mysteries of existence. Just as playing directs the orientation of children in the complexities of adult life, the rites give a safe assessment of our past and future behaviour towards the force majeure – whether you call it God or society – deciding about our fate.

“The participants in the rite are convinced that the action actualizes and results in a definite beatification, bringing about an order of things higher than that in which they customarily live. All the same this «actualization by representation» still retains the formal characteristics of playing in every respect. It is played or performed within a play­ground that is literally «staked out», and played, moreover, as a feast, i.e. in mirth and freedom. A sacred space, a temporarily real world of its own, has been expressly hedged off for it. But with the end of the game, its effect is not lost”3. The spatio-temporal framework, an imitation of the real world embracing strict rules, the realisation of the community of activity and awareness, the symbolic connotation of certain behaviour and objects are common to art, playing, games and ritual. It’s a desire deeply rooted in our psyche to conjoin in a shared reflection and to understand the world. Indeed, the works of Katarzyna Kozyra: The Rite of Spring or the In Art Dreams Come True project executed by “Zachęta” National Gallery of Art; constitutes an illustration to this problem of similarities and rudiments of playing, worship and art.

There is yet another aspect of the issue concerning faith and behaviour in the real world, and the question: can playing be serious? To our way of thinking, playing is the direct opposite of seriousness. At first sight, this opposition seems as irreducible to other categories as the play-concept itself. Examined more closely, however, the contrast between playing and seriousness proves to be neither conclusive nor fixed. We can say: playing is non-seriousness. But, apart from the fact that this proposition tells us nothing about the positive qualities of playing, it is extraordinarily easy to refute. As soon as we proceed from «playing is nonseriousness» to «playing is not serious», the contrast leaves us in the lurch – for some playing can be very serious indeed. Moreover, we can immediately name several other fundamental categories that likewise come under the heading «non-seriousness» yet have no correspondence whatsoever with «playing».

Laughter, for instance, is in a sense the opposite of seriousness without being absolutely bound by playing. Children’s games, football and chess are played in profound seriousness; the players have not the slightest inclination to laugh”4.

Huizinga, op. cit., p. 14.

Ibid., pp. 5-6.

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Paweł Łubowski, ‘Plastic Soldiers’, plastic toy soldiers bought in a toy store, and specially made in their likeness figurines painted with a non-toxic paint, 1984. Photo: courtesy of the artist

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Jake and Dinos Chapman, ‘Hell’, the installation, 1999-2000, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2000. Photo: Olga Sienko © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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Jake and Dinos Chapman, ‘Hell’, the installation, 1999-2000, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2000. Photo: Olga Sienko © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

Is art a game for adults? The rituals associated with the arts are permanently violated. Once the place of artistic “sessions” was the space of specially designed galleries and museums. Today, the art scenes are the street, the media, even the whole world. But art is a system limited by rules. None of the artists would be included in this system, without initially being endorsed by critics, curators, and subsequently being invited into these “scorned” museums. For now, even the new medium of the Internet won’t help in the destruction of this system. There is still need for verification in the arts – establishing a hierarchy, and the Internet, as the most democratic medium, cannot guarantee that.

However, the Internet is already becoming a part of this old system called “Art”, as happened to the press and television, etc.

Art is always going to be an elitist domain. This is caused by two elements: one needs to have appropriate predispositions, and essentially, one should “sacrifice” for it – which still connects art (perhaps in a less visible way) with religion.

Exclusiveness and hierarchical structure are inherent in art. This is dictated by nothing more than a desire to succeed and a lack of space in the “Pantheon of Art” for all those willing to sit there.

In the work of Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, repeatedly referred to here, the author, while specifying the relationships of playing, treats the

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visual arts primarily as an opportunity to pursue the needs of rivalry. This motive is the most important for him, but it is probably the result of considering art as handicraft skills – manual ones.

Today this problem exists, but to a lesser extent.

By absorbing various types of media into art, such as photography, film, electronic technology, and the introduction of ready-made items – ready-mades – as objects or installations, the skill of hands has ceased to be so important. These tools have enabled the transition from craft to art, which no longer has to deal with the matter of the world – it becomes more the art of idea. But the problem of competition – so important for playing – has remained. The system which is art requires the pursuit of a strategy and the rules to be obeyed. Already at art schools, the more intelligent students identify the rules of the game. After graduation, one must take into account art criticism and the curatorial system of art galleries that will allow students to make a quick ascendance towards the heights of fame. One can also choose the way of scandal, as many artists have done, entering into the game with the media. There are different paths to the consciousness of society.

Hence, there are many strategies. So which one do we pick up? This is what that “Playing” is about.

Annette Messager, ‘Articules-Desarticules’, the installation, detail, 2002. The Documenta11 exhibition in Kassel. Photo: © Archives of the ‘ARTLUK’ quarterly

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THE MODEL OF A HOUSE – CAPTURING THE IDEA Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski

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A great deal has been said and written about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s achievements and so it’s difficult to find something that hasn’t yet been discovered, analysed and discussed at great length.

However, there was always little curiosity about the results of his experiments with form and his efforts to create house-of-cards-like structures using three-dimensional elements. When thinking of the influence that his way of using geometrical forms had on other architects, I am not talking about the Modernists’ philosophy – much co-devised by Mies himself – or its contexts, which are already soundly defined and documented. What I want to focus on is the architectural detail, the way it was designed and understood and, subsequently, the influence this way of thinking had on the set of skills applied at the drawing board for the generation of architects to come.

The Barcelona Pavilion designed by van der Rohe in 1929 was certainly the ultimate representation of modern architecture and its potential at the time.

It is also a representation of his highly individual approach to architecture. Shaping space with such ease and grace is something that many architects aspire to: the way light completes the form and its depth, simultaneously showing off the boundaries and openness, a moderate but still self-disciplined reign over this space which has little to do with the investors’ will imposed to serve their utilitarian purpose – the mock-up inside the room with a scale of 1:1, a model. Sure, you could complain that it’s not practical, that it’s not to be inhabited by humans, you could claim it’s not really architecture but a mere abstract monument, a homage to Minimalism if it wasn’t for some other residential developments by van der Rohe: for example, the block of flats in Weissenhof, Stuttgart (1927) or Villa Tugendhat in Brno (The Czech Republic) that he designed a couple of years later.

The Barcelona Pavilion we can see today is an exact reconstruction conducted in the mid-1980s since the original building was pulled down after the Exhibition. The concept and its execution clearly needed some time to pass in order to get the recognition it deserves. The flat roof rests upon the tall, slender beams of a cruciform cross-section.

The interior space can be described as free-flowing.

The glass walls emphasize the lightness of this development. Van der Rohe used stone sheets and inserted them between the roof and the floor (they are made from polished onyx and travertine), creating an illusion of sliding walls. It gives that impression anyway. The ‘free-flow’ plan is a concept that materializes here. The space flows freely among the screens. When looking at the plan, those screens make up an interesting, print-like image where the orthogonal lines of various lengths are arranged in a

free, non-strict manner. The division into subsequent rooms is marked by the suitable sections of screens in the place of walls and doors. There is also the smooth surface of the water pool with the layer of pebbles underneath it – yet another kind of texture.

The multi-family house in Stuttgart has fallen into the international trend and has a lot in common with other similar buildings (however, it is completely different from the developments by Oud, Le Corbusier or Scharoun). It was there that Mies van der Rohe applied the same kind of layout as he did later with the Barcelona Pavilion. He would employ this manner of arranging space where it is most challenging. The echoing motif is the ubiquitous screen – a sort of altar that instantly dominates the rest. Here, the black slates of onyx were replaced by exotic wood. In the places where doors are necessary, they are as tall as the wall they are featured in, which means there are no lintels, enhancing clear and simple divisions generated by large, undisturbed surfaces. And, thus, the space-shaping treatment by the manner of using screens is upheld. With Villa Tugendhat, van der Rohe has proven that this state-of-the-art building is something more than just a representation of the idea but is, in fact, suitable for normal, day-today living, a residence designed with precision and beautifully finished.

Twenty years later in 1949, Philip Johnson, the much celebrated architect and a true icon of Postmodernism, designed his house in New Canaan (US) using the minimalistic template developed by van der Rohe. He allocated most of the facilities underground while arranging the main day-room – the representative part - in the form of a simple,

glass pavilion surrounded by greenery. He also made a bow to van der Rohe by furnishing the place with furniture designed by the latter, for example, the famous armchairs, called Barcelona armchairs, designed especially for the mentioned pavilion.

Such a simple and austere design always appealed mainly to fellow architects, designers and art minded cognoscenti (frankly, this was always an issue and it still is). What has remained valid and relevant up to this day is the architectural proficiency and great intuition for interior design. Undeniably, those intentions have not always been clear for the casual visitor. Certainly, creating ambience with the ultimate architectural consciousness is of utmost importance. One idea definitely took the lead: to create designs with full consciousness of what architecture should and shouldn’t be – using colour, texture or finish to constitute certain impressions where a particular wall or segment seems to be made of solid, homogeneous material in order to distinguish such an element, and to make it stand out from the rest. The purpose was simply to establish particular tectonics and to enhance the building’s inner coherence, making it clear and legible for others. Accentuating the edges of blocks with different colours, textures or giving them a separate finish, which seems to be quite popular recently, is nothing more than a – somehow distorted, seen in reverse – continuation of van der Rohe’s legacy. So, when it comes to architectural detail, it involves either large, three-dimensional blocks of material exuding real or illusory heaviness or feather-weight constructions that seem to be made of thin sheets of paper. That’s how it’s done.

The Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe – the reconstruction. Photo: Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski

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The Barcelona Pavilion by Mies van der Rohe – the reconstruction. Photo: Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski

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BOÎTE-EN-VALISE: THE SHORT STORY OF THE ‘POLISH EPISODE’ Krystyna Piotrowska

It was 1980. The short and turbulent story of bringing Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp to Poland featured: Marcel Duchamp – the artist himself, Grzegorz Gauden – then chair of the SZSP (Socialist Association of Polish Students – translator’s note) cultural committee, Krystyna Piotrowska – an artist and the owner of ON Gallery in Poznań, monsieur Blaise – a cultural attaché to the French Embassy and officer of the French Intelligence, as later found out, and Stanislaw Zadora – an art critic and employee of Centre Pompidou in Paris.

When, at the end of the 1970s, Grzegorz Gauden was reading From Pop-art to Conceptualism by Ursula Czartoryska, he became extremely enticed by Marcel Duchamp’s works and swore to arrange his exhibition in Poland by the end of 1980. The professional circles quickly snubbed this idea as unrealistic, with Włodek Nowaczyk as one of those people. Funnily enough, he was the one who later supervised the exhibition, as well as being in charge of the catalogue edition and preparing a brief seminar to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.

As previously established, several works by Duchamp, including his Boîte-en-valise, were in the possession of Centre Pompidou. In March 1980, Grzegorz Gauden and Krystyna Piotrowska went to the French Embassy to pitch their project of bringing Duchamp to Poland. They were welcomed by monsieur Blaise who was only too happy to help and jumped at the opportunity to present himself in the flattering light of a genuine cultural attaché.

‘Poster’ advertising the exhibition in ON Gallery, 1980. © ON Gallery’s Archive.

Photo: © Succession Marcel Duchamp / Adagp, Paris

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Marcel Duchamp, ‘La boîte-en-valise’. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, © Succession Marcel Duchamp / Adagp, Paris

Since monsieur Blaise kindly took the appropriate steps and persuaded Centre Pompidou to give up their lease fee, which was then 40,000 francs, they offered to let the above-mentioned works of art for free. The only charges to the Polish side were to be the transportation and security costs, as well as reimbursement of the Centre’s employee who was to accompany the cargo and remain in Poland throughout the duration of the exhibition. This employee was Stanislaw Zadora.

In summer 1980, the strikes broke out; on 31 August at Gdańsk’s Dockyards the independent work union called “Solidarność” was established.

Everything was ready for the arrival of the precious cargo. Gauden travelled to Warsaw in a vehicle that was specially customized for the transportation of works of art from the airport. When Zadora arrived in Warsaw it appeared that one of the chests had vanished. No one at the airport knew where to find it. Zadora was livid and scared too, as it was his responsibility to make sure everything was safe. He insisted there were three boxes, as he was present at the time of loading back in Paris. He blamed the ‘Polish mess’ for the disappearance of the box.

It was on the brink of becoming an international scandal. A little later it was discovered that the French had decided to remove one of the boxes at the last moment, claiming they were not happy with the set-up. And so the unfortunate box arrived safely a couple of days later.

Finally, Boîte-en-valise reached Poznań. There was a grand preview in October 1980. For security reasons, the exhibition was presented not in On Gallery but in the BWA civic gallery where constant security and monitoring was simple to arrange. Ursula Czartoryska came with her students to celebrate the opening ceremony.

In Poland at the time, there was a “parade” of freedom – the spectacular attempt to gain independence from the communist regime.

“Solidarność” enjoyed massive support from society with the record breaking number of 10 million official members. Internal matters and politics were feverishly discussed and were top priority, but somehow Duchamp was stealing the show. There were people coming to see it from all over Poland.

Well, it was because monsieur Blaise hadn’t yet come up with the idea of taking the exhibition to Warsaw.

In December, it travelled to the capital city to be shown in Studio Gallery. A special employee of Centre Pompidou came from Paris to escort the load from Poznań to Warsaw together with Gauden.

When the engine of their truck started, the radio aired the news of John Lennon’s murder.

A year later, martial law was introduced in Poland.

As for monsieur Blaise, he was extradited from Poland when it was revealed he was also acting as a spy during his Polish episode.

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The Contemporary Art Centre in the Old Market Square in Poznań at the Miniatures Skansen in Pobiedziska. Photo: Joanna Tekla Woźniak’s archive

CoCA In… Review of Contemporary Art Centres and Museums quarterly PUBLISHER: Centre of Contemporary Art “Znaki Czasu” in Toruń ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland Editorial office address: ul. Wały gen. Sikorskiego 13, 87-100 Toruń, Poland tel.: 692 393 567, 795 141 678 e-mail: info@csw.torun.pl Editorial board: Malina Barcikowska, Mateusz Bieczyński Natalia Cieślak, Dobrila Denegri, Ewelina Jarosz (Issue Editor), Marta Kołacz, Jacek Kasprzycki, Anna Kompanowska, Piotr Lisowski, Paweł Łubowski (Editorin-Chief), Sławomir Marzec, Aleksandra Mosiołek, Marta Smolińska, Krzysztof Stanisławski, Jerzy Olek Graphic design: Max Skorwider (Art Director), Paweł Łubowski, Wojciech Kuberski Collaborators: Christine Coquillat (Paris), Magdalena Durda, Daria Kołacka (Basel), Roman Kubicki, Zuzanna Mannke (Essen), Anna Markowska, Olga Sienko (London), Tadeusz Sawa-Borysławski, Grzegorz Sztabiński, Miško Šuvaković (Belgrade) Translations: Monika Ujma, Hanna Piątkiewicz, Zofia Smith Proofreading: Zofia Smith, Paweł Falkowski Editorial board reserves the right to shorten articles and correspondence, and to give them titles. Unsolicited materials will not be returned. Editorial board is not responsible for the content of advertisements.

Advertisements and promotion: Aleksandra Mosiołek aleksandra.mosiolek@csw.torun.pl Subscription: e-mail: ksiegarnia@csw.torun.pl Printed by: ARTiS Poligrafia s.c. ul. Granitowa 7/9, 87-100 Toruń Partner: ISSN 2299-6893

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