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Introduction
individuality, even in the face of subordination. Traditions are passed by a murmur, a breath and with them, the spirit of struggle. The title of the exhibition refers equally to the method of resuscitation as the method of word-of-mouth, that which passes under the radar.
For Slavs and Tatars, resistance is never an exclusively political idea, but one rooted in tradition, embedded in religion and contingent upon languages. Across a range of sculptures, installations, audio works and publications in Mouth to Mouth, the artists evoke a spirit of infrapolitics–the resistance of whispers, utterances, and sayings. A will towards transformation, both metaphysical and intellectual, marks the group’s unique place in contemporary art — contrary to the dominant globalization trends, they suggest looking into the past, but not in order to return to a Modernist internationalism, nor to reactivate a historical nationalism. What they propose is a transnational syncretism — an exchange, a translation, a combination of parts of various cultures, a mutual exchange of hospitality.
Slavs and Tatars reinforce these strategies by transforming them through art. Creolization allows them to combine aspects of various cultures and traditions, while subversion lets them undermine the reigning clichés and stereotypes; they use humor to release repressed or smothered concepts. They also carry on a game with and work on translation, transcription and transliteration between languages and cultures. The Mouth to Mouth exhibition presents a selection of pieces from five series developed over ten years of Slavs and Tatars’ practice: Régions d'Être, The Faculty of Substitution, Friendship of Nations, Kidnapping Mountains, and Pickle Politics. In the spirit of subversion, however, they have mixed up the themes (instead of presenting the series separately), in order to begin a translation process between the works themselves, and thus, activate the works as platforms for discussion, participation, or contemplation, through which their significance changes. The exhibition features six paths.
Slavs and Tatars navigate the area between the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China. They probe the identities, beliefs, and languages of people who live where empires (the Ottoman, Russian, and Persian) and imperial interests (of Western states) and ideologies (communism, political Islam, capitalism) collide. In the histories of this area’s cultures there is a strength of resistance that persists even when navigating these overpowering influences. Its subjects have had various strategies for maintaining and morphing identities, reconsidering
Jarosław Lubiak 3
Word of Mouth The exhibition is introduced by three works in which the idea of the word-of-mouth message is key. Molla Nasreddin the antimodern (2012) depicts the legendary figure of the Sufi wise man in the form of a ride. He is the protagonist of tales that have circulated in the Balkans and the Near East since Medieval times. Slavs and Tatars have captured a popular image, depicting Molla riding backwards on a mule. The figure from oral history doubles as our relationship with the past ― we do not progress without knowing what came before us. The revival of oral traditions is one of the group’s strategies. Sometimes it takes the form of creolization, as in Solidarność Pająk (2010). In a nod to the Solidarity activities in the 1980s, the artists look to the laborious and trying work needed to make these decorations. Folk crafts become a model of persistence and duration for a political process also known for its slow-burn. In Study No. 5 this acquires the spectacular form of an upside-down Christmas tree ― a tribute to social subversion. Kitab Kebab (2013) ― books pierced through with a skewer used for ground-meat kebabs ― suggests that gaining knowledge need not be exclusively a cerebral process, but, like eating, it can consist of devouring content, an anxious digestion and appeasing of hunger. The idea of word-of-mouth communication takes on a twisted, secondary meaning here.
Molla Nasreddin ― the antimodern, from the Régions d’Être series, 2012 fibreglass, paint, steel, 157 x 165 x 88 cm
Kitab Kebab (Kapuscinski - Orbeliani), from the Régions d’Être series, 2012 books, kebab skewer, 50 x 50 x 50 cm
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Solidarność Pająk, Study 5, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2011 natural Christmas tree, fluo lights, various sizes
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In Praise of Syncretism
Eastern Christians. Alphabet Abdal (2015) uses Arabic, the holy language of Islam, to write “Jesus, son of Mary, He is love.”
Perhaps the most astonishing concept of all those put forward by Slavs and Tatars is juxtaposing Poland’s Solidarity movement with the Iranian Revolution, or the broader parallels between Iranian and Polish culture. Both are saturated with the spirit of resistance against hegemonic influences (which easily transforms into their own ambitions to exert influence), and in both, religion plays a key role. The artists translate into Persian Czesław Miłosz’s poem “You Who Wronged,” in a call for translation as linguistic hospitality. At the same time, Samizabt (2015) puts forward the instrumentalization of poetry as a tool for political struggle. This tactic could be useful, particularly when, after the Green Movement in 2009, many reformers in Iran and those in the Arab spring looked to Poland for its successful transition from communism to democracy. Solidarność Pająk join the Polish folk décor tradition with Persian craftsmanship. Identifying in the patience needed to create the “pająks” (or spiders) a parallel with the methodical, slow pace of Solidarity, Slavs and Tatars present the folk assemblages as a case study for Iran.
The artists embed their work within the blurred edges of empires and belief systems, Long live the syncretics highlights Hindu and Buddhist elements within the practice of Central Asian Islam: striped ribbons suggest votives but also the different sorts of fruits (white and black) borne by the tree. Similarly, a flag reads “In the name of God, for your freedom and ours,” in Persian, alongside the historical Polish and Russian, an accretion of interfaith dialogue as much as national cooperation
Suggesting the ricochet of syncretism, Slavs and Tatars remind us that Arabic is not only a sacred language of Islam but also of Near
Samizabt, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2015, MDF, plywood, cotton ikat, aluminium, sound system, 133 x 18 x 18 cm 6
In the Name of God, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2013 linen, cotton, paint, 112 x 108 cm
Hip to Be Square, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2010, EP record, screen-print on sleeve, marker, 30.5 cm x 30.5 cm 7
Alphabet Abdal, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2015 woolen yarn, 190 x 500 cm
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Solidarność Pająk Study 6, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2011 glass balls, wool, steel, velvet ribbon, pattern tape, fringe trim, thread 80 x 40 x 40 cm Courtesy of Jankilevitsch Collection / Foundaton Zwierciadło
Solidarność Pająk Study 7, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2011 mirror balls, wood prayer beads, steel, thread, 100 x 60 x 60 cm
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Solidarność Pająk Solidarność Pająk Study 8, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2011 wool, steel, plastic beads, cordon thread, 80 x 40 x 40 cm Courtesy of Nigin Beck
Long Live the Syncretics, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2012 steel, paint, silk ikat, 320 x 150 x 100 cm 11
The Politics of Recitation
Through mechanisms of intercultural exchange, reading becomes an oral act and the shift to contemporary art allows for a collective understanding of the act. These swings between culture and performativity also see the artists join pop culture with national art motifs, as in Hip to be Square (2010) in the previous room or The Wizard of öz Türkçe (2014).
The elaborate, sparkling Resist Resisting God (2009) acts as the patron of the following group of works. Slavs and Tatars use the tradition of the Iranian mirror mosaic (which, in turn, is a local variation on the geometric abstraction that arrived with Islam), as a call to disobey the monotheistic gods of prohibition. The gravity of this heresy is countered by the frivolity of the piece, and by the fact that the text is only visible from a certain point of view. The Iranian tradition of writing invocations to the family of the Prophet Muhammad extends to car windows during the month of Muharram (the holiday commemorating the death of the Shi’ite hero and martyr Husayn ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad). In Weeping Window (2010), Slavs and Tatars invoke another myth, that of Sarmatism, on the rear window of a Polish Fiat (its equivalent was the Paykan in Iran). The bawdy call of Khajda Khłopaki (roughly “Let’s go boys!) replaced the Polish “ch” with “kh” used for writing the hard guttural “h” that appears in languages such as Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Uyghur. As phoneme and grapheme, “kh” allows the artists a means to withstand uniformity, as articulated in their book Khhhhhhh. The point or line of resistance can appear in various places, sometimes in bodies – in this case, in the depths of the throat.
Transliteration and translation are key to Slavs and Tatars. AaaaaaahhhhZERI!!!! (2009) deals with the breaks in cultural continuity in Azerbaijan due to the politically motivated alphabet conversions from Arabic to Latin, Latin to Cyrillic, and then back again to the Latin alphabet. This theme resurfaces in the Old-Slavonic ligature Ѿ for the preposition ot, which means “from” or “out.” This preposition is crucial to the politics of reading out performed by the group not to mention the inflection verbs (like rooting out, backing out, sending out, giving out). Other Peoples’ Prepositions (2013), a steel and glass sculpture, combines the religious symbolism of a liturgical object with a fetishistic sign of anal pleasure. The denial of physical pleasure, in turn, is key to the story evoked by the lamps shaped like Uyghur melons in Fragrant Concubine (2012). The aromatic melons were a commodity on the Silk Road, sent by the Uyghurs as a tribute to the Chinese Emperors. The Emperor’s Court had abducted the Uyghur girl Khoja Iparhan, famed for her beauty and enticing fragrance, 12
also known as Xian Fe. She did not succumb to the Emperor’s desire, becoming a symbol Slavs and Tatars transform into the artistic allegory of the melon-lamps, representing the (spiritual and physical) resistance of a Muslim minority in light of an attempt by a majority (Han Chinese) to disenfranchise it. The policy of reading out can also take the form of paronomasia, as in the combinations based on phonic similarities in the title words of Dunjas, Donyas, Dinias (2012), drawn from Slavic, Arabic and Turkic languages. These inspired a visual figure that combines the Balkan projections onto a quince with that of a globe and a taxonomy of fruits such as the melon. Finally, the policy of reading out can be a challenge or a mark of identity ― as in Ogórek Trocki (2016) ― an attempt to rescue a lost species of cucumber cultivated by Karaites: an anti-Rabbinical sect of Judaism known for its emphasis on the Oral Torah over the written Talmud. The Hamdami video (2016) will serve as a wider platform for building a future based on what has been salvaged from or lost from the past.
Other Peoples’ Prepositions, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2013 glass, steel, LED lighting, 112 x 45 x 45 cm 13
Hamdami, 2016 video, 00:05:20
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Resist Resisting God, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2009 mirror, wood, 150 x 100 cm
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Weeping Window, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2012 rear windshield, acrylic paint, LED lamps, 120 x 45 x 10 cm Courtesy of Stephan Oehmen
Fragrant Concubine, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2012 hand-blown glass, light fixture, 18 x 27 cm each, in bunches of eight
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Dunjas, Donyas, Dinias, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2012 fiberglass, steel, 52 x 30 x 25 cm Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw 17
Admonishing the Sovereign
Slavs and Tatars have enhanced the Gavrilov method ― fragments of the Kutadgu Bilig are read in six languages at once ― including Polish, German, Arabic, Gaelic, and Spanish ― creating a transnational polyphony pitched at various sovereigns.
Spatially and semantically, Lektor (Speculum Linguarum) (2014) and Mystical Protest (2011) are the center point of the Mouth to Mouth exhibition ― the center around which shifts of meaning, rhetorical effects, and acts of reversal orbit. We might say that the entire exhibition serves to admonish the contemporary sovereign ― if he wants to work his way forward, he has to look back.
An ironic counterpoint to the advice for just governance is the Mystical Protest installation, with the English-language text: “It is of utmost importance that we repeat our mistakes as a reminder to future generations of the depths of our stupidity.” In its own greenish light, the aphorism in praise of folly might be read as an admonishment to ourselves, as sovereigns of our own subjectivities.
The admonishment also comes through a reversal of perspective. Slavs and Tatars draw from Kutadgu Bilig (The Wisdom of Royal Glory, or literally: “The Wisdom That Brings Happiness”), an eleventh-century Uyghur text that belonged to the popular Muslim (and European) genre of “mirrors for princes” ― advice literature for rulers. The fragments here contain aphorisms on the use of language: skill in this art can bring advantages, while abuse can bring ignominious failure. Lektor is inspired by a method of translating foreign-language films in communist countries and to this day in Poland and Russia. The “Gavrilov translation” involved overlapping a voice-over onto the original soundtrack, so that both languages are simultaneously audible. The reasons for this method were purely economic–a poor man’s version of dubbing–but it has inadvertently become a remarkable way of showing hospitality to a foreign language in native speech. 18
Mystical Protest, from the Friendship of Nations series, 2011 luminous paint on Muharram banner, fluorescent lights, 240 x 620 x 15 cm Courtesy of Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler
Lektor (speculum linguarum), from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2014 multi channel audio work, plexiglass, speakers, each 47 x 49 x 22 cm 19
Retrieved from Transliteration
spiritual and the sensual. Hearing or speaking alone can be sexually arousing. Erotic relations are also explored in the Love Letters series (2014). The eight carpets (of ten in total) present images that reinterpret illustrations by Vladimir Mayakovsky. According to Slavs and Tatars, the tongue can be an overwhelmingly lustful organ (No. 2), it can slip or lick its way through all barriers put before it. But this is only one of its cunning tricks. It is a love of letters that have shown resistance to empires’ attempts to subjugate them.
Slavs and Tatars seem to contradict an oft-repeated truth (or truism) that says that something always gets lost in translation. According to the group, translation is associated with a gift and hospitality, it is a creative process which brings more gain than loss. By this premise, they sift through the history of forced changes in alphabets, in which transliteration often occurrs at the expense of “marginal elements.” They decide to retrieve what is lost in transliteration or extract what is obscured by it.
When Bolsheviks Cyrillicized the languages of Muslims living within the nascent USSR (No. 1), many of the attempts failed to outlive the regime. Four letters depicting Persian-letters distinct from the Arabic script became, for some, a symbol of Iran’s independent and distinct identity in the Muslim world (No. 3). Certain letters fell out of use when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk of Turkey ordered the conversion of the Arabic alphabet to a Latin one. The translation of the word “ooops!” into the Greek “ωxxx!” (oh!) implies the sexual mishap as well as a kiss, in the original Turkish “kiss.” And also the attempt in 1932-50 to replace Arabic as the liturgical language with Turkish in the call to prayer (No. 6). The fate of nasal phonemes feature amongst the numerous conversions–from Arabic to Latin (in the Arabic “ ”ڭor velar “n”) or Latin to Cyrillic (such
The Russian Cyrillization of Polish was introduced in the Russian partition in the nineteenth century. Two Polish letters in particular were problematic: the “ą” and the “ę.” These nasals had disappeared from most other Slavic languages. The solution came via letters from the Old Slavonic language, Ѫѫ (big yus) and Ѧѧ (little yus): Naughty Nasals underline the affront of OrthodoxCyrillic on a Catholic-Latin identity. Slavs and Tatars have transformed the letters into furniture resembling portable confession booths. The act of confession involves the deepest intimacy and works on the libidinal function of speech. Its tools ― the mouth, teeth, tongue, throat, and ears as well ― are an erogenous zone bringing together the 20
as the Polish “ą”) (No. 7). Or how the Soviet Union used a policy of divide and conquer–ascribing different letters to the same sound–to prevent mutual legibility between Central Asia’s Muslims (No. 9). Finally, of how the Abkhazi letter “Ҧ” became an acronym for the Russian curse word пиздец [pizdyetz] (No. 10). All the Love Letters speak of the passions letters generate. Slavs and Tatars thus send so many missives to the resistance of languages against imperial appropriation. A center for resistance can be letters or phonemes that can not be converted to another alphabet. Cyril (2016) gathers testimonials of unsuccessful attempts to Latinize, Cyrilicize, or Arabicize, fricative consonants, and guttural dipthongs.
Swinging Septum, 2014 tilia wood, steel, 150 x 100 x 5 cm 21
Cyril, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2016 leather, UV print, aluminum, wood, Ă˜ 132 cm x 15 cm Courtesy of Three Star Books
Naughty Nasals, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2014 acer, wood veneer, blockboard, wheels, fabric, foam, dimensions variable 22
Love Letters (No. 1), from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2013, woolen yarn, 250 x 250 cm 23
Love Letters (from left: No. 6, No. 7, No. 10, No. 3), from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2013, woolen yarn, 250 x 250 cm 24
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Love Letters (from left: No. 2, No. 5, No. 9), from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2013, woolen yarn, 250 x 250 cm 26
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Reversal
and a variety of subtexts. It comes to a cacaphonic climax with Tranny Tease for Marcel (from 2009), made up of fifteen plastic vacuum-formed panels all of which treat the issue of transliteration: To Beer or Not to Beer inverts the low-brow humour, Holy Bukhara, To Mountain Minorities (the Georgian inscription, chven sakartvelos gaumarjos means “long live Georgia,” but by changing an “a” into a “u” in the word sakartvelos, we get sakurtvelos, resulting in “long live Kurdistan”); Mountains of Wit (by changing "e" to an "ы", the title of Griboyedov's play of satires about Moscovite society (Горе от ума or Woe from Wit) is re-situated in the Caucasus, where the author spent several years and married), Dig the Booty (the a transliteration of an aphorism from the Latin alphabet into Persian and Cyrillic, a tribute to the Azeri language, which changed its alphabets three times in the twentieth century); öööps! (the English word for "mishap" doubles as "a kiss" in Turkish, a nod to the excesses of the script conversions in Turkey); ωχχχ! (oh [okh], a Greek translation of the English “oops”), Jęzzers język (in praise of nasal vowels, characteristic of the Polish language, rare among the Slavic tongues), OdByt (identifies the Old Slavonic ligature, “Ѿ,” within the Polish word for “anus” [odbyt]); Dschihad (an amalgam of past participles in the words “jihad” and “Warsaw”), Made in Germany (a phonetic transcription of the title into the alphabet proposed by Enver Pasha, the last Ottoman Minister of Defense), The Alphabet
A mechanism of subversion, reversal is found throughout the work of Slavs and Tatars. In Triangulations (2011), we see most clearly how an elevated strategy is disrupted by the common or vernacular effect of dissidence. Each of the works in this group recalls a stone marker indicating a fork in the road. At first glance we might think that it indicates exclusive alternatives, e.g. either Moscow or Mecca; but upon closer look, such expectations are quickly thwarted. The smaller inscriptions accompanying the city negate the destinations: Not Moscow, not Mecca; Not New York, not Najaf, Not Juan Les Pins, not Jerusalem; Not Milan, not Mashhad; Not Berlin, not Bukhara; Not Detroit, not Damascus. These works are inspired by a Stalinist policy to culturally reorient the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union, away from religion: “To Moscow, not to Mecca.” Slavs and Tatars see a way out of these binaries via triangulation, an escape from the binding narratives of Communism and political Islam, each of which claims to be exclusive. In response, Slavs and Tatars do not suggest a reversal of direction as much as negation of the choice itself: neither Moscow, nor Mecca. In the space where the Triangulations stand, you might get the impression that the compass has gone mad and there is no way to find your bearings. But this is only an introduction to a puzzle using various languages 28
(inspired by Poèmes industriels by Broodthaers, the Latin original has been replaced by Arabic, maintaining the exclamation point), Saturday ("manumission", the act of freeing a slave, is written in Greek and Hebrew; according to the Hebrew bible, slaves were to be released in the seventh, or Sabbath, year), Kwas ist dass and Coo Coo 4 Kumis. Reversal culminates in the work Nose Twister, a tribute to the highly nasal “n” (the phonetic “ŋ”) lost by the Turkish language in the Latinization of the alphabet in 1928. The form of the letter is transformed into a spatial object that doubles as a backrest for visitors. With the power of its form, the Nose Twister harnesses the riddles presented by the Tranny Tease vacuums, but also seems to provide a direction for thought totally disoriented by the Triangulations. We should delve into the depths and the past of languages, for perhaps our futures are written there: from our trajectories of development to the retreat of empires, not to mention an inexhaustible source of delight and knowledge.
Triangulation, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2011, concrete, paint, 27 x 24 x 23 cm 29
Dig the Booty, 2009 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
öööps, 2013 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Holy Bukhara, 2014 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
ωΧΧΧ, 2013 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Mountains of Wit, 2014 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
To Beer or Not to Beer, 2014 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm 30
To Mountain Minorities, 2014 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Alphabet, 2015 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
OdByt, 2015 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Made in Germany, 2015 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Jęzzers jezyk, 2015 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Dschihad, 2015 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm 31
Saturday, 2016 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Ku ku 4 Kumis, 2016 vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm
Kwas ist das, 2016, vacuum-formed plastic, acrylic paint, 64 x 91 cm 32
Nose Twister, from the Faculty of Substitution series, 2014 veneer, faux leather, foam, paint 100 x 235 x 235 cm
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Colophon Slavs and Tatars. Mouth to Mouth
Educational Program:
25.11.2016 – 19.02.2017
Iga Fijałkowska, Anna Kierkosz, Joanna Rentowska
Project and Concept of the Exhibition:
Lectures:
Slavs and Tatars
Slavs and Tatars
Curator of the Exhibition:
Implementation Team:
Jarosław Lubiak
Tomasz Mościcki (head), Waldemar Brański, Adam Bubel, Maciej Dębek, Grzegorz Gajewski,
Studio Manager Slavs and Tatars:
Wojciech Kędzior, Marek Morawiec,
Anastasia Marukhina
Bartosz Pawłowski, Artur Skrzypczak, Paweł Słowik
Assistant to the Artists:
Inventory:
Stan de Natris
Barbara Sokołowska, Karolina Zawadzka
Interns:
Konserwacja:
Eliena Leboeuf, Miron Galic
Karolina Nowicka
Coordination of the Exhibition:
Special thanks to the lenders of the artworks:
Michał Grzegorzek
Galeria Raster, Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Fundacja Zwierciadło,
Texts:
Dr. Stephan Oehmen, Three Star Books,
Jarosław Lubiak
Nigin Beck, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, The Third Line
Graphic Design:
Special thanks for help in the production of the works
Jakub Stępień/Hakobo
and exhibition: Olga Micińska, Sylwia Hryszko, Kamil Gałecki, Szymon Sławiec, Lakuza s.c,
Translations:
Studio Wektor, Dawid Ryżak, Florian Auer,
Ewa Kanigowska-Gedroyc, Soren Gauger
Titus Maderlechner, Pelle Hinrichsen, Eliena Lebeau, Miron Galic, Mahan Moalemi, Hubert Kielan,
Text Editing:
Aleksandra Knychalska, Joanna Manecka,
Jan Koźbiel
Anna Dąbrowa
Promotion and Media Contact:
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle
Justyna Gill-Maćkiewicz
Director: Małgorzata Ludwisiak Ul. Jazdów 2, 00-467 Warsaw www.csw.art.pl
Dofinansowano ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego / Exhibition organized with financial support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
Patroni medialni / Media patrons:
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