ZOFIA KULIK & PRZEMYSﾅ、W KWIEK
Edited by ﾅ「kasz Ronduda and Georg Schﾃｶllhammer
Editors’ Note The book that you are holding in your hands came into being as a result of a long-term process involving the editing and digitalization of the KwieKulik Archive. It consists of two basic parts. The first presents the oeuvre of Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek. The artists’ practice has been divided into 203 events from the 1960s to 1988. This register provides the organizational axis for the materials in the archive. The second part of the book comprises text materials in the following categories: KwieKulik Texts, KwieKulik Glossary, Contextual Glossary, Essays and Bibliography. The book covers each event with a description and a selection of related visual material (photographs, slides, film frames, etc.) and documents (notes, catalogues, leaflets, letters, etc.). Scanned documents, notes or correspondence are usually accompanied with a transcript (complete or partial). The KwieKulik events section is supplemented with the presentation of the Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation (PDDiU) — the venue where the artists lived, worked, exhibited and received guests. Unless otherwise stated, the illustrations gathered in the book come from the KwieKulik Archive, with K wieKulik as the authors. The artists were involved in various modes of documentation: text, photography, film and sound recordings. Photographs were taken on monochrome negatives and color diapositives in two formats: 35 mm and 6 x 6 cm. For the sake of clarity, in the descriptions we refrained from detailing the format and technique of specific photographs, marking only film stills. Under each illustration, document, transcription or event note, there are digital signatures attached to all materials. These are also the names of the files that may be browsed in the digital archive of KwieKulik. In the texts by K wieKulik and transcriptions of the documents we preserved the original spelling, with corrections limited only to obvious spelling mistakes or proper nouns. We also standardized and revised the format of dates. The K wieKulik Glossary is a collection of concepts introduced and applied by the artists, which in the course of time came to be associated with the unique character of their artistic practice. The Contextual Glossary supplements event descriptions, focusing on the people and the specific character of institutions, venues and organizations related to K wieKulik’s Activities. Some of the included entries are aimed at offering a better understanding of the political-social conditions that provided the backdrop of the artist’s activities from the end of the 1960s to the second half of the 1980s. The Contextual Glossary also helps the reader acquire familiarity with the gobbledygook of abbreviations, characteristic of the official bureaucratic discourse in the People’s Republic of Poland. We provided the meanings to the most common abbreviated names of institutions and organizations that appear throughout the book which retain a strong presence in KwieKulik’s discourse as part and parcel of both the official and informal language of the time. The book consists mainly of documents from the archive — textual and visual. The essays in the final part are somewhat of a footnote to the gathered material. They function as extended book references, featuring excerpts from texts devoted to KwieKulik in the course of the last several decades. It needs to be stressed that in fact the KwieKulik Archive consists of two parts. The first, covered in the present book, embraces the artistic practice of Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek. The second which is centered on the activities of other artists as documented by K wieKulik, still awaits editing. Łukasz Ronduda Georg Schöllhammer
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Publisher’s Note The present monumental monograph devoted to the artistic duo KwieKulik (Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek) includes an outline of the artists’ activities from the 1960s to 1988 (the period of their joint practice) as well as documentation of the Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation (PDDiU) run by the artists. To provide a better understanding of the context of the epoch, it also comprises KwieKulik’s source materials and dictionaries: of concepts used by the artists and language characteristic of the described epoch. On their part, the authors were invited to contribute essays in an attempt to outline new interpretative perspectives for Zofia Kulik’s and Przemysław Kwiek’s oeuvre. The book is a joint publication of three institutions that have been highly inspired by K wieKulik’s practice. In 2009, Wrocław’s BWA Awangarda Gallery organized the pioneering exhibition of KwieKulik’s oeuvre entitled ‘Form is a Fact of Society’ (curated by Łukasz Ronduda and Georg Schöllhammer). The Vienna-based Kontakt Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation extended its collection with works by KwieKulik, which provides an essential element in the investigating and collecting of art from the former Eastern Europe — conforming to the underlying mission of the institution. Finally, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw purchased the KwieKulik Archive and considers it not only a seminal example of a radical artistic practice, but also a contribution to the research into the iconosphere of the People’s Republic of Poland and the phenomenon of artists’ archives. Publishing this book with the ambition to provide a global grasp of the phenomenon of K wieKulik was made possible owing to the kind openness of the artists and their consent to hand over the archival resources to researchers, as well as their involvement — especially Zofia Kulik’s — in the research-related and archival processes, for which we would like to express our utmost gratitude. The catalogue could not have been published but for the determination and great dedication of the editors: Łukasz Ronduda and Georg Schöllhammer. The monograph not only delivers unique source materials but provides extensive coverage of the artists’ activities and a thorough understanding of the context. In this regard, the book highlights an essential methodological issue: the interpretation of the artists’ activities against the backdrop of the epoch. This pertains especially to engaged art, reacting to the challenges of its times, which KwieKulik’s practice undoubtedly was. From a broader perspective — it pertains to a vast part of the artistic events in former Eastern Europe, expressing resistance, discord and protest, but also to those of a subversive or ironic nature, whose meanings were embedded in the social-political realm of the times. The understanding of political conditions of the Communist era is ever more so the domain of historians, while a broader reception blurs the meanings and diminishes the grasp of subtle allusions and references. Hence the effort of the authors of this book to further cast light on the backdrop of the artists’ work by means of source materials and dictionaries. Another vital aspect, especially from the perspective of a museum or public collection, is the status of the work originating from an ephemeral activity, intervention or documentation. It would never have survived but for the artists’ archival passion. The present publication stands a chance of contributing to a successful solution for an entire array of problems related to the present existence and presentation mode of the archive. Joanna Mytkowska Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw Marek Puchała Director of BWA Wrocław — Galleries of Contemporary Art Christine Böhler Board, Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation
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Content List of KwieKulik Events.
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Art, Love, Politics, Science . . . .
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Łukasz Ronduda
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PDDiU .
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7 . 11
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Primary Texts by KwieKulik.
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KwieKulik Glossary.
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Contextual Glossary.
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Essays .
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KwieKulik: Form is a Fact of Society Georg Schöllhammer . . . . . .
KwieKulik Events .
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Counterculture, Hippies, and Alternative Social Movements in Poland in the 1970s Jacek Dobrowolski. . . . . . . . 512 wieKulik: Defying Cynicism, Defying Anti-Politics K Maciej Gdula . . . . . . . .
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511
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PDDiU: A Horizontal Archive Luiza Nader . . . .
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wieKulik — Activity Archive K Paweł Mościcki. . . .
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Let’s Get More Efficient! Art and the Discourses of Science Tomasz Załuski. . . . .
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An interview with Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek . . . . . . by Tomasz Załuski .
Index . 6
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KwieKulik Anatomy
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Bibliography .
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KwieKulik as Part of the Polish Neo-Avant-Garde of the 1970s Łukasz Ronduda. . . . . . . Before KwieKulik Maryla Sitkowska .
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The Gender Issue in the Works of KwieKulik. Cherchez la femme. Ewa Majewska . . . . . . .
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wieKulik Towards the PSP: The SB Towards KwieKulik K Łukasz Ronduda. . . . . . . . . 525
Art Documentation and Bureaucratic Life: The ‘Case’ of the Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation Klara Kemp-Welch. . . . . . . .
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List of KwieKulik Events 001 Przemysław Kwiek Before ASP . 002 Zofia Kulik Before ASP .
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035 Program for the ‘Galeria’ (Przemysław Kwiek) .
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003 Studies at ASP (Przemysław Kwiek).
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036 Games on the Mock-Up in Hansen’s Studio .
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004 Studies at ASP (Zofia Kulik) .
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037 Collaboration with Paweł Kwiek .
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005 Individual Activity (Przemysław Kwiek). 006 Individual Activity (Zofia Kulik) . 007 England (Zofia Kulik) . 008 Plein-Air in Skoki.
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009 Horizontal Composition (Przemysław Kwiek, Grzegorz Kowalski) . 010 Sculpting as a Process (Przemysław Kwiek’s Diploma).
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011 Przemysław and Paweł Kwiek’s Detention in Front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. 012 Activity with Ida (Przemysław Kwiek) .
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013 Work for the Blind (Przemysław Kwiek, Jan S. Wojciechowski) .
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014 Excursion (Group Action) .
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015 Open Form — Work with a Camera (Group Action).
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016 USSR (Zofia Kulik)
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038 May Day Parade; Garage (Group Actions).
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039 The Cleaning of Art (Group Action) . 040 KwieKulik at Sigma .
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044 Being and Acting (Group Action) .
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047 Day and Night Theater (Group Action) .
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048 Activities with Dobromierz .
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049 Current Art .
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050 The Faculty (Group Action) .
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052 Ameryka.
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054 Elections to the ‘Galeria’ .
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056 We Shit on It .
023 Legnica (Zofia Kulik) .
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057 Paweł Kwiek’s Niechcice .
024 Giżycko (Group Action) .
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058 Activities with Wojciechowski’s Ceramic Heads .
026 Projections in Elbląg and Gdańsk (Group Action) . 027 Film, Slides, Activities, Theory — Bogucki’s Gallery (Group Action).
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028 Close-Ups of the Young Creative Workshop (Group Action). . . . . . . . . . . 029 Game on Morel’s Hill (Group Action).
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060 Three Leaflets — Nowa Ruda (2) .
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061 Paris Youth Biennale — Audio Visual Section . .
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063 Everyone Fulfils the Resolutions of the Sixth Congress of the Polish United Workers’ Party: The Realist, Abstractionist, Conceptualist, Bowelist — Osetnica ’73 . . . . . . . .
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031 Variants of Red / The Path of Edward Gierek .
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032 Zofia Kulik’s Enclosure Assignment .
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065 Mail-Out — Urbanowicz .
033 The Street, the National Museum (Group Action) .
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066 Proposal and Lecture at the Institute of Art
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030 Proagit 1 — Think Communism (Group Action) .
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059 Activities with One-Minute Films — Cinemalaboratory . . . . .
062 The Logical Window; Idiot . . . . . 92
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053 Science — Logic, Praxeology, Mathematics, History, Organization and Management . .
055 Glusberg.
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022 Interrupted Projection — Nowa Ruda (1) .
025 Parasitic Art — ‘Dreamers’ Congress .
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021 Cybernetics.
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046 Activities in TV Studio (Group Action) .
018 May Day Parade (Zofia Kulik) .
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045 Warsaw Autumn — Intuitive Interactions (Group Action). . . . . . . . . . .
051 Toruń — Visual Game with the Audience (Group Action). . . . . . . . . .
020 Ten Dekagrams of Kwiek’s Applications.
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043 Composition in the Flat (Przemysław Kwiek).
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042 Milan (Zofia Kulik) .
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041 Proagit 2 — Political Spectacle (Group Action).
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017 Workshops in Kazimierz (Group Action) .
019 Projection Instead of a Sculpture (Zofia Kulik’s Diploma). . . . .
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034 Meat and Osęka (Przemysław Kwiek) .
064 Collaboration with Dwurnik . .
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067 Jabłonna .
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068 AK Kinga Plaque — Earning and Creating . 069 Commentary Art .
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071 Plaque for the Blind — Earning and Creating . 072 Youth Session — Osetnica ’74. .
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070 Artistic Cabarethon (Group Action) — Nowa Ruda (3) . . . . . .
073 Unknown X.
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074 LP Autumn Plein-Air.
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103 Mail-Out — Pome-grenade and Banana .
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104 KwieKulik Circle.
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108 SOIRÉE at Mospan .
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109 Meyer’s Encyclopaedia — PDDiU Exhibition (2).
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111 Venus of/from Kilo; Variants of Text .
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077 Nowy Wyraz, No. 12 .
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112 Activities by Malicki with Freisler’s Portrait — Poses (1) . . . . . . . . . .
078 Separate Whole: Malczewski and POP .
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113 Mail-Out — Service Art for Dwurnik .
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114 Activities with a Frame.
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115 October ’77 (Collective Painting) .
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116 Mail-Out — Against TBC.
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080 Consciously Bad Art — Liksajny . 081 A Poll — Nowa Ruda (4). 082 Awaiting the Start.
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083 Letraset — KwieKulik and SB .
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084 Activities with a Tube — Earning and Creating .
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085 A Bird of Plaster for Bronze — Malmö .
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086 PDDiU and AICA .
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087 Service Art for Partum .
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088 Fruits of the Earth by Dwurnik; Art Out of Nerves by KwieKulik — PDDiU Exhibition (1) . . . .
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089 Mail-Out — Damn it! Do not ignore the KwieKuliks . 216 090 Mail-Out — We Were, We Are, We Will Be . 091 Mail-Out — MusoHit-Art .
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217
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096 Mail-Out — Kantor=Kwiek .
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097 Mail-Out — Štembera .
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098 Mail-Out — Five Perfections. . 099 Mail-Out — Schweinebraden .
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100 Separate Whole: Zuzak and Flags.
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101 Trybuna Ludu Holiday — Hackwork and Poses .
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120 The October Revolution and Poland — Poses (2) — Earning and Creating. . . . . . . .
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121 Together We Will Do More — Poster .
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122 La Post-Avanguardia: Alice’s Adventures in Fucking Wonderland. My Two Projects Rejected by All. .
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123 Projection Without a Projector — Poses (3) .
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119 Using Our Own Child in Our Own Art — PDDiU Exhibition (4) . . . . .
127 Parcel for Prisoner of Art. . 223
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094 How Are You Ms Kulik? How Are You Mr Kwiek? You Are Polish Artists, Aren’t You? . . . . . .
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118 Sets in Sobótka .
126 Activities for the Head: the Media .
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095 Behavioralists at PDDiU.
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117 May Universal Starvation Never Happen — PDDiU Exhibition (3). . . . . . .
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125 Videodecoration — Earning and Creating .
093 The Eagle Affair .
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124 Zweitschrift — ‘Strange is the Stranger Only in Strangeness‘ . . . . . . . . . . .
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092 Mail-Out — Third World on the Vistula . .
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110 Mail-Out — Colossus with Feet of Clay .
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107 Żelazna — Earning and Creating .
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076 Reconstruction — Parasitic Art . .
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106 Mail-Out — Conditioned Reflex and Nothing More.
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075 Siewierz Plaque; Mercury — Earning and Creating.
079 Poljska Avangarda — Zagrzeb .
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105 Mail-Out — Cultural Assignment FOR YOU .
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102 May Sharp Shooting Never Happen .
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128 TV Set, Hackwork and Announcer — Jankowice . 129 Art on the Run — Rubber Stamp. 130 Heavy Complaints Kill Life .
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281 282
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131 Zofia Kulik’s Begging for Forgiveness .
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132 Art on the Run — Projection of a Rubber Stamp .
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133 Correspondence Performance, Passports, Separate Whole — Arnhem . . . . .
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134 The Monument Without a Passport .
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135 Activity for the Head: Three Acts .
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169 The House in Dąbrowa .
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170 24 Non-Pictures (Kwiek without Kulik).
137 All Souls’ Day — Chrysanthemums and Wrinkles.
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171 Brezhnev’s Funeral on TV — Demonstrations (4) .
138 Performance, a Minimum — La Post-Avanguardia.
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172 KwieKulik: Works 1968–1982 .
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173 Session in Kazimierz. .
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174 Marx Now — Mail Art .
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175 Marx Now — Performance (Przemysław Kwiek).
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136 Art Profiles — Authors’ Galleries .
139 Letter to Matuszewski .
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140 To Each According to His Needs — Sigma . 141 Paweł Kwiek’s Self-Organizing Team .
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176 Svetovid .
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143 Thingy — A Monument of Hackwork-Culture Cult.
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177 Marx Now — Gray Colors in Cologne .
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144 May Day Parade — Demonstrations (1) .
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145 Experiencing Monument .
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178 Visual Game on K wieKulik’s Heads — Moltkerei Werkstatt . . . . .
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146 We Kindly Ask — Mail Art.
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142 Poses — Four Channel Slide Projection .
147 To Vomit One’s Way Through Life — Mail Art . 148 Pope in Poland — Demonstrations (2) . 149 Nudes on Stamps — Mail Art.
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150 The Light of a Dead Star. .
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151 Game in Arnhem.
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152 Self-Portrait — Rubber Stamp .
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153 Vase (1) — Earning and Creating .
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154 Election Stamp — Mail Art .
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155 Awarding Ourselves a Prize.
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156 Zakąty. .
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157 Moscow Olympic Games — Demonstrations (3) . 158 Conditioning vs. Context (Przemysław Kwiek) — Miastko ’80. . . . . . . . . . 159 Art of the 1970s — Art of MKiS (Przemysław Kwiek) .
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160 The Model of Coexistence in a Shortage Situation (1) — Plan K. . . . . .
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161 Trip Around Europe.
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162 Activity for an Artificial Head .
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165 The Model of Coexistence in a Shortage Situation (2) — Stuttgart . . . . . . 166 Supermarket .
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164 Two Paintings (Zofia Kulik) — Miastko ’81.
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163 Sztuka ’81 — from PDDiU’s Archive .
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167 Activity for the Clay Heads — Krakow .
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179 Polish Duo (1).
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180 The Whistling Grill. 181 Acronyms. .
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182 Moods, Gray Paper and….
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187 Hammer-Sickle; Art in Panties.
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188 To Buy an Artist; Idiot .
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189 Banff — Multiperformance .
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190 Banff — ‘Artists’ Books, Posters, Prints and Catalogues’ . . . . . . . . . .
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191 Postmasters .
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192 A Party in Dąbrowa — 1 May .
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186 Festival of the Intelligentsia; Iron Bars . .
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185 Polish Duo (2) — Element of Decorations.
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183 Jerzy Truszkowski in Dąbrowa . 184 Semantic Monster.
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193 Vase (3) — Earning and Creating .
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194 Equivalent in Money — Poetization of Pragmatics .
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195 Arcadia .
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196 Banana and Pome-grenade; Mercury .
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197 Artistic Money; Bags. .
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198 Partum Prizes — Truszkowski’s Project.
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199 Fist = Fist .
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168 Meeting with Students during the Strike at Warsaw University . . . . . . .
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200 The Poetization of Pragmatics .
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201 Olsztyn. Libera.
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202 Objects .
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203 SASI — The Founding Meeting .
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042
Milan (Zofia Kulik) 17.05–25.08.1972
Italy
In 1972, Zofia Kulik received the prestigious Stella Sas Korczyńska Bottoni scholarship, a biannual award given to the ‘most gifted female graduate of the Faculty of Sculpture’ in Poland. This consisted of a four-month artist residency in Italy. During the residency the artist worked on her own projects: 1. Activity on the bas reliefs of the Milan Cathedral doors: Kulik transcribed fragments of her letters to Kwiek onto scraps of paper, then tore them into strips and stuck them to the doors of the cathedral with tape. Biblical scenes carved on the door were thus complemented by bands of paper. Like the Gothic works, but unlike them, they were
personal and ephemeral. Some of the inscriptions referred to the fact that she was pregnant (on her return to Poland she gave birth to Maksymilian Dobromierz). 2. Activity on a suitcase: Kulik reconstructed a Warsaw May Day Parade with figures molded from clay and carried banners that had excerpts from an intimate letter to Kwiek, against the background of the shape of the Palace of Culture cut from a letter from Kwiek. Parade decorations were made from colored paper used by children for cut-outs, and they resembled infantile decorations from state ceremonies in Communist Poland. 042_d-g_Milan(ZK)_eTJ_BM,ZZ_RD_LW.doc
Buy a postcard with the Duomo of Milan. Stick inscriptions to it (greetings), different and from different people, take a photo and send the negative. To Grzegorz: best wishes from sunny Italy; my belly is growing. To Magda: send a real postcard, cut out a rectangle the size of a film frame in it. Send the text divided into scenes from the doors of the cathedral to Przemek. Record canaries in a cage with a fixed camera as they merge minute leaps into a seemingly long flight. 042_t_KK1972 (ZK) Mediol szkic1_eLM_LWS_ZK_LWSdone_ok.doc
Banners knocked down, with no texts plus the entire thing with the suitcase. Palace of Culture from the letter, from the cut off parts — wings. Clay. Palace of Culture listing like a ship. Clay with perspectival grooves. Palace of Culture only with grass and a heart. After saturation and changing the Palace into a bird, put clouds inside. Magda with a sheet like a shadow of a bird. A tear. Diminishing photo of Magda. [Sketches illustrating the work of two slide projectors.]
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Dear Gerard! I’m sure you’re in touch with Przemek and you know that I’m now in Italy. I try to advertise Poland, our work, and Galeria El as much as I can. (I offer cooperation, documentation exchange). — they find it difficult to understand how your gallery functions; they ask about the taxes, the liberty to shape the profile, etc. — it’s also hard to explain group work to them (!) — everyone works individually here
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— it’s difficult to explain how we make a living, as there’s no way we can sell what we do. They don’t grasp the duality of our living problems (shortage of money, on the one hand, and on the other, lack of possibilities, with all due effort, of making a 35 or 16 mm film). 042_t_KK1972 (ZK) list do Gerard(1.VII)frag_eLM_LWS done_ok.DOC
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1 July 1972
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Sadly, I’m leaving Milan in a few days and for the next 3–4 weeks I won’t have a fixed address, until I get to Rome (in August). There is something I’d like to ask you: could you please send over some materials related to the work of the Galeria. Something I could leave here. The only thing I have is the documentation of the Dreamers’ Congress — (with a lot of texts that can’t be grasped here). If you have any suggestions about how I could get the most of my stay here, I’m looking forward to hearing them. And I will try to put them into practice (bad period — holidays). Przemek wrote that you were organizing a small working summit — maybe you will decide on something together there. Best wishes Z. 8
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Zofia Kulik, notes on the Activities on the suitcase and a sketch of the projection on two screens, Milan, 1972; pen and marker on paper
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Zofia Kulik, letter to Gerard Kwiatkowski, Milan, 11.07.1972
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Zofia Kulik, transcription of the letter to Kwiatkowski (see il. 7)
Zofia Kulik, transcription of the scenario (see il. 3)
9–23 Zofia Kulik, Letter from Milan (Activitiy on the suitcase), Milan, 1972; fragment of a series
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Zofia Kulik, ideas for sending postcards, for example using negative film, Italy, 1972
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Zofia Kulik, transcription of the notes (see il. 1)
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Zofia Kulik, inscriptions on a scrap of paper stuck to the cathedral door: ‘My dear, I want to be with you so much’, ‘I often think about the baby’, Milan, 1972
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104
KwieKulik Circle 10.1976
PDDiU
This piece is a collage of text and photographs — comprising images of places in KwieKulik’s neighborhood, the Warsaw district of Praga: a gateway stinking of urine, whistling ventilation pipes, a noisy restaurant, a vodka shop and the crowded Targowa Street. Eight photographs, eight situations with meticulous descriptions were arranged in circle. The work had been prepared for a lecture by Klaus Groh and Bikhardt Bottinelli ‘Die Kunst der Avantgarde in Osteuropa heute’ (Eastern European Avant-Garde Art Today), in the hall of Hermann-Schafft-Haus in Kassel on 4 February 1977. Additionally, the artists sent a letter to Groh, telling him about the differences they saw between Eastern and Western 1. 2. 3. 4.
5. 6. 7.
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European art. The letter begins with the statement: ‘Reality is divided. If we begin to contemplate anything (it could be a car or a work of art) and its conditions, then at some point, these considerations should always be “divided” and it should be clearly spoken from which reality this thing comes from, from the East or from the West’. The same text was sent to Robert Rehfeldt in East Germany. In response, he wrote: ‘Dear Zofia and Przemek, many thanks for your article [...]. A long time ago (01.02.1977) we received your nice letter […]. Your thoughts about the East/West situation, I liked this text, it is the best in my Archiwum Sztuki Aktualnij. Dziekuje!’ [Robert Rehfeldt, 24 July 1977]. 104_d-g_KwieKulik Circle_eng_BM,ZK_RD.doc
The corner of Targowa and Wójcika streets. A part of the 80m long neon light belonging to the grocery above which we live. The neon causes interference to radio and television reception but, fortunately, it has been out of order for a year now. Towards Wójcika Street, the furthest show on the right-hand sold vodka. The queue for vodka is 3 to 20 m long. Vodka attracts drunkards and degenerates. The door to our staircase is on the left, in the gateway. Targowa Street from our window. Blue exhaust fumes, street noise, and a crowd all day long. (Picture taken on a Sunday). You cannot open the window between 5 o’clock in the morning and 1 o’clock at night. The windows on the ground floor belong to the Wisła restaurant. The musicians + soloist work there until 1 a.m. The windows, especially in summer, are open. Through our closed windows, we can hear the trumpet, guitar, and drums, ‘Chicita’, ‘Calcuta’, the clatter of the cutlery, the patrons leaving the restaurant. The right side of our staircase — a toilet for the clients of the vodka shop. Dark stains on the floor are made by urine. Strong stench. The entrance to our staircase from the gateway. The gateway filled with bottle crates. The black recess on the left side seen in picture 2 is the other end of the gateway. The round lamp is glowing over the door through which the shop’s merchandise is shuttled in metal containers banging the whole daylong. The window in the picture goes out into the staircase. Over the door (see picture 7) on the right, you can see the shop’s main ventilation duct. Three huge ventilation engines located in the basement produce a quiet but persistent whiz in our flat.
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The meaning of the word ‘circle’ — ‘koło’: 1. Blisko — near; 2. Koło — circle. 1976 1
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Mr Przemysław Kwiek, MA, Ms Zofia Kulik, MA 03-717 Warsaw, K. Wójcika St. 38 apt. 1 Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation
Mr Przemysław Kwiek, MA, Ms Zofia Kulik, MA 03-717 Warsaw, K. Wójcika St. 38 apt. 1
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COMPLAINT Director WSS Społem Praga Północ Branch We would like to kindly inform you that installations at the Prażanka store are causing vibrations in our home. We have investigated the source of the vibrations and determined the following: The air conditioner mounted on the basement window facing the corner of Targowa and Wójcika. When it’s on, it makes sleep impossible — the vibrations move onto the floor, bed, and pillow as well as causing acoustic peaks of low tones, which you can’t stand for more than a few minutes. […]The store’s main air conditioning system. Installed in the basement as well. When on, it causes an intense whistle-like vibration. […] We would also like to inform you on this occasion that the store’s neon sign caused constant distortions of the television image and radio sound — the sign is currently out of service but when considering its reactivation, please take this into account. Sincerely yours, Kulik, Kwiek cc: 1. Head, Technical Department, Prażanka 2. Provincial Trade Union Commission, Community Oversight Unit 3. Management, Prażanka 104-2_t_KK1976 skarga Prazanka(25-VI)frag_eMW_LWS done_ok.doc
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Sincerely yours, Kulik, Kwiek
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KwieKulik, KwieKulik Circle, 1976; collage
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Transcription of the text from KwieKulik Circle (see il. 1)
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The house where KwieKulik lived. The windows over the neon light ‘Prażanka’ belonged to the PDDiU; detail from the KwieKulik Circle, corner of Targowa and K. Wójcika Street (now ks. Kłopotowskiego Street), 10.1976
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wieKulik, a complaint to ‘Społem’ concerning the noise and vibrations K caused by the shop Prażanka, 25.06.1976; typescript
Complaint We would like to kindly inform you that the Wisła Restaurant is disturbing the quiet hours. We live on the first floor across the street from the restaurant’s four windows (the corner of Wójcika and Targowa). The hours between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m. are the only time when traffic on Targowa and Wójcika — many times exceeding the norm anyway — subsides a little. Then, instead of being able to enjoy the quiet, one is attacked by an electrically amplified guitar and the soloist’s voice. Around 11 p.m. the party reaches its climax, initially making intellectual work impossible, and later sleep impossible. Opening the window — and this is the only time when one can open the window, 6 especially in summer time, as the pollution levels drop — is out of the question. But the restaurant’s windows remain open! This has been going on for the second year in a row now. Unfortunately, the place’s manager (?) didn’t show much culture and when asked (at 11 p.m.) to stop the noise, he started cracking stupid jokes: ‘Such funny music is a nuisance to you?’ … To then add, seriously, ‘Well, file your complaint then.’
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Transcription of the complaint to ‘Społem’ (see il. 4)
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wieKulik, a complaint concerning the noise caused by ‘Wisła’ restaurant, K 25.06.1976; typescript
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Transcription of the complaint on ‘Wisła’ restaurant (see il. 6)
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The October Revolution and Poland — Poses (2) — Earning and Creating 09–10.1977
PDDiU and The Lenin Museum, Warsaw
1977, KwieKulik were asked to develop a design for a tourIn ing exhibition of the Lenin Museum on the occasion of the sixieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The museum provided the artists with a brief, which spanned nearly fifty typewritten pages requesting that the artists make a work composed on large panels and not only to include a set of photographs and quotations from the Communist leaders of 1917, Lenin and Marchlewski, but also the leaders of 1977, Gierek and Breżniew. The artists’ first project was rejected for ‘being too socialist realist’ — the commission preferred something in a more modernist vein. The second proposal was approved for realization:
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it contained a modular element of 2 m high red panels painted in shaded tones. Reflecting and acting out the double binds of their status as engaged artists, KwieKulik included this hackwork in performative manipulations and For-Camera Activities, as they did with other jobs of this kind. Kwiek made ‘poses’ against the background of the red panels, repeating the exact ones that had been made when documenting an Activity by Jacek Malicki on Paweł Freisler’s portrait [see event 112]. Later the poses were continued by KwieKulik, and in 1979 they all were shown as a projection on four screens [see event 142]. 120_d-g_OctoberRevolut-Poland_e-proof_ZK_RD_LW.doc
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1–18 Photographs and documents relating to the project for the exhibition (hackwork) ‘October Revolution and Poland’ in the Lenin Museum, Warsaw, 09–10.1977:
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Kulik working on the first version of the exhibition project
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First version of the exhibition project, details
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Lenin Museum approval and stamp on the the first version of the exhibition project
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Kulik working on the the second version of the exhibition project, after rejection of the first version by the artistic committee
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12–14 Second version of the exhibition project accepted for realization by the Lenin Museum and by the artistic committee
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One of the series of poses performed by Kwiek against the background of the red panels that were part of the exhibition ‘October Revolution and Poland’
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The first page of the scenario of the exhibition according to which KwieKulik made their project
17–18 Selected materials used in the exhibition: reproduction of Izwiestia first page with the announcement of peace edict, and a reproduction of a Vladimir Serov painting The Announcement of the Soviet Government
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KwieKulik — Activity Archive
Paweł Mościcki
Art is that which the world becomes — not what the world is. Karl Kraus To act is a way to dream. Walter Benjamin
Talking today of the Polish artistic avant-garde of the 1970s, it is impossible to overlook the question of the political character of art created within a system that disciplined and controlled both the artists themselves and the circulation of their works. Also the current discourses on the relationship between art and politics should adopt as their departure point the questions: what does art rebel against? and how does it define its enemy? In what realm does it strive to shape its, sometimes flimsy and problematic project of an alternative. It doesn’t mean at all that the artist’s positions are always reactive, doomed to the barren repetition of multifarious versions of Bartleby’s famous saying — ‘I’d rather not’ — in the face of subsequent forms of domination. After all, we don’t know if domination is a category that pays off in all conditions and contexts. The political stake of art is therefore indicated not only by the discord, but also by the capability to transform an act of resistance into an event that initiates a new language, embracing the horizon of a collective life and shaping a new space where the world looks and works in a different way. Given this context, the heritage of the Polish avant-garde comes across as particularly worthy, since it clearly demonstrates the clash between the political language of the authorities and the political aspect of the language of art, the political institution and the political idiom. Hence, the life stories of the artists of that time can lay the groundwork for reflection on the problems of now. Zofia Kulik and Przemysław Kwiek’s practice as KwieKulik (mainly in the 1970s) can be regarded as an attempt at materializing communist ideals with the methods related to Oskar Hansen’s theory of Open Form.1 At the beginning of their artistic way, the artists were not interested in exploring the fringes of politics, nor formulating any project that would oppose the authorities. They wanted to be official and associated themselves in part with the values embraced by the official language of the Polish institutions of the Communist era. The outline of the development of their practices reveals a gradual departure from this ideal: from the shift to a critical position, through remonstrating against the system, to renouncing any kind of political struggle. It also gives a broad insight into the political strategies art can invent when faced with repression. In this light, the archive of KwieKulik can be regarded as material that hasn’t lost anything of its importance and does come in handy in archeological research on real socialism as an aesthetic-political form and, more importantly, on the projects aimed at the radicalisation and democratisation of its principle. We may begin the reflection on K wieKulik’s practice with the perspective of the political aspect of art with a trivial observation: the strikingly persistent, nearly obsessive use of the term ‘Activity’ against the fact that real political activity — the dominant ideal of emancipatory movements, which would often become their fetish — was not possible at the time. Leastwise not in the form of independent decision-making and the shaping of relations with others; nothing that would go anywhere off the track indicated by the authoritarian state. Obviously, the 520
predilection for the concept of Activity took its origins from the transformations in the very field of art. It stemmed from the influx in new forms of processual art, renouncing the object and the domination of the work and its display, in favor of the avant-garde practice of, performance, happening and other modes of ‘dissolving art in life’.2 The next step in the practice came with the willingness to tap into new forms in order to co-create a new, egalitarian society. However, KwieKulik’s activist approach, stoked by Socialist ideas and expanded by Hansen’s theories, did not meet with understanding. Additionally, the artists had to face some repressions in the later period, which largely contributed to their marginalisation both in the social and artistic realm. This ushered in the need to reformulate their own aesthetic ideas and change their political strategy. In her writings, Hannah Arendt differentiated political action both from labor understood as sustaining biological life, and from work, which creates the artificial world of things and determines the unique character of human existence. Without the possibility of acting, which — as Arendt argues — ‘corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world’, the two other types of activity merge to create a collapsed world, where the human and the biological blend into one horrific amalgam.3 The principle of this world was once identified as ‘natural history’ [Naturgeschichte] by Walter Benjamin, whose thought proved highly inspirational for Arendt.4 In this state of collapse, human history, which is supposed to be characterized by freedom and autonomy from biology, begins to resemble the natural cycle, the vicious circle of existence, where man is incapable of piercing even the slightest hole for his own personal biography. It might be the case that today we should replace the allegory of ruins as the sign of the barren repetitiveness of history, in which nature manifests itself, as Benjamin wrote, ‘in the form of the advanced maturity of the decay of its products’, by the image of a rubbish tip, addressing the eternal medial recurrence of the same — corresponding within the worldwide circulation of images to the ruins of the past.5 It is also the space where products of culture rot like overripe fruits. Contemporary natural history does not refer us any longer to the vicious circle of nature, but to the circulation of the virtual Capital, leaving its devastating hologram on every image. Thus, a sort of gargantuan archive emerges, where all answers concerning the future of political action are to be found. Such type of archive was for many years developed by Zofia Kulik on an ongoing basis in the work From Siberia to Cyberia after the duo K wieKulik parted artistic ways. Every powerful discourse in the field of culture inevitably creates false opposition, seeming difficulties, which come across as inherent in the discourse. One such mental simulacra is the opposition between politicality and existentialism. At the same time, it is the specific actions of artists that demonstrate best that the political and the existential not only do not exclude one another, but on the contrary — condition one another. The only
05
Paweł Mościcki
thing politics demonstrates is that — against Sartre’s dogmatism — existentialism always pertains to co-existence, being together with others and the kind of world that we jointly create. The question about the possibility of action always emerges when someone renounces the role of a fossil in the natural history museum, and insists on making inquiries about their assigned role and the space at their disposal. Let us return to the already mentioned paradox of Activity suggested as the name for a new artistic form and activity in public space. The more activities there are, the clearer the signal that genuine autonomous political activity has been permanently blocked. At the basic level of the interpretation, the immediate key appears to be hysterics. Artists are hysteric: unable to find fulfillment in social action, they invent multifarious forms of artistic activity to ease their desires with a perverse edge.6 If so, KwieKulik’s Activities are to be regarded — alongside other artistic phenomena with a similar meaning — as symptoms of a persisting political standstill of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, such diagnosis does not embrace the aspects that are essential both from the point of view of a psychoanalyst and an art historian: the inner dynamics of the symptoms and their multiple functions in the frame of the pathological psychic formation. Can we therefore venture a different interpretation of this paradox? To this end, we would have to reconsider the definition of action and its sense in art. Hannah Arendt remarks that action ‘interrupts the inexorable automatic course of daily life’, constituting a ‘peculiar deviation from the common natural rule of cyclical movement’. The author of Human Condition does not hesitate even to deem it miraculous. ‘The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, “natural” ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born.’7 Therefore, action appears here as related to an act of inauguration, starting anew, the childhood of the world as the period when new possibilities open wide, and this is where its political meaning is situated. This context invites a reference to the series of KwieKulik’s works Activities with Dobromierz, where the main model was the couple’s son. The natural routine of everyday activities involved in looking after a newborn child become here the material that serves as the starting point for the quest to a different kind of childhood, the childhood of other life forms, whose grammar is revealed by artistic activity. Paradoxically, the child who is a living testimony to the psychically conditioned nature of the artists and a new human, often demanding some trade-off from the parents, becomes here also the element of discovering anew his ontological capability of re-enacting the world, at least in part, on his own terms. The documentation, which also gives a broad insight into the uncanny apartment of Kwiek and Kulik, proves that these actions are more than just homegrown acting out of the impossibility of making a public statement. The space of home, oikos, which as Arendt reminds was treated already by Aristotle as the area excluded from politics and reserved exclusively to labor, acquires here the character of a true agora. The vast array of its functions included: gallery, workshop, venue for debates, international meetings and lectures. This rather small space provided shelter for a political hot spot as well as a laboratory of new artistic and human collaboration forms. Every definition of activity — including the political activity in art — sooner or later has to embrace the category of impact effect.8 If any politics of art exists, it boils down to the impact — achievement of specific effects in the social space. But what do 521
we understand by effect? KwieKulik addressed this problem in one of their most outstanding inventions, which they named Bank of Aesthetic Time-Effects. Its essence consisted in establishing an archive of Activities performed in various situations ‘to the camera’. What is the difference between the time-effect and effect and in what sense is it aesthetically effective? Addressing the Bank of Aesthetic Time-Effects, Łukasz Ronduda pointed at the twofold character of this practice, both maximalist and minimalist. On the one hand, the point was to ‘demonstrate and catalogue […] all possible material-spatial configurations of the material world’, on the other ‘to make specific time-effects available to everyone interested’.9 This means that in the later terminology, which laid foundation for naming the archive Studio of Activities, Documentation and Propagation (PDDiU) in 1974, the bank was situated somewhere between the documentation of the world with its endless configurations and the propagation of the gathered material. Where should we therefore locate the core of the studio’s name, i.e. the very ‘Activity’? Ronduda reminds that the material gathered by KwieKulik consists of ‘pre-semantic Aesthetic Time-Results’, i.e. the aesthetic material of the world right before ‘anchoring’ in the dominant codes.10 The activity consists here in suspending the automatic adoption of the image by the dominant narration. It means experimenting with the possibilities of inventing a different use for the image. Hence, time-effect would vary from effect in the fact that it interferes primarily with time; it does not use it to change reality, but rather modifies its course, disturbing the moment of passage of the pre-semantic material into the pre-existing image order. Thus, the artists’ Activity proceeds with a double rhythm. First they perform certain Activities ‘to the camera’, recording them on slides and negatives. Yet, later they modify the way these Activities acquire their discursive nature, their attachment to the symbolic order. They observe the manner of arranging material, with all kinds of adopted perspectives, they alter and model specific sequences. All the first-grade activities are subject to constant reconfiguration, which prevents the establishment of an orderly collection. This is the mystery of the slide series Poses from 1977. Exactly the same double structure is characteristic of another current in the artists’ practice — the pot-boiling works — commissioned by official artistic institutions. In this case, the basic material and the first-grade activity was the artists’ work within the system of the state. However, KwieKulik soon turned earning a living into a source of raw material for further operations — activities aimed at analyzing the dynamics of situating artistic gestures within the structure created and controlled by the authorities. Thus, K wieKulik also expressed their desire to get off the track that was beaten for them and add at least a minute ornament, which would modify the sense of the entire project. KwieKulik’s archive, embracing all these activities in the form of a large bank, emerged therefore as a space that documented and propagated not the sheer facts or actions, but their ‘possibilities’. Hence, we might just as well call it a ‘bank of aesthetic possibilities’. The moment of interference with time and the problematisation of the way images are anchored in the dominant forms are political in the full understanding of the word. The artists’ practice allows us to discern various arrangements of human gestures and recognise the codes imposed by the dominant power. Moreover, this is also the moment when history is born, or born anew, understood as the history of people, not of the circulation of anonymous material and its automatic reproduction. Man does not appear here as the proud subject of the humanist discourse, but as a distortion of the circulation, the little but decisive fold on the surface of hermetic exchange of signs, the delay and the
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Paweł Mościcki
intermediation of the automatic motion responsible for merging gestures, meanings and spaces. In The Archeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault called the archive a ‘general system of formulating statements’. In his view, it is a system of possible statements, words and their arrangements, configurations of a meaningful series. One of the fundamental theoretical statements of Foucault is that the essence of the archive is its positivity. In other words, potential statements do not fit within an excluded sphere of transcendental conditions and don’t precede the act of speaking, but are identical with the set of current statements. There is no other way to extend the potential of speaking, but to form the very statements. It is difficult to overlook the fact that the positivity principle is related to the exceptional intuitions of KwieKulik. Activity on the material recorded with a camera, the process of creating new possible forms and setting them as the subject of new social exchange, inevitably relies on the practical manipulation of the existing material. Reflection on new possibilities always adopts the form of specific Activities — experiments with new configurations. It is, to evoke Denis de Rougemont, like ‘thinking with your hands’.11 In the 1970s, K wieKulik succeeded in establishing a unique archive of Activity in the double sense of the term. Firstly, it is an archive of a plethora of attempts at influencing the space of social exchange. It demonstrates the possibility of setting up an alternative network of relations and configurations, both visually and socially. All is available to others, which encourages the continuation of these experiments beyond the studio. Secondly, the archive is a point of departure for action, the necessary intermediary between the artist and the public sphere. The point is not only to generate effect by means of an image, but to produce images and their new uses simultaneously, deactivating the automatism of the pre-existing form of effectiveness. The images are the first to be seized by the dominant authority. The necessary interval, the delay that the archive introduces between the artistic act and its effect saves the possibility of conceiving this childhood of a new language, without which no real politics ever has a chance to come true. Therefore, the lesson we can learn from KwieKulik is not Activity in the singular, but the plurality of Activities understood as the combination of documentation and propagation, critical analysis and further transmission of possible effects. All this in the sphere of aesthetics, pre-semantic images — the world in the making — the world that can soon confront us with the invincible frames of multiple of human practices. 1 This assumption seems to be the pivot of the exhibition ‘Form Is a Fact of Society’ in 2009, BWA Wrocław. According to another vital observation from the authors of this display, Hansen’s theory has never been truly reflected in architecture (which it fed on, though), but in the avant-garde activities of the artists who attended Hansen’s workshop. On this topic, see Michał Woliński, ‘Budować aktywność, rzeźbić komunikację’, Piktogram, No. 5–6 (2006), pp. 16–36. 2 See Jerzy Ludwiński, Sztuka w epoce postartystycznej i inne eseje (BWA Wrocław, Wrocław 2009). 3 Hannah Arendt, Human Condition (University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998), p. 7. 4 See Walter Benjamin, ‘Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, in: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. I, No. 1 (Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1974). 5 Walter Benjamin, ‘Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’, op. cit., p. 355. 6 See: Sigmund Freud, Josef Breuer, ‘Studies on Hysteria’, trans. J. and A. Strachey, in Strachey et al (eds.), Pelican Freud Library, Vol, 3 (Penguin, London 1974), pp. 190–201 and Sigmund Freud, Hysteria and anxiety, trans. Robert Reszke (Wydawnictwo KR, Warsaw 2001), pp. 43–71. 7 Hannah Arendt, Human Condition, op. cit., pp. 246–257. 8 As it was reminded in Artur Żmijewski’s manifesto, artists today also attempt to demand the right to effect, to redefine the possibility of achieving it. Unfortunately, this
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often leads to a simplified understanding. See ‘Stosowane sztuki społeczne’, Krytyka Polityczna, No. 11–12 (2007), pp. 14–24. 9 Łukasz Ronduda, ‘Bank czasoskutków estetycznych KwieKulik’, Piktogram, No. 5–6 (2006), p. 43. 10
Ibid., p. 43.
11
See Denis de Rougemont, Penser avec les mains (Gallimard, Paris 1972).
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