Kurator naiwny – aktywizm jako forma praktyki kuratorskiej

Author(s): Monika Weychert-Waluszko / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The article introduces the idea of activist curatorial strategy called „ naive curator”. It has been written from the perspective of newly shaped types of institutions, in the context of changes in Polish exhibition movement and increasing professionalization of institutions and curators. One such example is „galeria dla…” in Torun and curatorial practice of the author of this article. The practice is based on social work: education and attempts of balancing on the verge of exhibitions and „common life” with the receivers of art. These attempts anticipate atypical forms of communication. The operation is based upon a new form of dialogue and acceptance of mistakes, apparent failures and the category of temporary dissent from generally accepted forms of behavior – not only social, but also connected to exhibition custom. In the spirit of dialogue and tolerance, the quest for forms of communities based on “love” and common life may solve the dilemma based on opposition: unification/ alienation. The process of preparation of problem exhibition and curatorial strategies are judged as bastion for authoritarian or even absolute attitude not only towards the artist and work of art, but also gathering attention and receiver’s emotions. Among various types of curatorial attitudes: curator/star, curator/theorist, curator/artist and collective curator, the one that adheres to naive attitude is the last one. Negotiation of positions and construction of common, coherent vision thanks to the work of a group of people creates remarkably strong arguments. It makes locating works of art in exhibition’s space and contextualization towards other works of art and space far easier. The collective neutralizes „stardom”, introduces polilogue at the stage of creation and construction of the exhibition, as well as augurs well for its reception. Naive attitude is about deliberate omission of the context of theoretical shallows, modernist/avant-garde utopias of social change for the benefit of taking specific activist actions. Assuming that aesthetic and philosophical theories that describe artistic world may also be unreliable/mistaken. Are glorifiers of art’s alienation right? Or perhaps those who see art as the source of crisis and reflection? Or maybe those who are for the specific actions for the benefit of people? That we do not know yet.

Rodzinne transgresje Kazuo Hary

Author(s): Bartosz Zając / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 is a second documentary in the filmography of Kazuo Hara, artist regarded as a pioneer of a “private film” [kojin eiga]. At first alone and later with his lover and producer, Sachiko Kobayashi, he travels to Okinawa to film his ex-girlfriend, a radical feminist, Miyuki Takeda. He is not a distant observer, but a protagonist of his own movie, the experiment. Among the scenes illustrating the woman’s daily life, her romance with a young girl and also with the American soldier - which fruits with a child “born on a screen” – are those scenes in which the director gives camera away to Miyuki’s lover, cries and reveals himself in front of the viewer. Hara’s film is a masterpiece of transgressive documentary where the artist’s responsibility for his work is tantamount to the responsibility for his life. In his search for social changes he starts from his own, private environment. Through the raw form of his work – overexposed photography, lack of a synchronized sound and applying of a handheld camera – he manages to create a unique, subtle cinematic poem. On a foundation of a documentary recording Hara builds senses and meanings corresponding with the finest features of Japanese new wave [nuberu bagu], by which he was clearly inspired. This is how an extreme, private masterpiece was born.

Współczesny surrealizm czeski i odnowa języka wczesne filmy Jana Švankmajera

Author(s): Jonathan L. Owen / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

This essay is a critical study of the Czech animator and filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, one that pays particular attention to Švankmajer’s early works of the 1960s and ‘70s. The primary theme of this study is Švankmajer’s complex and multi-faceted engagement with the idea of language. Among the issues considered are the question of whether Švankmajer’s films ‘signify’ in any meaningful or straightforward fashion; the rejection of, and polemic with, the verbal model of language; the cultivation of a sensuous, affective formal ‘language’; Švankmajer’s interest in the communicative properties, the secret content, of objects; and the relation of language or self-expression to the childhood experience that Švankmajer valorises. I will connect these preoccupations back to Švankmajer’s involvement with the Czech Surrealist Group and his absorption of other traditions of the (Czech and international) avant-garde. Ultimately this essay will show that Švankmajer’s work, and not least in its engagement with language, is politically critical and subversive, whether considered in relation to the neo-Stalinist regime under which Švankmajer has made most of his films, or in a broader context. While eschewing any kind of naively utopian libertarianism, Švankmajer’s work is oppositional in its challenge to the codification of language systems by authoritarian regimes, and in implicitly censuring a civilisation that both reduces objects to their utilitarian function and represses the imaginative life (along with the possibility of expressing this) that we enjoyed in early childhood.

Miki i Donald na froncie (wewnętrznym) Disney Studios podczas II wojny światowej

Author(s): Łukasz Biskupski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The main goal of the article is to describe Walt Disney Studios’ propaganda activity during World War II. The author puts Disney’s production in a wider context of “home front” activity and functioning of the film industry under the coordination of the Office of War Information and within it, the Bureau of Motion Pictures Affairs. He also outlines the usage of propaganda (and film itself for propaganda purposes) both in the USA and Germany before WW II. The main part of the article concentrates on Disney Studios. It analyzes the impact of the war outbreak (as well as of other factors) on financial condition of the company and Disney’s cooperation with Canadian Government and political involvement in South American affairs. A detailed overview and description of several subgenres of cartoons that were produced for the needs of the government and US Army are also given. These were, for example, training films (popularly called “nuts ‘n’ bolt” films”), pure entertainment films as well as “motivation” films which were intended to encourage citizens to buy war bonds, pay taxes or save wastes. Apart from films itself the Burbank studio produced a whole range of other propaganda materials: from war insignia to Mickey Mouse gas masks. The article also contains some reflections on Walt Disney’s political attitude and preferences. Taking into consideration some of his pre-war films and their political meaning as well as producer’s contacts with Nazi Germany the author suggests that in the late 30’s and early 40’s Disney manifested a kind of a fascist inclination.

Z Hanoi do Hollywood czyli ewolucja filmu antywojennego z Wietnamem w tle

Author(s): Janusz Stachowiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

This article is an attempt to show how the American anti-war movies evolved during and after the Vietnam conflict. It presents chronologically (from 1967 till present times) various types of Vietnam-related movies showing different approaches to this problem.Most of all, it exposes Hollywood’s engagement in social matters and each period’s focal point of that problem. It shows that unlike the WW II movies, the Vietnam war movies focused not on the war itself, but on the mark that it leaves on people’s lives. It didn’t matter much whether they were American or Vietnamese or if the effect was either physical or psychical nature. Reading the text also gives us a point of view on the obstacles that the movie creators had to face during and after the production phase. This essay also tries to show the effect of anti-war movies on American film industry in general. Apology regarding the Native Americans in western genre and the completely new aesthetics (brutalization is the right word) of death scenes are just few examples to be mentioned.

Wychowywać czy pouczać? Perswazja i propaganda w polskim animowanym filmie dla dzieci

Author(s): Paweł Sitkiewicz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

Polish animated film created during the communist regime (1945–1989) can be divided into the experimental one, produced in independent artists’ ateliers, and the serial one, usually addressed to children and in this case supervised by censorship. The first one is considered as anticommunist, reacting to the bureaucratic state with criticism, the second one – as purely entertaining with a hidden propaganda message (government officially emphasized that short-feature films had to educate children, including propagation of socialism). The author of this article tries to examine the problem in practice. In his opinion independent artists criticized regime using metaphors or other sophisticated means of expression, thus the subversive character of their work could have been misinterpreted. On the other hand, animators working on films for children preferred soft didacticism to declared agitation. We can also find scenes showing, for example, friendship between Poland and Soviet Union, or praise for working class, but it is difficult to prove decisively that such images were meant to influence children by shaping their attitude towards communist regime. Other explanations are equally persuasive. Films for the youngest audience are generally based on simplifications and stereotypes taken from “adult” world, or even social life. In animated short films there is no time for the political context or further explanations.

Strategie twórcze w polskim kinie po 1989 roku Szkic pola produkcji filmowej

Author(s): Marcin Adamczak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The article is an attempt to apply Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of art to cinema reality, particularly to deploy the category of „strategy” (which is understood as a „opportunity existing in the particular field”) and the theory of „the field of artistic production”. It deals with four contemporary Polish film-makers’ strategies. The author distinguished the Baron strategy, the Auteur strategy, the Professional strategy and the Partisan strategy. These are perceived, according to Pierre Boudieu’s approach, as a possibilities opened in field of artistic production and determined by relation of forces within a field and „habituses” of individual players. In this way these strategies are determined by filmmaker’s position within the field (for example old/young, consecrated/non-consecrated). They are also shaped by outside (mainly market) forces. The Baron strategy is available for older directors with high-level of artistic consecration and it is in some ways a combination of Professional and Auteur Strategy, similar to European „Quality Cinema” which lead to national historical blockbusters. The representatives of Auteur strategy often refer to past modernist cinema and „auteur model” form the 60’. They neglect the importance of wide audience and box-office success or - in wider perspective - the industrial and market dimension of cinema. Cinema is perceived as art, autonomous „art for art’s sake”, independent especially from market reality. The Professional strategy is at the antipodes of the former one. „Professionals” make concessions for the public and their works are created (or prepared) for the pre-existing market, use proven genre formulas and try to response to the wide public tastes and expectations in order to get massive admissions. Box-office success is a shield for critics’ and „elitist” public disregard.” The Partisan strategy can be found in productions commonly known as „off-cinema”.

Rysunki Kobzdeja z Wietnamu

Author(s): Dominik Kuryłek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

Between 1953 and 1954, during the travel to fighting Vietnam, Aleksander Kobzdej made the cycle of the reportage drawings. He accompanied the Viet Mihn forces marching to Dien Bien Phu bastion, the fall of ended in 1954 which The First Indochina War. In this article, the author compares Kobzdej’s drawings with other reportage works in the visual arts and literature of the late 1940s and early 1950s in Poland. He tries to emphasize how the communist authority used them for its own purposes. He concludes that Kobzdej’s drawings are not only the example of social realistic art in Poland, but also the evidence of the specific kind of colonialism represented by the Eastern Bloc countries after the World War II.

(Nie)moc zapisu

Author(s): Monika Kozień / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

One of the greatest human desires is the desire to actualize, as attested by centuries-old history of representation. In Western culture, based on mimesis, actualization has been strongly associated with an image designed to be the closest equivalent for the original. But can we really maintain that perfect mimetic techniques and dominance of attractive images guarantee access to truth? Before the invention of photography, almost supernatural properties had been ascribed to illusionist painting. Photography and film were the next steps in perfecting the form of recording. With time, however, the objectivizing potential of photographic record has been viewed with deepening criticism, as proven by numerous attempts to minimize flaws of photography. One of those attempts has been the utopian concept of “total recording”, employed e.g. by the Mass Observation group. As opposed to the abundance of information obtained in the “total recording”, various artistic practices use the idea of emptiness, silence and nothingness, defying the role of the image or, more broadly, the role of eyesight in attaining truth. Such an ascetic approach may be found in works by Yves Klein, Bruce Nauman, Elżbieta Janicka, Paweł Althamer and Gustav Metzger. As there is no time-machine to transport us to bygone reality, we may only try and discover the past with our sensitivity and, primarily, experience – our personal sense of reality.

Walka o prawa ludności murzyńskiej w USA w optyce kina bezpośredniego. Przypadek The Children Were Watching

Author(s): Mirosław Przylipiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The author analyzes in detail one of the films of the American direct cinema movement - Richard Leacock’s The Children Were Watching, concerning integration of primary schools in New Orleans. Using this particular film as a case study, Przylipiak verifies the basic assumption of film-makers of this movement: the assumption that the cinematic medium has the ability to present reality objectively. The author qualifies their belief that the radical version of mimesis can be controlled by the use of cinematic devices. The problem became especially apparent in the context of their strategy of engaging into social discourse. The act of engagement was to be neutral and based on “pure” observation, free from valuation, using the aesthetics of transparency. Each of those alleged aspects of cinematic record was enabled by technological developments, such as silent camera synchronized with portable sound recorder, high-speed film stock. The central focus of the film analyzed in this text is the issue of racial segregation, the long-lasting problem of American society. The author sets the issue in the American socio-political context, outlining in historical terms the public debate around it, revealing finally the obvious bias of the film-makers of direct cinema movement. Contrary to their declared priority of objectivity, they produced images filtered through propaganda techniques, preceded not only with recording but with intentional use of editing and verbal narration as well.

Identyfikacja z figurą autora w kinie dokumentalnym

Author(s): Rafał Grzenia / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The paper consists of fragments from my master’s thesis written under the supervision of Prof. Mirosław Przylipiak at Polish Philology department at the University of Gdansk. The paper is an account of the ‘projection-identification process’ in relation to authorial subject in documentary film. The first part of the paper is based on the presumption that act of sight-perception constitutes documentary content. An important component of the act is the creation of an illusion of subjective perception. The illusion can be analyzed through the use of projection-identification mechanism, adopted from fictional films (the ideas of Balazs and Morin are briefly summarized). The adoption is based on a shift of the subject of identification from the film hero to the perceiving subject. A short comparison of the structure and mechanism of both genres aims to present the problem of differences in respective identification processes. An additional context is provided through an analysis of the role of camera in feature movie and of the transcendent subject. The second part focuses upon the relation of the author with the figure of the subject. Through a detailed analysis of the process of identification of the viewer with the figure of subject we are able to pose important questions concerning a possibility of lecture of a documentary that would be conscious and independent from the pressure of author-figure. We describe the techniques that enable the viewer to realize the ongoing identification processes and the reception techniques that enable the control of the process of viewer’s identification with the author-figure.

Potoczny odbiór sztuki krytycznej w Polsce. Sztuka pretekstem do eksploracji społecznych wartości, norm, stereotypów, doświadczenia życiowego

Author(s): Emilia Brzozowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

Polish art of the last decade of the 20th century – the critical art created, mainly by K. Kozyra, K. Górna, A. Żebrowska, P. Althamer, Z. Libera, G. Klaman, A. Żmijewski and others – has used the methods and the language of the contemporary visual culture. The artworks of these artists focus the interests on the cultural values instead of the aesthetic ones. These elements should have facilitated the reception of the critical movement. However, there are some obstacles. One of them is the fact that experts’ reviews and statements, on which the common participant of the artistic culture can base his approach towards critical phenomena, are not always adequate, as discussions about new ideas in art are often meta-artistic divagations about ethics and morality, whereas the meaning of the piece of art is pushed aside. Media discourse displays only extreme opinions of the audience. Nonprofessional recipient grounds his experience in the most conventional socialized everyday order of values and knowledge about reality. Contrary to experts, the common participant discovers the symbolic in the context of his own experience of body and sexuality, his own „ here and now”. Critical art influences those social structures by deconstructive activities and produces knowledge able to change them. Following Artur Żmijewski, the author claims that artistic discourse is equated with the discourses of politics, religion or science, and gives people a chance to consider mistake, absurd, fear, inconsistency, emotions as the unavoidable and authentic parts of life. Are we able to situate them on the same level as rational science? Is it possible to resign from typical and conventional modes of behavior which simplify interactions? Can we maintain the openness towards polisemic meanings and endless vigilance that is crucial when one approaches critical art? The answers to these questions would provide a good source for social diagnosis of current norms, values, social sensibility which shape our culture.

Jak zabija kapitalizm? Requiem dla snu Darrena Aronofsky’ego jako film radykalny

Author(s): Jarosław Pietrzak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The author mercilessly examines the neglected context of Darren Aronofsky’s film Requiem for a Dream – its radical and political significance. Pietrzak follows the film’s construction of the cinematic world and the way its postmodern form (editing full of redundancy, repetitions and chronological disorders, as well as other “non-transparent” devices, among which the physiological realism seems to be dominating) is almost entirely subordinated to its content (which, contrary to the empty variant of this kind of devices, that refer to nothing but themselves). Following Aronofsky, the author relates the postmodern interpretation of reality to its socio-economic dimension. Apart from interpretational movements of ideas, symbols and contexts, cinematic representation of the mechanisms of “structural, intentional and functional exclusion” become the most important issue. The author internalized the theoretical tools of Althusser, Adorno and Foucault, whereby he demonstrated the process of destruction of the culture appropriated by the capital.

Filmowy ślad środkowoeuropejskiej tożsamości. Uwagi o filmie Niepochowany Márthy Mészáros

Author(s): Anna Miller-Klejsa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

In her essay the author examines A Temetetlen halott by Márta Mészàros – a Hungarian director and screenwriter usually associated with feminist cinema. Due to the use of the quasidocumentary narrative strategy, A Temetetlen halott seems to fit the contemporary paradigm of telling (about) history. Produced in 2004, the film is a reconstruction of the last two years in the life of Imre Nagy, the legendary prime minister of the revolutionary Hungarian government in 1956, thus creating a perfect opportunity for the investigation of the so called Central European identity. A Temetetlen halott – a Polish-Slovak-Hungarian co-production – points to the close historical bonds between Poland and Hungary; the protest in Budapest was after all a sign of support for the changes taking place in Poland at that time (therefore one has to keep in mind that the revolt in Poznan in 1956 creates the historical context for these events). Built upon biographical experiences of real witnesses of the 1956 October revolution, the film shows the urgent need for an effort to keep the past alive, as it forms the basis of the collective identity.

Matka Polka i superkobieta O strategiach kobiecości w polskim kinie

Author(s): Monika Bokiniec / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

Ewa Mazierska, Elżbieta Ostrowska, „Women in Polish Cinema”, Berghahn Books Ltd. , 2006, s. 244.

Kamera i wideo jako narzędzia politycznego dyskursu w tańcu współczesnym

Author(s): Joanna Szymajda / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The paper introduces the question of video and camera application to the political discourse of contemporary dance. The first reflection regards the general topic of the political potential of contemporary dance and the relation between the type of political regime and status of the dance as art (with an accent on the case of the German Ausdrucktanz). Afterwards, the American postmodernist choreographers’s works are recalled as an example of the pioneer employment of the camera in the political discourse of dance. In that context Merce Cunningham’s ideas of fortuity and democratization of the theatrical representative space by using both computer and camera, emerge. The second part of this paper is the study of recent performances of Anna Teresa de Keersmeaker (Once, 2002) and Robyn Orlin ( L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, 2007). De Keersemeaker is a Belgian choreographer, pedagogue of Rosas Company and the founder of P.A.R.T.S. – the school of contemporary dance in Brussels. In Once, her last solo performance, she examines the possibility of the protest in our contemporary society by recalling the political and social atmosphere of sixties in United States. She uses for that a kind of memory games with Joan Baez’s and Bob Dylan’s songs as well as with the D.W. Griffith’s film The birth of the nation which is considered to be an affirmation of the Ku-Klux-Klan racists practices and ideas. The South-African artist with a very multicultural background, Robyn Orlin, is known as one of the most political contemporary choreographers. In her productions she dares to touch such a fragile question as AIDS, post-colonialism or African poverty. Very often she uses the cameras as stage objects. L’Allegro... to Handel’s music is her last performance ordered by Opera Garnier Paris. This performance mixes the various genres, such as dance, opera, music and video. Simultaneously with a scenic action the film made especially for this performance is projected on the enormous screen up over the stage. The images were taken in the different regions of South Africa and the videofilm is inter-acting with dancers’s bodies performing on the stage owing to bring into play the small cameras capturing directly the dancing bodies. Similarly to many of her performances, Orlin introduces here an ironic meta-reflection on the classical ballet as one of the symbols of colonialism. In the context of eurocentrism and post-colonialism, the example of Le Sacre du Printemps (2004) of Company Heddy Maalem is introduced, and next the videoproduction of Katarzyna Kozyra deriving from the same source of inspiration and treating the question of the author’s power on the performer’s body. The aim of this modest panorama, accented in conclusion, is to bring to light the idea of dance as political by nature.

Wokół Choppersów Anny Okrasko

Author(s): Anna Łazar / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The text Around Anna Okrasko “Choppers”, concerns Anna Okrasko exhibition in Okna Gallery (06.08 -26.08.2007) that was devoted to a visit to Saigon museums. Comments about Polish reception of Vietnam War during cold war period and about construing present day historical politics using museums are an introduction to the problematic of the exhibition. The analysis of Choppers is built through developing the context or asking about it. Key figure of the interpretation is Tourist’s view formed by American films on Vietnam.

„Rambo! Your Country Needs You!” czyli kino w służbie państwa

Author(s): Łukasz Kobylarz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 07 (14)/2008

The purpose of this essay is to examine the methods implemented by American cinematography in dealing with external threats to the United States’ security. By focusing on the image of the hero and the enemy, this analysis presents their character archetypes and displays their associated qualities, both negative and positive. Attention is also given to the means by which filmmakers had stirred national values, patriotic sentiment, and the will to fight in their films’ audience. In the final years of the Cold War, the Reagan administration had played a prominent role in the creation of the “action hero”, embodied by actors such as Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and Clint Eastwood. These 80’s films make up the reaganomatography genre also known as the cinema of new patriotism. They were created along the Republican Party’s political guidelines and President Reagan’s direct initiative. These ideological guidelines confronted the attitude of defeat deriving from counter-culture while promoting the containment of Communist influence and a tough stance in U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In the face of a Communist threat, they showed American society that the danger is real but at the same time provided a feeling of security which emphasized that the U.S. can – and will – overcome its enemies. Understanding the historical context and message of these films is essential to fully comprehend their social implications and shared characteristics. Nowadays, the ideologically-filled factors of reaganomatography have no contemporary counterpart and the crisis in masculinity on the silver screen has undermined the hero character. Nevertheless, their continuation can be seen in television shows, primary “24” and its lead character Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer. For what reasons has this subject been neglected by today’s cinema and what is the ideological role of television in confronting the dangers of terrorism and reassuring American society that as in the Cold War, the “Home of the Brave” will prevail once again?

CONGRESUL PARTIDULUI SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT DIN ARDEAL ŞI BANAT DE LA SIBIU DIN 19-20 IANUARIE 1919

Author(s): Vasile Şchiopu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: -/1977

As a result of the achievement of the Romanian national unitary state on December IsI 1918, the working elass in united Romania was faced with the problem of the unification and central'jzation of the socialist organizations from alI the Romanian provinccs and with the constitution, at national scale, of a unitary party.

A TRIBUNE OF COHORS III CAMPESTRIS

Author(s): P. Michael Speidel / Language(s): English Issue: -/1977