The Visitor
Daniel Malone’s new project tackles the problem of cultural production, playing it out on several levels. On the one side, it questions production as a once-and-for-all established system of generating meanings; on the other, it criticizes cynical and tautological use of empty signs for the purposes of ideology (nation, market). Malone’s starting point is the retelling the story of the alleged visit of David Bowie in Warsaw, during which the artist was to buy a record of the Śląsk ensemble. This record was to later inspire the creation of the famous track Warszawa from Bowie’s 1976 album entitled Low. This story, although seemingly well-known and simple, allows Malone to create an incredibly detailed, but legible network of relations and meaningful comparisons, not as much contra-factual but rather hyper-factual. The tale of the artist, recounted from the legendary record store on the Komuny Paryskiej Square to the fact that Bowie’s track inspired the musicians from the Band Joy Division, is international in its message, but remains local on the level of context, and it can turn out that what we learn from it about the connection of this context to the world at large is more important today than ever. Although the tone of this narration is mostly ironic, it is also true that on the one side the exaggerated gesture of rewriting history is dangerously similar to politician strategies and manipulation techniques used by the media today, forcing us to carefully scrutinize the cultural production we all participate in; on the other, it restores the tradition of storytelling to artistic work – a well-crafted story can distort the status quo, regardless of whether it will be instrumentalised by politics or radicalised by the creators of culture.