Film fabularny jako narzędzie kuratora i badacza sztuki

In the essay, the author, Łukasz Ronduda, relates his own work as an artist, a film director, an art historian and curator, discussed in the light of the cinematic turn and the formation of common ground between cinema and contemporary art in both artistic and institutional sense. Ronduda looks closely at his two full-length feature films: Performer (2015) and Serce miłości (Heart of Love) (2017) and highlights their wider context. The first frame of reference spans from experimental films to contemporary full-length productions dedicated to wide audience. The second reference is his own work involving academic research, curating, writing a novel and the creation of a found footage film. In this self-presentation, Ronduda discloses his different attempts to find the right medium to speak about and analyze contemporary art. The full-length film turned out to be particularly effective medium in its ability to express the truth by means of fiction, placing him between creation and institutional structure. Film as a medium of interpreting art seems to productively question fixed boundaries between research, criticism and art.

Film jako instalacja. Przestrzeń, narracja i afekt w ekspozycji Mieke Bal „Madame B".

The article discusses the construction of space and the position of the viewer in the video installation Madame B. Explorations in Emotional Capitalism, presented at the turn of 2013 at the Museum of Art in Łódź. Directed and designed by Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker, the installation was produced in parallel with a full feature film of the same title. Both the installation and the film constitute an intersemiotic translation of a literary work – Gustave Flaubert’sMadame Bovary. Part of the inspiration for this experiment was the proto-cinematic quality of Flaubert’s style (narrative simultaneity resembling parallel editing, the suppression of drama, dissolution of the time-flow). The museum installation, with its use of dark exhibition space and multiscreen projection, provided an innovative interpretation of the novel by bringing to the fore its acute audio-visuality: the non-verbal level of meaning found in the presentation of material surroundings, fashion, gesture, facial expressions, sound, tone, and tempo of action. In this respect, the exhibition had an advantage over the continuous version of the feature film, which tends to focus the viewer’s attention more directly on the plot. In the case of the museum installation, the narrative continuity was disregarded in favor of the affective resonance of selected scenes from Emma’s life. Walking through a series of episodes split across nineteen screens, the viewer had to choose his or her own way through a complex narrative (the whole comprised 450 min. of filmic material), so in a sense it was the viewer who “performed the piece”. The narrative of Madame B. partly diverged from Flaubert’s story to bring it closer to our times. The anachronistic intermingling of the 19th century and contemporary realities set it away from the conventions of costume movies and suggested the actuality of Emma’s story – its relevance for contemporary questions of “emotional capitalism”. These anachronisms and the spatialization of the narrative occasioned a specific position for the viewer, who, despite the immersive effect of the images, remained conscious of his or her participatory presence here and now. Thus, while attending to the scenes of Emma’s life, the viewer might also reflect on the emotional effects they raised in him/herself. This analytic outlook did not necessarily inhibit the viewer’s sympathetic engagement with the protagonists’ emotions and experiences, but gave it a more informed character. The spatial arrangement of images, as well as the situations performed in several episodes, also invited reflections on the social function of looking and being seen. In this sense, the installation may be counted as a part of Mieke Bal’s practice of visual culture analysis.

Mediateka Babel. YouTube jako temat, rama formalna i platforma sztuki

The text focuses on the specific features of the so-called 'cinematic turn' within the scope of visual culture emergent within the YouTube platform, particularly during its first, formative years. This turn takes place on the meta-level of the existing circulation of content enabled by YouTube, often being an autothematic reflection on this tool of cultural production. The vernacular aesthetics, a specific formal framework and a particular modus operandi of YouTube became the subject of artistic statements, sometimes in a form of subversive remix. Therefore I think of YouTube as a realm of art because of its meta-media practice that made the cinematic turn visible. It does not rely on straightforwardly understood production of (moving) images, but postproduction, as understood by Nicolas Bourriaud. Moreover, the cinematic turn taking place within YouTube is different from the one practised by the avant-garde of 20th century, due its being not “seeing” or “writing” (as Dziga Vertov understood montage) but rather “overwriting”, to use language more adequate to the described sphere of digital culture. Artists use YouTube as an open library, working with its resources, applying techniques such as postproduction, remix, re-contextualisation and appropriation. Therefore it becomes a multimedia library, a “Mediateca Babel” of a kind, to recall J. L. Borges' idea. The examples mentioned in the text are of a postproductional nature, such as to-camera-performance and subversive “overwriting” of contents enabled with the circulationism typical for social media. Equally important are the strategies of recognising the cultural framework of YouTube, in the context of 20th-century media art history, as well as the platform’s interface. Also, there is the issue of relations between vernacular creativity and the art system because of “capturing” the amateur-generated content and transferring it to mainstream artworld. These examples let me argue that the cinematic turn is a form of postproduction, which enables the hidden mechanisms behind the circulation of moving images in the overloaded global network. The cinematic turn in the context of YouTube does not mean that cinema and its language are at home within this platform. Also, the meta-artistic way of “making” platform art does not turn YouTube into “art platform” (as understood by Olga Goriunova). Nevertheless, platform art may happen in this context as a result of working with the cinematic turn in its vernacular aspect, which makes it possible to reveal its key features and move them to the meta-level.

Studia nad kinem a historia sztuki

Translation of François Albera's article originally published in French

Ruch: kinowość w malarstwie i literaturze

Translation of Mieke Bal's chapter into Polish

Biogramy

Biogramy

"Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable" - archeologia jako element strategii artystycznej Damiena Hirsta

The most important element of Damien Hirst's multimedia project "Treasures from the Wreck of Unbelivable" was the exhibition, presented from April 9 to December 3, 2017 in Venice, in the galleries of the Pinault Foundation in Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi. It was completed by several book publications and a 90-minute film of the same title, made available globally on the Netflix online platform on January 1, 2018. The exhibition included over a hundred objects, mainly sculptures, made in various techniques and materials in a wide range of sizes. The film, stylized as a popular science documentary, presents the fictional story of their discovery and exploration at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and their transport to Venice. It develops the main idea of the exhibition – a fictitious vision of the origin of these objects from an ancient wreck, filled with artistic collections, belonging to a fabulously rich ancient Roman freedman, with the significant name Cif Amotan II (anagram from “I am a fiction”). Realizing this fancy artistic vision, most of the works were made as if they had been damaged by the sea waves and overgrown with corals and other marine organisms. Hirst created a comprehensive and all-encompassing narrative using the principle of "voluntary suspension of unbelief," formulated by Samuel T. Coleridge. The artist sets himself and the viewer on a fantastic journey into the ancient past, taking up subjects central to his ouevre for decades: faith, relations of art and science, transience and death. He does this by means of numerous references to the artistic and mythological heritage of antiquity, not only Graeco-Roman, but also of other great cultures and civilizations. Although the formal and technical aspects of the project will also be discussed, the main goal of the author is to analyze how Hirst used the knowledge of antiquity (classics) to create both the exhibition itself and the mockumentary. The artist made archeology an element binding his narrative together, showing in the film not only how artefacts were obtained from the bottom of the ocean. He also presented a number of tasks that scientists deal with at various stages of the project – from the first discovery, through interpretation and conservation, to the presenting at the museum-like exhibition. Of course, his purpose was not to create a study in the methodology of underwater exploration, but to reflect on the cognitive power of science examining remains of ancient times. By juxtaposing two possible attitudes towards relics of the past, i.e. the strict discipline of the scholar and the imagination of the treasure hunter, he concludes that narratives arising from them will both have the character of a mythical tale. The ontic status of the artefacts themselves, as the things of the past, left in a fragmentary state by the passage of time, sets all the stories related to them within the discourse of faith.

Abstrakcji przestrzeń wieloraka. Kategoria przestrzenności w twórczości Wojciecha Fangora, Jerzego Grabowskiego i Ryszarda Winiarskiego - studium porównawcze

If one were to indicate some tendencies characteristic of the art of the 20th century, the pursuit of making artwork more spatial would certainly be one of them. This tendency manifests itself in the myriad of symptoms: an avant-garde redefinition of sculpture with its negative space; a proliferation of kinetic works enabling spectators to (re)shape artwork’s matter more actively; a dissemination of ephemeral forms, especially happening and performance; beginnings of installation art, to mention but a few. The present paper sets out to examine an artistic phenomenon which is not as spectacular as the aforementioned examples, but it could be somehow placed at the intersection of them. One can consider the particular type of abstract painting, embedded in a pictorial plane and slightly opening for surrounding space, but simultaneously reconceptualising the relation between the imagined and the physically present. The first part of the article deals with methodology. As far as research is concerned, the author assumes moderate scientism as the methodological perspective. It is based on the belief that mathematical sciences throughout history have developed notions and analytical methods allowing the observable and communicable features of things, including artworks and artistic phenomena, to be explained in an effective way, i.e. more faithfully and usefully. Because of the fact that mathematical truths are not absolute, the methodological perspective is called ‘moderate’. Taking into account these assumptions, the second part of the article defines the analytical category of spatiality, which expresses painting’s ability to evoke variously conceptualised spaces. The three subsequent sections of the article are devoted to some paintings by three Polish artists active in the second half of the 20th century, i.e. Wojciech Fangor, Jerzy Grabowski, Ryszard Winiarski. Each of them combined two differently understood spatial orders in their works: physical (related to phenomenological and sensual experience) and conceptual (related to notions and theories proposed by exact sciences). Having analysed a number of paintings by Fangor, Grabowski and Winiarski, one can define notions of cosmogonic, transcendence and probabilistic space, respectively. In summary, the specificity of works analysed in the context of ideas drawn from exact sciences is examined.

Fotografia i film w praktyce artystycznej oraz propozycjach teoretycznych Davida Hockneya

In his diverse works, David Hockney has used, and still uses, various media, which in some periods of his activity gained leading significance, while in the following they were abandoned or temporarily abandoned. But no matter what medium in the given period was the main form of creativity, the focus of his interest has always been the issue of image and imaging. The article is devoted to the practice and theoretical recognition of photography, which was a kind of introduction to experiments with a moving image. The author refers to the artist's numerous publications on the theory and history of image and imaging (including Secret Knowledge, History of Images, On Photography). Photography led to Hockney's audiovisual realizations. This is a kind of repetition of the natural evolution and developmental progression of the media, also, and perhaps above all, in the technological dimension. The article is divided into three parts. In the first part, the author presents Hockney as a practitioner and theoretician, in whose activities both these activities are closely intertwined. This is a sign of the times: practice and theory are equally important, awareness of the medium, or artistic and aesthetic self-awareness of artists, is an expression of the spirit of the era in which an intuitive approach to art today seems inefficient, not to say impossible. Hockney appears to be an exemplary artist, who is extremely conceptual in his artistic practice as a consequence of his research on the history of art and a constantly developed set of his own theoretical findings. He is an artist discursively commenting not only on his work as an artist in many media (painting, drawing, graphics, set design, photography, film, computer graphics), but also an art and media theoretician reflecting on the fate of images in a changing media landscape. The second part of the article is devoted to the reconstruction of Hockney's theoretical reflections on photography and the analysis of his photographic projects. First of all, experimental Polaroid compositions created in the early eighties, named by the artist joiners, as well as photographic collages and photographic images realized in the later periods of the British artist's work. The third part considers digital movies, as Hockney calls them, audiovisual realizations referring to both his previous photographic works and experimental video films in which multi-camera systems are used.

Obraz Artura Grottgera „Modlitwa konfederatów barskich przed bitwą” (pod Lanckoroną?): historia, literatura, ogląd

The subject of the paper is a painting by Artur Grottger, which has not yet been the subject of close art historical analysis, hindered by the complicated history of the painting as a material object: from its creation (1861–63) and being exhibited in Vienesse Kunstverein in 1864 (titled Das Gebet vor der Schlacht. Episode aus der vergangenen Zeit in Polen), via its appearances and disappearances in the arena of history, till its present status of an object in a private collection, whichlimits its accessibility. The reconstruction of the process of constituting its present title (The Bar Confederates Pray Before the Battle of Lanckorona), reveals the problematic status of the reference to the specific battle fought during the Bar Confederation (1768–1772). The confrontation of the pictorial presentation with a real course of the battle of Lanckorona (23 May 1771) proves that it was not Grottger’s imperative to reconstruct in a probabilistic manner neither the place nor the course of the specific historical event. The analysis of the common for the artist and its public cultural competence, whose basis during that epoch was literature, does not yield an unequivocal identification of specific historical figures or literary motifs as references for the painting. This probabilism of heteronomous, historical and literary references, increases the autonomy of Grottger’s painting as a visual medium. Following the tenet of art historical hermeneutics that it is not contextual references but the pictorial potential activated by the artist that defines the actual status of the represented event, the subject of the next part of the text is the vision-oriented logic of the painting. The main reference is Michael Brötje’s theory, according to which the surface of the painting (not the material, covered with paint, picture plane – die Flache – but immaterial, invisible instance – die Ebene) constitutes the ultimate instance for both represented reality, which it transcends and whose boundaries it establishes, and for the spectator, who confronts this reality in the process of viewing with the pictorial surface and its boundaries. In the process of viewing, which consists in the interaction between structural properties of the painting and the postulated by the viewer relating to the surface, the spectator experiences, as his or her own, the truth about the confederates’ origin, their connection with nature, their religiosity, rootedness in the motherland, death as their destiny, and their devotion to the ultimate absolute instance. The very experience, residing in the medium, ultimately determines the status of the heteronomous in relation to the painting, historical and literary references.