Odnajdując i tracąc miejsce. Łódzki underground wobec doświadczenia miejskiej codzienności.

The Łódź underground had emerged from the punk aesthetic, yet it absorbed successive genres surprisingly quickly: hardcore, industrial, later also, among others, techno and rave. It utilized diverse forms of expression: most of all sound, but also projections, site-specific actions, graphic design or fashion. The article, drawing from the memories and output of several most important participants of the movement, poses the question, in what way the underground so easily absorbed new genres and aesthetic patterns on the one hand, while on the other – it remained so strongly separate. The separation is revealed in the tension between experiencing new, experimenting musical and aesthetic trends, and the overwhelming everyday life of the post-industrial city. This tension was the reason why the underground movement was so intensely performative in its character, in which new knowledge and new inspirations were mostly created in action.

Zaczarowanie świata na przykładzie East side story Igora Grubića. Lekcja estetyki performatywności

In her The Transformative Power of Performance. A New Aesthetics Erika Fischer-Lichte argues that everything which happens in a performance can be described as a repeated enchanting of the world and transformation of all the participants of the event. The text is an attempt to consider the videoinstallation East Side Story by Igor Grubić exactly from this perspective. It discusses key concept categories utilized by the German theatre researcher, and at the same time undertakes an attempt to fit them into the installation of the Chroatian artist. The analysis points out to the bodily co-presence of the actors and the viewers, the performative production of materiality of the performance and the way in which the performance becomes an event. Questions were asked about a performance live as opposed to a mediated performance.

Performatywne alter ego

The dynamic development of the Internet and the constant search for new ways of reaching the user bring about the availability of materials that were previously unattainable. Performance art, thanks to its special openness to new methods of expression, reaches the mass media, while showing the individual’s psyche and character of the author’s work. The set of gestures, their sequence and narration are the basis for creating performance art, understood not only as a clear alternative to conventional art, but also characterized by unpredictability, in which the viewer is not prepared for the way messages are received. Undoubtedly, social platforms create an illusion. “The influencer” can reach thousands of viewers and gain fame without leaving home. Without a doubt, social media have created a new entry point to the global art scene, opening way to a wide spectrum of diverse artistic activities. The method of recording, the non-cutaneous nature of the phenomenon makes it possible to own performative actions. The context of a performance is particularly important. It affects what can be universally recognized as art. The question arises (since we distinguish two values of the performative action: in the art gallery and on the street), what frames on the social media allow the audience to interpret it as art, and assuming that it is an art, does it change the perception of a given phenomenon?

NON-INDISPUTABLE RELATIONS: SELECTED RELATIONS OF CONCEPTUAL ART AND PERFORMANCE (PART ONE)1

The text concerns two major concepts in the art of the last half of this century: conceptual art and performance. Conceptual art, which crystallized in the 1960s, has become one of the fundamentally seminal movements in contemporary art. Performance – a phenomenon with long history, since 1970s has been treated as an independent art genre. These two phenomena happen to be merged in various context; both feature an approach directed against the commoditization of art. However, in other areas and contexts crucial differences between these concepts can be perceived. Conceptual artists have adopted an analytical-index relation to objects in their approach. During performances objects often play a major (also emotional) role, being left behind as documentation. Conceptual art, distancing itself from the so called “retinal art”, i.e. the one that pleases the eye, has adopted utilization of texts or other linguistic materials as an important method of expression. For performance artists (except for performance lecturers), texts and descriptions are located on the outskirts, i.e. as plans preceding actions and descriptions following them. The discussed disciplines of art differ in their approach to media, as well: conceptual art treats them purely functionally, in performances they are of bigger importance, for example combined with multimedia. The conclusion attracts attention to the complicated relations between the two concepts: conceptualism and performance art, taking into account related activities in the 1970s and the difference in approach in the successive years.

Dzieło jako zdarzenie - Performans rekonstruowany w wyobraźni

An exceptionally interesting case of performance in contemporary art are artworks, in which artists do not present a performance itself but rather its effects. For these artists a performance is somehow included in the tissue of the artwork; it was indispensable for the artwork to be created, yet it is hidden so the viewer needs to make an effort to reconstruct this performative character of the artwork and understand (become aware of) the resulting consequences. The text analyses works by Akira Komoto (the Seeing series), the realization by Lech Twardowski (Generator Bez Maszyn), three series of works by Urszula Wilk (Niewysłane listy) as well as selected sculptures by Shen Shaomin (the Bonsai series). Although in these works we deal with various forms of performativeness, their joint feature is the fact that in each of them the viewer must discover and reconstruct the hidden performance in his/her memory.

Performatywny charakter estetyki

Many lecturers of aesthetics feel that the subject of their lectures is not necessarily aesthetics, but history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, the British philosophers of taste and German romanticists. Does that mean that aesthetics feeds on its own past, is nurtured by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that inspire no one and do not open new cognitive perspectives? Does it mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, while its vision of art and beauty is outdated, invalid and totally useless? Aesthetics is a polysemous concept, which has never been sufficiently defined. It can determine a way of perceiving and experiencing the world that is specific for a given community, in other words, taste, yet it can also mean certain countries’ or regions’ contribution to aesthetic thought, to the aesthetic self-knowledge of man. Thus its dimension is practical, cultural and philosophical. Today aesthetics faces new challenges that it has to live up to; its major tasks include the defence of popular art, polishing the concept of aesthetic experience, aestheticization of everyday life and de-aestheticization of art, transcultural aesthetics and its approach to national cultures. In the book “Aesthetics: the Big Questions” (1998) Carolyn Korsmeyer reduces the main issues of contemporary aesthetics to six questions. The first question, old but valid, is a question about the definition of art. What is art? Nowadays everything can be art because art has shed all limitations, even the limitations of its own definition, and has gained absolute freedom. It has become absolute, as Boris Groys says. It has become absolute, because it has made anti-art a full-fledged part of art, and it has not been possible either to question or negate art since, as even the negation of art is art, legitimized by a more than 100 year long tradition, going back to the first ready-made by Marcel Duchamp in 1913. Today making art can be art and not making art can be art, as well, art is art and anti-art is art. The old question: “What is art?” loses its sense, and so does Nelson Goodman’s question: “When art?”. When does something become art? These questions are substituted by new ones: “What is art for you?”, “What do you expect from art?”. There can be a lot of answers, because defining art has a performative character. Louise Bourgeois has expressed the performative character of defining art in an even better way: “Art is whatever we believe to be art”. And for some reasons, which we do not fully realize ourselves, we want to make others share our belief.

Tablecloth definition of performance

From its very beginning the development of performatics was influenced by two kinds of performance activities: performance art and theatre. In Poland theatrologists became proponents of performatics. The translation of Schechner’s book about performance studies was used to homogenise Polish performative vocabulary: the translator reached for the polonized word “performans” and created a new term: “performatyka”. Thanks to Schechner’s general definition – performances are actions, while the subject of performatics are behaviours – the concept of “performans” proved to be very useful because the Polish language lacks such “transparent tool of description”. When in the U.S.A. the researchers dealing with performance studies radically broadened the area of performative activities, their representative in Poland, Jacek Wachowski, became involved in the process of limiting the notion of “performans” and theatre’s influence on performatics. This article is devoted to his innovative proposal.

Performative nature of aesthetics

Many lecturers of aesthetics feel that the subject of their lectures is not necessarily aesthetics, but history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, the British philosophers of taste and German romanticists. Does that mean that aesthetics feeds on its own past, is nurtured by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that inspire no one and do not open new cognitive perspectives? Does it mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, while its vision of art and beauty is outdated, invalid and totally useless? Aesthetics is a polysemous concept, which has never been sufficiently defined. It can determine a way of perceiving and experiencing the world that is specific for a given community, in other words, taste, yet it can also mean certain countries’ or regions’ contribution to aesthetic thought, to the aesthetic self-knowledge of man. Thus its dimension is practical, cultural and philosophical. Today aesthetics faces new challenges that it has to live up to; its major tasks include the defence of popular art, polishing the concept of aesthetic experience, aestheticization of everyday life and de-aestheticization of art, transcultural aesthetics and its approach to national cultures. In the book “Aesthetics: the Big Questions” (1998) Carolyn Korsmeyer reduces the main issues of contemporary aesthetics to six questions. The first question, old but valid, is a question about the definition of art. What is art? Nowadays everything can be art because art has shed all limitations, even the limitations of its own definition, and has gained absolute freedom. It has become absolute, as Boris Groys says. It has become absolute, because it has made anti-art a full-fledged part of art, and it has not been possible either to question or negate art since, as even the negation of art is art, legitimized by a more than 100 year long tradition, going back to the first ready-made by Marcel Duchamp in 1913. Today making art can be art and not making art can be art, as well, art is art and anti-art is art. The old question: “What is art?” loses its sense, and so does Nelson Goodman’s question: “When art?”. When does something become art? These questions are substituted by new ones: “What is art for you?”, “What do you expect from art?”. There can be a lot of answers, because defining art has a performative character. Louise Bourgeois has expressed the performative character of defining art in an even better way: “Art is whatever we believe to be art”. And for some reasons, which we do not fully realize ourselves, we want to make others share our belief.

Finding and losing a place. Łódź underground towards experience of everyday life of a city

The Łódź underground had emerged from the punk aesthetic, yet it absorbed successive genres surprisingly quickly: hardcore, industrial, later also, among others, techno and rave. It utilized diverse forms of expression: most of all sound, but also projections, site-specific actions, graphic design or fashion. The article, drawing from the memories and output of several most important participants of the movement, poses the question, in what way the underground so easily absorbed new genres and aesthetic patterns on the one hand, while on the other – it remained so strongly separate. The separation is revealed in the tension between experiencing new, experimenting musical and aesthetic trends, and the overwhelming everyday life of the post-industrial city. This tension was the reason why the underground movement was so intensely performative in its character, in which new knowledge and new inspirations were mostly created in action.

Performative alter ego

The dynamic development of the Internet and the constant search for new ways of reaching the user bring about the availability of materials that were previously unattainable. Performance art, thanks to its special openness to new methods of expression, reaches the mass media, while showing the individual’s psyche and character of the author’s work. The set of gestures, their sequence and narration are the basis for creating performance art, understood not only as a clear alternative to conventional art, but also characterized by unpredictability, in which the viewer is not prepared for the way messages are received. Undoubtedly, social platforms create an illusion. “The influencer” can reach thousands of viewers and gain fame without leaving home. Without a doubt, social media have created a new entry point to the global art scene, opening way to a wide spectrum of diverse artistic activities. The method of recording, the non-cutaneous nature of the phenomenon makes it possible to own performative actions. The context of a performance is particularly important. It affects what can be universally recognized as art. The question arises (since we distinguish two values of the performative action: in the art gallery and on the street), what frames on the social media allow the audience to interpret it as art, and assuming that it is an art, does it change the perception of a given phenomenon?