PART V - ABOUT THEMSELVES
MS - So far you have presented a wide panorama of art phenomena and specific traits of artistic life of the seventies and eighties in Poland. I would like you now, as a summing up, to say a few words about your art, your problems, about yourselves without all those explanations and theoretical, historical or social digressions.
PK - I will emphasise important impulses in my work. There are two things: the first - practical examples of the theory and, the second, a social influence. I will add that, perhaps, this might pertain only to me; nevertheless it is a fact that we both strongly stressed the practical confirmation of what we have been talking about, the close correlation of these two things. It is likely the value we see in the documentation is related to this. The documentation is the evidence of what we have realised as a manifestation of our theory - we want to avoid empty words. And what is the origin of the theory? Generally, in my case, the theoretical inclinations came from the diagnosis of my world: its imperfectness. Certainly, I realised, I knew, that say thanks to my general education, all imperfect things can be overcome by incorporating certain facts into life. If the facts confirm themselves, they should be immediately propagated and introduced as mandatory. At the Academy I was concerned with the issues with which I dealt directly. If we established in a group that a given process had worked, thus it should be made obligatory everywhere, shouldn't it? An object is no longer the only final form of a work of art, so why is the syllabus of the Academy not being reformed in this direction? And so on, and so forth. It was a state of permanent dissatisfaction and rebellion, that was then an indispensable part of and the drive for our activity. After all we had to have a certain drive, didn't we? There was no financial motivation, rather - the other way round.... I was talking about the basis of general education. I had read, well after all who hadn't, that such a kind of behaviour had always been appreciated by society - all those innovators whose achievements were introduced as a normal thing in the social functioning. And that was simply the way of social progress. That was an undeniable thing for me because it was reaching me from so many sources. I repeat - undeniable.
ZK - By the way, you somehow related that social progress to socialism, didn't you?
PK - No, no. I did not know too well what socialism was. I did not even know what politics was. I learnt the definition of politics a few years ago: this is the art of reconciling opposite interests. To that date I had not know what it was. We are constantly talking about a little world, about the Academy. And - that is important, what we have said about the sources. I do not admit any influence on me from the outside before 1974, even though I saw something as if through a mist.
ZK - Let us not exaggerate. What about my letters from Italy in 1972? The description of Dibbets at the Biennial in Venice? My descriptions of the functioning of the artists I had met, of the galleries? And what about the earlier letters and tapes by Grzegorz Kowalski from the USA? And the library of ASP with current issues of magazines from all over the world? And Porebski's lectures including Duchamp? Admit it - you did not know English!
PK - That was your fault because in the division of labour you worked as an interpreter. I started learning English intensively in 1987. Well, in the visual environment the language is not a great barrier. But, indeed, I am making a fool of myself. It is enough to look into our notebooks of that period - everything is in them and it was also in our heads, yet it belonged to the category of erudition and in that sense was dead for me; although exciting. Even today, when I read magazines devoted to current art I experience an irritating excitation. I would sum it up as, getting in a Syrena54 after studying the catalogues of Mercedes and Ford; having studied the prospectuses of Hasselblad and Nikon I take pictures with Smena55. However, I pretty soon started to understand what was happening to me at the Academy. Well... So, the stage of the permanent rebellion came and my attempt to realise the ideas of "the Gizycko report". Certainly, that led to a total fiasco. That was that second period, we can say. It turned out that my concept, my "idealism", which I am absolutely convinced to date was a rational concept and could have been rationally realised - it simply failed. It is only now that I am beginning to realise why. And only now can we talk about socialism, political systems, politics etc.
MS - Can we date that breaking point as 1975 and the "eagle scandal"?
ZK - Earlier. The eagle issue was already a result, after all coincidental.
PK - It was the result of an internal event which conspicuously confirmed our intuitions. However, the intuitions did not have to be verified by unpleasant facts. To that moment, it can be said, we had still been optimistic. Despite a very hard situation we were optimistic in the broad understanding of the word...
ZK -Grounded in the belief in the good effect of rational activities.
PK - But I am thinking about Poland. This was also related to political factors. We should realise what political period it was - the first years of the Gierek era. Indeed, measured in some numbers the rate of economic development was one of the quickest in the world. The workers said "we will help" and the so called common man could buy dollars and go abroad wherever he wished to.
ZK - Again, you are exaggerating.
PK - Anyway, for people like us, who have such a realistic ethos, optimism is a completely natural thing. If somebody proposes a positive programme, whether socialist or not, it is the programme which counts, not some ideological declarations. And so, it turned out that all this fizzled. I think that the reason was those practical realisations, not on the part of the artists but politicians. And simply - people. In that period we, similarly, did not think of the so called "national characteristic" of Poles. We did not think about such issues at all, did we?
ZK - Uhm...
PK - It was only later, in the following periods that we started to realise it strongly and think about it at all.
***
MS - Is the category of being Polish important, is this a problem for you at all - in your art?
ZK - I will mention here the emblematic trend - the application of Polish emblems long before "Solidarity". What I mean is the beginning of the seventies and the things which Wisniewski, Przyjemski and we ourselves did. This is the topic for a separate exhibition. I have the major part of the material on slides. Namely, the Polish flag and various means of using it: white and red, the division of the field, this horizontal line....
PK - Yes, here we can speak about the Polish character of art in the strict sense. Sometimes, about the Polish character of the PRL type. In visual arts, any such applications of emblems, immediately reveals a certain facet or a separate value different from the meaning itself; it creates characteristic aesthetic time-results. However, for me, being Polish means yielding to our context first of all. In this respect I consider myself an utterly Polish artist. We even call ourselves the "Polish Duo".
ZK - The Polish character is a problem but in this respect that it should not be a problem at all. In our "Skrotowce" ("Acronyms"), those pictures that we showed in the Dziekanka in 1984, we wrote in one of the acronyms: "NCBP". This means - I must reveal the secret "I Do Not Want to Be a Polish Woman" (Nie Chce Być Polką). And that is the very problem.
MS - Is this a kind of a hunch-back?
ZK - A Polish hunch-back, a certain helplessness. It is not the lack of intelligence or talents, it is the lack of rational, efficient and proper functioning of everything and the lack of the normal attitude to everything, without cynicism, without all those ambiguities, without the pissed-off approach. This, obviously, has an impact on art, and also our behaviour and feelings when contacting foreigners.
PK - The lack of service, the lack of publications, bad equipment, a car which is a curiosity, the non-convertibility of the currency, etc. - All these are degrading factors.
ZK - We must always pretend that we did not remember about them. And we know that others, our friends, also pretend to be normal people. Consequently a paradox appears: those who emphasise this abnormality too often, that is who complain, become, by doing so, even more abnormal, provincial. This is some vicious circle.
PK - This is my observation concerning us and the circle of the people who left for abroad at their own expense and their own initiative in the seventies. Who knows, perhaps this hunch-back would not appear if everything had simply been done officially. If I had gone abroad as a rep, I could have stayed in the hotel on different conditions, you follow me? Modestly, just modestly because we are a poor country, however, backed by the state. And now - no state supports me, there is only me with my PDDiU, that is - I and my independence.
MS - Well, whether it is "only" - you can have a discussion on that.
PK - I know, that one day I shall get a medal for it, ha ha ha!
ZK - Posthumously. And would to God you got it posthumously, because if you got it while alive, you would be very poor among your fellow citizens.
***
MS - Some time ago we talked about the idea of artists employed as permanent workers.
PK - Oh, yes. Ha ha ha!
MS - I understand that this was connected with the first period - the period of your optimism and some attempts to get into the institutional network with the purpose of further revolutionising it - I think something like that was the basis of that idea?
PK - Yes, this is paradoxical: if the artist were employed permanently having his programme of breaking stereotypes and fighting against fossilisation, the state would - I am talking about our real-socialism state - have to finance the pikes in its own lake.
MS - That means guarantee their independence.
PK - Yes, and acknowledge their status as pikes. In other words, it would have to admit to providing finance to the opposition. The constructive opposition. If she wants - why not. I am not saying "no". However, the artists do not necessarily have to deal with it. After all they can do various things. They can even do nothing. It is so called "social luxury". My dear...hm... These are interesting issues.
MS - How do you both evaluate your contacts with so called "state patronage". Patronage - I would call the name an euphemism. A patron is the a of art who supports the artist, creates working conditions for him, meets him, is his friend, and so on. In this case all the above things are out of the question, it is a mere administering of art, dividing funds.
ZK - And making lists - black and not.
MS - Oh, yes, so called "preferences". But you have been active outside the state patronage, haven't you?
PK - Well, we accepted a few grants. But, indeed, it is difficult to call it patronage, if the grants are given to people in bulk, on a social benefit basis. I believe that the Ministry committee is not able to approach the issue properly. The other thing is the amount of granted money, Even if it were multiplied several times, it would not even suffice for a living. I am not talking about making your life comfortable if the grant is awarded to an artist in his late twenties. If the artist wanted to treat this money as a kind of patronage and spend it on his working tools or the production of works of art, he would have to earn money somewhere anyway. Another situation which we have run across in the case of "patronage", that is dividing state money, in the seventies, was that the money was granted to those who had a big income anyway and most often steady employment.
MS - Was there any "ministry milieu" group?
PK - No, that's not the point. It was something different. I would label it high and low demand. It is a different thing when the money is granted to help to make a thing which is in demand, and another if it is granted to someone who does not make such things. In our "patronage" the former case is being realised. I leave the conclusions to you. The point is the general distortion of the idea of patronage. In our country it was rich artists who started to obtain money. Who was rich became richer - that was the basic rule of this patronage. And who was poor, a grant would not help him anyway. Well, it might help in a sense, but...
ZK -... it would shut his mouth.
PK - Yes, something like that. At least for a certain time. This is also a characteristic thing; in our case, too. When we were obtaining grant money, our anti-social aggressiveness, by this I certainly mean social malfunctioning, diminished. However, when we started to lack money, our anti-social aggressiveness increased. Well... Obviously, this is a sick situation.
MS - Oh, yes, what would your postulates be?
PK - I understand patronage in the following way: the everyday life of the artist is good - either he is permanently employed or sells his work - and at a certain time he is granted extra money, but not for living - for concrete realisations for which he should unconditionally present a detailed financial report. In our country the habit of making financial reports about state money does not simply exists. It is another example of the general distortion of the system. It is not only in the art domain that the money meant for investment is just used for living. Finally, there is neither investment nor its results, nothing. Or not finished or uncompleted investments, etc. Thus we can say that state patronage serves the state itself, its reporting habits rather; it does not function as it should. Why? Because being a patron requires professional skills and we lack professionals in this country.
ZK - In all spheres of life?
MS - Well, for example in the sphere of administration...
ZK - I am asking, yet, I do confirm it. This is the basic accusation from each Pole, I think.
PK - Yes, yes. We can say that for the time being the professional level is not possible here. As a hobby - why not, it is plausible. However, we want to be professional artists and people.
MS - Can we thus sum up as follows: the state patronage does not practically concern you; although, you are not programmed to find it totally repulsive. If the patronage were what it should be, you would join without hesitation and objections in such an ideal, say, state patronage?
ZK - Yes.
PK - Our appearance at the Dziekanka entitled "Buying an artist" ("Kupic artyste"), when we offered ourselves for sale, was also a certain proposition of another form of patronage - simply, the members of society would buy the artist directly. What will happen depends on the situation - whether the purchased artist does this or that. He can do nothing, can't he? There is also another step, really paradoxical - if nobody from the outside wants to buy an artist, the artist can buy himself. Then he is free to do whatever he wishes. However, he has to find money to pay for himself. And here the games with the new type of money appear. The Artistic Money. Then the regular money is being transformed - when it is earned, it is normal money - into the Artistic Money; just as the bread and wine are transformed into our Lord's Body and Blood. And the artist realises his art for this transformed money.
***
MS - Thus we have reached the question of independence.
PK - The question of independence was very strong in the second period of our activity and probably was the reason for creating PDDiU. We understood independence in an instrumental way: to be independent you must do by yourself all the things on which you depend. Unfortunately, this is true even today.
ZK - So, in our case the emphasis was put on organising and administering ourselves. On organising by ourselves the fields and places where our art was created and revealed.
MS - In one word, to be independent from co-relations in artistic life, you need to create your own private artistic life?
ZK - Yes, in this sense PDDiU was such a guarantee of independence for us.
MS - Can we thus treat the founding of PDDiU as the sign of resignation, yielding to the system of institutions which you previously wanted to reorganise in your own way?
PK - No. Not as a resignation and yielding! As an element of co-existence and even of fight. It has not been our ideal to do something like PDDiU and propagating its form. It is the very paradoxical thing itself.
ZK - There was a certain constraint because of the circumstances: the situation forced us to take the alternative position and create PDDiU. It is worthwhile emphasising that we have never wanted to be on the margin. Just life pushed us there.
PK - The constraint of the circumstances, yes. To attain independence, something like PDDiU, we had to earn it. So, indeed, we achieved independence. Nowhere else in Poland could one make such kinds of exhibitions as we did. It was not possible for one artist to occupy the gallery for half a year or more, to make several overlapping exhibitions, etc. Or, say, stay for a night in one of the rooms. We experienced at the Academy that they asked us out at 7 in the evening. We needed to create a place where we could carry out all these things in the way we wanted to. Certainly, that is an absurdity!
MS - I can see another absurdity here. Having created this place of yours, having achieved independence, meanwhile, you sent appeals and offers to the government asking them to make PDDiU a state-run institution.
PK - Yes, exactly, Ha ha ha!
MS - Is this still so?
both - Yes, absolutely so.
MS - And if they take the place and sack you? What then?
PK - No, that is not possible. (ZK has some doubts.) Because we can have some safeguards. We have talked about that and worked out a strategy for such circumstances.
ZK - Based on the rule: who will be stronger. We kept the negatives, you have got the copies.
MS - Aha. I love you but I will not give you my pistol, yes?
both - Yes, exactly, ha ha ha!
PK - Making PDDiU a state institution is nothing else but making the government and the state guarantee our independence. In this way you check the society in which you live. Speaking in an anecdotal manner, to be independent in socialism you must create capitalism and the other way round. You can find justification for that.
***
MS - Independence is costly. How have you lived and financed your independence?
ZK - We have had hardly any earnings in Poland (PK - inserts: not "hardly any" but "none at all".) and as far as this most important type of our work is concerned - no earnings at all. We managed to sell two of our works, 40 thousand zloties each: in Lublin and in Szczecin. We also received a couple of grants.
PK - So, we have earned on our art 80 thousand minus tax since 1979. On our most excellent works. However, we have been abroad several times. In those cases we spent the saved pocket money and travel expenses on food. The rate of exchanging dollars into zloties was a crucial factor - it allowed us to convert those funny sums of money in a foreign currency into quite considerable sums. We called that money "dolarosze" 56, that is peanuts sums from dollars.
ZK - And our relatives helped.
PK - The relatives and family still help even today. Relatives, relatives! Shall I be more specific, or not?
ZK - I do not know...
PK - Our relatives help - this sounds both nice and formidable.
ZK - Yet, it is true that they help you. Yours or mine. Their help is significant. That means our relatives support us, ha ha ha. Meanwhile we participate is such situations abroad which are also organised by alternative places, which however are linked with their institutions. Thus, these are not some channels of commercial galleries or private donations, these are state-supported places that try to introduce a bit of novelty into their circuit; something like the house of culture, the centre for art, etc.
PK - To be precise: we have not sold any single work of ours abroad, either. Well, unless you consider as such a prelection with slides. I think, you'd rather not. There have been some performances but we did not obtain money for a performance as such, rather for a participation in the event in the form of the return of all expenses and a minimum flat fee. That is what it looks like. Well, there is also an important issue of the refurbishment. We have been living, one can say, constantly renovating for three years. That means we do all the work ourselves.
The renovation consumes large amounts of money and the money is, among others, the property of our relatives. Therefore, we simply function as contract workers because we do the renovation ourselves economising on the pay for would-be workers. We live by or from the renovation. From the labour of our hands in the renovation. Consequently, we have returned to the notion of Artistic Money. However, in my case a situation tragic for art happens because I try to follow the rules of logic, tend to treat the renovation and the rest after the work as ... unexpected art. Ha ha ha! Paying money to myself I can do whatever I want to, can't I?
ZK - Were it not for the renovation, we would be forced to produce some pot-boilers We came all this way through potboiling in the seventies - almost every kind of it. From large -scale decoration panels, architecture models, commemorative plaques, informative slabs made of plaster to bronze, writing diplomas, painting flags etc. etc.
PK - I mean we could have become rich thanks to potboiling - we were qualified and apt; however, to do so you need have the mentality of a pot-boiler which we have always lacked. Never, never have we been asked to do a piece of our work - a composition, a sculpture, etc. - which we could have created in an absolutely free and natural way. I considered what I did as the participation in violation of myself. The best potboiling was when we could create our own art simultaneously. Then we could be absolutely indifferent to the content, requirements, what you do, with and for whom. Otherwise you had to be committed - fu! Our definition of potboiling included in our complaint to Minister Wronski of 1973 is: "Potboiling is a work for money, however, only such work in which someone or something (regulations) determines the range of our competence."
MS - Did you manage to live on those works?
both - No.
ZK - No, because we spent much of the earned money on photographic materials. Our relatives helped us at that time too, however in a different form. Simply - baskets of food.
***
MS - Should an artist follow a certain ethical code? I do not mean a Ten Commandments or a common moral code. I mean professional ethics and the citizen's ethics - here and now. For example the boycott...
ZK - If an artist is to be independent, self-sufficient and decide about himself then it is not his own behaviour which is unethical, it is the behaviour of the group that pushes him in whatever way, in whatever name of right or false ideals, truths, programmes or whatever.
PK - Yes, including asking such questions.
MS - And the production of bad, worthless, revolting works which, additionally can have a bad influence over people, e.g. some monuments?
PK - I will tell an anecdote as an answer. Once, in some rage of anger I shouted that we should slaughter all the painters. To that Jarnuszkiewicz lamented: what are they guilty of, why do you want to murder innocent people? This calmed me down a little. Yet, again: someone had trained those artists, instilled this, not that, and so on.
ZK - It is a closed circle: The Academy or a professor who educates artists in a specific way, then they realise the commissions of PSP where the same professor sits in a Committee. So, it is as if...
PK -. they educated such people who would not cause trouble to the committee.
ZK - Do not cause trouble, speak in the same language, make works in the same style.
PK - Yes, of course. After all, it is an absolutely normal thing, it is like that everywhere. However, this has nothing to do with progress... And, what you have said: it is the system that is unethical, not an individual entangled within its works.
MS - Can we sum up as follows: an independent artist does not observe any codes. Getting involved in any kind of dependence, any kind of relations resulting from the system is the kind of artists' behaviour which we can consider unethical.
both - Yes.
***
PK - I think we should explain; although, perhaps, we do not have to, why we propagate the independence of an artist and our own independence. After all, it is difficult get out of it by saying "because I like this way, I feel I am a unique individual - full stop." I think that independence manifested in my activity is profitable for people, as simple as that. This was proved in the eighties. Our actions form the very beginning, all those efforts to guarantee ourselves independence - have now became a normal programme of acting to everybody. Everyone realises that it is impossible to act in a different way. That means our "mission" has been shared by everyone.
MS - You can be people of an exemplary stance?
PK - We must admit that we have played a twofold game. The faction of artists who opposed us - in the slogans and, needless to say, entirely wrongly called "independent" - did not acknowledge any links between artistic activity or art and the "here and now" reality. Noticing a gag from the height of their ivory tower and painting it in a metaphorical way - that is what their "commitment" ended with. However, the young avant garde in which we participated certainly could not negate the reality so unequivocally. That would contradict the assumptions of such trends us "ad-hoc-ism", contextualism, and so on. We were constantly participating in that reality. And, it is worth emphasising here, we managed to built our authority anyway, drop by drop, despite the ostracism of the milieu. At any rate, this was conspicuous and we had known about it from the very beginning and followed that policy consciously - the policy of beating our heads against the wall or putting them into something to achieve a certain outcome. I repeat: on purpose. To show the bruises later. In 1974 in "The Enumeration of Activities" attached to our applications we wrote at the end of the description of the Activities with Dobromierz (Dzialania z Dobromierzem): "One of the basic rules in this work is the fact that we allow the parameters of our helpless situation to shape the aesthetic time-results, our problems with living, supply of materials, accommodation, information - the situation that emerged from our departure from the worn-out patterns of behaviour proposed by everyone in the field of art and so called "artistic life". Our departure is the result of the realisation what the situation was bad and what it should be good!". And we just called this hitting the wall with our heads, "the commitment". But this behaviour does not say unequivocally that we belong to a certain side, on the contrary! We even allowed for such an extreme case where we both enrolled in PZPR - to make it conspicuous. Thanks to this e.g. the eagle issue, various letters or utterances have an official stamp and have to be preserved in the state archives - they are not merely cigarette smoke in a café. It was subconsciously received. I think that our artistic policy was right and proper. Which was confirmed both in verbal and other ways during the "Solidarity" period when we started to be noticed and set as an example. Our type of commitment was positively judged. By the way, I can see after many years that even that commitment was abused. I mean, when we were presented as an example of a proper artistic stance, on a justified ground, it was only as if we were an example of the other side. Now, even that period has passed and again we have become unnecessary, we did not get into society. Yet, I think that our impact was very strong, especially on the generation of Dziekanka. I am fully convinced about that. And the impact was a moral one, that is we gave them a moral feeling that there is someone who "keeps socialism to its word" and does not give in. That is a sufficient reason, I reckon, to speak about the influence.
ZK - Well, this is a complicated problem, because, on the one hand, we are rejected by our contemporaries and the younger generation just because of moral reasons, that is our viewpoint on the world, our behaviour, that entanglement into reality - this is utterly negated, rejected and there is not even the slightest will to understand this kind of stance. Which is the consequence of a doctrinaire stance of the other type of world view. On the other hand, however, certain visual and aesthetic effects as well as some method of self-administration have been adapted from us by others and put into practice. So, what kind of authority have we created? Some people have emphasised it many times - Owidzinski, Sikorski, Wodiczko - that we are consistent. Well, perhaps we unnecessarily get committed, are in the party, we do this, we do that; nevertheless in our artistic practice we are consistent and that is what counts. There is no unequivocal answer and unequivocal judgement. I would find the characteristic of those ambiguities very interesting, however, I am not able to do it myself. To do that you would need to interview the third persons about whom we can say that they were not or still are not indifferent to our influence. However, it would be good to hear such statements from the other side.
***
MS - CWhat else have you not said about yourselves?
PK - This is a mystery. If we revealed it we would have "Red and Black" instead of white and red.
ZK reading from a sheet of paper) - For about 17 years I have been working in a duo. I have participated in the realisation of common objectives. After many attempts I stopped believing in their sense and conflict-free group realisation. And simply have started to deal with myself. Now I am looking for something else, not a partnership in common initiatives. I am interested in those in whom I feel a big accumulation of psychological tensions, some cracks in their personality, in those who try to take certain "shortcuts" to express themselves. I am also searching for wider cultural plots. I do not want to limit myself to my own, individual context and conditioning. I do not want to be a laboratory guinea-pig any longer, I would like to be a missionary.
PK - Zosia! No!...
The end