RESUMÉ Artur {Arti} Grabowski – DREAMLINER – Performance
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RESUMÉ Artur {Arti} Grabowski – DREAMLINER – performance RESUMÉ PhD Artur {Arti} Grabowski Faculty of Intermedia Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków 1. Diplomas and academic/artistic degrees obtained (including their name, the place and time of their completion, as well as the title of the doctoral dissertation): Doctor of Plastic Arts in the field of "fine arts", Faculty of Sculpture, course: Intermedia (18 March 2011 – defence of a doctoral dissertation entitled "StatykAkcja – studium o statycznych aspektach w sztuce akcji" ["StaticAction – a Study of the Static Aspects of Action Art"]), thesis advisor: Professor Artur Tajber. Reviewers: Professor Antoni Porczak, Professor Kamil Kuskowski. Master of Arts: 1998 – 2003, Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, Faculty of Sculpture, (June 2003 – MA (diploma cum laude) at the Media Action Studio of Professor Antoni Porczak, reviewer: Dr Michał Ostrowicki). 2002 Socrates Erasmus scholarship at Universidad de Castilla la Mancha, Faculty of Multimedia, in Cuenca, Spain. 1998 – 1999 studies at the State Teacher Training College, Department of Plastic Arts, in Częstochowa. 1991 – 1996 studies at the Tadeusz Kantor State High School of the Plastic Arts in Dąbrowa Górnicza – specializing in Exhibitions. 2. History of employment in academic and research institutions 2a. Employment in academic institutions: 2010 – present – Assistant Professor, interim Head (from 2017) of the Performance Art Studio at the Department of Art Phenomena at the Faculty of Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. 2009 – 2012 – Assistant Professor at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology, Department of Information Technology in Bytom, Drawing Studio. 2010-1012 – Assistant Professor at the Performance Art Studio at the Department of Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. 2007 – 2010 – Teaching-and-research Assistant at the Performance Art Studio at the Department of Intermedia of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. 2 2004 – 2007 – Teaching-and-research Assistant at the Interfaculty Intermedia Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. 2b. Employment and contracts in art institutions: from 2013 – Member of the Program Committee at the National Gallery of Art in Sopot. from 2012 – Curator of the International Bipolar Performers' Meeting at the National Gallery of Art in Sopot. 2003 – 2004 – Art Curator at the BB Gallery in Kraków. 1999 – present – Independent Artist – creation and presentation of more than 100 artistic, social, educational and research projects in art galleries and institutions in Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Ukraine, Hungary, Great Britain, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Canada, India, Japan, China, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil and other countries. Achievement selected in accordance with art. 16 point 2 of the law of 14 March 2003 on academic degrees and academic title and on degrees and title in art (Journal of Laws (Dz. U). no. 65, item 595 with amendments): Work selected as the main achievement in the habilitation process: DREAMLINER – performance {A series of artistic performances} 3 Contents: 01. Introduction 02. Context and sources 03. Description 04. Interpretations 05. Language of the absurd 06. Conclusions 07. Afterword 08. Bibliography 4 01. Introduction Dreamliner, of which I am both the author and the performer, premiered at the Centre en art actuel Le Lieu in Quebec City, Canada, within the framework of a program entitled "Art performance Pologne Quebec – hommage à Jan Świdziński” that took place on 4-7 April 2013. The program was co-organized and co-funded by the Le Lieu centre, the Polish Institute in New York, the Faculty of Intermedia (my workplace), and the National Science Centre in Poland. Recorded in a digital format, it was released on DVD-video by the Le Lieu centre, under the title "Art Pologne Quebec – Polska/Quebec, performance art" (publishing agency: INTER/Le Lieu), in 2014. By the middle of 2017, the program had been presented twenty-five times in fourteen different countries. I decided to select it for presentation as the main achievement in my habilitation process because of its crucial role in my oeuvre as a whole; the performance weaves together many seemingly divergent formal and thematic threads I have picked up in the past decade and represents their intermedia synthesis. I began my career in art as a performance artist. Even though I graduated from the Faculty of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, I had already declared my interest in performance at the stage of specialization and the graduate diploma project (title: "Ja w performance" ["Me in performance"]. Between 2007 and 2010, I completed my doctoral studies. My theoretical dissertation was devoted to the phenomenon of statics in the tradition and practice of action art ("StatykAkcja – studium o statycznych aspektach w sztuce akcji" ["StaticAction – a Study of the Static Aspects of Action Art"]), while the practical project included recordings of six performances of mine. Since completing my doctorate, I have considerably expanded my artistic practice. Considering the nature of the discipline, it is important to keep in mind that my output includes several dozen works of various themes and different forms, all created in person (from preparation all the way to public presentation), and performed in more than ten countries around the globe (see: artistic biography); these also include art workshops, i.e. works created collectively under my supervision, and curatorships, where my own artistic practice and experience have served as a basis for the presentation of other authors. Ever since my graduation, I have also been involved in an effort to create a dedicated program, and then an organizational unit, to conduct research and teach intermedia art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, first as a research-and-teaching assistant at the Interfaculty Intermedia Studio and the Performance Art Studio at the Department of 5 Intermedia, and then, from 2012 onward, as a research-and-teaching assistant and later assistant professor at the Faculty of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. In September 2017, I was appointed to serve as an interim head of the Performance Art Studio, created in 2007 by Professor Artur Tajber as the first university unit in Poland to focus on contemporary action art. 02. Context and sources Performance art came into its own as a separate discipline at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, based, on the one hand, on the avant-garde currents of artistic action (Dadaism and surrealism, futurism, Gutai, happening, Fluxus...), and, on the other, on the counterculture revolt of the 1960s. Its sources can be found in many different artistic genres and traditions. The first performance artists were originally groomed as musicians, composers, poets, writers, painters and sculptors, but the current also featured figures educated beyond the world of art. Entering this complex environment at the end of the 1990s, I took its legacy as my own and shaped my interests in direct dialogue with the performance artists of earlier generations, beginning with the pioneers of the genre. And thus, my successive experiments always referred to the present day, to the world around me, as well as to the peculiar opposition in which the short tradition of intermedia and performance art had placed them with respect to other currents of culture. What is the greatest challenge for a performance artist? Common definitions prevalent in ordinary discourse would define it as an attempt to "transcend the barriers of psychophysical condition". To my mind, however, this statement not only merely scratches the surface, but also seems overly technical, based on a line of thinking rooted in the tradition of studio-based art. Similar challenges are faced by athletes, whose achievements are much easier to measure and whose effort to hone their skills often brings superhuman results. Art and sport, however, are not one and the same. Art encompasses the life of the artist, his spirit, his prayer, his delight, his concern, his love, his despair, his worry, his helplessness, and his fear. It embraces his eyes, his nerves, his suffering, and his joy.1 1 Zbigniew Warpechowski, "Podnośnik”, p. 54, 2001, ISBN 83-86983-39-6 6 Unfortunately, despite the lessons of counterculture, conceptual and contextual art, and the world-encompassing intellectual ferment of the 1960s and 1970s, many artists continue to treat their art one-dimensionally, as a mere craft, and pursue it with the predefined objective of achieving success or following current trends. As a consequence, an excessive exhibitionism of personal trauma and cloying sentimentalism expressed in the maltreatment of one's own body can be witnessed even within various post-avantgarde idioms. I believe that the huge potential of performance art, one of the freest and most informal disciplines, lies elsewhere. The supreme challenge for the artist is to try his hand at new tasks every day. To cultivate Authenticity and Sincerity. To be sincere toward himself and the viewer, while maintaining a healthy critical distance. To make sure his work tells the truth. To believe in its Justice, its meta-ethical value, the need to build the message with Honesty and promote dialogue, understood as a continuum, a process. To believe in Systematicity. To reconcile himself (a priori) to the fact that what we do is irrelevant, non-utilitarian and pretentious: that it is a claim placed on the world. To realize the need to give up on profits, approval and accolades. It is a great challenge to be able to oscillate between reality and fiction, physical proximity and intellectual distance, staying put and transcending boundaries – to exist in the miasmas of the absurd, in the realm of whimsical imaginings, pierced with the sting of provocation and painful questioning. It is a tough call to face the crowd as a hostage and messenger of higher values.