Dominik Kuryłek, Tumult of the 1980s

 

The independent social and cultural magazine Tumult was founded in Kraków in 1988. The founders and editors of the magazine were Bogdan Klich, Bogdan Wojnar, and Cezary Michalski, who were referred to as "Tumult representatives" in the first issues of the magazine. In its original form, Tumult was published until the end of 1989, i.e., until the sixth issue. The next issue was published in early 1990 under an abridged title. Issue no. 8 was published as Przegląd Ideo-Graficzny. Tumult.

In this text I am mainly interested in the Tumult published in the 1980s as an “independent social and cultural magazine” (issues no. 1 to 6) as part of the underground independent press in Poland.

The history of Tumult is intertwined with the student opposition movement, which grew very dynamically in Kraków after the killing of Stanisław Pyjas by SB (Security Service) on 7 May 1977. This is when the Solidarity Student Committee [Studencki Komitet Solidarność, SKS] was founded; three years later, it became part of the Independent Students’ Union [Niezależne Zrzeszenie Studentów, NZS, founded on 18-19 October 1980]. In 1988, when Tumult was launched, NZS was already in operation. After the experience of martial law, the Union became one of the most active underground organisations[1].

Moreover, Bogdan Klich, a founder and editor of Tumult, was an active member of the movement Freedom and Peace [Wolność i Pokój, WiP]. WiP was founded in 1985. It brought together young people, hippies, anarchists, pacifists as well as conservatives, who were critical of the government. Like other opposition activists, WiP members published magazines and stood up for persecuted individuals. They differed, however, from the Solidarity opposition in that they were sceptical about the idea of compromise with the government of the People’s Republic of Poland, which paved the way to the Round Table talks.

WiP members disagreed with the opposition movement’s strategy of waiting. Frustrated with waiting, they wanted new, overt, and determined methods of opposing the state run by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). They created their own opposition organisation and invented uncompromising and original methods of opposing the government, such as conscientious objection, environmental protests[2], opposing discrimination against national minorities, and litigation against officials.

The main WiP activists in Kraków were Jan Maria Rokita, Radosław Huget, and Bogdan Klich. Compared to other movements in Poland, WiP in Kraków was rather conservative, as demonstrated by the reference to John Paul II in the founding declaration penned by Rokita[3]. Anna Smółka notes that “Kraków was ideologically strictly right-wing” but “divided into two groups[:] ‘pragmatists’ grouped around Rokita and ‘protesters’ affiliated with Huget"[4]. The two fractions initially worked together. They eventually split up in 1988, mainly due to different views on the work of the opposition which was aiming to initiate the Round Table talks.

As with other opposition groups, publication of underground magazines was an important part of the activity of WiP. Initially, WiP was Poland’s first distributor of the Amnesty International Newsletter. Its own publications soon followed. In 1987 – 1988, WiP published WiP. Pismo Ruchu Wolność i Pokój in Wrocław, Serwis Informacyjny Ruchu WiP in Warsaw, and A Capella in Gdańsk. In Kraków, Bogdan Klich edited two issues of the magazine Wolność i Pokój (May and June 1987), dedicated in full to international politics and disarmament.

Once WiP’s momentum slowed down, and the strategy of the Solidarity opposition produced tangible results, Bogdan Klich left WiP and started publishing the magazine Tumult.

The social and cultural magazine Tumult was published alongside other independent cultural magazines, such as Arka in Kraków and Kultura Niezależna, which had national coverage. It was launched soon after the legendary magazine bruLion, published in Kraków.

„Arka” was the leading underground cultural magazine in Kraków. The magazine was published irregularly from June 1983 with the subtitle: Free magazine. Essays, criticism, literature, other forms. It survived as an unofficial publication until 1989, with over 2 thousand copies printed. Mainly distributed in Kraków, its regular contributors included Tadeusz Nyczek, Jan Polkowski (Editor in Chief), Maria de Hernandez-Paluch, Lesław Maleszka, Bronisław Maj, Bogusław Sonik, Ryszard Terlecki, Ryszard Legutko, Łukasz Plesnar, Piotr Pieńkowski, and Andrzej Nowak[5]. Arka focused on the recent history of Poland, as well as on emigration. The magazine was edited by conservatives, which left its mark, though a declaration in the first issue promised a plurality of views[6]. Arka published similar content to other underground magazines: reports of persecutions, illegal activities of the government and initiatives of the opposition, essays on recent history and analyses of the social and economic situation in Poland, discussions on the agenda of the opposition, literary works banned by censorship, including poems, short stories, criticism, and translations.

Underground cultural magazines included Kultura Niezależna, founded on the initiative of the Solidarity Independent Culture Committee [Komitet Kultury Niezależnej]. The magazine had national coverage, with a circulation of around 3 thousand copies, as a regular monthly from March 1983 to May 1991. Kultura Niezależna was one of the leading underground cultural magazines. The board of editors included writers, critics and essayists: Marta Fik, Andrzej Osęka, Jan Walc, Janusz Sławiński, Zyta Oryszyn, and Andrzej Kaczyński. Kultura Niezależna contributors included Tomasz Łubieński, Jacek Trznadel, Michał Głowiński, Roman Zimand, Jarosław Marek Rymkiewicz, Andrzej Kijowski, Barbara Skarga, Jacek Bocheński, Janusz Jankowiak, and Andrzej Jarecki. Kultura Niezależna published poems, fiction, reviews, literary and historical essays, interviews, as well as communiqués of the Independent Culture Committee and reports on annual Solidarity Cultural Awards[7].

When Tumult was launched in Kraków, the magazine bruLion, edited by Robert Tekieli, had been in circulation for over a year. bruLion was in underground distribution in 1987-1990. Its editors included Jarosław Baran, Wojciech Bockenheim, Krzysztof Koehler, and Adam Michajłów. Its regular contributors included Manuela Gretkowska, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Monika Krutel, Cezary Michalski, Olga Okoniewska, Mirosław Spychalski, and Krzysztof Winnicki.bruLion published poems, fiction, plays, reviews and interviews, and news about arts and publications. Awards were given to the best magazine and the best graffiti[8].

In the 1980s, bruLion was rather similar to other underground magazines. It reported on issues, problems, and names common to all of the independent press. The first issues published texts on authors discussed by the opposition. There were publications on Jan Polkowski, an interview with Wiktor Woroszylski, and translations of foreign writers such as Milan Kundera, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Reiner Kunze. From the very beginning, bruLion took a critical stance on official and opposition culture and showed interest in phenomena marginal to both of these “mainstream” cultures. bruLion turned to alternative culture, broke social, political and cultural taboos, and showed interest in new literature. These trends specific to the Kraków magazine became even more prominent with time.

The first issue of bruLion published among others a critical review of poems by Ernest Bryll, who was accused of consolidating the "altar boy ethos of anniversaries"[9]. The second issue contained an article by Mirosław Spychalski entitled “The Pope, Smektała and the Just” [Papież, Smektała i sprawiedliwi], which exposed the irritating propensity of opposition intellectuals to take the moral high ground[10]. A discussion of the Holocaust between Marek Tabor (Cezary Michalski) and Professor Jan Błoński in the fourth issue of bruLion had a similar tenor [11].

bruLion published texts of young authors, many of them debuts, which was unique among independent magazines of the time. These contributors included Marcin Baran, Krzysztof Koehler, Marcin Sendecki, as well as Marcin Świetlicki, who published in bruLion in 1990[12].

bruLion introduced alternative culture to underground magazines. The first issue presented “The Graffiti of the Year: Shoot Or Emigrate” [Napis roku: Strzelaj albo emigruj] [13]. Subsequent issues carried a special column devoted to alternative culture entitled “Garage” [Garaż]. The fourth issue of bruLion published the lyrics of the T.Love Alternative song “Nasza tradycja” (Our Tradition)[14] and the seventh/eight issue featured Paweł Kasprzak’s article about the Orange Alternative entitled “Wszyscy jesteśmy pomarańczowi [We’re All Orange][15].

Similar to bruLion, Tumult was critical of so-called independent culture, but took a more conservative stance. Clearly, a magazine edited together by Bogdan Klich and Cezary Michalski could not fail to become interesting. The content published by Tumult was initially no different from other underground magazines. However, similar to Robert Tekieli’s bruLion, the early issues ofTumult already revealed its specific slant.

Perhaps most striking was the critical reflection on the apathy of the Polish independent press offered by the Editor in Chief in an article entitled “Essays Ill At Ease” [Publicystyka na cenzurowanym]. Bogdan Klich wrote that the independent press is “immutable” as it tends to repeat the same topics and draw the same conclusions, and its authors are guilty of incompetence, sentimentality or futurology. According to Klich, reading the independent press, “[it] would seem that nothing important is going on except for the mandatory topics. And yet that’s not the case, it’s just that the editors fail to note the diversity of social and artistic events, as if they left them to the official press”. Klich pointed out the burn-out effect of the independent press, which “has stopped at a certain stage and is unable to address the expectations which today are greater than in years before”[16].

Such an image of the press became a negative point of reference for the authors. The editors of the magazine wanted not only to react to current political and cultural events, but also to actively participate in them and to create them. Klich’s article, published in the column “Clashes” [Spięcia], demonstrates the will to open a constructive dialogue on the state of the art of cultural institutions in Poland, including magazines.

It suggests a need for effective tools for creating culture and a need for independent cultural institutions, described by Klich in the fifth issue of Tumult in the article entitled “Whatever Happened to Independent Culture” [Co się stało z kulturą niezależną][17]. Klich outlined the problems of independent culture which result from its relations with “independent – opposition politics”.

It was probably thanks to an understanding of this close relation that the “social and cultural” magazine Tumult published articles describing and analysing current political events in Poland and around the world (the column “Events” [Wydarzenia], which was renamed “From the Local and International perspective” [W perspektywie kraju i świata] from the third issue on) alongside texts about literature (column “Literary Review” [Przegląd literacki]) and – which was unique to Tumult – publications on visual arts (column “In the World of Arts” [W kręgu sztuki]).

The column “Events” featured essays by Bogdan Klich, Maciej Szumowski and Dawid Warszawski about negotiations between the Solidarity opposition and the government of the People’s Republic of Poland, the Round Table talks, and the elections in June 1989. It presented historical essays about the recent history of Poland and other socialist countries, articles about Polish xenophobia, the situation of the Ukrainian minority in Poland, and the attitudes of the Polish minority in Lithuania to the local national revival. It also included reports on Gorbachev’s perestroika in the USSR, interviews with editors of foreign independent magazines, articles about the current problems of the democratic opposition in other socialist countries, and the activity of unionists in the West.

The column “Events” suggested that the crucial time of systemic transition requires not only debates on politics, but also critical reflection on the opinions and mind-set of Poles. This perspective was present in essays published in several issues of the magazine.

The column “Literary Review” featured fiction by Leo Lipski, Jan Józef Szczepański, Czesław Miłosz, and Milan Kundera, as well as – similar to bruLion – poems of authors of the young generation, including Lech Sadowski, Wojciech Wilczyk, and Marcin Świetlicki, and foreign poets who inspired both the older and the younger generation of Polish authors, including Saint-John Perse and John Robinson Jeffers.

The literary preferences of the editors of Tumult were close to the canon of the underground press, but the editors strived to make the canon more inclusive. Classics were presented from a more critical angle. Texts of younger authors differed from the genre of „veteran verse” published in other independent journals.

Similar to bruLion, though less directly and less radically, Tumult was critical of the prevailing model of independent culture. However, Tumult did not lean towards alternative culture, made no reference to the young music scene, and organised no competition for the best graffiti. The quarterly magazine from Kraków was attractive in a rather different way.

What set Tumult apart was the column “In the World of Arts” [W kręgu sztuki], which featured theatre and film reviews, as well as texts on visual arts. The third issue included probably the only colour insert ever published in an underground magazine entitled Tumult Gallery [Galeria Tumultu], in which Bogdan Klich introduced a series of paintings by Jarosław Kawiorski Balkony [Balconies] [18].

The column “In the World of Arts” also featured texts about current art events written by Łukasz Guzek, Krzysztof Klimek, Dorota Jarecka, Maryla Sitkowska, Maria Anna Potocka, and Anda Rottenberg. There were interesting texts by Piotr Krakowski and interviews with Professor Mieczysław Porębski. The column critically analysed the specificity of Polish culture and presented potential further directions of artistic work in the context of the new political and social situation.

For example, Andrzej Sawicki in the article “New Criticism?” [Krytyka nowa?] presented a critical analysis of exhibitions related to the independent circuit of culture[19]. In Sawicki’s opinion, by approaching politics, art criticism destabilised the existing institutionalised public circulation of art, but the trend could not last much longer. According to Sawicki, the change was evident in exhibitions created by critics (who now would probably be called “curators”) including Jerzy Bogucki’s Sign of the Cross [Znak Krzyża] and Apocalypse: A Light in the Dark [Apokalipsa – światło w ciemności], and Marek Rostworowski’s Romanticism and Being Romantic [Romantyzm i romantyczność] and Self-portrait of Poles [Polaków portret własny], as well as the Biennale of the Young in Wrocław. For Sawicki, art presented in those exhibitions, mainly nationalist art detached from the individual existence of the artist, was a temporary phenomenon. The text encouraged reflection on the profile of future exhibitions to be prepared by critics and artists, and the expected turn in criticism and art once the nationalist aesthetic of liberation and martyrdom was no longer in demand.

In the third issue of Tumult, Łukasz Guzek published an article entitled “How to Look at Contemporary Art” [Jak oglądać sztukę współczesną], opening a debate on the situation and profile of art in the time of transition[20]. Guzek seemed to agree with those who said that art was in crisis, and wrote that crisis was a sign of the times, reflected in contemporary art. Guzek referred to the systemic meaning of reality and argued that “Art is a specific pluralist system without dominance or subordination, whose individual parts concern different partial aspects which are interconnected within an organic whole without precedence of any single part. They all exist within an overall system, hence each part comprises all other parts”.

According to Guzek, “[c]ontemporary art should not be considered to be subordinated to any single concept; rather, it is an organism, a system, in which even contradictory opinions co-exist”. Guzek’s conclusion is that a systemic perspective on reality creates freedom, as it is a condition of the materialisation of human potential and enables self-fulfilment. Guzek referred to the contemporary political situation in Poland and its clear tendency to develop a system which would allow the existence of different positions, ideas, opinions, expressions of different problems and aspirations. Guzek’s stance was very open-minded. For him, art was a space of free thinking without any influence from the outside and beyond reductive orders of thinking. His article can be read as a manifesto of open art. Guzek identified the potential of art and introduced it as a space which cannot be clearly defined but which can accommodate all positions, where the imagination of the artist is the only limit.

Bogdan Klich was definitely most critical of the relationship between art and politics. In his text “What Happened to Independent Culture” [Co się stało z kulturą niezależną], he attributed the shortcomings of Polish culture of the past 50 years to the “subordination of culture to politics”, which he saw as a patron of the2 artsv. In his article, Klich understands politics to mean both the official politics of the Polish government and the activity of the democratic opposition. Klich pointed to the danger resulting from relations between culture and both the official government and the civic movement, with which the culture was in symbiosis, even in the 1970s. Klich wrote that at that time, culture and politics “[m]ingled so much that any cultural event was also a political gesture, for instance the underground publication of Andrzejewski’s ‘Miazga’, and any political move expanded the space of culture”.

For Klich, the best example of fruitful combination of culture and politics were the writings and the activity of Adam Michnik, who Klich says tried to prove that “literature is not a dead letter, remote, accessible only to the elect”. According to Klich: “There was an awakening in culture and politics in the 1970s”. Klich believes that “anything could have happened back then" because "everything was still open and undefined”. It was possible to “[e]xpand the space of culture and politics for their own sake rather than for the sake of any ideology”. Klich also argues that before August 1980, “independent culture had no patron on either side of the barricade. Without a ‘supreme doctrine’, culture was good; good means fresh, rich, diverse and expansive, raising relevant issues of its times”. Klich went as far as to claim that it may have been the only time when culture was genuinely independent. For Klich, culture became impotent at the time of martial law.

Initially, culture decided to wait and not interfere with politics, which eventually could speak in a strong voice. Culture voluntarily yielded to the political game and made up for its own passivity by distributing the legacy of cultural production from before August 1980. Klich argued that independent culture was wrong not to establish sufficient strongholds, probably understood as strong institutions.

After 13 December 1981, culture gave shelter to politics, and consequently “[i]t was obliged to advocate the truth and defend civilisation and its values against the barbarians, even against its own interests. With its own specific means, it was supposed to take part in the struggle, naturally taking the side of the endangered values”. According to Klich, it was the “agenda of a beleaguered culture […] serious and stern […] there was no room for lightness, wit, charm, the provocations which transport the viewer into a different reality”. For Klich, it was like a corset “which many artists and writers have put on voluntarily. It’s oppressive, it restricts every move, but it gives a sense of belonging to a community. […] The simpler and more stereotypical was their language, the more likely were the protected values to really survive […] the years of martial law made the arts virtuous […] Suddenly, there was a need for semantic art with an extensive literary or philosophical agenda. This need was addressed both by Catholic painting and by the ‘savages’, despite all their resistance to the patriotic and religious pathos and their love for sarcasm, provocation, and pastiche. Even the conceptualist and minimalist avant garde accepted that need in its purely formal experiments. The artefact now referred to a non-artistic reality and started to talk […] in this sense, art became righteous, visual arts were permeated by ethics, quite often leading to unbearable moralising. [The Church as a patron] [g]ave to culture the same kind of shelter that culture had given to politics. […] The formation affiliated with the Church missed its cue to say no to the protection of the cassock and restore its independence according to the model which had existed a decade earlier”.

In conclusion, Klich asked whether things could have been any different during martial law. His answer: “Certainly not, certainly it had to happen that way because only this model of one-dimensional, concentrated culture had a chance to survive. The real problem began when the threat diminished but culture remained dormant. This situation has continued for around three years, ever since Minister Krawczuk’s symbolic declaration promising to end the persecution of independent publishers and since the publication of Gombrowicz’s works by Wydawnictwo Literackie. Culture has missed this chance, the drawers in which earlier writing was supposed to be locked up turned out to be empty, and culture has since been lethargic and, what’s even worse, self-complacent”.

Klich’s text can be read as the peak of a critical perspective on Polish culture in the late 1980s. Together with other articles published in Tumult, it is both a despondent diagnosis of the status quo and an inspiration for active, creative and organisational efforts in the arts. Klich and other contributors of Tumult understood the need to change the status quo. However, their solution was not to separate art from social life but to make it an active participant. The idea was to strengthen the impact of art by means of the institutionalisation of artistic activities and by possibly the biggest expansion of artistic freedom, which could also expand the space of freedom outside of the arts.

The criticism of Tumult was addressed to a broad range of independent culture. However, instead of blanket criticism, it was an invitation to dialogue. Dialogue was one of the most popular notions in public discourse at that time, but it was not always applied in practice. The criticism represented by Tumult pointed to solutions, such as creating artistically valuable forms of influencing reality in parallel to politics.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the next issue of Tumult featured Maria Anna Potocka’s article “Muzeum artystów” (Museum of Artists)[22]. It was the first public declaration of the artist, who at that time managed an art gallery at the Desa pavilion in Kraków, announcing the creation of a Museum of Contemporary Art in Kraków.

The impact of this perspective, which focused on the institutionalisation of cultural activities, is exemplified by the history of Tumult itself. After 1989, it was transformed into an art magazine. The organisation developed by the first board of editors was taken over by editors interested exclusively in art. From its eighth issue on, the magazine was edited by Maria Anna Potocka, Stanisław Cichowicz, Łukasz Guzek, and Marcin Krzyżanowski. The columns were eliminated. The consolidated publication was dominated by texts about contemporary art. The new magazine offered no political essays or interdisciplinary perspective. Tumult focused on the production of visual arts. There is nothing wrong with that, especially considering that there were few art magazines in the early 1990s, and that there was a great need for an art journal. And yet, with its new profile, Tumult only reached a small audience.

Tumult illustrates the period of systemic transition in Poland, which climaxed with the election of June 1989. The very title of the magazine, as well as the history of contributors and featured texts, bear witness to the systemic, axiological, and social turmoil of the period: the “tumult” in which different political, social, and artistic perspectives collided, producing a huge potential, of which the editors were probably well aware.

Dominik Kuryłek, born in 1979, an art historian and critic, editor, since 2003 has been collaborating with Ewa Małgorzata Tatar. They curated a number of exhibitions, among others Guide Project (2005-2007) and Cafe Bar by Paulina Ołowska (2011) at the National Museum in Krakow, On the Volcano. Krzysztof Niemczyk (2010) at the Lipowa 11 Gallery in Lublin, Now is Now (2012) at the Wyspa Institute of Art in Gdańsk. They published “A Short History of Grupa Ladnie” (2008, with Magdalena Drągowska).

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Notes

1. For instance, NZS supported workers’ protests at the Lenin Steelworks in Kraków on 26 April 1988. ↑

2. Mainly protests against the nuclear power plant project at Żarnowiec initiated in 1986, the time of the Chernobyl disaster. ↑

3. “We, the undersigned, inspired in particular by the peace addresses of Pope John Paul II, resolve to found the ‘Freedom and Peace’ Movement in Kraków today.” Cf. “Founding Declaration of the ‘Freedom and Peace’ Movement” [Deklaracja Założycielska Ruchu „Wolność i Pokój”], Kraków, 15 April1985,
http://www.ruchwip.org/index.pl?pid=64. ↑

4. A. Smółka, “Między wolnością a pokojem”, http://www.ruchwip.org/index.pl?pid=75. ↑

5. Cf. E. Zając, Arka,
http://www.encyklopedia-solidarnosci.pl/wiki/index.php?title=R00207_Arka_Krak%C3%B3w. ↑

6. Arka No. 1/1983, p. 2. ↑

7. K. Boruń-Jagodzińska, Kultura Niezależna,
http://www.encyklopedia-solidarnosci.pl/wiki/index.php?title=R00147_Kultura_Niezale%C5%BCna_Warszawa. ↑

8. Cf. P. Goleń, bruLion,
http://www.encyklopedia-solidarnosci.pl/wiki/index.php?title=R00661_Brulion_Krak%C3%B3w. ↑

9. era, “Mały ześlizg”, bruLion No. 1/1987, p. 117. ↑

10. M. Spychalski, “Papież, Smektała i sprawiedliwi”, ibidem, pp. 140-142. ↑

11. M. Tabor, “Strzelaj albo emigruj”, bruLion No. 4/1987, pp. 98-100. ↑

12. M. Świetlicki, “Wiersze”, bruLion No 14?15/1990, pp. 6-8. ↑

13. “Nagrody”, bruLion No. 1/1987, p. 127. ↑

14.T. Love Alternative, “Nasza tradycja”, bruLion No. 4/1987, p. 90. ↑

15. P. Kasprzak, “Wszyscy jesteśmy pomarańczowi”, bruLion No. 7/1988, pp. 75-79. ↑

16. B. Klich, “Publicystyka na cenzurowanym”, Tumult No. 2/1988, pp. 17-20. ↑

17. B. Klich, “Co się stało z kulturą niezależną”, Tumult No. 5/1989, p. 20-24. ↑

18. B. Klich, „Galeria Tumultu. Balkony Jarka” (dodatek ulotny) Tumult No. 3/1989. ↑

19. A. Sawicki, “Krytyka nowa?”, Tumult No. 4/1989, pp. 49-51. ↑

20. Ł. Guzek, “Jak oglądać sztukę współczesną”,Tumult No. 3/1989, pp. 22-23 (following quotes from the same article). ↑

21.B. Klich, “Co się stało z kulturą niezależną”, Tumult No. 5/1989, pp. 20-24 (following quotes from the same article). ↑

22. M.A. Potocka, “Muzeum artystów”, Tumult No. 6/1989, pp. 61-63. ↑

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