Filmoteka Muzeum

'1,2,3 ćwiczenie operatorskie', a film by Paweł Kwiek, 'politicizes aesthetics.' A spontaneous improvisation with a touch of Fluxus flavour, it attempts to 'tell a story' about the relation of man to Socialist ideology, more specifically about 'having a chapter of the Socialist Youth Association at the Łódź FilmSchool.'
Kwiek`s film is a mixture of different sorts of formal elements and styles, including animation, acted out scenes and 'found' elements (both images and sounds). Coincidences, spontaneous improvisation without a script and a 'play' of formal elements ultimately become rules that guide this project.

Kwiek treated all the formal elements included in the film in a very 'cold', material manner. He was therefore able to freely 'operate' with 'political motives' thrown into the mix (e.g. an image of Lenin, footage of a Worker`s Day march, a statement on Socialism by the school`s provost.) This approach toward film construction allowed for free interpretation of elements with political connotations depending on their placement in the film. It is therefore difficult to establish whether the film is an affirmation or a critique of given symbols. Projections of the film in the 1970s often provoked shock.

The film was supposed to 'talk' about democratic values, but to do so through its form and manner of formulating film language rather than through its representational layer. For these structural reasons, Kwiek`s film was not fit to promote the only true ideology that reigned at the time. Meanings were purposefully left undetermined and interpretative openness remained its overarching value. The film and the strategy behind it were a canonical realization of Benjamin`s shift accent from 'content' to the 'production apparatus'.

Quoted from: 1,2,3... Avant-Gardes. Film/Art between Experiment and Archive, ed. Ł. Ronduda, F. Zeyfang, Warsaw 2007.

Year: 1972
Duration: 8'10"
Language: Polish
Source: 35 mm

© Paweł Kwiek, courtesy Arton Foundation

Acquisition date: May 7, 2012
Acquisition: deposit
Ownership form: deposit