Performans

Description by Filmoteka Muzeum

Video footage of the action Blurring (Thinking of Heidegger) in Canada in 1985. An inscription on the wall reads:
“Distance and difference comes into being between something that has been blurred and something that exists. The sense of distance consists in separation of one from the other; paradoxically, something blurred becomes determined and the very same moment it becomes an existence without the capacity of becoming an entity”.

The camera reveals the other walls of the room featuring blotted out inscriptions that cannot be deciphered. Jan Świdziński appears and blots out the above quoted text, making it similar to those on the other walls.

The artist shows the difference between entity and existence, thus visualising the rudiments of the German philosopher’s theory. Something blurred is the blotted out inscription, while an inscription that exists is the one we can read. They are separated from one another. Something blurred becomes determined, it is the very blur, it is existence, yet it cannot become an entity as we are unable to decipher it. We can decipher that what has not yet been blotted out, it becomes an entity of sorts for us, but once the artist blots the text out, he creates something that exists for those people who will enter the room later, at a different time. At the same time, the artist deprives them of a departure point, which we – the observers of his action – could begin with. The room features an already blotted out inscription, it suggests that there used to be something that we arrive too late to read. The artist underscores the cyclical character of transformations of entity into existence.

(ZK)