Discussion. Attitudes
Waldemar Baraniewski: Do you think that your deliberations could somehow be supplemented by Bauman’s perspective on modernity, which you are actually omitting here but to which Włodarczyk refers when discussing the avant garde?
Luiza Nader I am not really sure that he is referring to modernity in the sense adopted by Bauman. Bauman talks about a formation of modernity, having in mind the last 150 years of European culture. Włodarczyk, on the other hand, adopts a very different timeline. Bauman talks about modernism in a very broad, the broadest of senses, a modernism which led to the Holocaust. It would be interesting in reference to Strzemiński. Włodaryczk, however, speaks about the modernity after 1955, about the formation of the modern. I would be hard pressed to agree with such a categorical judgment, bringing socialist realism and the avant garde to the same level. Because such an evening out is actually taking place here.
Dorota Jarecka I find your thesis very inspiring. I remember that after reading Włodarczyk’s book I was intrigued by the very strong accusations he had formulated against the avant garde. I began thinking whether the pre-war avant garde did not have quite a lot in common with socialist realism. And when I began reading these texts, which are actually very non avant-garde, but which deal with the return to the order, with a recovery of certain rules in art and in reality, I discovered very strong connections. I am thinking, for example, about Starzyński’s pre-war texts. Was not the denial of the Holocaust and the attempt to mask the shame also a denial of the pre-war heritage, which was often unpleasant and gloomy? A denial of the trends which were on the right side of the Polish thought on art and philosophy?
Luiza Nader Probably so. What I meant was a certain border event and a certain extreme experience. This experience, however, if we are to accept its broad definition, is also about all that happened before the Holocaust, namely the entire rightist rhetoric, which was completely not avant-garde, and which actually seems to be much closer to the socialist realist assumptions. It is important to consider how eager we were to believe that it was socialist realism that was our trauma. Why are we so eager to think of socialist realism as of our shame? It is a tendency seen not only in art history, its stronger echoes are found in literary studies. I thought that there may be a number of reasons for the situation, but I was especially drawn to that duality of the trauma. There are certain traumas which are more eagerly talked about – it is related to the fact that we can also victimize ourselves in the process. And there are also those traumas which are not talked about at all since, all of a sudden, we are taken from the position of the victim to a position which is not very nice – the position of the aggressor, or at least the heir of the aggressor.
Piotr Rypson: I read the book by Wojciech Włodarczyk a very long time ago, and I can hardly remember it, but I think that there are two things missing – both in the book and your intervention. These two things are perhaps not as spectacular but, to my mind, are rather important: first of all, there is no report on the discourse about Polish socialist realism in the visual arts vis-à-vis socialist realism in literature, which actually preceded all that followed in the fine arts and, secondly, there is no analysis of what engaged art was in the 1930’s in Poland, how this discussion was carried over to the literary circles, and how it then entered the domain of art. This was the picture, more or less. I believe that one of the weaknesses of art history after the war is that all the research very much lacked the interdisciplinary character, to the effect that the whole area of the meanings created and the political discourse expressed in the domain of literature was not really taken into consideration in the studies of art.
Luiza Nader Thank you very much for giving me such ambitious tasks. This context is indeed lacking. It would also be very interesting in light of what was happening in literary studies in the 1980’s. Of course there was the whole void in terms of the notion of the avant garde of the 1930’s and of engagement, though the text by Włodarczyk did, to an effect, draw on such trans-disciplinary connections. After all, it was written upon the impulse of Sławiński’s seminars at the Institute of Literary Studies. I know little about this, and I was hoping that professor Włodarczyk would be here with us today to tell us more. I believe that this impulse for reflection on socialist realism in Poland – something which, in any case, is present in Włodarczyk’s methodology and his writings – did not come from art history but actually from literary studies.
Waldemar Baraniewski: Sławiński’s seminar was extremely important, in particular in terms of his research on socialist realist criticism. In his texts, such as “Voices from the House of the Dead” [Głosy z domu umarłych] or “A Different Type of Criticism” [Krytyka innego typu], Sławiński inquired into the basic functions, namely what was the role of a work of art in Socialist Realism, or what was the binding model of the artist. And here, Włodarczyk definitely followed in the footsteps of Sławiński.
Piotr Bernatowicz: What do you think about Boris Groys and the book that was mentioned here, “Stalin as a Work of Art?” You can find a similar thesis there. Could all of these issues regarding the affective attitude of the author also be applicable to Groys?
Luiza Nader Yes, all that is happening in “Socialist Realism in Poland in the Years 1950-1954” is also present in Groys’s book. He uses similar arguments, only that his reflection is more embedded in the context of Russian, Soviet art, Russian avantgarde, etc. To my mind, similar research would also be interesting in reference to Groys himself, namely research that would not be based on following the trope of factography […] I would once again like to stress that I do not feel competent to be talking about the starting date of Socialist Realism in Poland, for example. I was more interested in the rhetoric of the text, how it functions, what knowledge it transmits, how effectively is this knowledge embedded. I believe that a similar approach can be adopted in case of Groys, one of whose main rhetorical figures is hyperbole, exaggeration.
I would like to ask Karol about 1988 and what was happening at the Centre for Contemporary Art at the time, about the new team which was able to transform that gloomy place into a place of intense activity. Why were these short few months sacrificed in the name of the “thick line”? I feel that the Centre has never really self-reflected on this time, however short, which it had experienced.
Karol Sienkiewicz It is a very difficult question, and I am not sure if I am able to give you an answer. In any case, the work by Andrzej Dłużniewski which I have mentioned, was included at the exhibition Schizma curated by Adam Mazur. Maybe that made the title of the exhibition very apt in terms of what was happening there at the time. I don’t know to what extent it was a conscious decision of Adam Mazur to include video footage of a press conference of Wojciech Krukowski in the exhibition which was, by the way, organized on the twentieth anniversary of the Centre. It was assumed that the starting date, the date of the beginning, was 1989. The episode of there being a larger group of active people at the Centre for Contemporary Art in 1988 was short. And most had left the centre. The only ones that, I think, remained were Grzegorz Borkowski and Janusz Byszewski. What was rather symptomatic was that all of them had already appeared there in 1988, which shows that it was a time when any talk about a boycott or the official nature of these institutions was already losing momentum. There were no exhibitions yet at Zachęta, with some exceptions. For example, Koło Klipsa appeared at Zachęta in 1988. Bożena Kowalska organized an exhibition The Language of Geometry, which was very much criticized. But at the Centre, being a new institution which opened up to others, such things could be organised with a smaller moral burden.
Waldemar Baraniewski: You have mentioned Andrzej Mitan. Are you able to say anything about the programme of that group?
Karol Sienkiewicz I wasn’t really interested in that moment in time when I spoke to Andrzej Mitan.
Piotr Rypson: Two words in addition, as indeed it was a very interesting moment, a very instructive time for us all. It taught us, for example, that one should not rise to power when the ancient regimè is about to fall, that’s the worst possible moment (only joking). If I remember correctly, in 1988 the magazine Res Publica was already legally published, and a discussion erupted in different circles about what was allowed and how to negotiate things with reality. The exhibition, which took place in 1988, was organized by the milieu affiliated with fluxus, by Mitan and Dłużniewski, and it was perceived as some kind of a rotten compromise. They are themselves laughing at the things they had to listen to. From what I remember, Andrzej Dłużniewski very quickly began to understand that the true field of his activity is art and not the animation of a dead corpse, which the Ujazdowski Castle was at the time. And there was no conflict, as it was not even a milieu. It was more like two moments, but not in conflict. One withdrew painlessly.
Karol Sienkiewicz I don’t know whether there was no conflict. Andrzej Mitan is not here, but if you talked to him you’d know that he never set foot at the Centre again.
Piotr Rypson: Well, in this case we could indeed be talking about some kind of a conflict. In any case, Andrzej constantly tried to negotiate with those organs of authority which either consented or not to some artistic undertakings; but I would rather see it from the perspective of esthetic decision rather than any assessments of specific attitudes, or political attitudes for that matter.
Dorota Jarecka Luiza, in the current of the 1980’s, in the texts about socialist realism, do you see any moments which could be counter-current of becoming frozen, in need to find the guilty one? Do you find Włodarczyk’s text an example of what was happening then, or was it an extreme stance against the more complex ones? I remember the message of Elżbieta Grabska’s text – that the realism simply was there. I see this as an attempt at recovering realism, even socialist realism. That was the attitude toward the reality which was open to trauma even. I am not sure if I remember it well, but still, we are talking about a generation that did participate in socialist realism. That was what the shame was about, a shame that was genuine. It was shame or individual guilt, it was not a displacement.
Luiza Nader I should explain that I did no perform a case study which I could use as a basis for generalizing my knowledge so as to encompass the entire milieu of art historians. It would be unfair and completely wrong. I found this book important because I thought it was an important point of reference, also for contemporary historiography in Poland, which repeats its assumptions rather blindly and uncritically. It was a very friendly debate on socialist realism. Socialist realism – because it is happening in the 1980’s and because the artist and critics or art historians are faced with ethical challenges of boycott and opposition activism. There are numerous other themes which seem very interesting here, including the text by Grabska and the summary that Porębski formulated at the end of this session, and which was based on completely contradictory premises. They intersect with Włodarczyk’s argumentation in one point only – because Włodarczyk is also actually able to somehow recover socialist realism. It’s not that he condemns socialist realism. He condemns avant garde. In a sense, he tries to save socialist realism, its sense, and – with socialist realism, also figuration and painting.
Łukasz Gorczyca I have one more open question. The proposal of the interpretation of the criticism of avant garde presented by Włodarczyk from the perspective of the Holocaust is definitely convincing today. But I’m wondering, how are we to cope and find other methods of justifying such stances in the 1980’s. The problem is also somehow related to the attitude of Andrzej Bonarski, who said today that his stance was that of anti-avant garde. He detested avant garde, he still does. How does one cope with such attitudes? Is it really the key to such attitudes? One other thing was mentioned here today which appears in neo-avant garde, namely the need for the market. Obviously, it is a cliché taken from the international discussion, because if we take a look at the Polish situation then it does not make any sense at all. Painting appears in Poland in a very different context - a context in which Bonarski is present again.
Karol Sienkiewicz Wojciech Włodarczyk was the author of two very important books in that period – one was “Socialist Realism...”, the other “The Art of The Young”. The criticism of avant garde which you find in the book on socialist realism, Luiza, was it in a sense in anticipation of new painting?
Luiza Nader Yes, in a sense, but not for any commercial reasons. You have very aptly picked up on that part, Łukasz. Perhaps I did not express it precisely, but I was of course referring to the discussion in the West. Such situation never happened in Poland, as we actually very clearly heard from Mr. Andrzej Bonarski who spoke after your paper. I do believe, however, that there is a certain disenchantment with the avant garde in the 1980’s, a huge disappointment with the possibilities of the avant garde. There is also the very important question about engagement, something that we talked about today. What is that engagement? What can it be filled with? It is a completely empty term in the 1980’s, how can one fill it with some kind of sense? All of these things coincide with the return of the painting, which is possible also by an alternative interpretation of socialist realism. This is what is extremely important in Włodarczyk’s book. And what is also critical – he does not reject socialist realism, he delaminates it, demythologizes it, pulls out the “Arsenal effect” from it. It is an attempt to recover both painting and realism, and the Wprost collective, and some kind of a form of engagement so as to recover one identity and language which can be used by both the art historian and the observer of the scene at the time.
Waldemar Baraniewski: Let me recall this paragraph from the diary of Jerzy Stajuda: “Włodarczyk created Gruppa”.
Ewa Małgorzata Tatar I have a question to Ola Ściegienna about the critical attitude and the recovering of identity and defining engagement, one’s own engagement. The generalization that you have offered and which stemmed from your analysis of the many questionnaires is that the I-the artist and I-the citizen came apart. I was wondering whether you have come across any attempt of overcoming or capturing, maybe of problematising this phenomenon in your survey.
Aleksandra Ściegienna When I read and analysed the questionnaires, I had the impression that there was a general avoidance to any political contexts. All the responses are apolitical, as if the whole issue was subject to denial. The construction of the questionnaire is such that, at first glance, it seems to be about everything while it is actually about engagement – it is its main focus. I guess the text from the last issue of Artium Quaestiones by Piotr Juszkiewicz, “The Shadow of Modernism” could serve as an apt commentary here. Juszkiewicz writes about how the political contexts are denied, somewhere in the shadows of modernism. It is something that also comes out in the questionnaires.
Luiza Nader I would like to add something as Karol had asked me why socialist realism was constantly talked about in the 1980’s. Exhibitions were organized and there was a very lively exchange of opinions and thought about socialist realism. One thing is common to all these endeavours – the denial of the war, and the Holocaust with it. I thought it was a very interesting question as it leads me towards the interpretation focusing on the trauma. The 1980’s was an extremely dramatic time for both the entities and the individuals. I think that it was often a very traumatic experience for certain people – internment, for example. In the collective dimension, however, I think that martial law was not a traumatic event, not of the type that Badiou writes about, namely an experience which would call for a total redefinition of the cognitive horizon, a moment in which a community is created. Seen from this perspective, marital law seems to be an event of extremely positive – for lack of a better word – effects in terms of civic attitudes. We have hear here of the ZPAP, for example.
Karol Sienkiewicz I have used here the example of a group of people who decided that ZPAP would support the strikes in Gdańsk. It was the new management of ZPAP, elected in the beginning of 1980. Did that fact in a way provide a mandate or legitimize the focus on socialist realism?
Łukasz Gorczyca I would not want to provoke any very broad or open questions again, but what Luiza has just said forces me to think of that question about denial of the war and the Holocaust in the 1980’s. If we are to assume that Włodarczyk created Gruppa, then that takes us back to Włodarczyk. And Gruppa is an example of something opposite. In this context, Włodarczyk is somebody who is the linking element in this problem. We are talking about somebody working on a book on socialist realism, but the book is actually a disguised discussion with the present situation. Wlodarczyk accompanies a group of artists who smuggle the problem of history, identity, and war and – it wasn’t discussed here – maybe also the Holocaust in their works. They are sometimes quite straightforward about it – as in the case of Pawlak and his portrait of Hitler. There is also the iconography very strongly related to totalitarianism. Of course, it would call for a longer discussion, but it is intuitively difficult for me to subscribe to the statement that the issue of the trauma of the Holocaust and the war was completely absent in the 1980’s. Perhaps it was so in the neo-avant garde, but later […]
Luiza Nader The war – yes, the Holocaust – I would say no. I am not saying that there are not works of art that touch on the question of war, questions of the Holocaust that some could be interpreted in different ways, that they remain open. I believe that there are many works which were created after the war still out there for us to read. Art history was simply completely blind in seeing them; it was not seen as a problem. This is the issue I was actually trying to highlight – it was not a question of research since all that was interesting was related to 1950 and socialist realism. In his book, Wojciech Włodarczyk writes very openly, something that he later repeated in the text he delivered at the session of art historians, namely that war is no turning point in art history, neither is it a turning point in the awareness – apart from certain obvious historical consequences. I am talking about Yalta here. He makes that point very clear. So what he saw in the art of Gruppa was not forged into a historiography, into a historiographic experience.
Łukasz Gorczyca It is a symptom of a crisis for the discipline which we are discussing, not the art or historiography all together. After all, the question of the Holocaust appears in the public discussion exactly in the 1980’s, I think.
Dorota Jarecka It is difficult to apply our criteria and accuse them of not having known the language which we know now.
Luiza Nader It is not a language which we know now. That language was there, it had been created.
Waldemar Baraniewski: That statement by Włodarczyk that the war was not a turning point in art history – it was formulated on the basis of a certain concept, namely the adoption of a rule for us to be researching artistic traditions. We are not researching the subject matter, the social scope, etc. but the artistic traditions. From the point of view of artistic traditions – and here I shall remain the faithful participant of Sławiński’s seminars – these outside historical events had no bearing on the course of the artistic processes.
Luiza Nader Perhaps the whole problem of the Holocaust is that the term used in the 1980’s was tradition, while we are now more willing to talk about memory. What is very important in a memory is what is not there and what could perhaps be worth reconstructing, so as to regain oneself, to some extent at least.
Grzegorz Kowalski: I have to admit that you are missing the question of the Holocaust, the presence of the Holocaust in the 1980’s. It was there, in all of Bogucki’s exhibitions.
Luiza Nader But I am talking about historiography. I am not talking about exhibitions, about art.
Grzegorz Kowalski: So perhaps we should change the direction of this discussion a bit. There are areas which are either unknown or untouched by researchers, namely the decisions, I would even say heroic decisions, of artists to join in the events taking place and give up on the position of an observer, commentator – the decision to become a participant and to share the feeling and experience of what is happening with the rest of the society. After all, there was the trade union of ten million members in the background. The present membership is something like 650 thousand. The role of the Church was also very important in all that. There were strategists sitting in the palaces of archbishops and already trying to figure out what to do with this whole situation. These are things that you should make notes of and research now while the participants of those events are still alive.
For example, has anybody here heard of the role played by the Cieślars to make sure from abroad, from Paris, that Solidarity was constantly on the front pages? And they did that by means of para-artistic projects, by things which are rejected by the sophisticated researchers. The artists did all that so the word Solidarity would not leave the lips of commentators and journalists. It is a completely unknown fact.
I would like to draw your attention to that key moment when an artist made a decision after 1980 to stay with the society. This is the key issue: this art was engaged art, regardless of the quality. I personally remember when one of the Catholic weeklies published interviews with an artist on the occasion of Boguski’s Apocalypse... exhibition. I also allowed myself to say something then because I too was put off by all that kitsch next to some righteous ideas. I said it was an abuse. And it was Jacek Sempolińśki who set me right. He said: “All of art is an abuse”. Art is abuse because we should all be doing something else in that time. But we did what we could. I have to say that I recall this period as an extremely important one, despite the fact that it was a time of my failure, perhaps the biggest one in life. That is why I said to Waldek on my way here that it was a period of the transformation of Polish art. It was a melting pot, all of those things which were later termed critical art or what not were being baked at that time.
Jan Michalski: Two words to Luiza’s intervention. It is very difficult to talk critically about a text which uses terms from the psychology of depth. I have nothing against such hermeneutics, namely against interpreting somebody else’s books. I was under the impression, however, that Luiza applied the contemporary categories of the politics of memory and of historical politics to Włodarczyk’s book which was written in the early 1980’s when the politics of memory was non-existent. Hence the misunderstanding. Włodarczyk formulates his judgments about socialist realism in a boring academic book, written in a heavy language. It does, however, have the asset of being very reasonable and containing descriptions of concrete works of art. On closer inspection, the book is the antipodes to those which put the blame on the participants of socialist realism. Take, for example, the book by Trznadel “The Civil Shame”[Hańba domowa], which is nothing but a huge investigation of who was responsible and how these people have to confess before society
If memory serves me right, Włodarczyk does not do any such thing. He approaches the issue in a very autonomic way, and the ideological elements are very scarce in the book, if they’re there at all. That’s what I think. When we introduce contemporary categories to interpret old facts, the discussion becomes indeed cool and lively, but there is one thing we need to keep in mind – at least in my opinion – namely that the politics of memory in the contemporary sense of the term was something completely absent at that time. Thus the great narrative of the Holocaust, a narrative which is contemporarily universal, did not appear then. Instead, there did appear works of art which dealt with the problem - in abundance, in many different aspects. But the very politics of memory was not really present then.
Ewa Małgorzata Tatar I would like to note that, first of all, the tools used by Luiza come from the domain of psychoanalysis. Secondly, I find Luiza’s paper very important as it is simply an analysis of a means of constructing a certain historical narrative, an analysis which is based on a very careful reading of certain voids and omissions in the vocabulary of Włodarczyk. I also believe that Jan Michalski’s commentary is an attempt to perhaps undermine the significance of this presentation. […] I believe that the allegation that a contemporary methodology was used to analyse a text from the 1980’s is completely groundless when we are trying to inquire about the means of the text’s narrative. True, Włodarczyk’s text is important from the point of view of iconographic analysis. But I don’t think this is what reading these historiographic projects from the 1980’s is about.
Luiza Nader It’s not that I impose contemporary categories on a text which was written in the 1980’s. My reading of it is very different from yours – to me it is not a boring academic text; it is a text which is thrilling in its persuasion, rhetoric. Truly thrilling. Our readings of the text simply differ. But it is not that we use tools of contemporary methodology, whichever it may be, to criticise. I am wondering what use we could make of the relations which we could dissect from the text. I may be wrong, I may be the only one with this problem; perhaps I should also analyse my displaced position vis-à-vis this text. What I found important in this text was what appears in its rhetorical moments. I wrote down these different moments as I had expected some of you would ask about them: tell us, where are those quotes, how is he transmitting the shame. But nobody’s asking. It was important to me that these affects are there. And that the question of the affects and the affective nature of the text is completely abandoned by the art history of the 1990’s. There is the trauma-based interpretation but not the question of affects which, to my mind, are very much alive in the text. Włodarczyk even uses some of them – like shame, for example. Guilt is not there, but shame and fear are.
These categorises can be very useful for us now. I am not accusing the researchers of the 1980’s that they had not seen the Holocaust. I am just saying that they had already processed a certain problem. Thanks to them we can save a certain memory – the memory of socialist realism. And now we have other challenges before us. Not challenges of forgetting socialist realism but perhaps researching it in a different way now. I, for one, dream of a book about socialist realism, something to the tune of “Caviar and Ashes” by Marcie Shore. It would be absolutely fantastic, but I see no such book coming. Throughout art history we keep on repeating the judgments and this very evaluative language which is also present in this book. But it is no fault of Professor Włodarczyk. It is due to the lack of a deeper reflection on the subjects of our discipline. When reading the text and criticising the book by Włodarczyk I am, to an effect, criticising myself.
Waldemar Baraniewski, an art historian, professor at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. Published, among others, “Kazimierz Skórewicz. An architect, conservator, architecture scholar” (2000). Co-curator of exhibitions at the National Museum and the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, including «Sorcerers and mystics» (1991). Deals in the art history of the 20th century, particular attention paying to spatial arts (architecture and sculpture), art in totalitarian systems, and art criticism.
Luiza Nader, born in 1976, art. historian, lectures at the Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw. In 2005 she received a Fulbright scholarship. Published book “The Conceptual Art in the Polish Peoples’ Republic” (2009). Her main focus is on avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art, particularly in Central Europe, as well as on relations of memory and archives, theories of trauma and affect.
Dorota Jarecka, an art historian and critic, writes reviews, longer texts and interviews for Gazeta Wyborcza. In 2011 she co-curated the exhibition Erna Rosenstein. I can repeat only unconsciously at the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw. A laureate of the Jerzy Stajuda Art Criticism Award (2012).
Piotr Rypson, art and literature historian, curator, writer; 1990-1994 editor in chief of Obieg magazine, 1993-1996 chief curator at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. His publications include “Książki i Strony. Polska książka awangardowa i artystyczna w XX wieku” (2000), „Nie gęsi. Polskie projektowanie graficzne” (2011). Since 2011 deputy director of the National Museum in Warsaw.
Piotr Bernatowicz, art historian and critic, assistant professor at the Institute of Art History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, editor in chief of Arteon art magainze (2006-2012, again from 2012). Author of “Picasso za żelazną kurtyną. Recepcja artysty i jego sztuki w krajach Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w latach 1945-1970” [Picasso Beyond the Iron Curtain. Reception of artists and their art in Eastern and Central Europe in1945-1970].
Karol Sienkiewicz, born in 1980, art historian and critic, editor of books, e.g. collection of texts on the art of the eighties, “Draft” by Anda Rottenberg (with Kasia Redzisz). As a critic he writes to dwutygodnik.com. A laureate of the Jerzy Stajuda Art Criticism Award (2012).
Łukasz Gorczyca, born in 1972, co-founder (with Michał Kaczyński) of the Raster art magazine (1995-2003), then the Raster Gallery (since 2001). Active as an art critic and curator (among others Relax at the Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok, 2001; De Ma Fenetre at Ecole Nationale Superiere des Beaux Arts in Paris, 2004), worked for the cultural section of the Polish public television TVP (2000-2002). Published literary works “The Best Polish Short Stories” [Najlepsze polskie opowiadania] (1999) and “Half Empty” [W połowie puste] (2010, with Łukasz Ronduda).
Ewa Małgorzata Tatar, born in 1981, an art historian and critic, editor, since 2003 working together with Dominik Kuryłek. Their co-operation resulted in a number of exhibitions and publications, such as the Guide Project (2005-2007) and Cafe bar by Paulina Ołowska (2011) at the National Museum in Krakow or 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).
Aleksandra Ściegienna, graduate in art history from Warsaw University. Works at the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw.
Grzegorz Kowalski, artist and pedagogue, assistant of Oskar Hansen (1965-1968) and Januszkiewicz (1968-1980), lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In the 1970’s, co-founder of Warsaw’s Repassage gallery; developed individual forms of artistic expression based on including the expression of others into one’s own work (actions-questions, collections, tableaux). In the 1980’s creator of his own syllabus titled “Shared Space, Own Space”. Artists including Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna Kozyra, Artur Żmijewski and others graduated from his studio, known as Kowalnia (smithy – from his surname, Kowalski, Polish equivalent of Smith – from the translator).
Jan Michalski, art critic, together with Marta Tarabuła manager the Zderzak gallery in Krakow. Laureate of the Stajuda Award. His publications include “A Boy on a Yellow Background. On Andrzej Wróblewski” [Chłopiec na żółtym tle. Teksty o Andrzeju Wróblewskim] (2009), and recently “Four Essays on Wildness” [Cztery eseje o dzikości] (2011, together with Martą Tarabuła)
