The 2nd International Artists Meeting "Castle of Imagination".
The 2nd International Artists Meeting Castle of Imagination in Bytow was somehow different in character from the last year meeting. The crucial change consisted in organization of the event in vacation time in order to facilitate artistic presentation to tourists visiting Bytow. We must ad mint, that the change of time - because of holidays - had a negative influence on the number of visitors and the concern on the part of local inhabitants. Independent of expected higher concern about artistic achievements, the festival public no less numerous than last year. Financial problems, unusually low budget of the event did not allow for proper advertisement of artistic events at the Bytow castle. Anyway, big voluntary involvement of members of the Society of Contemporary Art as well as of many individuals from Bytow provided a very good atmosphere at the festival. Artists from 12 countries came to Bytow, namely from: Japan, South Korea, Portugal, Holland, Lithuania, Ukraine, USA, Great Britain, France, Ireland, Germany and Poland. The meeting had a special creative character because many artists had already had an established positioning contemporary art while some of them were in Poland for the first time. According to foreign artists "The Castle of Imagination" is a festival having it's the meetings of artists in the 60's and 70's, which used to be very creative with no basic ideology and no commercial dependency. "The Castle of Imagination" recalls the values which had the biggest impact on transformation of contemporary art in the second half of the twentieth century and which had been superseded by the art market and artists system. "The Castle of Imagination", while offering the artists with absolute freedom of presentation of their art in the context of a historical Teutonic castle, has additional interesting feature which precludes typical threats to art, which usually occur during organization of similar festivals in Europe and all over the world. Here are the leading features of the festival: lack of leading programmed or subject ideology, invalidity of location, Bytow is a remote town, difficult to find on the map, poor recognition on the part of critics, press, radio and TV, very low budget, no chance to involve powerful businesses, which could provide artists with up to date technologies, reluctance and confusion on the part local institutions, disability to take advantage of presence of internationally recognized artists, casual presence of "modern ones" (only once a year) so that artists are doomed to deal with, local public and have immediate contact with so called "unprepared" audience. So it came about that paradoxically outwardly shot comings of the festival became its main advantage, which fascinates artists and the "Art World" connoisseurs. "The Castle of Imagination" have become something like a metaphor of functioning of functioning of artists in the contemporary world, in which any efforts undertaken by artists to defend basic spiritual values constitute never ending process requiring mental and artistic concentration, but first of all they constitute the search of site with no pressure of "universal pop culture" or evaluation of art on the basis the of its usefulness for various ideological and philosophical concepts. The world of spiritual values (represented, among others, by artists) shows the absurdity of "partial" ideologies of human progress, indicates the need back or respect the holistic world development. The artists invited to Bytow often indicated in their presentations the absurdity of the satiated, clear and happy world recalling dramatic events in Europe, showing roughness and cruelty of people for one another and nature. Sean Taylor (Glasgow, Scotland) in his video "React Poland" presented the vanishing totalitarian world, descending communist ideology, a reminiscence of the presence of the Soviet troops in Poland. The film, documentary in form, was a proposal for future formulated in there words: React, Reclaim, Repair. Borne - Sulinowo, where the artist had found an instructive military film, photos of soldiers, abandoned objects, flats, devastated technical equipment, buildings devastated on purpose and contaminated soil - all that constituted the material for a very personal credo. Przemyslaw Kwiek (Lomianki near Warsaw, Poland) in his presentation - which he called "appearance 26" - presented slide photos of his installation in Lipsk in May this year. The installation - gallows with a human dummy located at the edge of a roof a degraded industrial district of the town. Mr Kwiek's story about human reaction, about reaction of police and authorities was a sad report about indifference and brutalization of social life in that town. Recording of negative behavior having its roots in inhuman East German system is a warning not only for a new democracy in Germany, but for ourselves as well, when we see indifferent, passive and frustrated people around us , people who cannot take advantage of the chances which are offered by democracy. Seiji Shimoda (Tokyo, Japan), a participant of last year's "Castle of Imagination", this time presented a performance entitled "My Country". The title "My Country" is only a very kind reference to other places and states in which the artist presents his performance, because each of us could find one's own critical reference to the country one in inhabits. Seiji Shimoda in his performance asks a question: "What is the enemy of your spirit?". In order to understand the course of the whole presentation, it is necessary to enumerate a couple of elements of that action: spread white paper, on which the artist standing on his tiptoes draws a line resembling peaks a mountain range: below that line he draws another one means of a sticking bang, something artificial and commonly used: to the band plastic bags are attached (garbage bags) with pumped air: there are some smaller ones among them. (for us, plastic still means civilization advancement and up - to - date ness, not the horrible problem of environment pollution). During the performance we can hear silent music - a piece by V. Smetana - which is supposed to remind us about a non - vulgarized serious art. Shimoda walks very slowly in deep bow over spread canvas, which resembles grounded canvas used by painters. He paints his naked body with red (a circle - the sign of the sun - the emblem used in Japanese flag) and with black at the same time impressing the front and back of his body on the canvas. Then, he blurs the ear lien sentence: "What is the enemy of your spirit?", destroys the plastic bags by knocks of his head and tears the tape down. Grey wrapping paper, which from the very beginning suggested the existence of a friendly matter, became unpleasant, irritating garbage. The artist indicates nothing concrete, provides no solution, but asks a question, which can constitute further ones. Yeun - Hi pan (Pusan, South Korea) closing herself in a traveler's bag filled with foamed polystyrene balls, reduced herself to an unimportant package, to an object, which can be thrown, kicked, tumbled, which was anyhow performed by the public. Slow blowing of the foam off, release from the closed bag constituted somehow shocking experience - the naked artist covered with polystyrene foam shows her helplessness a human being crammed into a unified system of values of the modern world. On the other hand, she says whatever natural and human is strong enough to fight the artificial, limiting, pinching. San Jin Lee (Pusan, South Korea) is now one of the most important Korean artists. S.J. Lee in his sarcastic speech referred to the plastic civilization of gadgets. He constructed a stone circle on the basis of a fire - place surrounded by field stones in which there was no fire, but a simple toy keyboard, on which a strange color full ball was jumping in confusion with equally color full trashy appendices, pressing the keys of a "child's" instrument which produced completely accidental sounds. Japanese flute music (Takashi Ogawa) was in contrast to that chaotic music. Korean Artist, using smoke producer with red russet color and another one with yellow smoke in a window of a castle tower, referred to traditional signal system, to visual speech which was used centuries ago. The artist also referred to European painting tradition trying to prove in a funny way that (quick) painting of a portrait is impossible or unnecessary, just like painting of the castle its self. Wladyslaw Kazmierczak (Cracow, Poland) the contexts of the artist's performance dealt with the problem of slow separation with the ideology of violence, the separation which is not simple at all. The major basic difficulty in getting rid of the traces of the past is separation with the mechanisms and traces of totalitarian system which was encoded in our conscience - both group and individual one. Projection of a60 minute black and white movie found in a Russian military base of Borne Sulinowo, the movie the sole content of which was the inscription "The End", emphasizing our lasting thinking about the past. The symbolic discovery says that the performance is not over yet, although the main heroes of the events are absent. The movie was projected through a big glass panel hanging vertically above the projector. The picture was focused on the glass panel, but the projector light penetrated into the room, to the audience watching the performance. The artist was throwing around various objects left behind by former residents of Borne. Beside usual utensils there were parts of uniforms and military equipment. Once those objects constituted important equipment of the biggest army in the world. The next sequence of the performance was catharsis. The artist soaked himself with water submersing a sponge in a tin bucket. That activity was connected with performing gestures of protest (a clenched fist squeezing the water out) or Nazi salutation. After having completely soaked himself, the artist soaked (cleaned) the glass panel, tore a page off a copy book and the wet one stuck to the projected picture. Momentous "out blocking", concretization of the inscription was broken by cutting the film tape off in the projector. Soaking of some pieces of film tape and sticking in into a glass panel screen (the longest fragment is put just in the middle of the earlier projected picture) changed the function of the film tape into plastic, normal celluloid. After having returned to the basic function to the film as completely useless in our world, the performer sat on the chair set on large glass panels situated on wooden blocks. Further development of the performance was ghastly and dangerous - the artist very quickly winding the film tape around his head suddenly fell back on the glass. Broken glass the clatter of the projector emitting light. Scattered objects, photographs and equally sudden exit with the film type unwinding off the real left the public in somehow unusual situation, in which the traditional division between art and reality, between rejection of plot, film illusion (even the convention of the film as a mass from) was disrupted. It is difficult to provide one clear interpretation of the performance - there are several possible ones, each one complementing another, contesting mass ideologies, group exultations and trusts, which in the past and contemporary history lead to collective disasters. Linas Liandzbergis & Dziugas Katinas (Vilnius, Lithuania) in their performance referred to historical tradition of art projecting a side of "Birth of Venus" by Botticcelli on the castle tower. The well known painting from the turn of Middle Agnes and Renaissance showing its soulful, fine esthetic form was in a deep contrast with another real painting about birth, bat not in foam - in mud, turbid mash. D. Katinas was wading half naked in a shallow gutter filled with dirty water, while L. Liandzbergis was hiding invisible, being completely covered by soil. Birth of Lithuanians, birth of artists was from dirt and in dirt. The Suggested contexts were undoubtedly clear. Both artists were sharing, from mouth to mouth. A long piece of baked bread with the audience uniting themselves with one another. Reliance on simple gestures, reconstruction of simple reactions among people is something necessary for recreation of basic, elementary values destroyed in the past by gigantic machinery of the Soviet empire. Oleg Migas & Anatolij Gankiewicz (Odessa, Ukraine) presented a performance which in a quite perverse game - reanimation of still nature, still nature as a traditional form of painting, but the still art invented perversely - real, set up to resemble the paintings of Dutch masters was supposed show us two contradictory intentions of the artists. The first motif of the performance was animation act, cutting "operating on" vegetables, spreading of the cut plants on a "dead" girl (a girl from Bytow), who in consequence of the artists efforts becomes alive, and another motif, which suggests flight from the standing academic tradition of the previous years and focuses on life, on life's value per se. "Dissolution" - an installation by a very talented Irish artist Alastair MacLennan (Belfast, Great Britain) was a very sarcastic expression concerning total garb aging and pollution of environment. The artist who spent some days cleaning a beach in Ustka of old plastic bottles and any other garbage displayed his "collection" on a huge table. The artist warns that we approach a vicious circle. Our ecological fantasies about clean nature are in obvious conflict with every day practice. Small children shoes represent generations to come. Theodore di Ricco (Berlin, an American who has lived in East Berlin for two Years now). The performance of an American artist who has chosen to live in East Berlin was a very suggestive manifesto of a degraded man beset by mass media on one hand and dealing with existential problems on the other hand (unemployed). T. Ricco adapted a fro of performance imitating exalted sermons of priests in American churches. Focus on social and existential issues, delivering of a "speech" (monologue) by an unemployed person just like a preacher even more strongly indicates the bitterness and despair of a disappointed man, with no hope, the man who questioned the traditional system of values, propaganda machine of a welfare state and its political back up. Pawel Kwasniewski (Warsaw, Poland). "Song About Fast Flying" was the title of a group performance of an incomplete group "Aby Space" lead Pawel Kwasniewski. The artists presented variants of their efforts to imitate birds (a bird). Repeated inevitability of fiasco of such efforts was demonstrated. The subject of wings was repeated - paper wings, stone wings and chicken wings as well as the efforts of their drastic transplantation to human body. "Mandragora" - Manuel Almeida e Sousa, Nuno Miguel Henriques, Belisa Almeida e Sousa, Victor Salgueiro (Cascais, Portugal). Performance of the four artists from Portugal belonged to quite a different category of performance. Symmetrical ness of movement and of all activities, use of white masks and white overalls, concentration of action within and around a square space, syncretic reconciliation of the opposites, use of simple, did not let us completely decipher their complicated sense. Theatrical character differentiated "Mandragora's" performance from other ones, but it still belonged to that kind of art although radial tendencies in performance prefer not playing anything, prefer not to imitate another reality. Miguel Yeco (Portela de Sintra, Portugal) - a special personality Portugal artists life is an unusually competent artist as an actor, who deals with performances which cannot be included within theatrical tradition. In his performance in Bytow he used nearly a theatrical costume of a knight from Middle Ages. Demonstrating various model sword strikes he crossed the castle yard. A moment later ho look off the costume transforming himself into a Tarot fortune teller. Those two suggestively created characters were connected with most basic images called out by the space of the castle. In the last part of his performance (in the cellar) Yeco was, as he said "an anonymous visitor from Lisbon", who narrated about unusual spiritual climate of Portugal by means of music, dance, slides and short video clips. Thus he went from general European images to his own specific culture. Waldemar Bochniarz (Lublin, Poland), "The Sound in White". The artist during his musical performance - he used saxophone - presented not classical sax music as we know from jazz music or concerts, but illustrated the audience relationship between himself, his system "loaded" with low motion of the performer, the system which tries up to the limit proceed a sound from the instrument. In the final stage Bochniarz entered the earlier spread white square. Crossing the white. The final stage of the performance was most dramatic - the artist exhausted, produced desperate some how uncontrolled sound, forcing his way through the inside of the square which in result led to getting through a double folded fabric of the white square, the artist entangled in torn bandage let himself free and terminated his performance. Dariusz Fodczuk (Bielsko-Biala, Poland). The artist prepared the interior design for his performance in the castle cellar. Two spirals were hung up at the ceiling of the room, one made of leaves and roses and the other on the basis of a wire construction was ornamented with small fish. Under the spirals, on the floor there was a wreath made of leaves shaped in "S" letter with centrically wound endings. Next to the wreath, dry sticks were filing center. In such entourage D. Fodczuk read a text which avoided any kind of classification. The content of the text referred to seemingly prosaic situation - the artist and his parents went on the river on a Sunday afternoon. But from that time an imaginative projection of the cosmic model of the Earth, Moon and the position of artist himself in reference to other planets begins. The ball is the Moon, the river is equator , the Farther of the author of the text leads into his "absurd" imaginations the more distant were we from reality. After having read the text and showing the public schematic drawings of a deer, the artist burnt down copy book pages and threw the ashes around the interior of the room. Mike Heintz (Hamburg, Germany), Christian Vanderborght (Paris, France) provided a live lecture on some unusual undertakings which they had initiated by themselves or in cooperation by means of slide photos and documentation. The first of presented actions involved transportation of huge stones on trucks from Scotland to India. Those stones which are frequently recognized in Europe as a sculpting material traveled through countries of various cultures assisted by artists. In each of them, on various stages of the journey they acquired different meaning or were simply absurd. The authors of that action described that as a translation undertaking - translation of concepts of one culture to concepts of another one. Further relations dealt with undertaken projects engaging advanced computer technology. One of them made it possible for any telephone owner, after dialing a proper number, to compose one's own musical composition by means of a telephone dial which is registered by the computer. Such compositions by various authors were synchronized into one common piece of music. Other undertakings made use of developed telecommunication network to create by many people one common video clip. Quite usual was awareness of the potential involved in various existing computer network on the basis of special software. The impression of power of modern technology coexisted with stimulation of the need to use it for artistic and humanistic purposes. Heintz and Vanderborght performed, in one of the castle halls an action "Odyssey Table" which lasted the whole day. That free party connected the problems of their art with natural atmosphere of a party. Cecile Noldus (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) presented two creative film realizations. Unusual set-up and movements of the camera suggested that we were watching a strange reality through the eyes of birds, butterflies and dogs. The soundtrack was "live" music played by the author, who quite successfully managed to imitate the sounds of animals and murmurs with her brilliant vocal skills. The next day she organized a big party in the castle for the dogs of Bytow. Preparation of the dogs meeting had several aspects, but the most important one was based on the assumption that the dog used to be a very loyal human friend. Now the interior of the museum is lacking the animal's presence. The owners came to the castle to the castle together with their dogs, so it was possible for artists to maintain direct with inhabitants of Bytow. Installation "Unclear Borders" by Takashi Ogawa (Tokio, Japan) in the room of the tower ideally fit round shape of the room. A political map situated in the center of the floor was accompanied by regularly displayed miniature radio receivers, each of them was connected to small sensor, which was sensitive to human movement in the room. In such a way, the public influenced radio frequencies by their mere presence, which was manifested by modulation of delicate sounds. Crossing conventional borders inside the room we switched into reception of signals different parts of the world. The space in the room became an imaginative model of the world. Quite non - Conventional technique of sound creativity was presented by Paul Panhuysen (Eindhoven, The Netherlands). In the bottom hall of the tower ho prepared an installation entitled "Three loudspeakers" in which the sound was generated as a result of movement of a strings system which was propelled by small electrical engines. The loudspeakers themselves had a from of rectangular paper membranes reminding rectangular paper sheets waiting for the engraver to begin his work on them. The mechanical system of the installation was well visible and quite readable after a short while. One could actually see creation of the sound. Also in quite unusual concert of that artist, which began sharp at midnight at the castle yard it was possible to see how the sound was created on the basis of the strings spread between the wooden balustrade of the porch. Panhuysen was moving his along the strings creating and modulating sharp "space" tones. Audio - visual presence of the sound enabled deeper reflection on the nature of our senses. It is a pity that the other part of the concert was jammed by the sounds of dance music at the wedding party going on at the castle hotel at the same time. Performance of Lise Kjaer (a Danish artist who lived for many years in Warsaw) was based, from technical point of view, on the projection of orderly slide photos onto four dark open - work screens hanging one after another. In that way, black and white, economical and abstract slide compositions appeared in multiplied special way. The shape of the screens (and projected slides) filled the whole area between the floor and the ceiling, so in such a way one had an impression that in the hall appeared special installations. Delicacy and transitoriness of these compositions was achieved by means of water steam causing slight vibration of the pictures. Her short installation located in a dark corner of the yard equally concentrated. An arrangement of small light points (projected by means of a projector) appeared on disappearing clouds of water steam. Hiroko Nagatomo (Kanagawa-ken, Japan) presented a process of creation of sketches made with use of traditional materials used form destroying part of her works. We could see big sketches of the artist displayed in the same place after the performance. Fumiko Takahashi (Tokyo, Japan) presented an installation in the caste tower. That installation was constructed on the basis of hung up stones which constituted a line of a soft natural shape. Small windows of the were smeared with a thin layer of plaster. Faint, dim light getting into the interior created the atmosphere of peace and desolation. The beginning and the end of the stone line was situated at two opposite, half - open windows. By one of them bird feathers were scattered (pigeon's?), while on the parapet of the other one a stone was placed. Beneath, symmetrically to the drawn stone line on a brick floor, the artist made two plaster forms - negative and positive - a cone and a crater, using of natural forms and natural material helped to construct an installation which required a kind of intuitive experience from us not discursive analysis. Lukasz Guzek (Crakow, Poland) put numerous inscriptions on a regular pile of cobbled stone next to the main gate of the castle. On each stone there was one word. Two of the words were distinguished: "life" and "death". Between them and on many levels there worlds denoting various expressions. Although there were no verbs among them, various sentences were created per se while one was watching the piece, That rigid stone set of expressions created a inexhaustible, system of texts to be read out depending on the visitor's attitude. Grzegorz Borkowski (Warsaw, Poland) made different use of text. Short inscriptions consisting of few words displayed on three extraordinarily huge T - shirts made of paper which were hanging on the top of the staircase. These objects looked as if they happened to be there by pure accident and were not gotten rid of in time. Openly artificial (made of paper) they were usually connected with popular garments on which inscriptions constitute a unique form of pop culture. To contradict this kind presence, the text on the paper t-shirts had reflexive and ambiguous credo, e.g.: "it is easy to copy the silence". Presentation of a spatial object prep rated by a 11 year author Sewer Hrehorowicz from Bytow was a quite outstanding event. A thin plastic pipe, supplied with some crosswise rapacious elements was hanging aslant on wires along with a lit torch in the corner of the hall. In the torch light focused on the floor one could see quote a suggestive shape of a worm which was moving stimulated by the supporting wires. Presentation of the object on the dark was accompanied by original music which created atmosphere of grimness, the atmosphere which was quite deeply rooted in the castle interior. The presence of a young artist who spontaneously presented himself in "The Castle of Imagination" constituted a satisfactory and proof to contradict a banal argument about "incomprehensibility" of contemporary art. Artistic proposal of S. Hrehorowicz became an equally important expression to iniciate dialogue with other presentations. The action by Piotr Wyrzykowski (Gdansk, Poland) contained the meeting of the past and present. In the historical hall of the castle, the author invited the guests to put on already prep rated t-shirts with printed pictures of all the Polish kings, just like they were presented by Matejko in his Galaxy of Polish Kings. For a moment all (44) kings appeared in the castle. That moment became historical. Beside general gaiety caused by metamorphosis of some audience into Polish sovereigns (at the Teutonic castle) one could feel a specific bombast of that moment. The ironic expression of the author undoubtedly questioned our contemporary attitude to the book, pedestal history. At the "Castle of Imagination" were presented the block of video movies by: Piotr Krajewski (Wroclaw, Poland), "The Polish Video Art" from OPEN STUDIO/WRO collection, Miroslaw Rogala(Chicago, USA) - "Macbeth" and "Nature living us", Piotr Wyrzykowski (Gdansk, Poland) - the films connected with artistic activity at "Laznia Miejska" in Gdansk, Mike Hentz (Hamburg, Germany) & Christian Vanderbroght (Paris, France) - video art documentation.
Grzegorz Borkowski & Wladyslaw Kazmierczak