The theme of this text is performance art, i.e. time-based art. I shall start, however, with considering the form, that is with static questions. There are two starting points which decide about the shape of art, define the direction of theoretical reflection and consequently, mould artistic philosophy. This explanation will not so much define modern art as it will help us comprehend, within the scope of the present text, its most essential feature.
It is generally believed that modern art sanctions the liberty (and liberality) of form. Hence the following sequence of thought: the freedom of form means the freedom of expression, that is generally the freedom of a human being. However, what is the meaning of the freedom of form in the world of art, and how does it apply to the human world? Plurality of form allows for touching possibly all sensitive points of the anthroposphere. Such an answer pops up intuitively and seems pertinent. Yet in fact it is greatly idealized and does not stand the test when confronted with artistic facts.
Nowadays there are no born and genetically pure performers and installers. Almost each artist in this trend started practicing traditional art, usually painting. Their further artistic experience was shaped to a considerable degree by dispute with that tradition. It follows the changes in twentieth-century art. The modernist artistic evolution (as well as revolution) was accomplished first in painting which was the most important area of formal change that finally led to modern art. Historically, the forms of performance or installation originated in the visual arts. The theoretical background for those transformations was the modernist ideology of novelty which stimulated the appearance of successive waves of the avant-garde, that is successive formal concepts of art.
The creative and innovative role of painting is now a part of the legendary ethos of art. Now thinking about painting follows it closely and therefore it is remote from and little integrated with the world of art. Painting is sought not for formal reasons but for the image; there is a need to fit into our surrounding some visuality, to complete the background of the reality in which our life is lived. The very activity of painting is often more important than execution itself. Thus conceived painting is anthropogenic. It results from the needs of people, and not the needs of art. Hence the form, technique and contents are momentary and interchangeable. By placing a person in the centre of any art, for instance of painting, we connect it inevitably with time, with processuality. Temporality gives openness to art. The measure of openness is the affirmation of incident, familiarization of chaos, and adoption of madness. These are the factors which dynamize both life and art. Yet the indispensable condition is to place the artist above art.
Artistic modernism considered as border-line phenomena both conceptualism and various manifestations of live art, which later became referred to collectively as performance arts. They derived from the modernist spirit of formal innovation, yet on the other hand they facilitated departure from art comprehended as objective aesthetics. Practicing art linked with life became possible. Such a claim was not new, in fact it was as old as modern art, but only then artist were able to accomplish it. This approach, noticeable in art in the early 1970's, became a veritable "Copernican revolution". Now it is practiced in the formulas of performance and installation, as well as in their various combinations and mutations which are broadly defined as time-based art. They have proved to be a completely different mode of art, of its practice and its relationship to the human being.
Thus the modern freedom of form, which the confused people call chaos, is misleading. It is a fallacy of modern art. We can choose between the static forms and time-based forms (or more precisely, forms based on timespace). The former are incapable of rendering directly the dynamism of life, and human energy, for life is fulfilled in action. A human being must be more important than art. The freedom of form means the priority of the artist before the work of art. The equation of art and life must be now supplemented by the equation of art and the artist. It can be interpreted thus: being in art gives meaning to life, that is, assigns a place in the anthroposphere.
Performance is an art based in the psycho-physical condition of the human being who is its matter, form and meaning. It is the most general definition of this art. Its specific quality consists in the fact that while other arts are validated by form, that is by the aesthetic object which is called a work of art, it is validated by the subject, that is by the artist. Such artistic behaviour can be generalized into a definition of art which states that it is a mode of organizing the anthroposphere, that is the human world, while the artistic means employed by it aim at identifying art with life.
The postmodernist process of change in art, begun in the 1970s, has been continued, and now time-based art dominates, also in terms of numbers, collective art presentations. It is not, as some artists and theoreticians hold it, a passing disease in art. It is no longer seen as single shocking avant-garde gestures but simply as general artistic practice which is truely modern. Artists take to time-based art for they perceive it not so much a modernist formal novelty but as a procedure which makes the very presence of art possible.
The curators of the "Castle of Imagination" , Grzegorz Borkowski and Wladyslaw Kazmierczak, have participated in the event as artists from the very beginnings, therefore the format of the event has been painstakingly prepared and the invited artists carefuly selected. The meeting aims at presenting the variety of time-based art which can be experienced only by active personal participation in artistic presentations.
This year's "Castle of Imagination" is the third meeting running. Three years seems to be enough to comprehend the specific character of the event which is largely shaped by the attractiveness of the site. The architecture of the Castle is often a part of the artists' works, both formally and emotionally. Bytow, which normally is not of great cultural importance, becomes a truely significant art centre in Poland at the time of the presentations of the "Castle of Imagination". The word 'truely' is a key word here as there are numerous fake art centres in Poland.
Art centres usually suffer from the disease common to institutions: they take care mainly of their own security, are most interested in justifying their own existence and rely for their prestige rather on paraartistic policy than on a clear vision of art presentation, and thus they lose a distinctive image. In the result they are intellectually diffident and artistically eclectic, incapable of defining and realizing leading values in art. Filtered through institutionalized "centres", art becomes static, loses vitality, becomes a cultural decoration of life instead of being life and living culture. The vitality of art cannot be accomplished by administrative measures. In the relativist world which makes values relative, art and art centres move about in search of life-giving energies. The significance and resonance of modern art depends, generally, on its ability to stimulate life energy both individually and collectively, both in artists and non-artists.
If we accept the above statement tentatively as a definition of art, it appears that art is absent from the regular art centres, and an art centre itself is a relative term: it is mobile and turns up in unexpected places. At Bytow, the "Castle of Imagination" has been functioning as a temporary centre. As a centre, it should be equipped with the power to diffuse and attract. Therefore it is necessary to expand the event in the media in order to emphasize and disseminate the values created there. Another significant feature of a centre has been already achieved: the event is international and intercultural, or better, supranational and supracultural, as art is universal. At Bytow, impulses from various circles and places in the world meet. For a period of time, the Castle focuses various intellectual and artistic values which, removed from their original context and amalgamated, create a new whole and a new artistic quality.
In the local scale, the "Castle of Imagination" is a powerful cultural impulse for the town and its inhabitants. Bytow has come close to becoming established on the world art map and the participants in the presentations get a rare insight into modern art. The presentations at "the Castle of Imagination" attract large numbers of non-artist spectators. It is exceptional in comparison with other centres where the artists' audience usually consists of other artists. The fact that it testifies to a common craving for culture is of lesser importance here. What matters most, the spectators create facts which must be seriously considered by the organizers. Therefore the programme is planned in such a way as to ensure the best and most spontaneous interaction with the spectators. Art presentation is neither haughty nor panders to the taste of the spectators.
The programme of the Third Meeting was dominated by performance art, which is the most interactive among the arts. Therefore in my account of the activities presented at the "Castle of Imagination" I shall focus on the presentations of performers. Yet the full programme of the event was more diversified than the performance festival. Before discussing time-based presentations let me mention the static ones. In the Castle Court two hanging items by Yong Ik Son (South Korea) could be seen, entitled "Alarm Bell". These items consisted of a real bell with a carved fish attached to it - in the author's culture, frequently used as a symbol of life - with such things stuck to it as refuse or military toys, which gave the work an obvious message of ecological warning. On a deeper level, the work referred to ecology as man's cultural identity. Inside the Castle, at the door which led to the rooms where presentations were performed, an old conceptualist master, Wlodzimierz Borowski (Brwinow near Warsaw) placed the inscription "Art is at the door". One of the curators, Grzegorz Borkowski (Warsaw), fitted the inscription "I only exist", which kept appearing and disappearing - a good philosophical joke of mystic and existential character (as well as self-mockery). The participation in the Bytow meetings of the youngest local artist, Sewer Hrehorowicz, has become traditional; with some help from his mother he designed one of the rooms using maps of imaginary nature parks. There were also video presentations: Piotr Krajewski (Wroclaw) presented the WRO festival, Jerzy Truszkowski (Lomianki near Warsaw) showed his documentation. A modest video installation "Void a void" was provided by Alastair MacLennan (Northern Ireland). The author of the present text (Lukasz Guzek, Krakow) conducted a poll on modern art among the people of Bytow. It was called "Mirror" as the text of the questionnaire was to mirror the thinking of the respondents. Over two hundred questionnaires were distributed in three days. The results have been analyzed and presented in this publication. The questionnaire, however, was also designed as a text on art encoded in the "soft" question form. Statements may be accepted or rejected, while this form of presenting ideas encourages indivisual reflection and spontaneous opinion. Theoretical texts rather promulgate absolute truth than stimulate thought, therefore they are considered hermetic and are read only by specialists. The most fundamental statement of the questionnaire, which expresses the opinion of the author, is to be found in the sentence: "An object is not art, only an artist is art"; it was printed on the posters displayed in the town and in the Castle. Therefore the very reading of the questionnaire text by a respondent achieved the objective of the poll. Apart from the questionnaire, this year's "Castle of Imagination" offered only one installation. It consisted in interfering into the space of the Ethnographic Museum in the Castle. In its rooms low-power loudspeakers were fitted, hidden among craft items. Now their function is often obscure or forgotten, yet in the context of modern art forms they may pass for legitimate works of art. They were therefore, following the well-known and frequent artistic strategy, elevated to this position. Hence the title "How much art is out of art". The crucial device was fusing those items with the texts by F. Nietzsche on art and culture which were whispered from the loudspeakers. Nietzsche appreciated only ancient Greeks and favoured classical taste. Yet he expressed his views in a style too ecstatic for the modern reader, which was particularly evident in his Polish neo-romantic translations.
To return to presentations by performers. An enthusiastic individualist could say that there are as many kinds of performance as there are performers. Such a statement, though true as each person is up to a point a unique individual, would exclude any deep reflection on art. Keeping in mind individual qualities, it is possible to define some general tracks in individual thinking. I shall try to define those tracks and following them describe the artistic content of the presentations at Bytow. So I shall not provide a chronological description of the activities but rather an attempt to define what the spectators at the presentations could see and learn about performance art or, more generally, modern art.
The primary device to produce live , time-based art was to expand the static image form in order to include man and to introduce into art the features which are specifically human: mobility and change - temporality and historicity. The term "primary" does not refer to being the first in art history. Devices to produce live art appeared parallelly in various kinds of avant-garde movements. An attempt to trace who was the first would be difficult and pointless in a text like this one. "Primary" means here the simplest gesture, a natural answer to the traditional forms of art presentation. "Primary" does not mean, however, that the form has become obsolete. On the contrary, it is always present as an element of artistic strategy. As the modernist principle of novelty is no longer the force which drives the mechanism of art creation, such an approach can be seen in modern pruductions as a vocabulary form.
In this category were the works of Do Wha Yu (South Korea) whose presentation 'Where are the lips' featured slides showing images of lips being projected onto the cubic body of the screen made of elastic fabric. The artist positioned herself inside it, and by her movements gave changing expression to the images. Her other work, "Expansion-shrinking", produced the effect of a changeable cubic body by the artist's movements inside it, from slow tremors to violent convulsions. In this case the spectators were involved. The held taut elastic tapes which allowed to pull the soft fabric covering the artist. Thus art became dependent on the spectators. At the sign from Yong Ik Son, who was her assistant, one by one the spectators let the tapes go, the cubic body lost shape and the artist could not move. In spite of its being based on movement, this art was more formal n the direct level. The ideological message of this work of art was the spatial and emotional contact of each person with others. This contact was changeable, anonymous, sometimes very close, but always only external. The performance by Wladyslaw Kazmierczak (Krakow) was also concerned with the primary phase of that art, although the manner of presentation was different. From the viewpoint of modern artists he reached into the archaeological period of notions about art, by placing his activity against the background of the remote period of the beginnings of twentieth-century art history. Thus the reflection embodied in this activity gained a general dimension. In this sense it was meta-performance, that is performance on performance, if it is possible in the case of art which involves the entire human personality in its actuality and which is possible only while the artist is present. It is anyway this layer of art where theoretizing, or simply thinking, is possible. The author placed his presentation deliberately beyond the modernist principle of novelty, as he quite rightly assumed that it is no longer the artist's duty towards art.
He called his performance "DADA,da,da,da...", which clearly refers to the Dada and surrealist roots of the art. Into the structure of the activity he introduced a quotation from the well-known ready-made by M. Duchamp - a bicycle wheel on a stool - which was given the role of a mytheme, that is a fundumental myth-creating factor. Thus we are faced with a postmodern attitude - all art is a catalogue of ready-mades from its history. The author points to the fact that modernist ideology in art no longer applies. In the presentation a tape was used with the recorded texts, interviews, poems and music by the Dadaists: Tzara, Janco, Huelsenbeck, Duchamp, Schwitters and others. In the course of the performance the activities of the performer resulted in the interchange of history and the present moment of art, that is of primary activities and the performance in action. The hermeneutic awareness that thinking is inevitably mediated and discovery in one's own work art proto-structures are among the most modern intellectual instruments. This performance was structured around a few props: the "Duchamp" wheel suspended in space, the remaining part of the bicycle on the floor, wheels up, a chair at the wall and a suspended old mirror. The action started with the chair, which is an anthropometric object. However, the artist 'sat' next to it, his back supported by the wall. It was a moment of the classic, physical performance, which took into consideration endurance when the artist creates a situation which tries his body. Then the action moved to the bicycle with its wheels up. The artist positioned himself in the place of the missing wheel. Turning the pedals with his hands he put the back wheel into motion and pressed to it his face which he had plastered, in front of the mirror, with slices of raw meat; the fast revolving wheel then tore the meat to shreds. This produced sound which was strikingly similar to the sound used in a piece by M. Duchamp "La Mariee Mise a Nu...Meme". The physical character of performance art became confirmed and reinforced in the subjective treatment of art, in the notion of the artist as a work of art rather than a producer of aesthetic objects. The performance ended in the scene when the artist removed from his face the remains of meat and tidied it in front of the mirror. As his final gesture, he walked off carrying the mirror, which symbolized the removal of one's own image multiplied in art, both personal and historical. Of a different and rather a-intellectual character was the performance by Istvan Kovacs (Hungary) . It had no title, and it was not necessary as everything "explained it self". The meaning of the presentation consisted in self-irony, which may be instructive to those who take their life and their art too seriously. Yet in the end the matter turned out to be serious. The artist communicated it by the following means: sitting in a high chair, his feet dangling above the floor, he made faces in the mirror, put on a series of sunglasses, put on a wig made of noodles, covered his head with a frill made of whipped cream, put eggs into his eye sockets and pierced them with his fingers so that they dripped onto the table, pushed his face into flour, poured honey over his head. The activities made sense when the artist got up, put on a military belt and began to play with darts throwing them up so that they stuck into a toy helmet on his head. Thus he turned out to be a caricature of the farcical military who make people's lives difficult in various parts of the world. Posturing in front of the mirror, self-admiration, narcissism and swaggering depicted in an ingenious way the mentality of army officers. Thus an antimilitary message was one of the facets of the performance. The presentation was full of ludic humour, but while all were having fun perhaps not all noticed that the artist not only made himself into something but also did something to himself; he placed himself in a given situation and staked his ego in the art game. It is an open question who laughed at whom in this case.
The performance by Roi Vaara (Finland) was full of humour but of a more reflective kind. Its title "A kind of dialogue between art and life" explains his activity and points to such an interpretation which raises it from the level of a joke to the level of general reflection. The activity was brief, as if it were a single sentence, but so precise that it amounted to voluminous theoretical dissertations. Only the language of art is capable of such essential statements. The artist, in an evening suit, started walking in the direction of the town centre, carrying a glass and a folded umbrella (a crowd followed him). Just beyond the Castle gate he encountered a fire-engine at full speed. It stopped on a bridge and the firemen turned the hose into the dry Castle moat flooding it with water. The artist, facing away from the firemen, opened his umbrella, while heavy smoke rose from the glass he was holding and quickly screened off his face. This surreal situation lasted for a while, long enough for the spectators to realize confusion and grasp the absurdity of the situation which the artist dedicated to the dialogue of life and art.
The performance by Wojciech Stefanik (Wroclaw) had a complex title "One more time - all - rather yes - and nothing" but its structure was simple. In a dark room a beam of bright light picks out the artist who is lying casually on a mattress, smartly dressed, large sunglasses screening his face. He makes small, almost imperceptible movements. A dull rythmic sound is heard. Soon the light goes off and the room is silent. When the light is switched on again the artist, to the beat of the Polish hit songs of the 1960s, gets up briskly, cuts the tape which divides him from the spectators, bows towards the place where he lay, kneels, waves a flag made of a newspaper. Then he moves to a cubicle marked by transparent courtains, changes into a standard everyday clothes, leaves his smart clothes hanging out, and then sits down silent at the table. The artist's activities went parallelly to the slides showing his other performances of a similar kind, as since 1981 W. Stefanik has presented essentially one performance, changing and adding only some props and elements according to his life experience. When the artist leaves the room, what remains is a slide which shows him in a similar situation in a different performance. The style of his activities and the music suggest at first the ludic character of the activities rooted in the old regime's culture. Indeed, it is the indelible background of his life. The change which takes place during the performance displays, however, a personal layer in which all "background experiences" become internalized and private. In his activity the performer re-creates his very personal matters which are practically beyond the grasp of the spectators.
A stylistically different performance was presented by Zdzislaw Kwiatkowski (Lublin). His performance may be defined as constructional, or even constructivist, that is intellectualizing and objectifying the matter of art; minimalist in its artistic means, emotionally cool, it resembled an artistic game of chess. Its title "Half full half empty" turned out to be the point of the presentation. The activity started with what was perfectly full and perfectly empty, that is with a glass filled with red wine and an empty glass. Then the glasses were moved from one corner of a square table into another and the wine was poured from one glass into the other. Some of the wine was spilled onto a white tablecloth. After a series of such movements the title effect was reached - both glasses were perfectly half-filled. In one of them the full half was emphasized, in the other - the empty half. The intellectualized performance and intellectualized art turned out to be perverse and revealed another aspect: their absurdity.
The performance by Antoni Szoska (Krakow) was also intellectual, although it was not entirely rational. It was, however, always very personal: as for an intellectual book-learning is extremely important, speech was an essential element of the performance. The presentation was formally structured as a collage, which related both to the elements of intellectual expertise, displayed in the manner of an academic (which is the artist's profession otherwise), and to the elements of transitory experiences and sensations and intuitive perceptions, which were sometimes objectified in reflection, sometimes self-searching, approaching open vivisection of one's own intimacy. Hence the procedure was had many layers and its elements, games and strategies were changeable, as they had to be continually adapted to particular layers. A tape with a recorded lecture or single sentences, or short pieces of music was played, mingling with the artist's gestures in front of the spectators, or with reshuffling of objects, or with inscriptions presented on screens. The whole was rather hermetic and little communicative as a discourse. Still, this performance may be seen as a kind of a shamanistic rite of modern culture, a rite performed by someone who is in daily contact with this culture and knows its mysteries. In this case art produced a world of its own which attracted the spectators, infected them with madness, enticed with intellectual explosions and fascinated with ambiguities. This intellectualism, when converted into mood, proved the authenticity of the artist who appeared as being-in-art.
The performance by Wen Lee (Singapore) was also personal, yet it did not reach such extremes. Similarly, it appeared to be a private ritual. His "Ghost Stories" told about the threats to one's identity, personality and artistic freedom which the artist experienced. They stem from the environment and the world in which the artist lives. Singapore is a place friendly to money but not to modern art. Performers must have police permission to present their independent activities in public, and galleries are indifferent to this kind of art. Therefore performance artists work aware of their social isolation and their actions are directed against the hostile authorieties. Wen Lee's performance began with his painting of a five-pointed star, which referred to the number of stories told. Also, there are five five-pointed stars in the flag of Singapore. Hence obvious connections between art and politics. In the centre of the star a stump was placed which became an execution block for a plucked and drawn chicken. Then the artist moved to other locations where there were props required in telling other stories: military boots, a bunch of prickly roses, milk, fish, a counterpane. Each of them was used to perform ritualized activities. After each tale the artist recited: "I want to live".
Owing to its structural connection with the person of the artist, with the conditio humana, performance art is never pure form, it is not limited to aesthetics, yet its meaning often reaches beyond the artist's ego, into the social sphere, towards philosophical or socio-political generalizations. The range of meaning varies and depends not only on the individual choice of strategy, but also on the art tradition in which the artist works and which influences his choices. In "Ghost Storeis" meaning was perfectly balanced: the artist spoke as much about his being in the world as about the world itself. On the other hand, his activity entitled "Neo BABA: ultimate business of business" was of didactic character. It warned against the mind becoming dominated by money, the situation which is typical of the artist's country but which also applies all over the world. His performance - although the term may not be appropriate here - became a game with the public which could again play an active part in art. First the artist changed into a white-collar uniform and took to business. The spectators paid with real money for xeroxed banknotes which were signed by the artist as if they had been works of art. Then from the money he thus earned Wen Lee made a stick, perhaps a magician's wand, perhaps a blind man's stick, and started on a tour of the Castle, followed by the spectators.
A polemical aspect could also be noticed in the performance by Roland Miller (Britain), "Traillin cluods of ? glory, from the West". In perfect accord with the site, the artist appeared as a King. On one level his activity referred to Polish pro-European ambitions, which are rather not shared by the British, objectified as illusions. His King was a King, but also a pauper, "Lackland", who distributed gold which turned out to be worthless spangles - he was a character like many in English history and legend. On the first day of the event, from the cceremonial opening, the King was present in the Castle Court where various things befell him, and then he reappeared on the last day, as the victorious King. The artist's intent seems difficult to decode, yet the public, particularly the youngest one, seemed less perplexed and enjoyed his presence throughly. His activity was of the kind which in Poland is defined rather as avant-garde/alternative/street theatre than performance art. As far as its formal characteristic, it filled the duration of the event with its time structure and was site-specific. In the result, its real time span gained another time span, that of art, which suggested that everyday dimension is not the only dimension available, particularly in such extraordinary circumstances.
On the second day, when the King was temporarily absent, the unreal aspect of time at the Castle was emphasized by Shirley Cameron and Colette Cameron (in real time the wife and daughter of Roland Miller). Their production "Moves" was also performed in a fairy-tale setting: the artists wore the "standard" costumes of fairies or medieval princesses. The structure of their performance (we shall use this term after all) included communication chaos and impossibility to meet. First the Yellow Lady (Shirley) and the Blue Lady (Colette) sat together in the Castle Court playing a game known only to themselves. Then the ladies parted and the Blue Lady kept sending the Yellow Lady letters which dashed like paper swallows from the crown of the Castle walls. Each message sent was marked by a yellow flag on the wall. The movement of the Yellow Lady was outlined by the spots where the messages landed and where a blue flag was raised. The Castle walls at Bytow are long and high so the activity continued for a long time. The next stage took place in a Castle room where the Ladies demonstrated their joy at their meeting, sat down together at a table and began a communication game, each one drawing the other's schematic "portraits"- heads in tall fairy-tale head-dress - tearing them in half (separating head and face) and then joining with the other's half. Then the public were drawn into the game drawing portraits of persons selected at random. Shirley Cameron appeared again on the last day together with the King as "Castle tree goddest" distributing among the public "lucky leaves" cut out of her magic robe. Thus the family performance by Roland Miller and Shirley and Colette Cameron-Miller transformed both the Castle timespace and the art at the Castle.
Predictably, as the Bytow event was of international character, the activities presented there featured also ethnic motifs. Wen Lee's ethno-performance "Yellow Man's Blues" is an activity from a series continued for many years under the title "Yellow Man". The artist, his face painted yellow, played blues on the guitar, which boldly and provocatively defied the stereotypes and prejudices concerning the way we see people of different race and culture. Ethno-cultural motifs were strongly evident in the performance by a Hong Kong couple, James Law and Anthony Leung. Their act "Pretend" was based on an old Chinese legend. The artists presented it in the most mysterious place in the Castle. The spectators, invited to the Castle vaults, could read the text of the legend but the further passage was screened with a transparent courtain ; from the courtained-off space stimulating erotic sounds could be heard. The female artist stood guard and apparently having forgotten her English, answered questions with utterances which could be understood by Chinese speakers only.
Anthony Leung presented also an individual activity. She constructed symbols which were simple if perceived philosophically, but essential if their individual consequences were considered. In the Castle Court she first kneaded dough and then tried to use this "mortar" on stones in order to construct something: a place of her own.
The individual activity by James Law was also culture-specific, but was related to recent history and politics. It opposed the way in which common people are manipulated and victimized by big politics. Everybody may be placed in such a situation, yet his example referred to Hong Kong whose citizens are greatly worried by the approaching change of political status . The artist portrayed his concern (and expressed the concern of others) by sweeping a large amount of bamboo leaves he had brought to Bytow all the way through the Castle, from the cellars, to corridors, to the tower, to the crown of the walls. The activity ended with writing down a sentence which expressed his determination to preserve his cultural identity. The artist apologized to the great powers of the world for the fact that he was a Chinese, that he spoke English and that he was going to keep his British nationality (overseas).
The public which participated in the presentations could not form such an analytic opinion on the events presented at the Castle as the one obove. For them the curators prepared a special bill of fare so that they could first taste modern art and only then possibly ask for recipes. It is certainly right to emphasize rather intuitive insights and general, vaguely defined direct perceptions than profound interpretation in this social environment where culture has not yet assimilated modern art. The most common impressions the public had were the variety of the forms of art and the acceptablity of various dimensions of individual madness. Another impression from Bytow is the close identification of art with the artist, the awareness of the individual character of a work of art. The artists of performance art did not hide behind static forms but took upon themselves the whole impact of confronting the public. Art was not much different from life. The ego of the artists was ruthlessly brought into direct contact with the other egos. Perhaps the highest value of the event consisted in this direct contact, in confronting the artist directly, and not through an alienated product such as a work of art.
Lukasz Guzek
Translated by: Jadwiga Piatkowska
The 3rd International Artists Meeting "Castle of Imagination", Bytow, Poland, June, 1 - 3, 1995
Curators: Wladyslaw Kazmierczak, Grzegorz Borkowski
Organized by: The Society of the Friends of Contemporary Art in Slupsk
Co-organzers: Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions in Slupsk, The West Kashubian Museum in Bytow
Executive director: Wladyslaw Kazmierczak