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EN
The subject of this text is metadisciplinary and methodological reflection in the context of current discussions on the specificity of cultural studies in Poland. I present my vision of the methodological approach, which I call social (materialist) cultural analysis, and which crystallized in the course of conceptualization and operationalization of my research on the phenomenon most often called street art. And although I formulated it in the context of a specific research procedure, as if in interaction with the issue I am exploring, it seems to me that it has a broader value in at least two related areas: as a contribution to the discussion on the specificity of cultural studies ‘work’ (as a formula of softly understood empirical research) and as a reflection on the ‘bottom-up’ approach postulated in the era of the end of universalism and macrotheory. I situate my proposition in the context of the discussion on the formula of Polish cultural studies; in relation to the postulates of abandoning thinking in terms of traditional scientific disciplines; and in the context of the idea of ‘bottom-up’ development of theoretical categories. The three most important aspects are: transdisciplinarity; a turn towards a sociological perspective in cultural research; reflective empiricism, in which the theory becomes a derivative of the process of collecting empirical data (sources), and which ‘saturates’ in the process of their collection.
EN
Labirynt Gallery and BWA Lublin Gallery (BWA - Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions), despite its undeniable role in the history of Polish art in the seventies and eighties, has not yet become the subject of in-depth research. Instead, it has become a myth, the core of which is the belief that the Labirynt Gallery and BWA Lublin Gallery was a kind of extraterritorial place in the era of the People's Republic of Poland (PRL), excluded from the operation of cultural policy – and thus exempt from boycott after martial low imposed on December 13, 1981. This myth (like any) was constructed ex post, in this case on the grounds of the anti-communist hegemony that dominated the public discourse – including art history – after 1989. In this article, I propose to look at the history of the Labirynt Gallery and BWA Lublin Gallery in 1969–1993 through the social history paradigm. It is an approach that assumes that under communism the relations of power and society are much more complicated than the binary model of enslavement and resistance depicts. Rather, it is a kind of web of interactions, tensions and tactics in which social actors have more or less, but real, agency. In this view, communism is also a broad modernization project, whose agenda included a range of solutions supported by different social strata. I try to use this perspective to show the whole complexity of the functioning of the Labirynt Gallery and BWA Lublin Gallery during the era of the People's Republic of Poland (PRL). Based on extensive source material, so far unexplored, I put forward the thesis that Labirynt Gallery and BWA Lublin Gallery was fully subject to the policy of the authorities. In turn, these were either favorable or indifferent towards it. Director Andrzej Mroczek did not even have to negotiate his program. This is particularly evident in the case of the BWA Lublin Gallery, an institution much more exposed and dependent on local and central authorities than the Labirynt Gallery, which operated as a part of local community center (dom kultury). As I show, in the eighties BWA Lublin Gallery was continuously developing: opening more branches, implementing the established program, smoothly cooperating with the CBWA Gallery. Also, cooperation with the local and central authorities was exemplary. The article tries to show that Andrzej Mroczek was not a dissident (like the myth says), but a political realist. In this vein, I propose to speak of BWA Lublin Gallery as an ‘ark’ for an artistic movement which was dramatically weak institutionally, while politically it was completely indifferent. The Lublin 'harbor' allowed it not only to survive, but also to develop.
EN
Previous studies on the emergence and development of video art in Poland have been generally focused on analysis of leading artists' creative concepts and poetics of their works. Such a perspective does not address a wider context of artistic culture – a configuration of material, institutional and social conditions od production, distribution and reception of these practices. This has resulted in a simplified, abstracted image of the beginnings of video art in Poland. A broaden and more historical analysis entails, therefore, re-inscribing its subject into a set of local and translocal conditions: material and technical modes of creating and presenting video works, their various forms, a topography of their production and distribution places, their circulation channels, a network of video art contacts, cooperation and exchange, and finally, the location of Poland as one of socialist countries of East Central Europe on the map of artistic and economic centres and peripheries. The task of analysing the video in such an expanded field of artistic culture also needs a broadened concept of “the work made with the use of the video.” The term refers not only to practices usually deemed to be the video art ‘proper,’ such as videotapes, videoinstallations or videoperformances, but also comprises all conceptual and documental forms of existence, distribution and presentation of video works: textual descriptions, schematic diagrams (which sometimes remain the only material form of a work), exhibition boards with photodocumentation, brochures or catalogues etc. The article offers an analysis of a series of exhibitions and projections of video works which took place at the Labirynt Gallery and Bureau of Artistic Exhibitions (BWA) in Lublin between 1976 and 1984. My approach combines in-depth archival research with the methodology of exhibition history, infrastructure and conditions of artistic production studies, and critical reception history. While doing this research ‘groundwork,’ I attempt to establish who actually participated in the discussed artistic events, describe the works which were showcased there and reflect on how they were or could have been interpreted. I take into account translocal and transnational networks of contacts of both institutions, their contributory programme, co-created by numerous artists and curators, as well as the whole of an expanded field of artistic culture: changing conditions of production, distribution and presentation of works made with the use of the video.
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