Dis-Section of a Dead Body
Sekcja magazine, which now functions chiefly online (as a weekly magazine with cultural news and - once a month - with deeper critical discussion), is edited by young people. A reading of the April edition has awoken some of my nostalgic memories of the time, when with a group of friends, I was taking my first steps in literary and artistic criticism. Sekcja - Section – features some words of wisdom and a substantial dose of good criticism. The criticism is not omnipresent, however, but concerns only a few phenomena of the cultural mainstream, which distinguishes Section against the background of many other magazines, which are often rather evasive and afraid of expressing strong opinions. Visibly, the young editors of Section politely but firmly disagree with the old stagers.
In the article entitled What is the aim of the museum? What is the aim of the conference about it? Piotr Kowalik, the editor-in-chief, says that the conference A New Museum of Art – Contemporary or Modern? Places, Programs, Goals, which took place in the National Museum, Warsaw in March, a week after the long-awaited agreement between the Ministry of Culture and the Town Hall, was “a little bit about everything and a lot about nothing”. “Was it all just an occasion for a two-day-long meeting of old friends? We should also stress the problem of not only this conference – some people should not have been invited and listened to”.
This approach may not be politically correct, but I really like the author’s point of view. What specific faults of the event does he mention? “Already the watchword of the conference has shown the organizers’ doubts concerning its main theme. Was it about the planned Museum in Warsaw or about the general idea of a museum collecting contemporary/modern art? Or maybe about the collections that already exist in different museums in Poland? According to the reports that have been brought to our attention during the conference, architecture is a key feature of exposition planning. Unfortunately, not much has been said apart from this.”
Kowalik stresses that he missed the information about the coexistence of the new museum with Zachęta Gallery and the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, especially as far as financial matters are concerned. He claims that the new museum is planned to rely mostly on grants from the Ministry of Culture, which seems to be a questionable project.
The author also mentions that time and place of the origination of the art to be collected are still not defined and the opinions on the subject are divided. “It is to begin with collecting pieces of art that are created at present, while most of the older ones already are in national collections and can not be taken away, because otherwise a conflict might arise among the animators of culture. Everyone seems to agree with that! As far as I’m concerned, civil servants shouldn’t treat the effects of their work as their dominium.”
The only report that, according to Kowalik, was outstanding and interesting was the one by Nawojka Cieślińska: “Nobody else touched the problem of cooperation with other (also foreign) institutions, the subject of presenting private collections and the idea of sharing costs when buying expensive pieces of art. Does this prove that other speakers were not interested or knew nothing of the subject? Or maybe they were simply convinced that it did not concern them? By the side of this report came out another matter, connected with the question What is the aim of the museum? This undertaking, so unique in Poland, haven’t been in any way presented to the public opinion (or at least, setting aside the articles by Dorota Jarecka in Gazeta Wyborcza). From today’s point of view it is rather doubtful whether in ten years’ time, on the opening of the museum, the press would call it »The most awaited event in the last few years«.” But still it seems a good idea to invite some PR specialists to cooperate. Even if it won’t make Poles look forward to the opening of the museum, it surely will be useful while looking for money.
The final conclusion is not very optimistic. The opening of the architectural competition for the museum is getting closer and still no one knows what should be presented there and how it should be organized.
Yeah, it is a really modern approach to presenting art.
Maria Rubersz (The discourses that failed to meet – about the functioning of the photographic document), who took part in a session entitled Polish documentary photography on the crossing of discourses, organized alongside the Leonard Sempoliński exhibition in Zachęta, also had no reasons to be enthusiastic. The participants of the session were to talk about “historical and critical aspects of documentaries” and to analyze the “methods of presenting them in museums.” And what? It all ended up on empty declarations: “Although all these themes were present in most of the reports, there was no deeper reflection on problems of the documentary and its place among the arts. The speakers of the session took the fact that documentary photography is a piece of art and that the aforementioned discourses are crossing, for granted. I am really curious how and where they do cross. The discussion between Jarecka and her opponents shows rather the lack of trust and differences between the two.”
Which is a pity, as the subject is worth investigating. There are more and more exhibitions of documentary photography, but few reviews and publications on the subject. The Warsaw Festival of Artistic Photography, that had just ended, has also been strongly (but deservedly) criticized. “The document had its place here, but as nothing more than the usual photographic impressions from eastern Europe, presented mostly in cafes. The images that have found their place in the galleries have also shown themes such as the abundance of bicycles in Amsterdam. Such exhibitions will never help documentary photography in getting popular. The festival, which was a total failure, could have been passed over in silence, if the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, which has just opened the Faculty of Photography, hadn’t been involved.”
All these conferences and sessions seem to be quite pathetic, so I am not surprised that the young are already tired of them and that they would like to send the old, together with their conferences, to the grave. On the other hand – I hope someone will try to kill me for what I am saying, or the situation is worse than I have thought – soon they will understand that such sessions are nothing more than a waste of time.
Beside the two above reports, the latest Section features extensive material on Vienna (in Polish and in English, critical but also practical information; I wish I didn’t go in few days to Berlin but to Vienna, because I would knew exactly what – and what not – to see and why). There is also a very, very long article by Karol Sienkiewicz Wherever you are, my Michelangelo, I love you!” ARTIST – QUEER – MODEL basing on a homo-artistic story by Przemek Monasterski My Michelangelo. Both – the article and the cited pieces of the story are… well… brave. So brave that I can not make up my mind to place them here (still they are available on Section's website), but maybe this is a proof that I too am already an old, half-dead body… (“anemic and blond-haired”, of course).
Klara Kopcińska
Translated by Magdalena Nastalska
Discussed journals: Sekcja