Hidden Treasure
Making an exhibition about sex and pleasure is a rather difficult task for a heterosexual male. Penetrating the hidden treasures of Polish art of sexual connotations of the recent decades, one finds himself in a difficult position, permanently accused of domination, of repressive 'normativeness,' expected to assume responsibility for the centuries of the western cultural discourse, shaped up by 'great dead white men' ignoring any point of view not consistent with their own. At the same time, this awkward position is addressed by a huge number of coarse, idiotically naive, eroticised representations functioning in the sphere of the show media, representations turning all (our potential) desires, images, and pleasures into commercial products.Paradoxically, therefore, it is us who are most threatened by reification today. Today's perfect consumer is a Marquis de Sade libertarian, trained in a perpetual experience of pleasure, new ecstasies, pandered to live in a state of permanent orgasm - and redistributing his or her identity by buying commoditised lifestyles, eroticised worlds, and so on.
Additionally, in the sphere of the contemporary Polish public discourse, our subjective position seems to have been permanently appropriated by, on the one hand, the rightwing political discourse, and, on the other, by feminist criticism (and that expressed from the position of sexual minorities), for which, in turn, it is a synonym of a repressive norm. As a result, sexuality is entangled in a web of conflicting discourses, and the politicised and journalistic language of the discourse dominates and inhibits it instead of communicating, transmitting, and explaining.
In the field of Polish art (especially of the last decade), heterosexuality appears as a monster than needs to be permanently deconstructed, exposed, subjected to distancing procedures, treated coldly, with chirurgical-penitentiary precision and strictness. The monster should be permanently disciplined lest it rises again its hideous head at a time when, for the time being, our ethical requirements are turning in another direction. As a result of that, heterosexual men ('the heterics') - unlike homosexual men, and women of either orientation - appear as a group (already as Strangers among Strangers) that has failed to develop an alternative 'language', competitive to that offered in the mass media or politics, of the expression of their own sexuality. A language to anchor heterosexual sexuality back in the everyday experience and make it the property of the individual existences (rather than the media or politics).
The role of images is invariably to challenge the rules of language and the judgments decreed by it. We are therefore reaching for the hidden treasures of Polish art and assuming both the pleasure of presenting them and the accompanying risk.
Choosing some works and rejecting others we get precariously close to the sphere generated by the contemporary show of visual consumption (or politics). We want to create a chance for the development of a language adequate to the circumstances, for creating interesting meanings, which seems to be best achieved using the instruments of subversion and over-identification with the system that seemingly situates us in a comfortable position. We are left to speak from the field of the discourse perceived as dominant, but on the basis of objectification.
We decided to encourage the 'discovery,' provoke the making, and, in a situation arranged by us, make a presentation of works associating sex with pleasure. Our goal was to fulfil something like the situationist-postulated alternative economy of pleasure. We would like to refer to situationism's hedonistic and ludic aspect, its specific counter-culture striving towards pleasure, towards the experience of ecstasy, the desire for overthrowing the eroticised consumer culture's monopoly for the distribution of pleasure. The situations invented their own economies of pleasures (this is the forgotten aspect of the situationist dérive or Unitary Urbanism). The experience of pleasure, appropriated by the consumerism-orientated media, was to be regained and subordinated to immanently human purposes, such the development of one's identity, or of closer relations (bonds) with other people and the place where one lives.
We wanted to give a voice on sexuality to other languages than those present in the art of the 1990s when sexuality was associated chiefly with repression, the sphere of disciplining, training, resulting in that sphere's heavy politicisation. In a sense, by combining sex with repression, Polish art of the 90s joined a martyrological trait always present in Polish culture, with its inability to celebrate pleasure and sexuality (even in its heterosexual version). Let us notice that the traditionally repressive attitude towards sex (and sexuality), shaped up in the Polish society in the second half of the 20th century by surprisingly unison action from the communist party and the Catholic Church, has been accompanied since the 1990s by contemporary discourses strengthening, paradoxically, the repressiveness towards language and visual representation. In fact, Poland is not an exception here - all issues associated with pleasure, eroticism, imagination are treated with suspicion today as properties on which pop culture is based and on which it thrives. If they appear in the field of art at all, it is usually as an object of deconstructive operations, carried out from the position of the artist's ethical responsibility for the beguiled and manipulated society, reduced to its sexual, i.e. animal, instincts. The pesky textuality of critical art deprived sex of pleasure and its irrational magic.
Our concept as curators was to tell a narrative about the flirt of sexuality and pleasure in the field of the Polish art of the last 30 years (the point is especially our sexuality, as it is it that gives us the greatest pleasure). We thus searched for works treating of this combination without complexes and removing the obligation of political correctness.
During the situation we have envisaged we assume control for one evening over one of the floors of the Novotel (formerly Forum) Hotel in downtown Warsaw. In this subversive flirt with dominant culture, we are interested in the aspect of gaining access to places located in the centres of 'capitalistic work and production.' Our aim is to reverse the relationship of appropriation, to subordinate the non-places of dynamic circulation of people and money to the specificity of artistic language. Art does not have to develop solely in repressed, 'post-capitalist' places. We are interested in the dynamic, intense, erotic energy of modern capitalism. In the situation created by us in the Hotel we would like to create a space that would be hot and at the same time, for at least a moment, would free sex from the obligation to aid the circulation and distribution of goods, money, lifestyles, people, and so on. We would like to make it available as a gift, enable the viewers to immerse themselves in it, restore it to their experience. At the same time, access to it will be limited, for we do not want to take artistic statements on sex out fully into the public space (as was the permanent practice of critical art in the 1990s).
The erotic aura and sexual energy of the works creates the event's artistic mood. Our goal is to mobilise the 'language' of talking about sex, to create an alternative discourse of sexual representations, ones that have not lost contact with the 'real' experience of sexuality. The viewers, with their individual experience, will perhaps lose their distance towards those works as they are pulled into a process of seduction. The whole situation is to tempt, seduce, and excite. We are thus proposing an uninhibited approach to the sexuality expressed in those works, a view accepting the eroticism and sensuality present in our lives. The nature of the films and presentations serves to habituate and unblock sexuality in language rather than to entice pornographically-stimulated lust.
Limited access to and the exhibition's short duration (one evening), the inability to closely inspect all the exhibits - all that will help us to focus on sex and eroticism as a kingdom of imagination. Pornography is the excess in introducing sex to the visual sphere. Whereas before pornography, sex and eroticism had been by definition more phantasmagorical, mystical, spiritual (due to the very aspect of more intense imaginative work), now it is being subjected to permanent exposition, analysis, mechanisation. That is why we do not want for our 'hidden treasures' to be displayed in public for too long; when the event has run its course, they will be hidden again, though, at the same time, they will perhaps start to live in the viewers' imagination, in their collective fantasy. We want to retain them not completely exposed, not fully consumed - and yet inspiring and fuelling the imagination of those few viewers who will have the chance to see the show.
Lukasz Ronduda
Piotr Rypson
Michal Wolinski
Walerian Borowczyk
Beast
1975 film
essential edition by Maurycy Gomulicki, Ilian Gonzales 2005
Oskar Dawicki
Performance
Maurycy Gomulicki
Male Fantasies 3
2004/2005 wideo
music: Sharif Dean, mix: Maciek Sienkiewicz
Janusz Haka
Ticklish Stir
1975 film stills
Undress
1975 film stills
Marek Konieczny
Dialog with a Pyramid
1975 film 16mm
Tomasz Kozak
Landscape after Battle
2005 video
Igor Krenz
Formal Analysis
1990 / 2005 video
Zofia Kulik, Zbigniew Libera
Untitled
1987 film 16mm
KwieKulik
Actions on the frame
1978 photo animation
Dominik Lejman
Statistical flowers
2005 acrylic on canvas, video projection 160 x 135 cm
Anna Nizio
Kadistu
2003 photo installation
Paulina Ołowska
Collage-Poster
2005
Józef Robakowski
No Access (Vital Video)
1990 video
Robert Rumas
From the Calendar Series 2002 ttempera on plexiglas, offset printouts
Zdzisław Sosnowski
Goalkeeper
1975 film 16 mm
Zdzisław Sosnowski, Teresa Tyszkiewicz
Permanent job
1978 film 16mm
Maciej Toporowicz
The Hidden Treasure
2004 video
Krzysztof Zarębski, Krystyna Jachniewicz
Untitled
1974 film 16mm
Krzysztof Zarębski
Contact areas
1975 film 16mm