The aim of my self-reflection is not to write down a set of “good practices” or to codify the tenets embraced in post-artistic circles. I consider such endeavours entirely pointless: hot air like that is usually written with various funders or para-governmental bodies in mind. It is either window dressing or an attempt to subjugate social forces which, despite a seemingly chaotic nature, are characterised by a strong ethos.
Post-artistic self-organisation means following a clear aest-ethical azimuth that manifests not in the letter (codes or tenets) but rather in everyday practice. It means living knowledge, a kind of artistic, political and ethical compass that makes it possible to relatively consciously navigate the vast expanse of art multiverses and to engage, in a spirit of mutual respect and trust, in activities based on collective self-organisation in informal spaces not subject to institutionalised, routine procedures. Contrary to anarchist fantasies, going beyond formal structures or functioning at intersections or in hybrid relations with existing institutions in no way means that the world of artistic self-organisation is devoid of hierarchy, conflicts, disagreements, or narcissism. On the contrary, as I attempted to analyse in my book The ABC of Projectariat, published in English in 2021 by Manchester University Press, seemingly non-hierarchical networks and projects are frequently accompanied by capital accumulation, fierce competition, and inequality governed by the cruel economics of art whereby everybody works but only few reap the benefits. This is why post-artistic aest-ethics is largely an ethos of doing a good job, cooperating, and preventing burnout or (self-)exploitation.
This ethos evolves and matures in the post-artistic practice of organising projects or setting up patainstitutions that try to do things differently by creating spaces based on reciprocity, interdependence, trust, equality, respect for diversity, shared responsibility, an even distribution of work (including care work), and a fairer distribution of its results. Such networks, projects, collectives, or patainstitutions are not only a form of protest and an arena of (ethical) practice but also a springboard for thinking about and working towards a different, fairer and more equal society. They avoid the pitfalls of sectarian moral intransigence, the cult of political purity, and the celebration of small differences. Rather, they are guided by a radically pragmatic awareness of the situation, blending a radical awareness of systemic entanglements (whether of the art world or of extractivist capitalism) with a pragmatic emphasis on action. Radical pragmatism is frequently based on trust in one’s companions, solidarity, and mutual care.
It is first and foremost a practical philosophy, an ethos one lives by, and situational ethics forged when one faces one’s daily challenges. Therefore, instead of creating a set of rules external to the world discussed here and in order to show that my reflections are grounded in practice, I will rely on the aest-ethical compass of the Office for Post-Artistic Services (Biuro Usług Postartystycznych, BUP), which I had the pleasure of co-founding in 2020. As the BUP itself puts it, its aim is to sustain post-artistic initiatives engaged in the fight for democratic values, civil rights, equality, freedom, solidarity between people and between species, concern for the environment and the planet, women’s right, and minorities’ rights by supporting social and political movements in their artistic activities and strengthening various forms of activism. The BUP, which functions under the umbrella of the Warsaw-based Bęc Zmiana Foundation, works together with and supports a vast network of post-artists committed to the above causes. It seeks to reinforce this grassroots movement, in both its more spontaneous and self-reflective forms.
The compass itself is a tool for aest-ethical navigation visualising the system of values that guides the BUP in its endeavours. One of its leitmotifs is a sense of the absurd and situational irony, a consequence of continually hunting for the coefficient of art in everyday situations. Accordingly, the arms of the aest-ethical compass can set the azimuth for something like the duckrabbit, whose quackhopping shatters the lofty complacency, bureaucratic priggishness or ecclesiastical pathos of classic codes, sets of good practices, or other tenets. Inspired by the concept of “arte útil” (“useful art”), the compass is poetry harnessed for the needs of grassroots self-organisation, a useful tool for navigating the intersection of different forms of art and blending together the usually separate logic of needs and logic of sensitivity by which artists and local activists or eco-activists can be guided.
Such is post-art, shimmering, nomadic, and without its own territory, an art that goes beyond its own boundaries and functions outside the comfort zone. It is an area of relative freedom: after all, nobody tells one what to do, and there are no firmly established institutions whose procedures would define what is allowed and what is not. There are neither post-art museums nor a post-art market that would dole out both rewards and sanctions, separating good (collectible) art from bad (that nobody wants to exhibit or buy). There are no beaten paths dictated by a canon. Nor are there the systems of usual justifications governing the art world in which artists can get away with more because their freedom is limited by their ateliers alone. Thanks to exhibition systems, the results of their work are celebrated as “just” art: a self-expression devoid of agency, or a conceptual joke. Going beyond these systems entails responsibility. The vast expanse of post-art is traversed together with other travellers, some, or even most, of whom are not familiar with the conventions of art. The world is not a big atelier in which artists can get away with anything. It is an intricate network of streets going in all directions, and nooks and crannies built and inhabited by myriads of diverse communities, whose needs and customs post-artistic travellers must take into consideration if they want to set up their workshops and nomadic laboratories on the streets or perform their post-artistic shadow play there.
As far as post-studio activities are concerned, human and non-human persons are, as Florian Malzacher once observed (quoting Claire Bishop), both mediums and partners in post-artistic activities. They have their will, agency, and needs, ecosystems that sustain them, and areas of competence that they know better than most post-artists who enter them with their imagination, unusual ideas, and strange tools. The compass of the Office for Post-Artistic Services is designed to help navigate long-inhabited territories and sharpen empathy and the aest-ethical sense.
Aest-ethics itself is an interesting concept, whose foundations were laid by Tania Bruguera, founder of the Hannah Arendt Institute of Artivism in Havana, Cuban oppositionist, champion of arte útil (“art as a tool” or “useful art”), and supporter of archives, schools, and associations that promote such art. Aest-ethics is an expression of art that goes beyond ateliers and the white walls of exhibition spaces and becomes widely available, a part of people’s everyday lives. In situations where one is dealing with the human element, beauty merges with practice, aesthetic forms become ethical dilemmas, and artists’ activities entail greater responsibility. This is not a question of art being subordinated to a single dominant moral majority; on the contrary, post-artists frequently provoke, shatter widely held beliefs, and oppose moral or religious systems that vilify or discriminate against persons (and non-human persons) who do not fit into dominant standards or are exploited by neoliberal capitalism. Be it the River Sisters (Siostry Rzeki), who stand up for the Vistula and other rivers, the Congolese Plantation Workers Art League (CATPC), which sets up art workshops at former plantations in Congo, post-artists working together with the Border Group (Grupa Granica), who perform radical acts of hospitality on Poland’s eastern borders, post-artistic teams working in Opolno-Zdrój, a small town that is likely to soon be swallowed by a sprawling open-pit mine, or the large number of people carrying creative cardboard placards during the All-Poland Women’s Strike – the post-artistic forms that they engage in are an answer to political challenges, and it takes radical empathy, ethical sensitivity, and diplomatic etiquette to form any alliances, especially outside of one’s zone of aesthetic comfort.
The vast expanse of post-art is usually not traversed alone. It is always packs, temporary collectives, networks, movements, and caravans that embark on such travels, setting up base camps, building nests, forming assemblages with other communities or institutions, searching, building, and sustaining common goods, resources which are neither state-owned nor private and which a multitude of users can take advantage of. The element of self-organisation is not without its risks: (self-)exploitation, more or less hidden competition, inevitable conflicts, conflicting interests, and the need to negotiate differences in views, identities, and values. It is also a world of non-regulated work, based on projects and frequently on temporary contracts, afflicted by an endemic lack of funds. While driven by goodwill and enthusiasm, it is also haunted by the spectre of poverty and hardship, especially when one does not have a family to fall back on, or money or a good job that would give one security in life. Here aest-ethics becomes the work ethic of post-art workers, built on respect for the material interests of those involved and the limits of their buoyancy, mutual care, and the principles of social solidarity. Even though these principles frequently remain uncodified, my many years of experience working in different patainstitutions or movements have made me realise their importance. It is particularly in the long term, in a perspective longer than one season, that ensuring the safety and hygiene of post-artistic practices is an issue of high priority as it makes it possible to support fragile and unstable ecosystems based on ephemeral ties whose azimuth is set by aest-ethical sensitivity and movement is driven by the desire to go beyond the areas of institutionalised security. The aest-ethical compass of the BUP represents an attempt to capture values and unwritten principles that allow practitioners of post-art to get their bearings when they travel across unknown territories accompanied by others.
Duckrabbitness
The duckrabbit, the leader of the post-artistic pack, is the mascot of the BUP. Królikokaczki.pl is an archive of dozens of post-artistic practices in which artists have been engaging in Poland since 2015. It is supported by the BUP, which describes the figure of the duckrabbit itself in the following way:
The patron of the archive of post-artistic practices is the duckrabbit, an animal first spotted in a German satirical magazine in the 19th century. The duckrabbit is both this and that, both a rabbit and a duck, both fish and fowl. How it appears to us depends not only on the angle of view but also on our approach, desire, and experience. Being difficult to classify as one species or the other, the duckrabbit is an ideal mascot for practitioners of post-art, which is neither art nor non-art (nor anti-art, though it may be non-non-art). It may be both an oil painting and a banner at a demonstration (or an oil painting at a demonstration, a sight not as rare as one might think). Political commitment is blended with a sense of humour, and artistic imagination is put to work for the benefit of social movements.
The term “post-art/post-artistic practices” itself is derived from the works of the Polish conceptual art theorist Jerzy Ludwiński, who argued in his 1971 essay “Art in the Post-Artistic Age”:
“Perhaps today we are not dealing with art any more. We have simply missed the moment when it transformed itself into something completely different, something we can no longer name. It is certain, however, that what we are dealing with today has greater potential”.
Post-art is unschooled. It cannot be easily assigned to a single genre: it can make use of many different media, conventions, and formats, from both within and outside the world of art. These practices may be concealed in well-recognised styles and forms (sculptures, drawings, happenings), but they also thrive in other, far removed areas: from investigative journalism, through processions and urban gardening to plumbing. Duckrabbit practices can sometimes be confused with art (although the reverse can also happen), as is the case with displays of paintings reminiscent of classic suprematist works in which primary colours, yellow, blue, and red, become a gesture of solidarity with Ukraine, or huge golden flags created from ordinary thermal blankets, which save lives and are brought to marches in an act of solidarity with refugees on Poland’s eastern borders. They sometimes involve dancing or unruliness, like demonstrations by the River Sisters on a beach by the Vistula. At other times, they are reflective, like an archive of anti-fascist artistic practices on the website of the Anti-Fascist Year (Rok Antyfaszystowski) initiative. Most have a “high coefficient of art” (as Marchel Duchamp would put it), shimmering at the intersection of art worlds and everyday situations.
You’ll Never Walk Alone
This slogan is familiar to anyone who has ever taken part in any demonstration in support of the rights of women (such as the right to decide about one’s own body) or non-heteronormative people (who still have to fight for the right to lead a normal life outside patriarchal norms). Also frequently found on banners are slogans such as “When the State Does Not Protect Me, I Will Protect My Sisters”, based on recognising and emphasising the fundamental interdependence of protesters, which is a consequence not only of a common fate but also of the politicisation of protests or public dissent. Expanding on the views of Jacques Rancière and Hannah Arendt: when streets or squares become an arena of public action, participants are exposing themselves to the judgement of others, not only their companions but also the apparatus of power. This entails a risk that gives rise to a sense of interdependence, which motivates people to offer mutual assistance, chip in, and organise solidarity protests. There is nothing worse than being an ordinary individual held in disdain who is forced to confront the machinery of state repression. This privatisation of fear has a chilling effect so desired by all builders of repressive panopticons (past and present). The architecture of power that Michel Foucault wrote about supports the all-seeing eye of power that scrutinises, and also atomises, each and every individual. Subjected to repression, individuals are left to their own devices, weak and without support. This is what makes simple gestures of solidarity so important: no form of opposition is possible without them.
For Your and Our
Such commitment, however, is demonstrated not only people linked to one specific interest (or protest) group, usually united both by a common fate and by participation in the fight for a common cause. Many efforts or struggles are cosmopolitan in nature, i.e. not confined by the boundaries of a single nation-state, region, city, or professional, ethnic, racial or gender group. Such cosmopolitanism of resistance is not just a concept conceived by some globalised, oikophobic elite, as authoritarian leaders would like to see it. After all, the slogan “For your Freedom and Ours” was emblazoned on banners during times of greatest glory in the history of Poland: the Springtime of Nations, the struggle against the fascist onslaught in the 20th century, or recently the war in Ukraine, when it unleashed a huge wave of solidarity with those fighting against Russian invaders. One of the campaigns organised by the Anti-Fascist Year was also held under this slogan. During that campaign, artists presented their own interpretations of the slogan to protest against the return of xenophobic nationalism. Those influenced by the slogan understand that freedom cannot be won in a single country, and that our fight is other people’s fight and can never be won without mutual support. This sense of transnational (cosmopolitan) solidarity is all the more important in the face of a climate catastrophe for which we are all paying the price while the benefits are being reaped by few. As Zygmunt Bauman put it, humanity is facing challenges on a global scale and, whether it likes it or not, can successfully overcome them only by efforts on a similar scale.
Imagination Is Our Weapon
More than half a century ago, in 1968, the world was swept by a wave of countercultural protests, the main enemy being the spirit of primitive patriarchal capitalism. Counterculture advocates opposed exploitation and racial segregation and fought for the rights of women and sexual minorities, as well as the right to lead a better, freer, more creative life. It was at that time that the slogan was coined that it is not poetry that should serve the revolution (as socialist realist apparatchiks would like to have it) but the other way around: it is the revolution that should serve poetry understood as the right of all people to safety, self-fulfilment, and a life of creative freedom. As years went by, hippies became yuppies, and a new spirit of capitalism emerged from counterculture. In it, the poetry of everyday life merely fuels a string of consumerist fantasies of people who can afford them and who push the costs of their consumerism onto others: plantation, factory or store workers. It is a world in which the exploitation of some people allows the global minority to lead a sheltered life. While the demands of revolutionary poetry have not been satisfied, they are still an ideal worth fighting for, with imagination frequently being employed for this purpose. Contrary to the reality principle and the principle of realpolitik, imagination does not accept a world full of injustice and exploitation, and makes it possible to envision a different order for things and bodies. Such a militant imagination is a litmus test for any policy. It is not a simple tool for gaining power, but rather a radical way of putting it to the test.
Going Beyond the Pose
The world of mainstream art employs a specific organisational grammar in which anything can be expressed precisely because the well-established principles that this world of art is based on are never challenged. And so, the main speakers at conferences on equality are usually people holding senior positions at elite universities, where only members of the global elite can find employment. A biennale may be dedicated to environmental disasters, but it will be attended by people from across the globe generating hundreds of tons of CO2. Art institutions may declare themselves open, while at the same time jealousy monopolising channels regulating the visibility of and access to resources. This is not because of the hypocrisy of individuals but rather because of the institutionalisation of hypocrisy: even the most noble of causes can be appropriated and become springboards for individual careers in a neoliberal art world in which the winner takes it all. There is no point in frantically tracking individual abuses: what is needed is systemic cooperation to change the system, which requires placing trust in fellow duckrabbits, knowing that the proof of pudding is in the eating. Going beyond the pose is a collective movement. It is worth putting people to the test. After all, trust has its limits, the sincerity of intentions is proved by actions, and in a fluid world there is no point in wasting time working together with posers.
Wisely and Effectively
It is especially in conflict situations that duckrabbits try to keep their common sense about them. Being shimmering creatures brings great responsibility: there is no room for binary oppositions or attempts to maintain one’s revolutionary purity here. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu put it, perfecting otherwise slight differences is a curse, whether for small avant-garde art groups or for political sects whose members are continuously being removed until only a small group of admirers of the leader remains (such was the fate of Guy Debord, leader of the Situationists). Like other users whom Stephen Wright writes about, duckrabbits are rather radical pragmatists: “[their] agency is neither exclusively rebellious nor purely submissive toward an exterior norm. They know they will never be owners; that they will never eliminate that dimension of exteriority from the power relations that impact on them. Users take on those
instances of power closest to them. And in addition to this proximity, or because of it, they do not envisage that the solution to their problem could lie in any sort of future to which the present might or ought to be subordinated (very different in this respect to any revolutionary horizon). They have neither the time to be revolutionary – because things have to change – nor the patience to be reformists, because things have to stop”. Radical pragmatists make use their competencies, but without obsessing about their instrumentally understood effectiveness. Post-artistic activities may be closely related to Tania Bruguera’s concept of “arte útil”, but the obsession with the effectiveness of art is not there. Duckrabbits are certainly radical, getting to the bottom of the problems they are confronted with. They take positions, protest, and man the barricades. They create alternatives, and set up consortia, cooperatives, or other patainstitutions. They do not, however, split hairs, and do not loose any sleep over the alleged lack of effectiveness of their actions. Nor do they intend for post-art to dominate other areas of life or replace other modes of actions. Post-art is like salt: palatable only in small doses. Oversalted, it becomes completely inedible.
Business And Pleasure
Duckrabbit consortia try to mix business with pleasure. Following in the footsteps of ancient philosophers, they combine caring about the world with caring about themselves and other people. Accordingly, conventions are frequently combined with balls, drifts with demonstrations, picnics with meetings, and anti-fascist plots with leisure. Individual and collective leisure is especially important at a time when everyone is overworked and under constant stress, and depression and burnout are rife. Aside from that, leisure time is a prerequisite for free imagination, joint reflection, or further action. Time spent free from the pressure of necessity and daily grind provides the opportunity to take a breather and perfect those strange tools that post-art employs. It is the time when the best ideas for collaborative activities that can then be put into action come into one’s brain. The idea of the Anti-Fascist Year emerged at a meeting before a carnival ball under the slogan “Neither Fish Nor Fowl”, to which duckrabbits’ friends and relations had been invited. It then became reality and is now one of the biggest (if not the biggest) such initiative in Poland, bringing together over 150 entities and individuals from across Poland. This rhythm is like inhaling and exhaling. One cannot keep working without ever drawing breath. One cannot keep shouting all the time. Each and every person needs some time to take a deep breath, which is enjoyable when done by oneself, but even more so when done together. Every pack of duckrabbits could use a lungful of fresh air, after all.
Interdependence, Sharing, and Co-Authorship
Such concern for a collective rhythm of work and leisure has its roots in the feminist critique of care work (who will take care of carers?) and the ethics of community economies. As J.K. Gibson-Graham argues, it is based on recognising the value of diverse forms of work, respecting people who perform this work, and sharing the effects of collaborative efforts fairly (this is why respect for co-authorship is so important in art). The recognition of interdependence also applies to non-human persons. This is related to concern for ecosystems understood both metaphorically, as social ecosystems, environments sustaining post-artistic practices, and in ecological terms. These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they usually fuse together. This is why so many post-artistic activities are driven by concern for the environment and non-human persons in the face of the climate catastrophe. The ethics and economics of post-artistic practices stem from an attempt to work out a post-growth perspective in artistic production that would not be based on cultural overexploitation geared towards the overproduction of content and projects. Instead of privatising the effects of collective work, an attempt is made to build common goods that different circles of post-art practitioners can benefit from. In the process of creating and sustaining them, the limits of growth and buoyancy, whether of the natural or social environment, are taken into account and care is taken to ensure that the development of given practices is sustainable and does not take place at the expense of the interests of human or non-human persons (if possible, of course, as post-artistic activities sometimes require significant amounts of energy and cause exhaustion). Such interdependence is practised at the inextricable intersection of culture, nature, post-art, and post-Anthropocene.
