The proposal at hand seeks to envision a method of \u2018evacuating\u2019 art beyond its contemporary conventions. This necessity stems from the specific parameters of artistic work in an era of irreversible changes sweeping across the planet and the imperative to confront the loss of ecological stability. The question of whether art can be socially useful or whether it belongs to another order \u2013 one without any function, in which it can set its own rules \u2013 is resurfacing with greater force than ever before. It is a fundamental dilemma with which the art world has been openly struggling for more than a century: on the one hand, autonomy and seeking refuge in the safe world of museums and studios; on the other, a return to the streets, gardens, social movements, working for the sake of sisters and brothers, human and non-human, the animate and inanimate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While contemplating the possibilities of constructing \u2018endospore\u2019 models (the titular term, borrowed from biology, denotes a dormant form that enables organisms to survive adverse conditions), of forging new alliances for 21st-century art and of creating new forms of healing for a strained system (severely impacted by the pandemic that has disrupted mobility, security, and efficacy during the tumultuous years of 2021\u20132022, and further exacerbated by the full-throttle Russian invasion on Ukraine in 2022), we will look for examples from the history of art and non-art, as well as contemporary practices which develop beyond the strictly artistic. Rather than focusing solely on the production of new tools, languages, and criteria, we will scrutinise promises of the past, searching for methods and practices from the repertoire of \u2018post-art\u2019, \u2018romantic conceptualism\u2019, radical pedagogy, and cartography, agriculture, non-Western systems of knowledge production, institutional critique, the history of internationalism and emancipatory movements. We will also draw on examples of alternative institutional praxis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One aspect of the programme explores the question of the \u2018instrumentality\u2019 of art, conceived as a means of discerning our place in the world, of educating (ourselves and others), and of unlearning. Following the ideas of the cognitive scientist Alva No\u00eb, we will consider art as a box full of \u2018strange tools\u2019. At the same time, we will engage in practical exercises to harness the potential of misunderstanding<\/em>. Knowledge can be organised and distributed through systems which we are neither able to name nor explain. By way of an illustration beyond the realm of art, we might employ the rebbelib<\/em>, a navigational map used while sailing around the Marshall Islands until the late 1940s. Such maps facilitated flawless passage amidst myriads of minuscule isles strewn across the vast expanse of the Western Pacific. The rebbelib<\/em> consisted of interwoven strands of coconut palm fibre, bedecked with shells and stones. These maps were not carried aboard but memorised by the sailors. This system was completely incomprehensible to the European newcomers. It was not until the 19th century that it was discovered that the fibres represented the so-called \u2018dead waves\u2019, while the points at which they interlaced indicated the direction of navigation. To use them, you had to expose yourself to a physical sensation, calibrate your body to feel the impact of the wave on the boat and estimate its frequency, strength and direction. For an outsider, this system was so far removed from conventional cartography that it seemed almost paranormal. This example could illustrate a number of misconceptions about contemporary art and the inadequacy of questions such as: \u2018What does it mean?\u2019, \u2018What is its purpose?\u2019 or \u2018What are its effects?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, the programme for the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice is grounded in the need to develop a new cartography<\/em> for contemporary art. As a style, discipline, and format for production, distribution, and audience engagement (with its sophisticated tools such as biennial exhibitions or art fairs), contemporary art bears several serious flaws: a tendency towards exaggeration, competition, elitism, overproduction, puffery, and waste. In the midst of the planetary climate crisis, this baggage becomes burdensome. The efforts of artists engaged in generating social change, focused on everyday labour, unheroic and unspectacular, not always resulting in tangible works, elude the institutional radars \u2013 by choice or necessity, they often migrate beyond the world of art. There, we shall seek them, though they may have completely shed the characteristics that allow us to excavate art from the non-artistic strata.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In advocating the need to unravel the constraints that limit the world of contemporary art, it is worth bearing in mind the freedom of art, including the freedom to cease being what it is commonly perceived to be. Occasionally, this entails a return to forms that have been somewhat discredited or marginalised in the annals of history, e.g. propaganda. This term took root in the first half of the 17th century (in a religious context, promoted by the Vatican \u2013 the propagation of the faith) and is derived from the Latin word propagare<\/em>, which simply means \u2018to produce new plants from a parent plant\u2019, \u2018to propagate plants\u2019, \u2018to cultivate\u2019. At the end of the day, every work that inclines us towards something \u2013 be it an aesthetic form, a viewpoint, pleasure or discomfort \u2013 constitutes a form of propaganda. In an era bedevilled by disinformation and cultural wars, fuelled by cynicism, profit lust, and myopic political scheming, art that propagates action in the service of sisterhood, reproductive rights, and environmental welfare is exceptionally valuable. Meanwhile, the flamboyant costume that contemporary art so willingly dons often constrains its movements and prevents it from delivering precise blows. The American intellectual and social activist, the father of Pan-Africanism, W.E.B. Du Bois, wrote in 1926: \u2018All art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. (\u2026) I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A guiding light through the world of terms pertinent to addressing the challenges that face contemporary art can be found in a book, \u2018Toward a Lexicon of Usership\u2019 (2014), authored by the Canadian theorist Stephen Wright. This slender volume has reignited discussions concerning the utility value of art, its autonomy, and the role of the audience. In his book, Wright devotes considerable attention to artistic practices on a 1:1 scale (\u2018art that uses the world as its own map\u2019), questioning the validity of creating artificial models or replicas of reality in spaces reserved for art. He underscores the need to redefine the roles played by cultural producers and consumers today (authors should become initiators of processes, and viewers should become users). He encourages a rethinking of the (passive) position of the viewer, the hegemony of the event and the object, seeks strength in the weakness of art, and contests the need to replicate the existing systems, the strictures of ownership and authorship, and the rules and regulations of the so-called expert culture. We will juxtapose these concepts with proposals from the 1970s, including Jerzy Ludwi\u0144ski\u2019s theory of \u2018art in the post-artistic age\u2019, and thus diagnose the 21st century as a time of post-art in a state of emergency.[1]<\/sup> A theorist, lecturer and art critic (1930\u20132000), Ludwi\u0144ski championed conceptual art and is considered one of the founders of Polish conceptual art. He was instrumental in organising groundbreaking artistic events such as the Og\u00f3lnopolskie Sympozjum Pu\u0142awy\u201966 [1st Symposium of Artists and Scientists in Pu\u0142awy, 1966] and formulated the programme for the Museum of Contemporary Art (1968) \u2013 dubbed the \u2018Museum of the Game\u2019. Ludwi\u0144ski used the term \u2018post-artistic age\u2019, which seems useful for locating certain processes in contemporary art on the conceptual map and in history.[2]<\/sup> This theorist posited the need to prepare for an entirely new art, one that would be immaterial and would not require the support or \u2018sustenance\u2019 (in terms of visibility and attribution of meaning) by institutions. He divided the evolution of art into six phases, placing us currently in the fourth phase, the stage of meta-art, which absorbs the entirety of reality. Ahead of us lies the total phase, leading to the zero phase \u2013 to an art that cannot be definitively exhibited in a conventional manner, for instance, in an art show; it can only be \u2018suggested\u2019. In discussing \u2018art in the post-artistic age\u2019, Ludwi\u0144ski pointed to the mutual permeation of art and other disciplines. \u2018The smaller the field of artistic activity, the greater its expansion into seemingly victorious domains. (…) Within the art of visual exploration, artistic phenomena penetrate so far into the competence of science and technology that they are indistinguishable from the latter, just as the products of New Realism and Dada art are indistinguishable from ordinary objects and creations of nature,\u2019[3]<\/sup> he elucidated. Ludwi\u0144ski frequently used hand-drawn sketches to convey his ideas; his lecture notes and typescripts abound with diagrams, illustrations, and charts. He posited that new art eludes both language and the institutional apparatus at our disposal. \u2018It is highly probable that today we are no longer dealing with art. We have simply missed the moment when it transformed into something entirely different, something we can no longer name. However, it is certain that what we are engaged in today holds greater potential,\u2019 he asserted.[4]<\/sup> This greater potential primarily entails the opportunity for artists to work outside the art world, in the fields of political protest, ecology, advocacy for sexual minorities, alternative tourism, natural sciences, etc. Following Ludwi\u0144ski, many of the contemporary artistic practices in Poland that have social or political consequences can be described as post-artistic practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By reviving Ludwi\u0144ski\u2019s proposal and relating it to the specific attitudes of artists creating in the 21st century, the term post-art can be applied to many practices that remain beyond the institutional radar and do not always allow themselves to be clearly defined as art. In a preliminary sense, the term post-art could define (typically) long-term artistic practices that do not (or only sporadically) lead to the creation of material works of art with clearly attributed authorship, inaccessible through conventional cycles of artwork-exhibition-museum. Most often, such practices involve the application of competencies from the field of art beyond its domain, engaging various (also non-artistic) entities and characterized by phases of dormancy and heightened activity. Post-art is frequently devoid of distinguishing features (such as title, author, originality, exhibition architecture, durability, etc.) by which we can distinguish its constituent actions or objects from non-artistic backgrounds; simultaneously, it constitutes a part of other non-artistic systems, such as economics, education, climate activism, agriculture, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition, Jerzy Ludwi\u0144ski used the term \u2018glue\u2019,[5]<\/sup> when discussing art as a substance that fills the \u2018gaps\u2019 between disciplines, which also has unifying properties and brings together more or less compatible elements (social sciences, philosophy, astronomy, etc.). Such an understanding of post-artistic practices as a cohesive force between different areas of knowledge and professions, with blurred authorship and difficult to \u2018capture\u2019 institutionally, is characteristic of a number of collectives and individual artists currently active in Poland and around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Post-art also has its own art history. Similarities, inspirations, and sources can be found in the work of individuals such as the American artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who viewed art as a form of caretaking for the immediate environment and the natural world. Following the birth of her child in 1969, Ukeles published her \u2018Manifesto for Maintenance Art\u2019, in which she addressed the separation between the artist\u2019s work and motherhood. The text, which simultaneously served as the script for the exhibition entitled \u2018Care\u2019, abolished this dualism by declaring the undertaking of tasks related to childcare and household maintenance in terms of art. Ukeles wrote: \u2018I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order). I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also (up to now separately) I \u201cdo\u201d Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art. (\u2026) MY WORKING WILL BE THE WORK\u2019 [emphasis added, S.C.].<\/p>\n\n\n\n The exhibition was never realised, yet the manifesto became a \u2018roadmap\u2019 for the artist\u2019s subsequent practice. She documented the performances of daily childcare and domestic work (Private Performances of Personal Maintenance as Art, 1970), but also staged actions in museums, such as cleaning the stairs (Washing\/Tracks\/Maintenance: Outside, 1973). From 1978 onwards, Ukeles was an artist in residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation. In the initial phase of her residency, the artist spent 11 months working on the \u2018Touch Sanitation Performance\u2019 (1979\u201380) \u2013 she contacted over a thousand sanitation workers, accompanied them at work, conducted interviews, and thanked them for \u2018keeping New York alive\u2019. Ukeles is also involved in a long-term project to transform the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island into a city park. Not only was it the largest landfill in the world, but also one of the largest human-made structures ever created. By the end of the 20th century, it was receiving over 20,000 tonnes of waste from New York City daily. In March 2001, the landfill was closed, largely due to public pressure following the so-called Syringe Tide of 1988 and 1989, when waves washed medical waste onto the beaches of New York and Connecticut. Several months later, Fresh Kills was reopened to sort and bury one and a half million tonnes of debris from the World Trade Center towers. Ukeles\u2019 proposal consists of three modules: a viewing platform overlooking the salt marshes and earth forms: the Earth Bench and the Earth Triangle. The revitalisation of the Fresh Kills aims to restore the biodiversity of the marshes and reclaim their function as a coastal barrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Ukeles\u2019s example is well-documented and occupies a prominent place in the annals of art history, it rather points to a rupture within the system. Contemplating \u2018art beyond art\u2019 (as Rasheed Areen has called it) requires a radical rethinking of the hitherto prevalent ideas and rules. One of the classics of conceptual art, the Uruguayan artist of German descent, Luis Camnitzer, a teacher and author of texts on education, compared the art world to a lamp store with Aladdin\u2019s lamps.[6]<\/sup> We collect, preserve, and marvel at these \u2018vessels\u2019, viewing them in museums, contemplating their embellishments and contours. We can recount the history of these objects, identify styles and trends. Yet, what truly captivates us is the genie, trapped in the lamp or bottle; we believe it resides inside and has special powers. We have devised an intricate system to sustain faith in the existence of this spirit: the towering edifices of museums, frames and plinths, books and catalogues, the argot, the cult of \u2018geniuses\u2019. This system can be exceedingly costly and energy-intensive as well as demanding specialised knowledge and (as befits any cult) a certain degree of initiation. Art would then be a \u2018craft plus\u2019, although it is difficult for us to ascertain \u2013 without delving into esoterica \u2013 what lies behind this mysterious plus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if the genie does not exist? Or, what appears to be a far more intriguing preposition: he has left the lamp or rarely visits it, instead residing in many different places, objects, and actions? At this point, one could invoke Marcel Duchamp, who pondered the term \u2018a coefficient of art\u2019 during his lecture The Creative Act in 1957. Duchamp was fascinated by the difference between, on the one hand, what the artist intends to communicate through his work but loses that message, and, on the other hand, what the work \u2018in itself\u2019 communicates without the artist\u2019s intention. Following this path, Stephen Wright ventured a certain intellectual and perceptual exercise: Let us assume that there are no separate sets of things and phenomena which can be deemed works of art and those that are not art. Instead, there exists a certain \u2018substance\u2019, whose intensity increases or decreases in different objects or actions. The art coefficient can, therefore, be measured in all human activities and their material and immaterial outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The practice of art is an act of addition, less often of subtraction. Hidden within it lies a peculiar paradox: Even works of art that proclaim to be critical of the exploitation of natural resources and predatory modernisation are themselves energy-intensive, expensive objects. The effort required to keep works of art alive, in the form of air-conditioned rooms, sophisticated forms of presentation or specialised transport, is nothing short of monstrous. Fickle ideas, captured in material forms, drain resources and energy. At the same time, for several decades now, there have been clear mandates to refrain from production and to transfer artistic creativity to the sphere of environmental and climate activism. This is the case, for example, with the process of dematerialisation of the artwork in the conceptual art of the 1960s, a practice that was often based on an ecological foundation. This aspect has been marginalised in the history of Western art, as incompatible with the cold, analytical, \u2018non-organic\u2019 image of the movement. In a conversation with Ursula Meyer in 1969, Lawrence Weiner, one of the pioneers of Conceptualism, made the following explicit statement: \u2018If you can\u2019t make art without making a permanent imprint on the physical aspects of the world, then maybe art is not worth making. In this sense, any permanent damage to ecological factors in nature not necessary for the furtherance of human existence, but only necessary for the illustration of an art concept, is a crime against humanity.\u2019Two years later, in Poland, a text was published to accompany the open-air event \u2018Ziemia Zgorzelecka, 1971: Science and Art in the Process of Protecting the Human Natural Environment\u2019 in Opolno-Zdr\u00f3j. This manifesto, which articulated the premises of what was probably the first open-air artistic event in Europe on the subject of climate change, included the following prediction: \u2018The archetype of our modern civilisation turns out to be the most important engine \u2013 among those known to us \u2013 that is hurtling towards its own annihilation. It stems from the drive for constant change in the world. There is currently a visible crisis in the concept of science as a universal remedy for all of humanity\u2019s problems.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the terms that might be useful in describing art that does not rely on the imitation and reproduction of the visible world (i.e. the continuous production and search for \u2018novelty\u2019) is the 1:1 scale. In relation to the 20th- and 21st-century artistic practices, this category was introduced by the aforementioned Canadian theorist-escapist Stephen Wright. The 1:1 scale artistic practice uses \u2018the world as its own map\u2019 rather than being concerned with creating models of reality. It is a world that describes itself, a territory that is its own map. Wright quotes an extract from Lewis Carroll\u2019s Sylvie and Bruno<\/em> (1893), which deals with a cartographic project where a mile of land corresponds exactly to a mile on the map. This motif was also taken up by Luis Borges in his short story On Exactitude in Science<\/em> (1946) and by Umberto Eco in his essay On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1<\/em> (1995). When using this literary reference, Wright alludes to artistic practices that challenge the validity of creating artificial models of reality within art spaces. Artists establish their own museums, gardens, political parties, and schools; they become consultants, chefs, therapists, etc. On a 1:1 scale, art is difficult for institutions to recognise, because the distinctive characteristics that allow such practices to be captured, named, and subjected to the judgement of historians or critics disintegrate. However, the 1:1 scale allows one to enjoy the real effects of such practices, even if they are not always \u2018benevolent\u2019 in nature. Wright speaks of their dual ontology: They are \u2018this and that\u2019, art and life, a performance and an ordinary gig, an artistic process and a political one. They produce a real effect, good and bad, for humans and non-humans alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, we can refer to practices that engage with contemporary ruins, the processes of entropy and the cataloguing of human-modified landscapes. What can serve as an illustrative case in point is the enterprise undertaken by the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), an organisation founded in 1994 in Los Angeles, which creates exhibitions and research programmes on the modification of the planet\u2019s surface by Homo sapiens. One of CLUI\u2019s programmes is the conceptual American Land Museum, which covers the entire territory of the United States and whose collection consists of objects described by the Center\u2019s team as follows: Abandoned factories, landfills, aircraft graveyards, mock-up cities for military exercises, slagheaps, etc. The critic, theorist, and curator Lucy Lippard has written that CLUI is the most important successor to the conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s; yet, it is difficult to qualify the Centre\u2019s activity as art. The sites indicated by the organisation do not automatically become works of art, but we are undoubtedly dealing with the use of the tool of exhibition \u2013 the \u2018display\u2019 of these objects and buildings discovered in the landscape.[7]<\/sup> Among the related inspirations and historical references, one should mention the classic essay A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey<\/em> by Robert Smithson from 1967, which describes the artist\u2019s native post-industrial city as a \u2018found\u2019 sculpture exhibition in public space. Six years later, the artist became interested in the Bingham Canyon Mine, an open-pit copper mine, one of the largest man-made excavations. Amidst projects associated with the revitalisation of industrial areas, Smithson submitted an official request (which has never received a reply) to Kennecott Copper Corporation, the company managing the mine. He proposed halting mining operations and transforming the site into a work of art, reminiscent in the form of a 19th-century cyclorama. From the bottom of the mine, it would be possible to observe the process of the mine being reclaimed by plants and animals for centuries to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This aforementioned example leads us to another term that is useful in the context of museology in the age of climate crisis, which is \u2018rewilding\u2019, i.e. the restoration of (an area of land) to its natural uncultivated state, renaturalisation. This term emerged in the 1990s in discussions about new, more radical environmental protection strategies. It was proposed by Dave Foreman, the founder of the Earth First! organisation. Another organisation, Rewilding Europe, describes its progressive approach to conservation on its website as follows: \u2018It\u2019s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife\u2019s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.\u2019[8]<\/sup> The fundamental principle of rewilding is \u2018Nature governs itself\u2019. In a sense, this is a reversal of the processes initiated by humans during the Neolithic Revolution. It seems tempting to apply this term to artistic practices that involve refraining from production and creating conditions for other species to take control of a given area. In this context, it is worth recalling the work of John Latham, an artist employed by the municipal office in Edinburgh in 1975\u201376 (as part of the experimental Artist Placement Group programme). Latham was commissioned to produce a feasibility study for the removal of nineteen suburban slagheaps. Since the 1860s, these heaps had been left over from the extraction of bituminous shale containing petroleum derivatives. Latham treated these heaps as process sculptures and proposed their nomination as monuments of historical, cultural and natural significance. The group of heaps was eventually protected under the UK\u2019s Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act. The nomination of these heaps as landscape-as-art could also be interpreted as removing the dichotomy between the natural and the artificial. It also brings to mind Joseph Beuys\u2019 enigmatic proposal (which has left few traces in museum archives and literature) for the \u2018conservation\u2019 of Dutch light. Beuys\u2019s hypothesis was that the unique light conditions known from old paintings were finally lost at the beginning of the 20th century due to the draining of the Zuiderzee (or Zuider Zee), a former bay in the North Sea. Through artistic action, rewilding, it would theoretically be possible to recapture the sublime experience of being dazzled by the vastness of the bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another related term that helps describe a large part of contemporary artistic practice in Poland is \u2018occupational realism\u2019. It was proposed by Julia Bryan-Wilson, who played with the ambiguity of the adjective \u2018occupational\u2019 in English, since it refers to both \u2018professional, vocational\u2019 and \u2018taking control of something by means of military force\u2019. The theorist cites, among others, Californian artist Ben Kinmont\u2019s project with the poignant title Sometimes a nicer sculpture is to be able to provide a living for your family<\/em> (1998\u2013to date).[10]<\/sup> Kinmont runs an antiquarian bookshop with rare books on gastronomy, while nominating this activity as an artistic performance. Starting from this example, Bryan-Wilson defines occupational realism as a practice \u2018in which the realm of waged labour (undertaken to sustain oneself economically) and the realm of art (pursued, presumably, for reasons that might include financial gain, but that also exceed financialisaton and have aesthetic, personal and\/or political motivations) collapse, becoming indistinct or intentionally inverted.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n For many contemporary artists and institutions, the crucial question is how to define the boundaries of art in the case of such a subjective experience as a collective gathering in the Bia\u0142owie\u017ca Forest, a protest in front of the parliament building, or the running of a food co-op. Art is increasingly becoming part of entirely different non-artistic systems: ecology, politics, agriculture, religion, anthropology or therapy. It constitutes a specific field of human activity, whose interdisciplinary character and blurred boundaries contribute to its vitality and adaptability. The blurring of art\u2019s boundaries is a factor that allows art to conquer new areas, the territory \u2018beyond the map of art\u2019. In today\u2019s institutional (and even more so in the non-institutional) art world, the separation of artistic activity from professional activity, of a work of art from an everyday object, or of artistic skills from social skills has become not so much irrelevant as secondary. In the case of 1:1 scale artistic practices, which are often extensive, long-term programmes initiated by artists, gallery presentations should not serve to \u2018capture\u2019 them by the given institution, but rather to disseminate information, to highlight certain specific skills used by artists (interdisciplinary thinking, unorthodox knowledge production, bringing temporary institutions to life, etc.), and to encourage independent escapades into the world beyond the museum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These diverse experiences from the art and non-art fields are united, for example, under the aegis of the Consortium of Post-Artistic Practices (CPP): a broad but highly informal alliance of art practitioners initiated in 2016 during the Congress of Culture in Warsaw. Most of the actions that emerge from the group\u2019s meetings are anonymous and relate to issues such as women\u2019s rights, ecology and anti-fascism. The group makes explicit reference to texts by Jerzy Ludwi\u0144ski and the conditions for creating art in the \u2018post-artistic age\u2019. The Consortium\u2019s efforts are aimed at mobilisation, the exchange of ideas, the dissemination of information, the creation of networks and, most importantly, the opening of \u2018channels\u2019 through which art and other tendrils of social life can intertwine. The CPP often uses the format of historical reconstruction; in 2017, for example, they recreated the 1980 political action of the theatre art group Academy of Movement, entitled \u2018Justice is a Beacon\u2019. The group\u2019s symbol and mascot is the rabbit-duck, an optical illusion that appears in Joseph Jastrow\u2019s psychological tests and on the pages of Ludwig Wittgenstein\u2019s Philosophical Investigations<\/em>. This drawing captures the perverse, ambiguous nature of many contemporary attitudes and artistic actions in Poland, as it represents both art and non-art, multiple things at once, eluding musealisation and capture by the language of art criticism and the art market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagining a new world is a step in the right direction. Here we can see a role for artists in times of planetary change \u2013 namely, to mobilise and initiate imaginative processes which offer an alternative to the overwhelming doubt and the creeping fear that it may already be too late to do anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/sup> Popularised in recent years by, among others, the activities of the Wroc\u0142aw Contemporary Museum, which houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to Ludwi\u0144ski (\u2018The Archive of Jerzy Ludwi\u0144ski at the Wroc\u0142aw Contemporary Museum is a permanent exhibition and research space, combining elements of an exhibition, an archive, and an art repository\u2019, https:\/\/muzeumwspolczesne.pl\/wystawy\/archiwum-jerzego-ludwinskiego\/), or in the exhibition titled \u2018Making Use: Life in Postartistic Times\u2019, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2015, https:\/\/www.mutualart.com\/Article\/Making-Use–Life-in-Postartistic-Times-a\/EB22C232588CF4BB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/sup> J. Ludwi\u0144ski, \u2018Sztuka w epoce postartystycznej\u2019 [\u2018Art in the Post-Artistic Age\u2019], [in:] Sztuka w epoce postartystycznej i inne teksty <\/em>[Art in the Post-Artistic Age and Other Texts<\/em>], J. Koz\u0142owski (ed.), Pozna\u0144: Akademia Sztuk Pi\u0119knych w Poznaniu, 2009, p. 57.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/sup> Ibidem, p. 63.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/sup> Ibidem, p. 66.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/sup> Ibidem: p. 133.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/sup> L. Camnitzer, \u2018Where is the Genie?\u2019, edited transcript of a lecture delivered at the conference titled The Idea of the Global Museum<\/em>, Museum f\u00fcr Gegenwart at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, December 2016 <\/a>https:\/\/www.e-flux.com\/journal\/100\/268759\/where-is-the-genie\/<\/a> [accessed: 10 November 2021].<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/sup> L. Lippard, Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West<\/em>, New York, 2014, pp. 27\u201329.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/sup><\/a> https:\/\/rewildingeurope.com\/what-is-rewilding-2\/ [accessed: 6 November 2021].<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/sup> J. Bryan Wilson, \u2018Occupational Realism\u2019, [in:] It\u2019s the Political Economy, Stupid!<\/em>, G. Sholette, O. Ressler (eds.), Londyn: Pluto Press, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [10]<\/sup> B. Kinmont, Sometimes A Nicer Sculpture Is to Be Able to Provide a Living for Your Family<\/em>, Sebastopol: Antinomian Press City, 2002.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The proposal at hand seeks to envision a method of \u2018evacuating\u2019 art beyond its contemporary conventions. This necessity stems from the specific parameters of artistic work in an era of irreversible changes sweeping across the planet and the imperative to confront the loss of ecological stability. The question of whether art can be socially useful […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text"],"acf":{"content_type":["texts"],"intro":" Endospores. Survival Programme for the Arts <\/em>is a proposal that engages students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in the critical analysis of how the contemporary art system functions as well as in the attempts at its restructuring.<\/p>\n","person_related":[{"ID":823,"post_author":"3","post_date":"2024-02-13 12:32:21","post_date_gmt":"2024-02-13 11:32:21","post_content":"","post_title":"Sebastian Cichocki","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"sebastian-cichocki","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2024-02-28 22:31:57","post_modified_gmt":"2024-02-28 21:31:57","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"https:\/\/endospory-cms.asp.katowice.pl\/?post_type=people&p=823","menu_order":0,"post_type":"people","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"related_content":[{"ID":1396,"post_author":"3","post_date":"2024-02-13 12:06:00","post_date_gmt":"2024-02-13 11:06:00","post_content":"\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Never before has time flown so fast. Processes that once spanned millions of years now unfold within mere decades. In 1947, Isamu Noguchi proposed the construction of Memorial to Man<\/em> in the desert, a vast land-based work of art, a colossal relief resembling a human face, visible from space. This monolith was intended to stand as a vestige of a civilisation vanquished by nuclear fire, its eyes fixed on a new haven that the few refugees would seek on the red plains of Mars. Yet, the fantasies to call \u2018Planet B\u2019 our home have vanished into the ether. We are left with but one Earth. An awareness of both the catastrophic agency wielded by humanity and the inevitable doom that awaits the order as we know it demands an altered perspective on human activity \u2013 a perspective stripped of anthropocentric hubris, more in tune with the \u2018non-human\u2019 and closer to geology than the humanities. Only when we change our perspective and understand that we live simultaneously in \u2018more than one dimension\u2019 will we able to see the consequences of the processes that took place after the Neolithic Revolution (and later the Industrial Revolution and the post-war economic acceleration). The gifts that so-called Civilisation brings us are also our poison. Eat Death!<\/em> proclaimed the American artist Bruce Nauman in his ominous work of 1971.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are living in a time of planetary change that affects each and every one of us, without prejudice. Climate change impacts all spheres of life, including the way we think about art \u2013 the systems of its production and distribution, its social function, and its relationship with other disciplines, primarily science. In 2020, at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, we were preparing for the opening of the exhibition titled The Penumbral Change<\/em>. Art in the Time of Planetary Change<\/em>. This exhibition brought together artistic works from the last five decades based on observations and visualisations of the changes underway on planet Earth. It was intended to provide a space for discussion on \u2018managing the irreversible\u2019 and new forms of solidarity, empathy, and togetherness in the face of the climate crisis. The inauguration of the exhibition was postponed just a few days before its scheduled opening on 20 March 2020 due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic. We were all too aware of the cruel irony of this situation \u2013 the consequences of belligerence towards nature, which lay at the very heart of the exhibition\u2019s discourse, had led us into an institutional stasis, sealing the exhibition\u2019s fate even before it could welcome its first visitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The title of the exhibition is taken from the 2014 book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future<\/em> by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. In this work, our current era is referred to as \u2018the Penumbral Period\u2019 and \u2018the Penumbral Age\u2019 and defined by a character from the future as \u2018[t]he shadow of anti-intellectualism that fell over the once-Enlightened techno-scientific nations of the Western world (...), preventing them from acting on the scientific knowledge available at the time,\u2019[1]<\/a> which led to tragedy. We bear witness to this process: scientific findings have ceased to command the conclusive authority they once held, failing to spur the populace into action. \u2018Science becomes belief. Belief becomes science. Everything becomes nothing. Nothing becomes everything. All can believe and disbelieve all. We all can know everything and know nothing. Everyone lives as an expert on every subject. No experts live on any subject,\u2019[2]<\/a> wrote the American writer and historian Ibram X. Kendi in The Atlantic<\/em> while analysing scepticism about climate change or even denial of this threat (the so-called climate denialism). The crisis of the culture of experts and scholarly pursuits is accompanied by the burgeoning resurgence of fundamentalist movements. These groups refute doctrines such as the theory of evolution, the harmfulness of smog, and the deleterious effect of humankind on the climate. Evidently, the arsenal of statistical data, graphic representations, and shocking photographic and video accounts from areas blighted by ecological ruin no longer capture the collective imagination in a sufficiently compelling fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artists\u2019 observations often resemble scientific ones, yet they seldom assail the audience with a barrage of numbers, sharply rising infographic bars, or lurid portrayals of poverty and devastation. Art wields an array of strange tools (Alva No\u00eb, 2015) that we can deploy to discern the \u2018signs in heaven and on earth\u2019. When the customary implements of dialogue and persuasion falter, artists grant us a \u2018leap of imagination\u2019, working with emotions and confronting the incomprehensible and the unknown. Art can come to our aid by harnessing the power of imagination, at times more effectively than the tools developed by science and environmental policy. What may serve as another significant example from the twentieth-century art history is the work of Joseph Beuys, not only a charismatic visual artist but also a co-founder of the German Green Party. Beuys pushed to erase the boundaries between the artificial and the natural, advocated for interspecies dialogue, and drew inspiration from shamanism and animism. He encouraged various forms of direct action through artistic happenings, including protests against tree felling, \u2018die-in\u2019 protests, and mass oak tree-planting initiatives. The artist also set up the Green Tent in Hamburg \u2013 a place for information about protecting the planet from destructive human activities. At the Green Party\u2019s launch in 1980, Beuys announced: \u2018In the future green tents will need to be raised everywhere all over the planet! They will be the incubators of a new society.\u2019[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the main historical references for the Penumbral Age was the activity of the OHO Group, a Slovene art collective active from 1966 to 1971 (although it must be borne in mind that these markers of foundation and dissolution are merely fluid and somewhat arbitrary constructs) and described as \u2018transcendental conceptualism\u2019. In the initial phase, the members of the group were dedicated to Reism, a philosophical art project based on a non-anthropocentric view of the world and the discovery of things as they are, without any hierarchy of importance and beyond designating functions. They engaged in the creation of \u2018popular art\u2019, which was to be made available on matchboxes sold at bazaars. During the second phase, they explored the potential offered by new art, drawing on Arte Povera, Land Art, Conceptualism, Anti-Form, and so forth. Many of their endeavours took place in nature, involving poetic and ephemeral interventions, utilising readily available materials such as strings or sticks. In the final phase, members of OHO sought to transcend the confines of art through radical educational practices, esoteric exercises, and agriculture. The group\u2019s makeup underwent changes, particularly in its formative period, when OHO operated more as an artistic \u2018movement\u2019, engaging representatives of diverse disciplines: poets, filmmakers, sculptors. The documentation presented in the exhibition focuses on the final phase of the group\u2019s existence. The film Summer Projects 1970<\/em> provides an overview of the group\u2019s actions, conducted in various personnel configurations outside the gallery space, described by means of diagrams and instructions. In 1970, the OHO Group was invited to participate in an exhibition titled \u2018Information\u2019 at the MoMA in New York. In response, the artists focused on activities they termed \u0161olanje<\/em> [training] and organised two summer sessions in the villages of Zarica and \u010cezso\u010da. Rather than working on specific projects, they approached communal living, cooking, walking, and the very act of breathing in a conscious, conceptual manner, seeking patterns of behaviour and relationships with each other and with nature. These were primarily exercises in mindfulness, through which they honed their own perception of OHO as a \u2018collective body\u2019. At the time, the idea of abandoning art and completely changing the way they functioned in society was being fervently debated. Come April 1971, the core members of the group moved to an abandoned house in the countryside of western Slovenia and established a commune called the \u0160empas Family. There, they continued their erstwhile explorations in the field of posthumanism, spirituality, and land art through meditation, cultivation of the land, daily drawing sessions, weaving, ceramics, and animal husbandry. Yet, a year hence, the \u0160empas Family disbanded, leaving but one member in the countryside: Marko Poga\u010dnik, who continues his work for the local community and natural environment to this day, also undertaking attempts at \u2018earth healing\u2019 through \u2018lithopuncture\u2019, a method of his own crafting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Penumbral Change<\/em> exhibition spanned five decades and served as a testament to the heightened reflection on environmental concerns in art during the transitional period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as in the second decade of the 21st century. The former was marked by the intensification of pacifist, feminist, and anti-racist movements, along with the emergence of the contemporary environmental movement. In 1970, Earth Day was celebrated for the first time, while 1971 witnessed the founding moment of Greenpeace, and in the ensuing year, the international think-tank, the Club of Rome, published The Limits to Growth<\/em> report, which outlined the existential challenges posed by the relentless depletion of natural resources. The same period saw the emergence of new artistic phenomena such as Conceptualism, Anti-Form and Land Art (also known as Earth Art). By introducing a \u2018geological\u2019 approach to art, artists utilised ephemeral, organic materials or aimed for the complete dematerialisation of the artwork. Many ideas proposed at the time forever altered perceptions of the role of art institutions and the relationship between artistic practice, professional labour, and activism. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who integrated caretaking and motherhood into her artistic practice; Bonnie Ora Sherk, who transformed urban wastelands into green oases; or Agnes Denes, who combined art with cybernetics and agriculture \u2013 all were harbingers of a countercultural revolution that ultimately faltered and failed to fulfil the hopes placed in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For us, Land Art represents much more than a trend in Western art typical of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Following the ideas of the Pakistani artist and activist Rasheed Araeen and drawing on his eco-aesthetic programme, we seek \u2018global art for a changing planet\u2019. Araeen is the creator of sculptures, installations, performances, and theoretical texts. After moving to London in 1964, he began to combine his artistic pursuits with political activism (which included joining the Black Panther Party) and a critique of colonialism and globalisation. In 1978, Araeen founded the magazine Black Phoenix, revived in 1987 as Third Text, which remains one of the most important publications dedicated to the history of art from a postcolonial perspective to this day. Araeen formulated the programme of eco-aesthetics in a series of essays collected in a volume titled Art Beyond Art. Ecoaesthetics: A Manifesto for the 21st Century<\/em>, published in 2010. In it, he advocates transcending the supremacy of Homo sapiens as a species and unleashing \u2018the creative energy of the free collective imagination\u2019.[4]<\/a> Araeen\u2019s programme is staunchly anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, and anti-capitalist. The very system within which art operates comes under critical scrutiny as one that perpetuates hierarchies, glorifies growth and progress, is propelled by the intellectual fuel of modernity, separates creative energies from the processes of everyday life, and petrifies them into the form of \u2018narego\u2019 \u2013 the narcissistic ego of the artist. Araeen employs the terms nominalism and cosmoruralism. The former is about artists setting in motion useful processes, carried out by local communities \u2013 fluid, enduring, based on sustainability. In 2001, for example, Araeen used his engineering expertise to propose the construction of a dam in the desert of Baryuchistan, which would retain water from seasonal rivers and thus improve the living conditions of the nomadic population. The dam would serve as both a sculpture and a fully functional engineering solution. The second proposal, cosmoruralism, presents an overall vision of a network of cooperatives and eco-villages based on equitable cooperation between the global North and the global South, which would result, among other things, in the reforestation of the Sahara Desert. The exhibition features drawings related to both concepts: a project for a farm harnessing energy from monsoon winds (nominalism), and selected maps from the Mediterranea series, the Mediterranean Union, a new form of economic and cultural cooperation between Europe, Asia, and Africa, where an extensive railway network serves as the primary mode of transport (cosmoruralism).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The artistic endeavours associated with \u2018canonical\u2019 Land Art, such as Richard Long\u2019s \u2018Throwing a Stone around MacGillycuddy\u2019s Reeks\u2019, wherein the artist follows a stone as it hurtles forward, Robert Morris\u2019s plans for \u2018terraformations\u2019, or Gerry Schum\u2019s television programme (a glimpse into the fusion of new media and the dissemination of \u2018organic\u2019 art cultivated in the midst of deserts or forests), coexisted in the exhibition alongside works from the 21st century. These latter works served ecological education (Futurefarmers, Ines Doujak, Center for Land Use Interpretation), embodiments of protest (Suzanne Husky, Frans Krajcberg, Akira Tsuboi) or spirituality and esoterica (Shana Moulton and Nick Hallett, Teresa Murak, Tatiana Czekalska and Leszek Golec). Field recordings are a particularly useful tool for raising awareness and documenting changes in the natural environment. One of the participants in the exhibition, AM Kanngieser (based in Wollongong, Australia) \u2013 an academic, radio producer and sound artist \u2013 works on issues of climate justice, political geography and \u2018listening\u2019 to the Anthropocene\/Capitalocene, primarily through sound research. AM Kanngieser was born and spent her early childhood on a boat sailing the Pacific. She recalls the sounds of the ocean intermingling incessantly with the crackle of the shortwave radio operated by her father, a sailor and electrician. Kanngieser\u2019s works comprise field recordings, interviews, and various forms of sonifying scientific data. Concurrently, the artist delves into issues such as the use of voice and sound in political protests and the history of radio as a tool of resistance and self-organisation. In addition to sound installations, AM Kanngieser is the author of numerous texts, lectures, and audio dramas concerning violence against Indigenous communities and the natural environment in the Pacific region, linked, for instance, to deep-sea fossil fuel extraction or the consequences of nuclear testing in the 20th century. The exhibition features a sound installation (outside the building, overlooking the Vistula River) based on early morning field recordings on the atoll Tarawa, with the capital of the Republic of Kiribati in the Pacific. The republic is on the frontline of climate change, with sea levels rising there by 3 metres, regularly submerging the island in salty water. The water infiltrates homes, hospitals, drinking water wells, fields and gardens, destroying crops. AM Kanngieser comments: \u2018The Kiribati people I spoke to are reluctant to leave their ancestral land where they have lived for a thousand years. Some elders told me they would stay there no matter what. If it\u2019s God\u2019s will, nothing can be done. Kiribati\u2019s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is disproportionately small compared to the impact the islanders are facing today.\u2019[5]<\/a> According to climate projections, Kiribati will be completely submerged by 2050.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within the sphere of interest of environmentally conscious artists lie issues such as climate debt, post-anthropocentrism, the inevitable depletion of fossil fuel reserves, the repercussions of unchecked accumulation of wealth and economic growth, planetary ecocide and colonial exploitation. All of the above serve as a backdrop for Land Art. We therefore propose that the term should encompass a broad panorama of artistic practices concerning human relationships with other species, inanimate matter, and the planet as a whole, as well as non-artistic actions undertaken by artists and activists (from community gardens to advocacy for Indigenous peoples\u2019 rights and the establishment of political parties). In this context, Land Art is not confined to any specific medium, material, or geographical region. It can also encompass activities that do not operate under the label of art. One example would be the ice stupas in Ladakh \u2013 engineered by Sonam Wangchuk. These glacial stupas have a fascinating form and a clearly defined function: to provide water for the inhabitants of the desert situated at the foot of the Himalayas. Rainfall is scarce in the desert areas above 3000m, and agriculture depends on water from seasonally melting glaciers that flow down from the Himalayas. Currently, due to global warming, the water no longer reaches the villages at the foot of the mountains, or does so abruptly, destroying buildings and bridges. To create the ice stupas, Wangchuk and his team use the forces of gravity and the difference in temperature between day and night. They use a simple system of pipes to carry water from the peaks down to the villages in the valleys. The ice cones, which are several metres high, melt slowly, providing farmers with water until early summer. Another beneficial side-effect of the construction of the ice stupas is the drainage of lakes formed by the sudden collapse of large chunks of glacier, which block the flow of water and cause flooding. Legend has it that Ladakh has specialised in \u2018cultivating\u2019 glaciers for centuries. In the 13th century, an ice dam is said to have been used to stop the invasion of Genghis Khan\u2019s army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Living in the midst of an ever-deepening crisis is forcing us to fundamentally rethink the entire system of social organisation and to confront dilemmas of an ethical and existential nature (from climate migrations to burgeoning class conflicts). The world of art, with its hallowed museums and conceptualising rituals of organising things and ideas, is no exception (to paraphrase the slogan of the Youth Strike for Climate: \u2018No museums on a dead planet!\u2019) and requires profound systemic transformations. We regard our involvement in this discourse as the museum\u2019s imperative, not a mere trend or art-world fad. Against the backdrop of the so-called \u2018ecological turn\u2019 or the voguish appeal of \u2018Anthropocene art\u2019, we emphasise the steadfastness of environmental reflection, rooted in continuity and responsibility. As an example of actions imbued with planetary imagination, we can mention the story from 1970, when a group of Buddhist monks from the Shingon and Nichiren schools, along with three lay companions (referred to as a hippie, a Christian, and a student), embarked on a pilgrimage across Japan, from Toyama to Kumamoto. They took the name Jusatsu Kito Sodan, meaning the Group of Monks Bringing the Curse of Death. This episode stands as one of the most radical yet poetic ecological and anti-capitalist manifestations in Japanese history. Armed with instruments made from conch shells and books containing Abhichar curses (based, among other sources, on Vedic rites from the 9th century), the monks travelled from factory to factory, establishing camps and performing rituals. Their intention was to bring death upon the factory directors through prayers. The activities of the Jusatsu Kito Sodan were a response to environmental pollution and mass poisoning in Japan, following a series of epidemics in the mid-1960s. This period saw the emergence of new diseases, such as itai-itai, caused by cadmium contamination in rice paddies, a side effect of coal mining. Japanese industrialists, linked to American business interests and shielded by the government, remained unpunished. One example was the operations of the Chisso Corporation, which \u2013 aware of its detrimental effects \u2013 discharged mercury-laden wastewater into the Shiranui Sea for thirty-four years, resulting in poisoning of thousands and the severe Minamata disease. The actions of the Jusatsu Kito Sodan can be analysed as a radical artistic experiment or a performance merging spirituality with concern for human and environmental well-being. According to Buddhist beliefs, particularly in the Shingon tantric school, humans are part of the cosmic environment, on equal footing with other life forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Undoubtedly, art will not shield us from catastrophe, yet it serves as a means to equip ourselves with peculiar tools for the labour of imagination and empathy. In her seminal manifesto of 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles posed the question: \u2018After the revolution, who\u2019s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?\u2019[6]<\/a> In artworks of recent decades, we seek not only visualisations of processes unfolding on our planet but also potential proposals for the future. If ecological catastrophe is indeed imminent (a sentiment surely echoed by the inhabitants of thoroughly devastated Pacific islands such as Nauru or Banaba), we collectively wonder if we will ever manage to tidy up this planetary mess and rebuild relationships with other sentient beings. Can we start anew?<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> N. Oreskes, E. M. Conway, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, <\/em>Columbia University Press, New York 2014, pp. 59-60.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> I. X. Kendi, \u2018What the Believers Are Denying,\u2019 The Atlantic<\/em>, theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2019\/01\/what-deniers-climate-change-and-racism-share\/579190\/<\/a> [access: 12.09.2023]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> J. Beuys, \u2018The Green Tent. Joseph Beuys and the extended concept of ecology\u2019, e-flux<\/em>, https:\/\/www.e-flux.com\/announcements\/69282\/joseph-beuysthe-green-tent\/<\/a> [access: 29.02.2024].<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> R. Araeen, Art Beyond Art. Ecoaesthetics: A Manifesto for the 21st Century<\/em>, Third Text Publishing, London, 1910, p. 39.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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