"When Is a War
Finally Going to Happen?" was the question posed to the Warsaw
public on September 8th last fall on a billboard that showed a picture
of a man lying down and gazing dreamily at the clouds. Three days
later, the authors, artists from the art group Twozywo (Art Mater/i/n/al)
covered the word "war" on this handmade billboard, changing
its meaning in Polish into "When Is It Finally Going to Happen?"
From the point of view of the management of Art Marketing Syndicate
S.A. (AMS) this artwork, originally addressing the laziness and
the thoughtlessness of the new consumerist society in Poland, had
become, in the recent political context, "too prophetic."
Indeed, it is not the first time that art on billboards sent a strong
message to the public in Poland. The activities of the Galeria Zewnetrzna
(Outdoor Gallery), an art project lead and sponsored by AMS, provide
a good example of how the meaning of "public space" has
changed in Poland during the last two decades.
 |
| Twozywo,
When Is a War finally Going to Happen?, Campaign
2000, Courtesy AMS and Twozywo. |
|
Under Communist rule
the term "public space" did not exist. Being part of the
official ideological realm, public buildings, company headquarters,
streets, and squares remained a medium of the regime’s propaganda
for over thirty years. Controlled by security officials and the
Polish United Workers Party the outdoor premises, known currently
as "public space," were not accessible for artists with
the exception of those who served the official political system.
Of course, the censors were sometimes not intelligent enough to
do their job or had some sense of humor. It is hard to imagine that
at a time when every image and word shown to the public required
permission of censors the pathetic slogan, "Socialism is Our
Target," was affixed for many months to the Hunters’
Union building in Warsaw, provoking much laughter among passersby.
There is also a famous photograph of the Moskwa (Moscow) Movie Theater
in Warsaw taken during martial law. It pictures a huge banner advertising
Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now! on the
wall with police military forces marching in front of it outside
the building. This image became one of the most memorable of those
difficult times.
As a student of humanities
during the martial law period, I observed for some time how a wall
might become the object of an ideological battle. Taking a tram
to the university campus, I would go through a narrow passage, facing
one of the adjoining walls. "Down with Communism!" stated
the graffiti one day. Overnight some policeman covered the sentence
with fresh paint: "Down with Solidarity!" This dialogue
continued with different contradictory sentences for the next few
mornings. Finally the representative of one of the groups put on
the wall: "Down with violation of the law!" This survived
for quite a long time as it made everyone happy because the meaning
of "violation of the law" was entirely different on
both sides.
After the political
transformation of 1989, when Poland officially became a parliamentary
democracy again(1) the entire situation changed.
Since the advent of outdoor market commodity advertisement, Poland
has been shaken by several battles about freedom of market and its
ethical approach. The content of an ad as well as the right to advertise
certain products seems to create as hopeless a discursive impasse
as pro-life, pro-choice, and other ideological dilemmas. It is mutually
insoluble.
AMS started its Galeria
Zewnetrzna project in 1998(2). The company sponsors
art projects by leading and emerging Polish artists in regular campaigns
that present an edition of 400 posters in major cities. Another
project supports younger artists and groups to create a single piece
on one temporarily donated billboard panel(3).
An art historian, Lech Olszewski, is the company’s marketing
director, and he runs the project with sociologist Marek Krajewski.
They also support and collect some other phenomena of temporary
interventions in public space, such as stencils and so-called "vlepki"
(stickers illegally applied onto legally existing objects). Galeria
Zewnetrzna’s program is innovative in a country with a strengthening
advertisement market. It represents a buffer zone between the cynicism
of contemporary commercial marketing and the ambitions of a Polish
artworld that is having difficulties clearly communicating with
its audiences(4). Using double-edged sword strategies
to protect both the company income and its satisfaction with doing
something creative, AMS has to make compromises in order to continue
the project. In its promotional materials the gallery directors
said: "The gallery is going to promote aesthetic alternatives
to boredom and to the instrumental kitsch of the Polish contemporary
city’s ionosphere.... In future editions of our venture we
would like to present... antimoralistic and nonpropagandistic works,
but at the same time involving both as content and form."
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| Pawel
Susid, Zle zycia koncza sie smiercia/ Bad Lives End
with Death, 1998 (first campaign, edition of 400) |
|
The AMS Outdoor Gallery
got off to an ambitious start in its first year with a campaign
entitled When Another Becomes the Other (this also could
be translated as When the Stranger Becomes the Other).
Pawel Susid’s Bad Lives End with Death, Anna Jaros’
We Are Horrible, or Jadwiga Sawicka’s Converting.
Domesticating. Taming discussed some social issues, such as
the acceptance of difference or the pressure of cultural paradigms.
 |
| Jadwiga
Sawicka, Converting. Domesticating. Taming.
1998 (billboard edition of 400) |
|
Enthusiastic press coverage
helped to promote the project. But these first projects were not
that disturbing as images, and their message was not very direct.
Their meaning depended on the context of some other accompanying
commercial ads. The situation changed in the summer of 1999.
 |
| Katarzyna
Kozyra, Blood Ties, 1999 (billboard edition
of 400 copies) |
|
Katarzyna Kozyra, a younger
artist and the winner of an honorable mention at the 48th Venice
Biennale, was chased by the media and persecuted by right-wing politicians.
She had become the informal winner of the national contest in controversy
(if such a thing existed!). Thus no one was astonished when a billboard
version of her Blood Ties produced in 1999 for the fifth
edition of project caused greater turmoil compared to the previous
ones. Blood Ties was made originally in 1995 as a four-piece
photo work(5). Two of the photos show Kozyra nude
and another two show her naked sister with a handicapped leg. Both
young women lay down on a background of a red symbol--a cross or
crescent--centered on white. Another element of the images are compositions
of vegetables--cabbages or cauliflowers. All of the components are
selected by usage of the principles of similarity versus difference.
So siblings of similar age and appearance are differentiated by
the use of images of disability and two great religious systems
are depicted in conflict regardless of the common roots of their
belief. And, of course, there is a reference to two famous charity
organizations, which serve on war fronts around the world. For the
billboard edition Kozyra selected two of the four images. She stated
officially that she relates her work to the situation of victimized
women during the war in the former Yugoslavia.
The work infuriated some
right-wing politicians. One statesman from Gdansk even detected
Satanism, since one of the young women is photographed upside down
on the cross. Joanna Fabisiak from Solidarity Voting Action (AWS),
who collected 800 Warsaw inhabitants’ signatures under a petition
against the poster, explains: "This is not prudery or bigotry,
but only a protest against liberalization of social norms."
Undoubtedly, similarly to many other debates about the morality
of art, this conflict is another ideological battle between liberalism
and conservatism. Some members of the Polish Parliament accused
the artist of offending the feelings of believers and tried to look
for allies in some Islamic countries’ embassies in Warsaw
but those diplomats declared politely that actually they enjoyed
the pictures. Although those politicians did not succeed in creating
an international scandal, the situation became too much for Polish
authorities and the budget of Kozyra’s presentation in Poland
National Pavilion at the Venice Biennale was radically cut. The
posters were partly covered with paper, due to decision of the AMS
management. Some cities asked the company to refrain from exhibiting
the piece on their streets and their statement was accepted. The
spokesman for the Polish Episcopate, Adam Schultz, stated that he
can identify with the message of Blood Ties but he does
not accept its form.
 |
| Marek
Sobczyk, “What?: Repetition”, 2001
(edition of 400)
Courtesy AMS and the Artist |
|
The fourteenth edition
of the Outdoor Gallery Project in the summer of 2001 was a poster
version of Marek Sobczyk’s What? Repetition (Solidarity).
Just a few days before the 21st anniversary of the Solidarity movement,
Sobczyk reminded the Polish nation of one of the most important
cultural icons of the 80s, the famous red logotype of Solidarity
that became an international trademark of resistance and victory
of freedom. Sobczyk repeated the symbol upside down in a mirrored
reflection. As the curators of Galeria Zewnetrzna noted the artist
asks about the actuality of the value system that Polish society
used to associate with this mark. Sobczyk’s project coincides
with and emerges from the political situation of an electoral campaign,
when the government established by Solidarity officials lost the
trust and backing of the voters.
In 2000, the artists
from the collective project named the Technical Culture Central
Office (CUKT) had run a fake election campaign, scheduled for the
entire year of the real presidential election in Poland.
 |
| Technical
Culture Central Office [CUKT], Wiktoria CUKT
Campaign, 2000 (edition of 400) Courtesy AMS and the
Artists |
|
The artists created a
candidate for the President of the Republic of Poland, who was not
only a young attractive woman, but also a fully virtual, computer-generated
being. The campaign of this long-legged beauty started on the internet.
The idea was to promote the internet as the tool and institution
of a democratic society. But, of course, the artists played with
the illusion of democracy. The candidate was perfect for everyone,
as she shared every opinion sent to her by e-mail. Her statements
were completely contradictory, so as to please every possible voter.
This internet project was followed by several election meetings
and finally a billboard campaign with AMS, released exactly at the
moment when "real" candidates started to present their
own ones. This campaign really appealed to the Polish sense of humor,
especially when the billboard of Victoria CUKT was shown, for instance,
next to the billboard of President Krzaklewski from the Solidarity
Union. Mr. President, whose campaign was based apparently on his
attractive look(6), had no chance against red-haired
Victoria. Regardless, she lost, but so did he(7).
 |
| Two
candidates: Marian Krzaklewski and Wiktoria Cukt, 2000
(picture taken in Gdansk, corner of Walowa and Lagiewniki
Streets), Fot. Grzegorz Klaman |
|
While some of the Galeria
Zewnetrzna’s critics complain about most of the art billboards,
indicating their lack of communication and clarity, more direct
and provocative projects are criticized just because they are clear
and communicative. AMS seems to be in a radically blocked situation,
because most of the criticism comes from local politicians, and
the economic situation of the company depends on good relationships
with local governments. Online magazine Media i Marketing Polska
noticed over two years ago that the situation may affect the AMS’s
development and warned that the company may earn, since provoking
Behaviors hard to accept(8), a reputation
as a controversial company.
During the last ten years
we have observed an increasing number of billboards in the countryside,
caused by the lack of legal regulations, especially in the earlier
period of establishing outdoor advertisement companies. Seen practically
everywhere, in the most unexpected places, the billboard advertisements
violently assault the eyes of the viewer and became one of the most
successful mass-communication media. The only significant difference
between art on billboards and art presented indoors is that it is
shown to everyone unintentionally passing by. AMS Outdoor Gallery
has the biggest audience among all of Polish art projects. It is
also, more than any other art project, influenced by undercurrents
of public opinion. As opposed to museums, it is not taking the risk
of a cut-off of public funding but, rather, the loss of market income.
Theoretically there is more freedom for a private, self-financed
project, but when it takes place in a public domain, the situation
is especially complicated. Considering these limitations, Galeria
Zewnetrzna had to apologize several times for misunderstandings,
miscommunications, and wrongly interpreted intentions. As Marek
Krajewski stressed in his press release, the idea of his outdoor
gallery comes from the lack of educated gallery-goers and a lack
of professional art criticism in Poland. By dragging contemporary
art into the public space Galeria Zewnetrzna influences the reception
of art, which becomes a part of the public discourse.
Regardless of most of
the debate’s rhetoric, no less populist than most of the political
battles in the country in general, the discussion these art billboards
provoked made citizens more aware of their rights and of the collective
ownership of public spaces and the importance of visual culture.
Despite the troubles involved with exhibiting contemporary art in
public institutions, art on billboards has become an important element
in the negotiation of a structure for the transformation of society.
Is it a step on the path to understanding public art? Or is the
negation and lack of understanding necessary for public art to exist?
(1) Poland is the oldest democracy
in Europe; the constitution of 3rd May is dated 1791 .
(2) The Outdoor Gallery also publishes free postcards
and maintains its own WebPages. Some other artists who took part
in their activities are: Jadwiga Sawicka, Pawel Susid, Monika Zielinska,
Rafal Bujnowski nad Sanislaw Drozdz. For more information search
www.ams.com.pl ;
(3) ICf. Galeria Otwarta in Krakow, its archive
and the locations map at www.galeria24h.virtual.pl .
(4) More about reception of contemporary art issues
in Poland in: Aneta Szylak, “New Art for New Reality. Some
remarks on Contemporary Art. in Poland,” Art Journal,
Spring 2000.
(5) One poster of the billboard edition was presented
in NYC at Exit Art in Fall 2000 in the exhibition The Body of
the East curated by Zdenka Badovinac from Lubljana.
(6) And a slogan “Krzak Tak” what means
“Krzak (his nickname) yes”, qualified by some political
marketing advisors as “the silliest election motto ever”;
(7) For more information search http://www.cukt.art.pl
;
(8) JP, Manipulacja przeslaniem, Media i Marketing
Polska, 3.06.1999.