During the Second World War Jan Świdziński studied architecture through underground courses organized by the Warsaw University of Technology, and he attended ballet classes at the Leon Wójcicki School. He also participated in the Home Army resistance movement. In 1947 he began his studies at the Higher School of Arts and Design (today the Academy of Fine Arts) in Warsaw, studying painting in the studio of Jan Cybis and graphics under the supervision of Tadeusz Kulisiewicz. He graduated with a degree in painting in 1952. He is the organizer and co-organizer of a number of meetings, festivals, conferences and exhibitions devoted to contextual art and performance art both in Poland and abroad.
Świdziński has published several articles and books about art, including Art as Contextual Art (Lund, Sweden; 1976), Art, Society and Self-consciousness (Calgary, Canada; 1979), Freedom and Limitation - The Anatomy of Post-modernism (Calgary, Canada; 1987), Quotations on Contextual Art (Eindhoven, Holland ;1988) and L'Art et son Contexte (Québec, Canada; 2005). In 2009, two of his books were translated and published in Polish: Sztuka i jej kontekst, a summary of his artistic and theoretical inquiries, and Sztuka, społeczeństwo, samoświadomość.
In 1989 Świdziński was appointed President of the Artists of the Other Arts Association, and in May 2005 he was awarded the Polonia Restituta Order for his contribution to the development and promotion of Polish culture in Poland and abroad. He has lectured at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, the Université du Québec in Montreal, New York University in New York, L'École Sociologique Interrogative in Paris, the University of Calgary and Vancouver University.
Świdziński has coordinated and curated a number of major international conferences, including an international conference of artists and theorists from 35 countries held at the Remont Gallery in 1977 (Art Activity in the Context of Reality), as well as performance art festivals such as the Interscop International Festival in Łucznica (1990), Real Time - Story Telling International Performance Art Festival in Sopot (1993) and the Interakcje Performance Art Festival in Piotrków Trybunalski (1996).
As an artist, theorist and thinker, Świdziński is the main representative of the post-conceptual movement. In his "12 Thesis of the Contextual Art" (included in the Contemporary Art Manifesto proclaimed in 1976 at Sweden's Lund University during the first "Contextual Art" exhibition), he formulated a concept of contemporary art that remains up-to-date and inspiring to this day. He has been creating performance art since 1974.
"My interest in performance art grew on the one hand out of my contextual theory, and on the other hand out of my experiences with dance, body movement and the gestures I used to give performances", he said.
For Świdziński, performance is the most easily accessible form of art, a form that can be understood by everyone everywhere. He believes that the artist can convey a message only through direct contact with those whom he meets in the same context of time, place and situation.
The path that led Świdziński to the theoretical analysis of art passed first through the field of traditional art – including dance, architecture and painting – which he had explored earlier. It was a path that also determined his choice of performance as the most satisfying form of artistic expression. He joined the ballet school during the war, and studied architecture at the same time. After the war he continued his architectural studies on an irregular basis until 1970, but, inspired by the drawing classes he attended as part of his coursework, he also took up courses in the painting department. Between 1952 and 1962 Świdziński created a series of paintings called Znaki semantyczne / Semantic Signs. However, his solo painting exhibition in 1965 put an end to his career as a painter, for he discovered that paining and other traditional art forms were unable to confront the fundamental and existential dilemmas faced by contemporary man.
Between 1965 and 1970 Świdziński turned to science, becoming deeply interested in semiotics, linguistics, neopositivism and formal logic. Together with Marek Konieczny he established the Art and Design Section at the Cybernetics Society. His studies on semiotics allowed the artist to develop a critical view of the conceptualism emerging in England and the United States at the end of the 1960s, and in the early '70s he created a series of works and actions entitled Z logiki niekompletnych rzeczywistości / Out of the Logic of Incomplete Realities. In 1970 Świdziński wrote Spór o istnienie sztuki / Dispute over the Existence of Art, which is considered to be the first attempt to give some sort of theoretical order to the aesthetic concepts developed thus far.
"The publication of the article 'Dispute over the Existence of Art' occurred during a time of youth revolution, just before the events in Nowa Ruda. At a meeting of art schools where everybody expected to see traditional works of art, the students suddenly revolted and created the counterculture movement. Since there was limited information on art available at that time, my article was quite popular in these circles and I started to be invited to participate in various events".
The article described the art world as it was developing in the 1960s:
"Art and reality have changed so much that the artist's work no longer concerns the creation of art objects so much as deliberation on the essence of art. As a result, the artist was often mistaken in thinking that it was art that he was creating. While clinging to the old system of values, he created a fictitious existence for something that had ceased to exist in reality".
Świdziński presented his thoughts and concepts at the F-Art Counterculture Festival in Gdańsk in 1975, and again shortly afterwards at the "Condition of Contemporary Art" symposium hosted by the Remont Gallery in Warsaw. In February 1976 he published the English-language version of the foundations for his contextual art theory, under the title Art as Contextual Art. It was released on the occasion of an exhibition of Polish artists hosted by Jean Sellem's St. Petri Gallery in Lund, Sweden. The exhibition also featured works by other Polish artists with whom Świdziński had cooperated, including members of the Sztuka Najnowsza Gallery in Wrocław: Anna Kutera, Romuald Kutera and Lech Mrożek. Also present were artists from the Seminarium Warszawskie / Warsaw Seminary (with Zbigniew Dłubak), the Warsztat Formy Filmowej / Film Form Workshops from Łódź (Józef Robakowski, Wojciech Bruszewski and Ryszard Waśko) and Henryk Gajewski from the Remont Gallery in Warsaw.
Świdziński's performance aroused considerable interest among the audience. In 1976 the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication (CEAC) organized a conference on contextual art in Toronto, with the participation of Art Sociologique, Art and Language, Artist Meeting for Social Change and the Fox. The following year Collectif d'Art Sociologique also organized a contextual art conference in Paris. Świdziński criticized Joseph Kosuth's tautological model of art, claiming that art is an "empty sign" and gains meaning only within a social context. He advocated replacing conceptual art with art that emerges within a local context, which would remain in a state of constant confrontation with the current social processes. This was an open model of art that assumed unpredictable changeability and gave a social character to the artist's actions. As Kazimierz Piotrowski wrote:
"The practice of a contextual artist reminds one of the work of an ethnologist-therapist who travels to different places and helps the locals (whether they be inhabitants of the Kurpie region or of New York) to understand their context through exposing her or his own, all while bearing in mind that we have the right to be different and we should respect these differences".
A context consists of a specific collection of standards, values, meanings and discourses of various types that make it possible for art to be defined and verified. It is worth remembering that art is a process, and that the context is never final – it is constantly changing.
At the end of the 1960s and beginning of the '70s, Świdziński began engaging in artistic interventions and protests. "I am interested in the art that operates within the sphere of meanings, not the art that creates objects", he claimed. Performance exemplifies contextual art because it takes place within a specific context, which is subject to change and acquires new meanings. Świdziński used text, photography and installations in his performance projects (such as Stale mówimy o człowieku / We Constantly Speak About the Human Being, 1978; and Zamazywanie / Blurring, 1983). He combined them with very limited means (Rozmyślania przy śniadaniu / Breakfast Thoughts, BWA, Lublin, 1990) and sparse gestures (Anomia / Anomie, 1998).
"While giving a performance I communicate, weather willingly or not; I convey a message. Even if I say that I do not care about the audience, they still look at me and receive some message conveyed through my actions. The message is the aesthetic of the performance. Therefore any noises or disturbances need to be eliminated, because they hinder communication and reduce the quality of the message".
Świdziński's work treats the world of art with considerable humour, irony and satire.
He uses photography in his works as well, often employing photographs as props in his performances. For him, photography is "a symptom of reality", around which a performance is created in the form of a text or speech. His best-known works using photography include Działanie z fotografią przedstawiającą Van Gogha / Performance with a Photography of Van Gogh (1976), W porządku / It's OK (1994) and Anomia / Anomie (1998).
Author: Ewa Gorządek, July 2010. Translated by Katarzyna Różańska, September 2010.
Selected performances:
- 2006
- European Performance Art Festival, Centre for Contemporary Art at Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw - 2005
- Tupada International Action Art Event, Manila, the Philippines - 2004
- "Navinki" International Performance Art Festival, Minsk, Belarus
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski - 2003
- "Asiatopia" International Performance Art Festival, Bangkok, Thailand
- "Navinki" International Performance Art Festival, Minsk, Belarus
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski
- Performance Art Centre, Lublin - 2002
- "Navinki" International Performance Art Festival, Minsk, Belarus
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski
- "Nove Zamky" Festival, Slovakia - 2001
- "Navinki" International Performance Art Festival, Minsk, Belarus
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski - 2000
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski - 1999
- "Interakcje" International Art Festival, Piotrków Trybunalski; - 1998
- "Ex Teresa" International Festival of Performance, Mexico City, Mexico - 1997
- "Dimension 0" International Festival of Performance Art, Vilnius, Lithuania
- "Zamek Wyobraźni" International Performance Art Festival, Bytów
- "Magnesia" Performance Festival, Dziekanka Gallery, Warsaw - 1996
- "9 Dragons' Heads" Festival, Cheongwon-gun, South Korea
- "AnnART" Festival, St. Georges, Romania
- "Second Hand" Performance Festival, Dziekanka Gallery, Warsaw - 1995
- International Performance Festival, Gyula, Hungary
- International Nature Art Symposium and Exhibition, Gongju, South Korea
- "Gonna Be All Right", QQ Gallery, Cracow
- International Performance Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania
- Galeria Działań, Warsaw - 1993
- Real Time - Story Telling, International Performance Art Festival, Grodzka Gallery, Lublin
- Nihon International Performance Art Festival, Nagano, Japan - 1992
- Rencontres Internationales de Poésie Contemporaine, Tarascon, France - 1991
- Real Time - Story Telling, International Performance Art Festival, Sopot
- Festival Internacional de Performance and Poesia d'Acció, Valencia, Spain - 1990
- "Interaction" International Performance Festival, France
- Première Biennale d'Art Actuel: "A la manœuvre", Québec, Canada
- "Interscop" International Performance Festival, Łucznica - 1989
- "Espaces Affranchis" Festival of Art, Danaé Foundation, Paris, France - 1988
- "Immedia Concerto", Art Festival, Quebec, Canada
- Zakład nad Fosą Gallery, Wrocław
- "Take Position", International Art Meetings, Stodoła Gallery, Warsaw - 1987
- "Staatsliedengreep" Art Festival, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Art Biennale, Zielona Góra
- Centro Internalionale Multimedia, Salerno, Italy - 1986
- Het Apollohuis Gallery, Eindhoven, the Netherlands
- Remont Gallery, Warsaw - 1985
- Banff Centre of Art, Banff, Canada
- Western Front Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
- Eye Level Gallery, Halifax, Canada - 1984
- BWA Gallery, Lublin - 1981
- "Warsztat l", Lublin
- Mała Gallery, Warsaw - 1978
- Contemporary Art Gallery, Wrocław
- Labirynt Gallery, Lublin - 1977
- Remont Gallery, Warsaw
- Contemporary Art Gallery, Wrocław - 1976
- Contemporary Art Gallery, Wrocław - 1974
- Performance Meetings at the Teatr Dnia i Nocy, Poznań