Mirosław Bałka, "Boy and the Eagle", 1988, sculpture, detail, photo: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
"Reclaimed heritage. About Polish art of the 80s." is a two-day conference hosted by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
For many years art of the 80s has been neglected by Polish researchers and curators, the sparse exhibitions and publications merely copied the image drafted back in the '80s. An extensive research programme aimed at redefining this image was initiated in 2009 and has since resulted in a meeting of researchers in 2010. Time has come to take all the different attitudes which crystallised in the 80s and look at them from a distance. The main purpose of the conference is to reformulate where art of the 80s is currently placed at in the history of Polish art. Questions about the artistic traditions present in the 80s, new trends, forms of artistic life and the state's policy towards the creative circles will be the starting point for a broader analysis of the role of art in social processes, the critical potential of artistic phenomena, artistic strategies, etc.
We ask about the '80s in Poland in times of a particular interest on the part of the international art scene. In Western Europe and the United States the '80s are considered a period without a theme or form paradigm, a period when artists pursued individual ideas rather than followed wide concepts defining art in relation to the world. The development of the art market on an unprecedented scale played a particular role here. The "return to painting" and the revival of modernist concision was part of that. However it was also the period preceeding the era of globalisation.
It was a different case in Poland, where the suspension of the neo-avant-garde problem of the work of art came as a result of social relations alongside with the question about the attitude, or as Anda Rottenberg has put it "the shift of the criteria from artistic to ethical" caused by social transformations, the birth of Solidarity and the imposition of martial law. Those events caused the semantic space to thicken. On the other hand, independent movements, new formations and informal groups should not be perceived only in the context of artistic traditions, but also in the context of the civil society values that were emerging at that time. We will take a closer look at art in the 80s from the perspectives of different environments, individualities and breakthrough exhibitions. A major focus is the key question for the decade - the question of the artist's attitude and the processes of contemporary curatorial practices look in the context of the '80s.
The conference is going to be summarised by a publication released at the beginning of 2012.
Participants: Alexandra Alisauskas, Waldemar Baraniewski, Piotr Bernatowicz, Łukasz Gorczyca, Aleksandra Jach, Dorota Jarecka, Wojciech Kozłowski, Dominik Kuryłek, Luiza Nader, Karol Sienkiewicz, Piotr Stasiowski, Aleksandra Ściegienna, Ewa Tatar, Wojciech Włodarczyk
The programme of the conference:
26 Setpember 2011
14:30 Waldemar Baraniewski
Introduction
15:00 Ewa Małgorzata Tatar (with Dominik Kuryłek)
Island. Now is now.
15:30 Piotr Stasiowski
The experiences of independence of Wrocław's creative circle in the 80s.
16:00 Dominik Kuryłek (with Ewa Małgorzata Tatar)
The perturbation of the late 80s.
16:30 Discussion
17:00 - 18:00 Break
18:00 Aleksandra Jach
"Construction in process" – the community that arose?
18:30 Alexandra Alisauskas
Communists Like Them: Polish Artist Groups at "Kunstlergruppen zeigen Gruppenkunstwerke" (a paper in English)
19:00 Wojciech Kozłowski
Zielona Góra 1979-1991. The unwritten myth.
19:30 Discussion
20:00 Adjournment
27 September 2011
12.00 Łukasz Gorczyca
"What is going on?". Andrzej Bonarski smf hid exhibition activity between 1986 and 1991.
12.30 Dorota Jarecka
Janusz Bogucki – the Polish Szeemann?
13:00 Discussion
14:00 Karol Sienkiewicz
"Without the proverbial pump". CCA and other cases of the state's artistic patronage.
14:30 Aleksandra Ściegienna
A survey of the Art Histrians' "Visual artists 84-86"
15:00 Luiza Nader
Historiography about the socialist realism in the 80s. A case study.
15:30 Discussion
16:00 - 17:00 Break
17:00 Piotr Bernatowicz
The lost heritage. About exclusions in the legacy of Polish art of the 80s.
17:30 Wojciech Włodarczyk
18:00 The reclaimed heritage? The process of historification of the 80s. art.
Panel discussion.
20:00 Closing