Józef Robakowski (cooperation: Małgorzata Potocka), "Cinema is Power! ", 16mm, 1985, 8'
While drawing inspiration from the "tradition of metaphorical montage known from interwar painting, photography, and avant-garde cinema", since the 1960s, manifestoes and self-commentaries became an important part of Józef Robakowski's art. His goal was to objectivise the message of film, to portray photography, film and video as a new type of language which would only be functional if it was void of anecdotes, literary forms and narration. In a 1971 manifesto Calling Once Again for 'Pure Film', he wrote,
Currently the subject of my work is eliminating from film elements characteristic for literature. I am aware that such a conception constrains my freedom of action, raises artificial barriers, and leads me to the peripheries of the genre. I believe however, or rather, am convinced, that through various kinds of experiments, trials, propositions, I will succeed in freeing film from the ballast of habits adopted from literature, uncritically accepted almost universally by both filmmakers and viewers.
Test II, a non-camer film, from 1971 is regarded as one of the most radical statements against the narrativity of the traditional filmic message. The piece was made by puncturing a dark film tape, as a result of which during the screening the viewer is 'attacked' by a strong beam of projector light, producing the effect of afterimage.
Simultaneously, he would conclude that by filming everything around, one always films oneself. A practice he called 'personal cinema', that is, one based on the observation of one's immediate surroundings as well as 'self-observation'. The exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Art (CSW) at the Ujazdowski Castle presents his films, video installations and recordings of performances. His 1970 animated film Market Square is made up of still images of Łódź's Czerwony Rynek square, made every five seconds on a single day between 7 am and 4 pm compressed to just five minutes.
Robakowski also made films which he called 'television re-reports' with clear allusions to the socio-political situation in communism Poland - Brezhnev's Funeral (1982), or Art Is Power! (1984), bringing together footage from a Soviet military parade with music by the Slovenian group Laibach. Also in his later films Robakowski often reached for private, intimate, stories, such as in Joseph's Touch (1989), telling about his three encounters with homosexuality on various stages in his life.
He led a group of students, with whom he strove to establish an independent path for poetry, art and film, detached from the commercial sector. In 1960s he headed the Pętla film club in the 1960s. The group soon turned to mechanical inscription, using machines to explore the power of light, or illumination, as described by Robakowski's own cinema guru, the author of the Tenth muse (1924) Karol Irzykowski. Robakowski recalled the process of using machines to record imagery,
Artists usually function through their consciousness, through their habits. Here there is the kind of habit that we cross the border of the imagination. Therefore the machine registers situations which we are not able to imagine, describe, nor dream up. When we went and set up the camera on the edge of the market square, we could not have known what would have happened. And this camera recorded a reality which could never have been scripted. I could not have foreseen how it would have turned out.
This type of cinema provided a perspective on the concept of "Polish performance", which can be seen as a kind of masochistic performance. The actors use their bodies intensely, even hurting themselves. Using the possibility to "pretend", the participants enjoyed themselves in creating films that were something of a parody on the Polish mentality. In effect, museums were soon clamouring for these works, giving the "joke" a respectability within the scope of culture.
In the summer of 2012 the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw hosted a retrospective of Robakowski's films - Robakowski's own Cinema - between the 5th of June - 23rd of September 2012. The exhibition is accompanied by a hardcover catalogue of photographs and stills. For more information, see: csw.art.pl
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: culture.pl, csw.art.pl
Thumbnail credit: Józef Robakowski, "My videomasochisms II", 1995, 5', film still, photo: CSW Zamek Ujazdowski Warsaw