Instrukcja Janka Simona / Instruction by Janek Simon
Tomasz Baran
Cecylia Malik
HISK - Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent (Belgium) & Muzealnicze Studia Kuratorskie, Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków & Krakowskie Biuro Festiwalowe, Kraków (Polska)
The site of the present exhibition, the Wyspianski Pavilion in Cracow, is a difficult space, of complex meaning and serving several diverse functions. Among a city information point, offices, and a conference room, is an exhibition space. This space is what was given to us and what was presented as an one of several immutable aspects of the project amidst a spiral of facts, events and exchanges which took place over the course of planning and preparation.
Issues concerning inter-institutional cooperation, differences regarding the role and function of education (equally artistic as curatorial), problems of the exhibition space, the significance, or insignificance, of the present exhibition in the careers of the young artists involved – all became the topics that dominated the discussions concerning our undertaking. Finally, we asked ourselves the question: Is art – or rather, “the” art – at all necessary for such a project to be called a success and understood by all the participating sides – institutional and individual – as such?
As a result of our thoughts on the matter, we completely transformed the concept for the exhibition in the final moments indicated by the project deadlines. This was a maneuver that lead most of the project’s participates to a state of consternation at the very least. We soon provoked a Hitchcock-esque situation that began with an earthquake after which tensions only escalated. An exhibition – in the classic sense of the word – will not take place; however, we would still like to define the series of events that will be held in the Pavilion with just such a word. The visual side of this project will be limited to only two lists of names, those of the artists and curators involved, printed respectively on the stationary of each institution.
An idea capricious enough, yet while the project begins in this notion, it does not end at the level of a prank. The aim here is an examination of the most crucial problems and dilemmas presented over the process of our work, those facing the artists and the public – their expectations and our assumptions.
We hope that this project will, on the one hand, become a presentation of the activities of both institutions through presentations by former students of the curatorial studies program as well as artists of the HISK, and, on the other, that it will become a discussion surrounding the problems resulting directly from the organization of this project by us, its curators. Hence panel discussions concerning: the problematic of exhibitions founded on inter-institutional cooperation, the role of the academy in the education of artists, the place of young artists in the complicated structure of the contemporary art world, the methods and paths of career-building for young artists, the situation when artists are denied the ability to insert the fundamental (i.e., visual) medium of their communication, the problems involved in collecting young artists' works, the questions relating to the exhibition space and last, but not least, the limits of materiality of art on display.
The exhibition, CREDITS/CZOŁÓWKA, is thus a confrontation of artists with curators, curators with institutions, as well as of each side with the public. In the process, we hope to reveal some of the dynamics of power that propel the mechanisms of contemporary artistic life, usually presented to the public in a ready product, so-called the “exhibition”.