malga

THE UNDERGROUND THAT WILL NEVER BECOME THE ESTABLISHMENT

A screening of Małgorzata Kubiak´s films made me realize that two essential traditions that have shaped Western culture and sustained its vitality were absent from Polish culture: psychoanalysis and underground. Yet it is only in the context of the two traditions that Małgorzata Kubiak´s films and books can be understood. And not just them, but also the peculiar type of personality presented in and through them, or, to put it simply, Małgorzata Kubiak herself.

Neither of the two traditions of Western culture has ever been a Polish specialty. In postwar (and prewar) literature, art and other areas of creativity, they could be found as trace elements only. It is an immense cultural gap. Realization of their absence helps to illuminate the view of contemporary Polish art, or at least certain processes occurring in it. It also explains typical reactions of its recipients. These remarks refer not only to art, but to contemporary Polish culture in general.

Contemporary Polish culture, in its broadest meaning of a system, was formed under the influence of the PRL (Polish People´s Republic) variety of Communism. It is one of the reasons why Polish culture is completely incompatible with Europe and the Western world, also in the systemic sense; systemic, i.e. that of integrating, coordinating the individual with the general, everyday practices with strategic decisions.¹ The dependence of culture on its political past has permanent consequences in the present time, e.g. for its artistic aspect. Andrzej Turowski coined the term "polish ideosis" to describe this situation.² The art (and culture) of the ideosis is politically determined in every aspect (for instance, in its narrow sense of the subject of a work, and its broad sense of a cultural system). The contemporary expression of Polish ideosis is the aforementioned cultural gap, a result of the cultural policies of the Communist period. On the other hand, Polish cultural establishment, the so-called "luminaries of culture", would now have the society believe that while there is a thing or two in the economy that ought to be reformed, with respect to culture we already belong in Europe. Nothing or very little is being done to bring about a change in the condition of culture. It is an enormous deception and at the same time a self-deception on the part of the elite, perpetrated so that a few elderly gentlemen could maintain a good frame of mind. Actually, our culture is as distant from Europe and the world of Western culture as our steel industry and agriculture. Perhaps Polish reforms should have begun with culture anyway. It would be easier to win farmers and steelworkers to them if general awareness were created that the changes in the economy were a part of the transformation of the cultural system, and not a mere invention of technocrats.

Małgorzata Kubiak left Poland twenty-five years ago. The oldest participants in the events on contemporary Polish art scene can still recall the young and courageous artist who bathed naked in a waterfall in Elblšg in 1973, during a festival organized by the EL gallery. She emigrated to Sweden shortly afterwards. She remembers that a leftist climate prevailed at the School of Fine Arts in Göteborg at the time and everybody was painting factory workers. She made over a hundred self-portraits back then and the students hated her work. ³ She has traveled a lot in Europe and both Americas. She is the author of three books: Dirty Paradise (1992), Babe Trouble (1994) and Scheisse Elysees (1997). She writes in English only and does not allow to improve or refine the English of her texts.⁴ American literary critics, so fond of clarity, described her as a "neo-neo Beat dame", placing her books next to Burroughs´s Naked Lunch and Ginsberg´s Howl.⁵ She has also her own band, Miss Mess, who play a kind of punk rock, with Miss Mess herself shouting out lyrics that vary between more and less articulate. Her friends Nick Cave and Lydia Lunch as well as other familiar and not-so-familiar figures of the underground have appeared in her films.

During her stay in Poland Małgorzata Kubiak showed her movies in Łodz (the Wschodnia gallery), Krakow (the Atmosfera club, the screening organized by the QQ gallery) and Sopot (the Gazownia gallery). They were called The Ego Trip, the common title of the whole of Małgorzata Kubiak´s film production.⁶ The word "trip is used here in its slang meaning of being under the influence of a drug, especially a psychedelic, i.e. consciousness-altering one. The ego is compared to a psychedelic drug whose influence enables one to make a peculiar cognitive journey to one´s interior. Also, the ego stimulates to action; it causes all other things to happen, determines the course of a person´s life. Simultaneously, it is the drug whose effect lasts the longest: a lifetime. Every action is taken under its influence. Or, to put it differently: one is irreversibly addicted to it, keeps using it and starts from scratch over and over again. In Małgorzata Kubiak´s case, the ego-drug is actually her sex, which determines everything: both life and artistic activity. Narcotics as well as sex, literature and films act as a catalyst of the ego-drug. They are not the "heroes" here, contrary to the counterculture of the sixties, when sex and drugs were important in themselves and used in order to flaunt the strangeness of its lifestyle. Małgorzata Kubiak is a part of that tradition, but in another generation, as indicated, apart from a different attitude to stimulants, by lack of political reference points in her creations. Which is right, since politics was the biggest illusion of that historic counterculture.

In art, the ego is not the same as individualism of solutions: the former stresses the content of an object; the latter, the novelty of its form. Yet the Polish art world considers formal innovation to be the driving force of artistic life and the key to an artistic career. It is a typically modernist attitude. Unexpectedly, the presentation of Małgorzata Kubiak´s movies proves that Polish artists stick to modernist thinking and as long as they do not move on, contemporary art will not be possible in this country. The formalistic approach posed problems with the reception of Małgorzata Kubiak´s films during the shows in Poland. What was there to be seen then? Shots filmed with the camera handheld or mounted on a tripod and recording whatever fit in the frame; shots that were long, too long and monotonous, the lighting varying during a shot or awfully arranged; poor focus or unsteady depth of focus; finally, the randomness of sets, repetition of motifs and the simplest of scripts and editing. This style could be defined as "dirty cinema" or classified as home video. But even if we were able to describe to ourselves the origins of this kind of art in familiar terms and find its ancestors, it would turn out that we still had not reached to the essence of her art. In fact, the most important question is not which of the available conventions and aesthetic principles was employed here, what procedure was carried out. Certainly, all the material could be lit and filmed better. The production could be more professional. But video art must not be confused with cinema, especially with its Hollywood variety, which is often the case. The video-aesthetics of Małgorzata Kubiak´s films corresponds to the content of the communication, or, according to the author, the ego. Therefore, Małgorzata Kubiak´s biography is at once her artistic biography, her videography. Her films should not and actually cannot be analyzed in isolation from her life, from a purely formal perspective. Their strength lies in their realism. Their aesthetics is realistic.

The above quality is the source of another perpetual problem of reception, characteristic of Poland, though not exclusively so. Małgorzata Kubiak´s films are generally regarded as too erotic, if not downright pornographic. How can they be pornographic, when the woman has sex with her husband? It would seem that the contemporary viewer is accustomed to eroticism. Yes, he is, but, to be precise, to the cinematic treatment of eroticism. Let us now consider a graphic sex scene from a professional film, even a porn movie. Let us then imagine how the scene is filmed: numerous film crew members, such as cameramen, sound engineers, lighting technicians, directors, various assistants etc. are hovering over the pair of actors-lovers. So it is possible to shoot sex using several cameras to make it look nice, to light the scene well and edit it ingeniously. It will make for smooth and pleasant viewing. But then one can always say, "it´s only a movie, it´s not real" (although it may look so), and to pacify one´s (or someone else´s) ego with the explanation. Such an explanation is a form of self-censorship and the censor is placed in our own heads. That is the one thing we cannot say about Małgorzata Kubiak and her films. She is really doing IT and expresses it very clearly to us. Her choice of cinematic means leaves no doubt that we are not dealing with actors here and that it is not a professional, studio production. Consequently, we are unable to distance ourselves from the picture we are watching. The camera merely records, and the editing, very economical and purposeful, is a result of authorial decisions. That is why the film is really a vivisection of the ego, is commissioned by it and presents it without imposing limitations on itself. The autotelic nature of the art is expressed in the frantic masturbation. And not just that; the whole erotic content of the films as well as the images of violence are self-referential.

However, "the ego trip" is not only a personal matter. It is also a cultural question. Western culture is individualistic, which enables it to encompass psychoanalysis and the phenomenon of Małgorzata Kubiak, whereas exploring one´s ego, the "I" as a material for art, self-analysis as artistic strategy are virtually non-existent in Polish culture. On the other hand, these means of expression are the most easily available to everyone. Why is it that the resources are so seldom utilized then? Surely because the tradition is not established in Polish culture. To take interest in oneself, in one´s ego, somehow did not seem right in Poland recently, it was not cultural, not in the sense of etiquette, but with regard to the professed code of cultural values. Such an attitude usually incurred charges of egoism. Concentrating on oneself which assumes the form of "ego trip" is not the same as egoism, though. Egoism denotes pathological insensitivity, an individual flaw in character that can be corrected. "The ego trip" is a cultural and civilizing trait of character; the ego coordinates individual and cultural qualities. Małgorzata Kubiak´s ego and art result as much from her character and personality as from the cultural factors, these being the conditions outside the ego and independent of a person, which the ego has been "thrown" into and operates in out of existential necessity. It means that there is a sort of cultural approval of Małgorzata Kubiak. Western culture can comprehend her and her video art, just as Polish culture and viewers cannot. This is the true cause of the indignation which, to simplify matters, is attributed to the erotic content instead.

There are other reasons that make Małgorzata Kubiak compatible with Western culture. The creation of underground presupposes a strong and consolidated official culture, which forces us to resort to the resources of the ego in order to survive and not become consumed by it, to be able to confront it face to face, day after day. There is no other way for anyone who respects himself and his individuality. That sort of culture, strong in values and traditions and not with the police and government institutions, did not exist in Poland in recent years. And the present cultural lack of understanding of the needs of the ego results not only from the fact that it was not possible to reconcile Freud with Marx in the Soviet Union, but also from the Polish opposition´s failure to create a sufficiently strong cultural alternative to the official system, which, incidentally, proves that the system was weak in that it did not produce the need for a powerful opponent. Today, although ten years have passed since the fall of Communism, the official culture is still not potent enough to generate an equally strong opposition, or its underground, its cultural antagonist. Only if the values of official culture are strong, can it create an alternative whose values will be strong. But there is more to it: the true strength of official culture consists in its ability to assimilate ideas that are critical, opposed to it, which is equivalent to the ability to regenerate its creative resources.

It may appear that the cultural opposition in Poland was strong; after all, every artist who would not conform to the official standards, placed himself exactly on that side of the fence. On the other hand, it must have only been so because the official offer was so meager and empty. Before the war, the same political ideology did generate an artistically interesting underground, for instance, in the form of the so-called Pierwsza Grupa Krakowska (First Krakow Group), concentrated around the Cricot theater. Today it turns out that all former underground is desperately striving to become the establishment. The only reason why someone continues to be in opposition is that he was refused admittance to the salons. The assimilation of underground into the official culture has to be effected on its own terms, however, since otherwise it immediately loses its identity and thus becomes deprived of all that is valuable about it. In such a "castrated" form, it is culturally worthless, both for the establishment and for itself. The dissident artists awaiting the favor of artistic institutions are therefore justly rejected, and, what is more, by both sides - they have nothing to offer to anyone any more. This is also true of those who managed to enter the official salons before they were closed, or became full, for having given up their oppositional stance, they cut themselves off from the source of fresh concepts and creative energy. But the salon is ruled by force of inertia, so it does not take a lot of profound and original thinking to remain a part of it. The artists who understood that have carefully "dosed" the official structures with themselves. That is the essence of the underground´s self-awareness and its "nourishing" value for culture. A culture that does not cultivate its underground is weak and separated from the supply of new ideas, which condemns it to wither away. One should only hope that one day Polish official culture will be worth its underground.

The value of Małgorzata Kubiak´s presentation consists in that it is an example of an underground that has its history and is firmly rooted in its own traditions and mythology, which, as a matter of fact, her books draw on freely. At the same time, it is a form of underground that will never become the establishment. It will never be possible for it to exist within the institutional framework of official culture. Małgorzata Kubiak is in no danger of being institutionalized. The reason for that is not the open sexuality of her films, as it is not obscene in an unacceptable way (it is nothing compared to Pasolini), or the presence of drugs (there are plenty of them in any thriller), or the formal and technical qualities of the productions. These films cannot be different. Otherwise they would only be movies, porno-Hollywood, not video art. The movie world is not a realistic one. It is not the world of Małgorzata Kubiak, the world in which her ego attains self-fulfillment. After all, she is real, not cinematic. She, or rather her ego, is the only cause of the origin of these films. And it is the realism of the presentation of her ego that is the most underground, genetically countercultural. In the poem On Burroughs´ Work Allen Ginsberg wrote⁷: The method must be purest meat/and no symbolic dressing,/[…], and further on in the same poem: A naked lunch is natural to us,/we eat reality sandwiches./But allegories are so much lettuce./ Don´t hide the madness. Their open realism makes it impossible to sell these films (for the purposes of propaganda) as a cultural model, as an ethical thesis for social consumption. The art connected with life is an insurmountable barrier for the artistic establishment which produces institutionalized official culture. The artist proves more important than art; to be an artist is more revolutionary than any work of art.

Łukasz Guzek
tr.Robert Gałązka

¹ "Systems viewing consists in perceiving the world in terms of the systems of integrated relations." Ervin Laszlo, The Systems View of the World, USA, George Braziller, Inc. 1972. back

² Andrzej Turowski, "Polska ideoza", w: Sztuka polska po 1945 "Polish Ideosis", in: Polish Art after 1945, Warsaw, 1987, p.31 back

³Jessica Willis, "Malga the Conqueror", NY Press, Jan 29-Feb 4, 1997 back

⁴ Małgorzata Kubiak comes from a family of literary traditions: her father, Tadeusz Kubiak, was an admired poet in his time, and her paternal uncle is Zygmunt Kubiak, the author of the excellent "Mitologia Greków i Rzymian" Mythology of the Greeks and Romans back

⁵ Jessica Willis, "Malga the Conqueror", NY Press, Jan 29-Feb 4, 1997 back

⁶ Music to The Ego Trip and to few other Małgorzta Kubiak´s films were composed by Zbigniew Karkowski, interactive electronic music composer from Krakow, currently lives and works in Tokyo. back

⁷ Allen Ginsberg, On Burroughs´ Work, in: The Green Automobile (1953-1954). back