Art Interventions: Castle of Imagination Endangered!

*** October 10, 2006 ***

Nieves Correa, Spanish performance artist added support:

I want to express all my support to the "real" Castle of Imagination and to Wladyslaw Kazmierczak whom I meet last year in Madrid. I am here for everything you need. The whole affair is a real witch-hunt.
All my love
Nieves.

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Dariusz Fodczuk added: Just to remember

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Meantime: Zbigniew Warpechowski’s bio prepared for In the context of art / Differences Performance Art Festival in Warsaw ends in a sentence: “…This year he agreed to be the curator of “Castle of Imagination” festival in Slupsk, where he inspired a "Symposium of Poetical Realities.”

>>>Text in Polish

Or>>> http://www.spam.art.pl/_new/swidzinski/biogramy_roznice.html

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And finally Wladyslaw Kazmierczak's letter to Dariusz Fodczuk:

To My Friend Darek,

I think this is about time for me to write a few words that possibly will not let us go crazy out of joy. I have to sadden you, dear Darek, not everything is as beautiful and good as we would like it to be. Somewhere in the background of this huge fuss about the Castle a deeply hidden envy towards performance artists-curators shows. I am saddened by the fact that only Z. W. expressed that in an open and absolutely sincere way. Others hide their jealousy underhand and that does not make the future look good for us. Z. W., caring about the Castle silently and solitarily – willy-nilly – pointed his finger at his own dreams. He had never organized anything before, so he wanted to do something positive. He also showed that the Festival is important. He appropriated, overtook the name. He could have not done that, could have ignored the Festival, could have refused and I would have felt like I had been through the wringer. I would have felt unappreciated and turned down. Z. W. had to, however, help that blunder not to give me the satisfaction and decided to use the weapon, that he had thought would aim our weak side. He used the performance art definition, nay, even a philosophy. I saw that especially YOU, so intelligent and experienced, had huge problems getting what was going on between those acts and statements that missed the truth of the definition. Your last letter was nothing more than a brilliant description of that discrepancy. And here our guru made a huge mistake: setting up such a “wartime” definition of performance art (and performance art festival) in the announcement of his own / not his own festival was very problematic. For everyone. For Z.W. as well. Because the energy of this genre of art is in its indefiniteness and absolute freedom.

I am wondering, how it happened, that your unquestionable authority Z.W. all of the sudden made some kind of a fierce volte and went straight downhill. For no real reason. Probably Z. W. encouraged by the success of his previous fussy actions against myself reasoned that also this time he may allow himself the next discrepancy between the thoughts preached and his deeds.
I try to understand the way of thinking of Your Teacher and the Only Creator of Polish Performance Art, I read his previous statements and I slowly find analogies. Z. W. in a book about his own performances (we don’t look inside, we read only what’s on the cover) defines performance art as follows: “…nevertheless, the thoughts that come to my mind make the blood freeze in my heels. I have to write them down, because I can’t chicken out against my own intellect. Here’s one of these thoughts: “performance art may be an archegonium of style.” Everybody knows, what style I think about, and still I would call a style what comes from Rodin’s definition, I won’t deal with school, textbook styles. If once I wrote that performance art is performance art’s critic and going further (here I touch charlatanry) – new art manifestation, that is art, total creation, permanent, absolute (let them hung me, I’m wading further), so may it surprise anyone that style will be born because of it, if we add one condition, the artist’s personality and his spiritual suspension in time. Now I can slacken, now I can bargain, but the price has been set. I know it well, what the cost of such confessions is. You loose your friends and your colleagues cross the street when they see you.”*

I don’t know about you, but I feel bad in the neighborhood of uncontrolled pride and the definition of performance art, whose only aim is to underline the “greatness” of the one who defines, not its intellectual use. The only compensation is the humoristic value in the expressions like “blood freezes in my heels” or “I can’t chicken out against my own intellect”.

Warpechowski repeats Jaques Derrida’s famous sentence “The language bears in itself the need of one’s own criticism” and quotes other performance artists, who say that each performance may be a definition of performance art. This, in its sense dramatic statement, tells us, that performance artist’s fate is cruel. Yes, dear Friend, we have to take this swirl of performers’ emotions into account when we think about the lack of appreciation, money and the ephemerality of our art. Warpechowski overcomes his fears and frustration by attacking other artists. He makes himself the only creator of Polish performance art and his aggression towards other performance artists has been widely known in Poland for more than 20 years. Z.W. with his appropriated patent for being infallible, preaches, teaches, and shouts every now and then. He does it especially when no one wishes him to do that. He adopted this method of his existence in art and he thinks it’s fair. So such a trifle as overtaking the “Castle of Imagination” Festival seems to be an unimportant episode and hence his surprise and feeling offended that whoever dared to say NO all of a sudden. Equipped in his genius he did not expect that out of the blue there would arise the Civic Initiative “Balcerowicz has to stay”**

Warpechowski had also been very lucky: up to now no one had argued with him in English. Foreign artists had not known his statements, his acts nor the content of his books. And suddenly here’s Art Interventions website http://www.republika.pl/art_interventions where English language and the open discussion became his worst enemies. And You, my Friend, writing in English to IAPAO, You crossed the barrier, which Z.W. had thought, no one would ever cross.

And now, after this gigantic action of the Festival’s defense, we know, that dozens of artists from all over the world dared to say mere “no” to Z.W. I think that after this action Z.W. cannot just stand in any gallery in Poland and say: You, Mr. Darek, unfortunately you are not a good performance artists according to my definition of performance art.

Your lifelong Friend and Debtor

Wladek Kazmierczak

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* Z. Warpechowski, Zasobnik. Autorski opis trzydziestu lat drogi z²ycia poprzez sztuke³ performance, Gdan´sk 1998.
** „Balcerowicz has to leave” was a famous slogan of anti-reformatory opposition in Polish politics. Balcerowicz – first ministry of finance in democratic Poland, best Polish economist ever, but blamed for unemployment and all the inevitable side effects of the transformation from communism to capitalism.