Ryszard W. Kluszczynski
Trans-media Art. On the Art of Ryszard Wasko
1
Ryszard Wasko is one of those artists whose creative attitude was shaped in
the nineteen seventies. His work was a part of that decade and helped to
form Polish art in the following years. Unconventionality and radicalism of
his works is still a challenge to modern art historians because they demand
equally unconventional methods of interpretation. A scholar analyzing
artistic events in Poland of the last twenty five years, who might try to
describe and interpret Wasko's work by placing it in the space marked by
any of the artistic genre categories, would have to admit quickly that such
an attempt is completely futile. Wasko's works are not limited to any of the
artistic genres he uses because they easily cross the borders between them:
And his individual realizations, even if they remain – due to the materials
used and some general genre manifestations – within a certain kind of art,
they still cannot be explained by referring to the characteristics of that
branch of art which is realized in them. On the contrary, quite often the
fundamental principles which make up the structure of the artifacts come
from a different branch of art than the one in which the works were actually
created and where we would be inclined to place them.
This suggestion leads us to a hypothesis, which I shall try to develop in this
essay, that the character of Ryszard Wasko's work in general, as well as the
character of his individual works, is often defined by inter-generic, intermedia
relations. Those works set in motion a whole net of intertextual
relations on the level of general structural and ontological determinants, and
on the level of different types of perception and rules of interpretation. In
other words, in order to grasp a work which belongs to a certain artistic
genre in its specificity, one should refer to its non-specific features which are
characteristic for another kind of art.
Another hypothesis I would also like to explain here says that if a work by
Ryszard Wasko belongs to a different kind of art than film, it is precisely film
which plays the role of the "intertext" with regard to the work. In such a case
we might also want to examine how the process of intertextual references is
realized with regard to films.
2
As the rust example let us take a photograph, or rather a photographic
construction called The Accident (a police record) from 1971. This work
transgresses the standard of a photographic presentation through the
multiplication of the picture. But it is not the most important fact here. Not
one of the individual photographs making up the whole work presents the
whole of the title event – they show only particular details. But putting those
fragmentary presentations together also does not form the whole picture.
The potential whole here is a mental image, a notion. We do not see the
photograph from a definite, external position, which may be considered to be
a perception perspective specific for this medium, but, like film viewers we
are placed within the world presented. Our looks are not located or fixed in
one point, but they are subordinated to the edited structure and thus they
move from one place to another. But unlike in the case of a film this change
of the vantage point is not developed in a linear way – it moves in many
directions and it is not limited in time. In a film we have to do with a few
time levels: the level of the time of the film itself, the level of time of the
presented world (diegetic time), and the time of perception.
The Accident using cinematographic conventions places them within the
temporal order of photography, where we actually have to do only with the
time of perception. This is where the aspect of infinite presentation
characteristic for this work and its static-dynamic order spring from.
Many other photographic works consisting of many elements and created in
the first half of the seventies in a similar, but not identical way, transcends
the determinants of the medium. From O° to 180° (1971) is a photograph
which joins into one a series of pictures that somehow represent the
movement of a human bead being raised from the earth to the sky by means
of a constant, linear movement of the point of view of the camera. Movement
is also inherent in the structure of a series of works entitled Fourdimensional
Photograph (all from 1972). In the first work six horizontally
placed photographs presenting a city landscape reveal the growing
disturbance (motion) which is introduced into the static photograph by
movement and thus – by the element of time. In the second work of the
series an abstract graphic element – a line, which replaced the
representation of an object – undergoes the same process that was described
above. In a few other photographic works which came into being in the
middle of the decade Wasko continued to manipulate spatial structures in
relation to the perception process. Reduction - Enlargement - Attempt (1975)
or The Listing of Space Using Numbers 1-8 (Attempt II), created in 1976, are
examples of other works in which multiple photographic systems situate the
observer in a sequence of ever changing vantage points, but always in the
same space. The viewer is usually placed within the world he observes, not
in some distant, external position. And always – as in the works discussed
above – the overall vision is created by the imagination of the observer; it is
not simply the object of his vision.
All the works described until now are characterized by a deconstructive
attitude towards the medium in which they are created – i.e. photography,
whose borders and determinants are problematized, but the works still
remain within the limits of the medium. It is possible mainly due to the fact
that the deconstruction of photography takes place using the attributes of
the film medium which is a development of the medium of photography. Film
determinants, such as time and movement, disturb and transform the
photographic order of Wasko's works. The intertextual connection of
photography and film deconstructs the former, defining at the same time the
character of individual works.
This character is different in works where photography is elongated and
transformed by drawings. A Hypothetical Photograph (1977) is a series of
illustrations, the first one of which is a photograph: a city landscape that
changes into an abstract form by means of a drawing (contour lines are
drawn around objects, creating "diagrams") projected in a series of nine
other illustrations. The deconstruction of photography turns to
abandonment of photography in this work. In Enlargement – a work created
one year earlier – graphic structures enter into the structure of photography
disturbing the relation of representation. The origins of this kind of
experiments may be found in a work from 1972 called The "n" Chair. The
photograph used in this work was also disassembled and transformed into
an abstract arrangement.
In all the discussed works we can also observe a conflicting tension between
artistic and meta-artistic language. The energy released in this reaction
possesses both a deconstructive and cognitive aspect. The object of Wasko's
deconstructive analysis is the nature of the medium. In the case of
photography we have to do with the problems of relation between the
picture-representation, the object and reality. All the symptoms of metaartistic
reflection accompany the intertextual discourse which builds a
system of various inter-media relations. Together they form a net of
references, derivations and transgressions determining the situation of art
remaining in the process of constant border transgression, art which
constantly rejects its old spheres and forms, art which rejects itself.
3
In the seventies besides photography Ryszard Wasko was also interested in
film-making. He was one of the first members of the “Film Form Workshop”,
the most important formation of avant-garde cinema in post-war Poland. The
group was founded in 1970 by the graduates (some lecturers including) and
students of the Film School in Lodz. In spite of its cinematic origins and its
name the “Film Form Workshop” possessed a decidedly polymorphic nature,
as the members of the group were not only directors or cameramen, but also
photographers, plastic artists, musicians and poets. The open nature of the
“Workshop” allowed all of them to find their place in its programme,
especially because many of their artistic endeavors were clearly closely
related to happenings or performances.
Ryszard Wasko became a “Workshop” member in 1971. The following year
he made his first films within the programme of the FFW. He quickly became
one of the most prominent artists of the group. He took part in numerous
presentations of world avant-garde cinema of the decade, such as, for
example, "International Experimental Film Festival" in Knokke-Heist
(1974), "Film als Film" in Kolnischer Kunstverein (1977) or "Film as Film" in
Hayward Gallery in London (1979).
Wasko's films, like his photographs, combine an analytical attitude (towards
the medium) with the intertextual tendency to transgress the genre borders.
The Padlock (1972) develops a non-cinematic narration by means of referring
to photography (motionless, static frames impose this feature on cinematic
images). Registration (1972) is based on space manipulation, constructing by
means of counterpoint use a series of pictures engaging the imagination of
the viewer and deceiving him finally by the vision of an impossible space.
This film (like the photographic work The Accident, discussed earlier) tries to
place the viewer within the constructed space. This time it operates in
accord with the nature of the medium, even though the construction of the
discourse has much in common with photography. The Wall (1972)
transforms a direct film registration through its non-chronological editing
(after cutting it into very short pieces) and through sound counterpoints. In
The Sidewalk (1972) Wasko again uses the intertextual reference to
photography because movement appears there as a result of connecting and
dividing static images created by means of ones animation. System I-VI
(1973) is an analysis relations between pictures and sound, which, by the
way, plays the role of media intertext in many films by Wasko and other
artists centered around the “Film Form Workshop”. The film 30 Sound
Situations (1975) which, in turn, studies those relations in reference to
perception rather than to ontology of the film. In all those works by Wasko,
as well as in those I have not mentioned, one can notice clearly analytical
interests in the spatial dimensions of the cinema. I Walk Between (1975)
ultimately leads the cinema in the sphere of performance art (to a lesser
degree it was also attempted in his other films, like in the aforementioned 30
Sound Situations). It is only one of the many roads which Wasko's cinema
takes to leave its original realm. The analytical attitude which has a lot to do
with conceptualism and structural cinema concentrates its attention
primarily (if not exclusively) on media determinants and it neglects not only
expression, but also form conceived objectively. It concerns both film and
photography in the same degree. In Wasko's works created in these two
media the objects gradually disappear from the pictures and images. The
function of representation is replaced in them by an abstract analytical
discourse. A lot of works and photographic and cinematic projects have been
devoted totally to discussions of problems that are of interest to him, such
as, for example, the question of relation between the plane (of a photograph
or the screen) and space.
The cinema of Ryszard Wasko, like his photographs, is stretched between
the internal analysis of the medium, the study of its mathematical logic, and
the external analysis of its relations and connections. Photography found its
intertext above all in the film medium, while external intertextual functions
in the case of film are filled by different media that are also present (in
various ways and to various degrees) in cinematic structure: photography,
sound art and performance are examples of these artistic disciplines. Their
active presence within and without the medium of film problematizes the
opposition between "the inside" and "the outside", making transgression and
transmedializm the essential features of works by Ryszard Wasko.
4
His video works occupy a similar place within the realm of art. In his
installation Corner (1976) he problematized the phenomenon of direct
transmission, analyzing simultaneously the relation between reality and its
representation, between real space and presented space. Another
important aspect of this work is the spatial character of the installation itself
(the monitor) – it is a point where real space meets the representation of
space, so the installation not only deconstructs the medium of video, but it
also comes into an intertextual relation with sculpture and environment art.
The problem of presented space in video art, this time in an intertextual
relation not only to spatial arts, but also to performance art, returns in
Wasko's video-performance-installation called The Space Beyond (1976). His
video-performance (created in the same year) entitled The Fatigue of My Leg
draws our attention to the position of the artist as the subject of
unintentional intrusions in the structure of the work – which also presents
the work itself (in accord with McLuhan's ideas) as the extension of human
psychophysiological activity. The problem of the intrusion of the medium in
the structure of the work Wasko examines in another work called
Enlargement (1976).
Some of his video works of the seventies, like, for example, Measurement
(1976), were extensions of his earlier film experiments. Most of them
combined the continually present in them transmedia perspective with the
analysis of the features of the new creative instrument – video. However, all
of them were open, both structurally and notionally – they were
consecutive stages of a mental process within the limits of which various
aspects of the medium were analyzed.
5
It would seem that photography, film and video were basic creative
instruments for Ryszard Wasko. However quite early in his career, at least in
1977, one might clearly notice signs of transformations in Wasko's works
(the artist himself believes his turning-point work to be Model 50, created in
1976). In the second part of this essay, when writing about his 1977 work
Hypothetical Photograph, I said that the deconstruction of the medium
becomes its gradual rejection. Other works of the same kind followed: a
second version of Hypothetical Photograph (1978), a series of works under a
common title Hypothetical Film (1979). The artist rejects the media he bad
been employing until now and reaches for new means of expression, he
moves away from technology and from the danger of being enclosed in one
particular style. But he does not do away with his earlier attitude which
basically may be described as an inclination towards elementary qualities.
Among other features of his work that survived the crucial time of change
(proving their importance) one should mention space, time, movement,
dynamics, light, fragmentation, incompleteness, inconclusiveness,
transformation, transgression and transmedialism. The works created in this
paradigm escape general perception – the whole is elusive, but, on the other
hand, it is necessary to understand the details we perceive. What is
necessary is then the intrusion of structural imagination (this aspect of his
works is fundamental for all artistic projects related to conceptual
strategies). The position of the audience becomes dynamic and the gradual
nature of perception corresponds to (at least for the time of perception) the
structure of the work which takes on an analogous shape.
Not only his contemporary works, but also works from the eighties contain
the seeds of this project. In time transmedialism begins to dominate in
Wasko's work over the analytical perspective. Black Film (1983), Checkpoint
Charlie (1987) or Quinta essentia (1988) develop in a series of intermedia
relations. Many of his works of this period possess their basic general
feature and they are still in contact with film, which was rejected as the
medium of expression, but which returned as an intertext. Their static
structure consisting of many elements gives the impression of a process in
motion (and thus also in time). A particularly interesting example here may
be a work created in 1986 – Holistic Event, also known as Homage for the
Street. A construction of many elements – black polyhedrons – was laid out
on the floor of the gallery. Their shape and appearance evokes associations
with a piece of film tape. The movement of the film is replaced here by the
movement of the receiver who – moving within the space of the gallery –
builds a reversed but still dynamic relation with the imaginary "film". At the
same time the movement of the viewer represents a walk on the street, hence
the other part of the title. This dynamism is completed by the perceptive
changeability of the work dependent on the changing light (natural light
coming through the windows of the gallery). This work, while keeping its
intertextual relations with film, seems to be its ultimate rejection. It is a
move towards plastic visualization, towards matter, texture, paint; physical
activity and real space. Towards new creative possibilities.
6
At the end of this short outline of Ryszard Wasko's work I should mention
one more very important aspect of his creative endeavors. For many years he
has been an initiator and organizer of numerous artistic ventures. Special
significance must be attributed particularly to a series of exhibitions under a
common title "Construction in Process". It was organized for the first time in
Lodz in 1981 and it possesses a certain interesting feature: artists who are
invited to participate in it invite in turn another group of participants, which
gives the exhibition a dynamic, open and common character, perfectly
harmonizing with the idea expressed in the name of the project. Its concept
goes back to the time of “Film Form Workshop” when many artistic projects
were based on creating possibilities and contexts for the expression of other
artists. The transgression we observe in this case questions the borders
between "pure" artistic creation and creation conceived as organization. A
similar idea was the guiding principle in establishing the Artists' Museum.
This institution also should be treated as an artistic project because activity
in the realm of art, if it is undertaken in the name of art, cannot tolerate any
barriers, conventions or limits.
Published in: Ryszard Waśko. Retrospective 1970-1990 (photography, film, video), Galeria
FF, Lodz 1997.