THE ARTIST AS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST OF CONTEMPORARY TIMES

On the one hand, there is nothing new to contemporary art. All styles and techniques were worked out by modernist avant-garde movements, whose presence in contemporary culture is validated by the post-modern strategy of quotation. On the other hand, everything has changed. Art no longer needs the form, God or the absolute.

The fundamental changes in art are organically connected with the changes in culture. It is not just a new avant-garde, style or trend. The current situation can be compared to that at the advent of Christianity, which marked the end of the ancient civilisation. According to Hans Robert Jauss "the word modernus was used at the end of the fifth century to denote the contemporary, new and official Christian reality and separate it from the past pagan Roman reality" (J. Habermas "Modernism: Uncompleted Project", in: Postmodernizm. Antologia przekładów, ed. R. Nycz). Nowadays, the new post-modern modernisation is reshaping the intellectual habits, including our way of thinking about art.

The features of art correspond to the features of contemporary thought. Art is characterised by the dynamic and labile character of structures, which is in opposition to statics and hierarchy. It is the mAs the form is ambivalent, contemporary art focuses on the artist. That is why the artist is central to art, especially as the latter is synonymous to the form of aesthetic objects. Due to the relation between art and life, be it real or be it just postulated, the individuality of the artist defines art. Uli Krauss´s father owned a butcher´s shop. Uli himself is a cook and a renowned expert on South German and French cuisine. He knows all the tricks of the trade and uses them to build up his artistic technique. Contemporary art stems from life itself and does not need anything else, let alone another art. It is enough when you consider yourself an artist. What used to be a provocative gesture of modernist avant-garde movements has now become a natural artistic practice.

Yet, it does not suffice to know how to handle an art form. It is necessary to integrate the form with the sphere of meanings. Meanings, which are coded by the artist and decoded by the recipient, refer directly to the artist and, more generally, to the human being. This, by the way, is the only acceptable generalisation. With this approach, live art (performance art) is the only adequate formula. Performance is the art of human condition. Such are the prerequisites and possibilities of contemporary art.

Every performance is about the human being, because such is the nature of this form. Performance is an anthropologisation of art and stands in opposition to the formalism of modernist "art for art´s sake". The use of a myth points out to the universal heritage of Western humanism. What is more, the myth moves us to an even older tradition reaching beyond history, that is to the archaic history, whose only evidence is mythology serving as the non-material proof of the existence of human spirit. Thanks to this non-material artistic fact we can introduce the old tradition into contemporary culture and find its up-to-date representation in contemporary art.

Uli Krauss´s presentation was performed as a ritual ceremony. Yet, it was not a rite as such. Contemporary art, especially in its anthropologised forms such as performance, has a human dimension; it is not religious in its character. It is man, not any supernal being, that is its point of reference. Art has no practical purpose, while rites were usually performed to achieve a certain goal. An aesthetic object, which used to be a goal in itself, is left out and does not belong to the discourse about art. Neither does the notion of beauty. Art which is performed as a quasi-rite serves to express the artist´s contest with the world. Contemporary art is anthropologised and can be understood and practised as anthropology. Performance art is a modern form of quasi-rite in which the individual and the universal meet and unite.

Uli Krauss´s performance "Requiem for Martias" consisted of two mutually coherent parts. Firstly, a goat was deprived of its hide and hanged high upon the ceiling of the gallery. Uli Krauss stood at the top of a ladder, performing his rite slowly and solemnly. Due to his craft not a single drop of blood was shed. The animal´s entrails fell to the previously prepared vessels. Then, single slices of meat were cut off and thrown down to the gallery floor. They fell on the photographs of antique sculptures and illustrations with examples of pathology of human body. All the pictures were covered with gelatine mixed with wine. After several hours there was only a skeleton hanging in the gallery. Uli Krauss came down to the floor and started preparing a meal, using the goat´s meat as its main ingredient. In the second part of the performance, the audience was invited to taste the broth.

The gallery space was divided into two spheres: the earthly, or corporeal, and the heavenly, or spiritual. To put it differently, they were the spheres of art and the artist. In this way the gallery became a model of existential situation which is best described in the "artist-in-art" formula. The earthly was represented by pictures, which served as a reference to art as well as to the human condition. The ost important tenet of postmodernism, giving birth to all other features of contemporary world and thought as well as to everything that is contemporary in art. Hence, postmodernism allows accepting the human being and human condition as the model for art. It is also the source of contemporary art´s forms and meanings.

The definition of art has always been tantamount to the definition of beauty and the universal, statistic set of beliefs about beauty. Yet, the notion of beauty has disappeared from the discourse on art and culture; it is used only on the popular level, where the intuitive definition of beauty coincides with sensual pleasure. Yet, art is not necessarily "the nice thing".

Modernist art tended to destroy, or to deconstruct, the notions of art and beauty. As this process went on, classical beauty underwent "brutalisation" (in the sense of art brut) in order to broaden art´s scope. Today there is no connection between art and beauty. The latter ceased to be an art category and is no longer artistically useful. Art is everywhere and everything, including the classical form, is art.

Uli Krauss made use of the myth of Martias in his performance. Martias was "a Silenus living in the woods of Phrygia; he found the aulos dropped by Athena and, proud of his play, dared Apollo to enter a music contest with him; the listeners decided that it was the god who played more beautifully; the punishment for Martias´ conceit was severe: Apollo tore off his skin and hanged him on a tree; Martias´ blood turned into a spring, which later on changed into a river" (Słownik kultury antycznej, ed. Lidia Winniczuk). The ancient culture was once (and that was not a long time ago) a universal language used for expressing the generally accepted values, including artistic ones. Today culture has neither such a language, nor such values and, what is most important, this is its positive aspect. Martias´ story, told in Ovid´s Metamorphoses, was the groundwork for the performance. It constitutes a pretext for contemporary art.

Latter is somatic and determined by our corporeality. This is where the viewers and participants of the performance belong. The heavenly sphere, related to Martias and Apollo, is the spiritual, mental and intellectual reference. It concerns the mind and intuition, comprising the conscious and the incomprehensible, as well as happiness, suffering, success and defeat. It is also the sphere in which the artist-performer operates. "Sometimes it is a success, and sometimes it is not", says Jan Œwidziński rendering this commonplace observation into the matter and form of his performances. The result of a performer´s activity has to be accepted. Every outcome is a positive one, because it is art, and art is life.

The coexistence and mutual penetrability of the worldly and the heavenly were the basis of the performance. The human, inner point of view does not set the hierarchy of meanings. Instead, it forms a dialogue. In performance art the meaning can not be fully predetermined by the artist. Meanings emerge from the activity and from the interaction with the viewer. Such an attitude is consonant with the standards of thinking in contemporary post-modernist world. Art does not strive to reach the absolute or a preordained ideal. It does not explain the meanings that are hidden in forms. To start art history anew is not its objective. Moreover, art is not performance´s goal at all. The human being is central. The performer who places himself in art is art´s essential element.

Live art is a game in which new answers are found, yet, no solution is final. Art creates a feedback loop and this is its most desired cultural and artistic consequence. At a techno party I saw a DJ´s reaction to the audible effect of feedback. He used an accidental phenomenon to create music out of it. This is what theatre people call "winning a situation" when they want to hide a mistake. It happens in static situations that do not allow flexibility because of a predetermined plan to make the form perfect. Each unforeseen element is a catastrophe if the form is completed in advance. In post-modernist art forms (including electronic music) such a situation can be used as material for further creation. This, however, calls for a revolution in thinking. To use feedback creatively we have to change our approach to art and culture, accepting open-end situations and a dialogue. The well-known post-modernist principle "anything goes" is practicable, though it can be misunderstood and interpreted as a manifestation of artistic cynicism. And indeed, in modernist thinking about art, it can be an abuse because modernism used aesthetics to define art. In postmodernism, this principle expresses the current creative character of contemporary art and culture. Art and life create a feedback that bears fruit.

Łukasz Guzek
Tr. Katarzyna Buczak