SEBASTIAN CICHOCKI: For some ten years, you have interviewed artists making “critical” work. How do you think we should understand their various practices?
ARTUR ZMIJEWSKI: Society often takes the artist for a shaman, demiurge, or painted bird—a bit of a madman, someone consumed by an incurable ailment. Obviously, this is just a fabricated phantasm that protects society from real encounters with art, at the same time that it protects the artist from any real responsibility for his or her actions. Many artists today do not want to be cloaked in that myth, however. They do not want such status or immunity, because these are tools of alienation.
SC: Tearing down veils is always fraught with risk. It creates fear in those who want the myth to live on.
AZ: Seeing the true picture involves some loss. What are artists, really, without this phantasm? They are just like other people, somewhat helpless in the world. They are even a bit ignorant, with gaps in basic education. They know little and understand less and, occasionally—like many others—they are incapable of listening. But if artists lose what used to place them above others, why should we listen to them?
SC: What would art be if its role in society was redefined in this way?
AZ: Art is—or it can be, depending on our level of consciousness—an equal partner with other discourses. It deals with the same reality and operates in the same world, talking about the same things. It may take a critical stand—but then science, politics, or social convention can also take critical stands toward art. We are all talking about the same thing: the world in which we live, its restrictions and possibilities, and how we want to construct it. Read more...>
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