Session 1: Theories of Translation and Transfer
Informal Networks in Alternative Official Galleries in Poland and the Concept of Video Art as a Cultural Transfer
Abstract
The received concept of cultural transfer is a combination of a number of aspects: the object of transfer, a demand for an active reception of the transferred content, its transformative adaptation, subjects (human, institutional, infrastructural etc.) mediating these processes, wider contexts (historical, social, political, economic etc.) which make the transfer possible, and the effectiveness of the transfer, its scale, scope and consequences. The concept of cultural transfer can indeed be used as a comprehensive tool for constructing historical accounts of East Central European art history since it allows us to integrate research into, among others, the specificity of local artistic cultures, their comparative analysis, reconstruction of networks of contacts and exchanges, institutional analysis, the study of conditions of artistic production, and exhibition histories. However, certain clarifications of cultural transfer should be introduced to avoid confusion with the transfer taking place between two national cultures. We should consider network transfers or multilateral flows and try to proceed from the notion of transnational to trans-state history, where the question of nations is but one aspect of the story, and, above all, we should ask if through cultural transfers a sort of concrete universalism—singuniversalism or pluriversalizm—emerges.
Drawing on a Polish sociologist Andrzej Rychard's theory of "real communism" as an "institution" which consisted of both official-formal and informal structures and mechanisms, I will propose a conceptual model which goes beyond the simplistic and inoperative dichotomy of official versus unofficial and consists of several interconnected relational aspects: mainstream – alternative; formal – informal; capital – peripheral; public – semiprivate; traditionalist – moderate modern – experimental; aesthetic – sociocultural. This configuration promises to be more relevant and productive in actual cases where "official" and "unofficial" overlap.
Finally, I will present a short case study. The Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin, situated in a peripheral eastern part of Poland, was a formal institution operating under the aegis of the local Lublin Culture House. It’s alternative programme, which was initiated and animated by the director Andrzej Mroczek, was essentially open to contributions resulting from informal artistic networks between countries of East Central Europe and the West. A collective presentation of Polish neo-avant-garde artists Video Art of 1976 (commissioner: Józef Robakowski), which was organized at the gallery, can be interpreted in terms of a cultural transfer of the eponymous concept and the artistic genre it described. I will reconstruct how the transfer was initiated by de Appel Gallery in Amsterdam (which itself acted here as a node of a transcontinental network of the emerging video art scene), what the mutual interests and stakes behind the transfer there were in Polish and Dutch art milieus, and how the transfer was actively received and transformed in the Polish context.
