When did you first think: I will be an artist?
Probably never. It’s a classic mistake, I didn’t prepare myself for such a scenario. I was convinced that my calling was sound, which intertwined everything around me. Imagination has the greatest room for maneuver here, and you fight an enemy you cannot see. I didn’t think that music-making was part of the list of artistic practices. For me, the word “artist” was used when someone had a serious accident, and that was after drinking. I also didn’t think that making music was part of the list of artistic practices. For me, the word “artist” was used when someone came out unscathed from a dangerous-looking accident, especially after drinking alcohol. Then the grandmothers watching from the fence would say, “Now that’s an artist.”
So where did this transition come from?
I once decided to create graphics for music recordings using the offset technique. I lacked the specialized machines and finances to be able to sit down and work on such a cover. A friend showed me the way to fulfill these dreams (as a self-taught graphic artist) and suggested that I apply to study art, because there I would get all the materials and machines for free, if I got in. I don’t know how, but I got in. And with my first touch of clay and immersion in graphic techniques, I flew away, forgetting about the layers of sound I had been striving for.
Did you have a predisposition? Artistic genes?
I was very lucky that my parents allowed me to educate myself, to relax and develop my own view and understanding of the world. I owe my current mental, physical, and executive state to them… They let me leave the house for the whole day, without any special supervision. Today, the ruling powers, castrated of knowledge about life, and dead legal provisions impose heavy prison sentences for failing to supervise a young person. How are we supposed to learn about life without leaving the house, without getting into trouble, or without encountering other human beings? Only from “others” can we learn something that is not in our genes, something that will push us far away from our parents’ path of learning.
You have to be lucky with people.
I was. The wonderful people I met along the way had the time and willingness to talk to kids because they were sitting on their doorsteps anyway. Today, you won’t find that because every other person is definitely a pedophile… All people are hidden and restricted by top-down laws.
What else made you become an artist?
My hyperactivity and predisposition to constant work, resulting from my background, influenced this decision. My whole family are working-class people and farmers who cultivate the land. That’s why I’m not suited to sitting at home and drawing flowers. I have to carry, move, store, deliver, talk, think, and calculate well. Only chronic physical fatigue keeps my mind fresh, oxygenated, shaken up, and uncluttered. This supports me in moments of overload, allowing me to come up with shortcuts and intricate ways of creating art. In a trance of fatigue and with the time for setting up the exhibition running out, the right decisions emerge, saving me and my time. Images identical to the expected aesthetics also appear, which I only have during sleep, and here they are. With my developed manual skills, I can sketch or build all of this, and I want to continue to nurture it in myself.
Apparently, you took your first steps in the world of art by producing imitation postage stamps and bus tickets for your family? Did you believe that they would function just like the originals?
Even in elementary school, forging documents was a way to make a decent living. I couldn’t afford to buy records, cassettes, or even posters of music bands, so I started making them myself. The formats were the same as the originals, but the technical facilities were worse. I had at my disposal old, clean pages from books from the library, from the first and last pages, and pastel crayons dipped in my mouth or vinegar.
And what came of it?
It wasn’t the printing of my dreams, but it gave me a sense of the presence of a better, “foreign Western” graphic culture. Often, the hand-made copies had something much more endearing about them, mistakes perhaps, but generated from my own code. This meant that I returned the borrowed original without regret and flaunted my hand-drawn copy. Later, I made monthly tickets for most of my family so that I could speed up my life, at least in terms of traveling distances, because we didn’t have a car. There were also postage stamps, prescriptions, and documents. Several people went to the United States because I managed to extend their student IDs by stamping, or rather drawing, a stamp of continuation of studies. When I got into college myself, I took these practices out of my life and transferred them to art. It is a suitable platform for such practices.
And then there were imitations of album covers and cassette tapes. Which ones do you remember best?
I made a lot of album covers and collage-style cassette inserts. I had orders from friends to make drawings similar to the albums of their favorite bands, which also allowed me to get to know “foreign” typographic environments. It taught me humility and a certain discipline in hand printing. Most of the orders were for mainstream bands, such as TSA, Iron Maiden, and Saxon, due to their rich visual layer, or later thrash metal and death metal productions: Slayer, Venom, and Vader – these were based on my musical preferences.
What else did you copy?
I forged items that I wanted to own. Hand stamps from the 19th century, the first pages of very old books, boxes with beautiful labels, or banknotes with well-designed graphics. I copied music on cheap instruments to get closer to high-budget sound recording and production. I also fabricated my credentials to enter an art competition open only to university graduates as a student. This inaugurated what they call an exhibition career that continues to this day.
The deeper you go, the thicker it gets. You put a replica of a cattle car in the Hamburger Bahnhof, build a copy of a devastated Polish tenement house in Blankenberge, Belgium, a cemetery with faithfully recreated tombstones in a gallery in Warsaw, a World War II bunker in London. Critics call you a “genius of the fake” and a “falsifier of reality.” It is a very detailed analysis of material heritage, which is elevated to the rank of art by the artist’s gesture.
The most important thing in these projects is the absence of the original. What’s more, the stories I tell through manufactured or collected objects never happened; they only have the aura of plausibility. Copying in itself is a boring activity, albeit a very instructive one. However, if you start putting it all together using only two “ingredients,” your own dormant genetic resources and the endless deposits of other people’s libraries, you will end up with a Molotov cocktail, ready to mess up the proper assessment of the art on display.
The creation of these precise replicas of reality seems very methodical, even obsessive.
What is very important is the maniacal, months-long, and sincere work that does not succumb to institutional arrangements and technological barriers to planned work. The most important thing is to make a repetition that did not exist… A repetition with a stronger charge of distance, which takes place here, and the context of its setting in the present day. Thanks to this, we can once again take a look at situations, people, or achievements of humanity that we overlooked because we could not be in all places and with everyone, because we are affected by constant technological acceleration. Obsession is welcome in order to conduct multi-channel reconnaissance, research on moving and stationary tissue. It is often a beneficial chemical state of mind, conducive to bolder immersions where it is already too late or not yet allowed.
Faithful reproduction of reality is such a simple reflex of early art. But 20th-century abstract or conceptual art does not respect it. You, however, have managed to transform precise copying of the world into conceptual art.
When I create, I don’t think about whether I will trample on some and praise others. I have to be at least in harmony with myself. Perhaps I have only shown how much can still be gleaned from dusty and discarded wisdom, how to argue with it in the present day. At every stage of approaching art, what matters is inner skill and aesthetic sensitivity tested in various fields. Even a child’s drawing can be turned into a great conceptual treatise.
Are there things, phenomena that you think are impossible to counterfeit? Have you thought about trying, but gave up?
I don’t want to prove to myself or others whether I can fake something or whether I will fail. I only “fake” things that I cannot find for certain reasons and that are necessary for me to establish a precise message. I often let go of ideas where I couldn’t gather most of the imagined needs. So far, all of them—over 400 exhibitions—have taken place on schedule, and I’m happy with them. They helped me get to where I am now, mutating my sensitivity and the “possibility” of certain artistic realizations.
You seem to be very well organized. You said that you carry the seeds of your exhibitions within you until the right circumstances arise to realize them. They wait for their time. Sometimes for a long time.
This is the case with several ideas that are waiting for the right interior space in terms of height, number of floors, and daylight. After all, everything affects the final reception of the exhibition. I cannot imagine compromising on this matter, showing something less or worse. It lies quietly in my resources and gains strength. A good example is letting your mind enter into an “unlimited plan,” in which you have an endless number of people to help you, plenty of time for implementation, and finances with lots of zeros after any number.
The height of comfort!
Such a state of comfort can also be fatal, but personally, it helps me choose from the impossible what is almost possible and achievable in my lifetime. Time is irrelevant to me; I am ready to hand over the work I have started to dedicated successors if, for some reason, I leave this world. I do not program exhibitions “from – to.” Smaller shows build the foundation for more monumental exhibitions. It is good to participate in all processes, not to divide them into work in the studio and in the museum or gallery. I don’t have a studio, I organize and execute everything in the chosen exhibition space. Unless I get an offer to do something in a public place, and that’s a different story.
For example?
I had an idea to displace half of the city in a very short time, so that the person I brought in would feel guilty about the “liquidation” of the community. To make them feel uneasy when, for example, they leave a store and find that the world is deserted, unlike before they entered it. I would subject myself to such measures, as they seem to me to be more powerful than an outstanding film or book. Unfortunately, the number of people to convince, signing contracts with them, GDPR, and adapting the premises within the radius of the action make this project significantly more difficult.
I guess the pandemic has already done this project for you…
But the point was to be able to enter abandoned apartments. First, I ask myself if I would leave my apartment for art. And I would have reservations about whether someone would abuse my hospitality by wandering around my room. This way, half of the projects fly off into space, but I have to articulate them, check them out, and try them out for myself. Then a few remain, and
I wait for the right moment—the space, the budget, the curator—to realize them.
And now, what is the moment?
When Anda Rottenberg called in June about a project for the BWA in Bydgoszcz, I asked her to give me three days to decide on the subject of a solo exhibition. I already knew the gallery space, so I cleared my head, poured the problem out onto my hungry and critical eyes, and then the decision was made to do “Four-Bidden Museum.”
Four identical bourgeois rooms from the late 19th century arranged in a swastika pattern – each furnished with a number of historical objects. Trinkets, medals, diplomas, books, prints, antlers, clocks. They differ only in minor details – it’s like a game of “spot the ten differences.” How did you manage to collect the same number of items?
I had this exhibition in mind for a long time. It evolved in my mind until I talked to Anda, when I realized that we only had a month, and I had planned a lot of items, four times over. The organizers promised to help me find things, and I visited dozens of reliable places and people myself. That’s how we collected half a truckload. The only thing we couldn’t find were four busts of the manufacturer. Instead, I cast a bas-relief from the wall of my house with the image of Józef Kraszewski, the patron of the street where I live. All this to drive the viewer mad and confused as they wander through four identical spaces.
I read somewhere: “I never had the collector’s bug. I just want to get to know as many people, as many stories, and as many objects as possible.” But in another interview, you say: “I have a collecting mania. Sometimes I think that only a fire will save me.” So what’s the truth?
I am treating my addictions, such as collecting, and above all, collecting unnecessary things. Thanks to exhibiting and working on this issue, making this problem public, things are much better and I am now calmer about the “trinkets” at flea markets. I can walk past them dispassionately and without looking at them.
How did you manage to control this obsession?
By bringing it out in myself. I am also growing out of it naturally. This does not mean that I do not have new loves, which you had better not ask about, because we will interrupt our meeting.
Bourgeois German repetitiveness, mass production, mindless repetition of certain patterns became the seed of Nazism – is that the theory you put forward in works such as Four-Bidden Museum?
Then we should probably stop breathing, because it’s repetitive and mindless… automatic. Add to that the serial production of carbon dioxide! However, all of this is necessary to sustain life functions and, in our case, noble cultural values.
We have a problem with overproduction in the world, and you’re still multiplying it! You’re accumulating even more of the already existing objects…
I’m giving them a chance to survive, to prolong the recognition or admiration for such an object in an era of global indifference to yesterday’s achievements. Walking around scrap yards in Berlin, I find new laptops, still in their packaging, for two euros, because companies that have devices older than two years are required to dispose of them – this is according to the law and fire safety regulations in offices located in large buildings. There are more such absurdities, but that’s not the point. In my research on objects, I try to slow down the heartbeat of the earth, to spend more time on the phenomenon of inventiveness and the carriers of these objects. To read the reason and method behind the creation of a thing or a complex device. To consider how to use it for other purposes or functions. I need all of this to create hybrids and “new assemblages” that fuel my exhibitions.
But you still do a lot of exhibitions every year. How do you manage planning and organization? How many people work for you?
On average, I have 30 exhibitions a year. It’s a terrifying number, but it’s a result of the way I work. I run a dozen or so projects at the same time, and as long as I don’t go crazy, I’ll keep it that way. It expands my neurotic network and allows me to take on bolder challenges. I can’t have anyone to help me, because who would understand this organizational mess? I am the cleaner, the curator of the collection, the warehouse keeper, the porter, the driver, and the president of this venture. However, for larger projects, I can invite assistants and subcontractors, which shortens my drudgery and allows me to work with people, which is a lively form of cognition. These are people I no longer need to tell about life or technical basics. They are perfectly aware of their skills, and working with them cements our relationships. It is a great privilege not to have to worry about trivial matters that someone else will take care of for you, but it is ten years of work that has made it possible for us to rely on each other in this way.
How do you save energy or generate it in times of crisis?
I avoid excessive administrative work, which is almost impossible in the era of lockdown. As long as I have the advantage of manual work and I’m on the move, my mind finds the time and way to rest on its own. I have the genome of a manual laborer,
so it’s enough for me to work and have someone to come back to.
Do you have a tendency to procrastinate?
I think it’s more of a tendency to procreate, so as not to settle down for good, because no one will pull me out of my stagnation. Most people die because they end their professional activity. Looking at my parents, I don’t think I’m cut out for rest. But I don’t think I would ever understand it. Would I sit in front of the TV or lie on the couch? Slowing down my exhibition activity, yes, but then I work on one music album or a complex exhibition for about three years – that’s comfort and privilege! I don’t put things off until later, because I would drown in an office tsunami, where I receive 20-25 emails a day about work matters.
You recently told me that your strategy for the future is to return to farming.
Is that just a vision, or are you already implementing it? At the moment, only spirits and silage. But that’s enough for a beginner farmer.
For now, you still live in the city, in Lublin. Have you already bought land in the countryside, are you planning to move?
I already have the land, and now I need more Kuśmirowskis to keep everything under control. I’m also going back to recording and composing music.
Would you like to have a twin brother?
I do, I carry him inside me.
Interview by Monika Brzywczy,
Photos: Krzysztof Kozanowski
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