Songster

The video Songster, which is a recorded performance directed by the R.E.P. collective, is a recollection of different artworks and artistic events which, in the past two decades, have caused scandals, public controversies, or interventions of the authorities in different parts of the globe. The several episodes include, for example, the censorship of the Soc-Art exhibition by the Tretyakov State Gallery management and the Russian Ministry of Culture before its showing in Paris (2007), the photograph by Andres Serrano destroyed in 2011 in the museum in Avignon, or the court trial of Dorota Nieznalska, author of the installation Pasja [Passion], accused of offending religious feelings.

The non-standard history of the newest art told from the perspective of contemporary iconoclasm, political decisions about art, or the pernicious relations between artists and religion, history, or politics, has been presented here in the form of a song monotonously chanted by a folk singer. The footage was recorded at Kościuszko Square in Białystok. The singer tells the chanted story standing in the most prominent location in the city, in a square which is the equivalent of an ancient agora, the distribution centre of power and information.

The use of the archaic form of social communication is aimed at recalling what this form was

like before the advance of information technology and fast news feeds. In the video, the culture of the IT society is for a moment replaced by the former oral culture, now effectively supplanted. The artists try to show the conditions of a place located in geographical, economic, and political peripheries, both in terms of the micro- and the macroscale. The isolation of the countries behind the Iron Curtain, and their later difficult adaptation to the post-communist reality, seems to be the most important issue for the artists. The information about the events from the centre – or the West – arrived here with delay: brought by those who had traveled abroad, and then distributed by word of mouth by people who, though unaware, played the role of folk storytellers.

Izabela Kopania

Text published in the book by Izabela Kopania „Open Set. Works from Kolekcja II of Galeria Arsenał in Białystok and Podlaskie Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych”, Białystok 2012