Lukasz Guzek: TO PLAY, OR TO BE. Krakow, 1999
tr.Robert Galazka 


According to one of the current opinions about artists, they have a desire to 
provoke. It is a part of the artist's contemporary mythology, a legacy of the 
epoch of modernist avant-garde movements. In fact, the matter looks 
altogether different: the artist is provoked by the surrounding reality and 
people who create it. Art is born in response to the world. The controversies 
appearing in and about art indicate the points of crisis in the area of 
culture. Hence, a work of art is frequently misinterpreted as the source of a 
problem, which leads to ignoring its true origins . 
Nevertheless, art is a good starting-point for considering the problems of a 
more general - cultural - nature. Especially contemporary, post-modern art, 
which, unlike modernism, is neither set on merely formal aims nor self-
referential; on the contrary, it looks for content as a guarantor of its 
place in culture. Bernadette Huber's installation, The Disposability of the 
Madonna in an Individual View of the World and Individual Rules of the Game 
(Die Verfügbarkeit der Madonna im persönlichen Weltbild und Spielverhalten), 
is a typical example of contemporary art’s searching for its raison d’etre by 
placing a work in a cultural area of conflict. Bernadette Huber’s 
installation could easily be regarded as a provocation. Therefore, it makes 
possible an analysis of the genesis of conflicting tensions between art and 
the intellectual clichés that condition the cultural reception of a work of 
art. Such a broad outlook enables the work to become a functional model of 
contemporary art, which means that we no longer discuss specific, individual 
situations, but operate at the level of general ideas. Let me add here that 
the model of the conflict "the artist vs. the world" is falling into disuse 
today and the situation is also reflected in Bernadette Huber's installation. 
In its basic layer, the model is perfectly binary. The binary structure may 
seem too simplified to include all complication and diversity of man's 
cultural presence, all the aspects determining that we think and feel in a 
certain way and not differently, determining our specific views. But the 
basic structure of our thoughts and views is in fact binary, black and white. 
Besides, it only seems to us that the views are ours. They are really 
cultural clichés, an echo of the patterns and standards of thought passed on 
in the process of intracultural communication. Hence their simplicity: it is 
a condition necessary for implanting them in our minds. After all, our view 
of reality is black and white, we even "know" well what is black and what is 
white, or, to put it differently, what is good and what is evil, since it is 
in the sphere of so-called values that the instillation of the patterns and 
clichés serves as the basis of general culture's way of functioning and the 
forms it assumes. "Colors" result from the subsequent process of 
individualization, from life's "processing". 
The binary pattern of cultural structure is presented in Bernadette Huber's 
installation by means of the quotations excerpted from a prayer book and the 
speeches of Pope John Paul II on one hand, and from advertisements in erotic 
magazines on the other. In this work, the pattern took on the form of a field 
for playing a game of "heaven and hell" (or "hopscotch"), drawn on the floor 
of the gallery. The quotations were placed in the respective parts of the 
field, marking out the playing area. In addition to that, a game was being 
displayed on the monitor, serving as a sort of instruction and revision of 
the rules of the game if somebody had already forgotten his childhood. The 
texts represent two realities: the reality of the predominant religion and 
the reality of natural human needs, which, according to the universal 
cultural pattern, remain in opposition. Both Poland and Austria are countries 
where culture is subject to an extremely strong pressure of the Roman 
Catholic tradition. Therefore, the religious aspect in the work executed by 
the Austrian artist in Poland is not incidental. Bernadette Huber draws on 
the algorithmic elements that influence the general state of the minds. Yet 
she does not base her work on abstractions and metaphysical meditations 
isolated from life, but stays close to reality. The quotations illustrate the 
practical side of religious devotion: the way it is understood and put into 
effect in everyday life by individuals and the state officials responsible 
for social policy. Eroticism has also been captured in its reality here: 
whereas sex described in the magazines is pure fantasy, the advertisements 
are placed by real persons informing of their sexual needs and desires and 
assuming correctly that there are other people who feel the same way. The 
quotations constitute the first, basic layer of the work, which may be 
defined as the level of cultural reality. Its factual content guarantees its 
credibility, and at the same time paves the way for the introduction of the 
third element - the third layer of the installation. 
The third layer is the game. It is "superimposed" on the layer of the quoted 
texts, situated over it, so to speak; it is independent, but at the same time 
transparent. The Madonna - a self-propelled, remote-controlled figure 
constructed by the author for the installation - is the link between the two 
levels. Moving the figure along the playing field leads the player through 
the consecutive stages of the game, just as in the children's amusement (or 
in the instruction on the monitor). On one of the walls of the gallery there 
is additionally another Madonna in a small altar with a built-in mechanism 
for reproducing sound and voice - in short, a typical example of church-fair 
kitsch. It is perfectly complementary to the self-propelled Madonna; in that 
context, the latter does not seem a particularly bizarre notion. At the 
popular level everything is both possible and "good". The aesthetics of 
kitsch is associated with the binary structure of thinking. The artist 
emphasizes that meaning of kitsch, making it the main visual aspect of the 
work. The level of the game is the level of art, the sphere in which the 
artist operates. The model of the situation presented in the installation is 
as follows: the dominant culture and the social practices dependent on it 
define the playing area, whereas the artist, thrown into that reality and 
inevitably made a part of it, is provoked to join in the game. He cannot 
escape reality, but he can enter into a game with its elements. He plays to 
save his identity, to be creative, to be himself, to be an artist. In 
contemporary art, the artist is no longer a producer of aesthetic objects and 
art itself is not fulfilled in a thing called a work of art, as was the case 
in modernism according to its major slogan, "art for art's sake". The artist 
defines his position in relation to the world and his environment rather than 
in reference to art and formal issues. 
Although the game is patterned on the children's game that everybody used to 
play, it is now intended for adults. By means of something they have known 
"forever", the participants are to make a Freudian journey to the forgotten 
strata of psyche and bring to the surface the hidden factors determining the 
way of thinking and feeling. It is then that their deep structure and its 
binary character become apparent. The involvement of thought in a series of 
specific, "everyday" forms usually prevents us from looking so deeply in, 
from seeing through to the foundations. And even if such a style of thinking 
is not characteristic of a given player, it is now easier for us to realize 
its omnipresence around us, in the functional system of culture. The playing 
field is a model that presents what is typical and cultural, and not 
individual and personal. Each of us has to function in an abyss that culture 
opens up between the binary oppositions. We have to, because a conscious and 
radical departure from culture, if at all possible, takes place at the cost 
of escapism, which may be literal and involve changing one's residence, e.g. 
for a monastery in Rishikesh, but may also take the form of mental illness, 
or - most frequently - of anesthetization by unawareness. Living in the 
global village has not made any substantial changes in the cultural situation 
of a man who has absorbed the cultural model described above since childhood. 
Bernadette Huber invites us to play, proposes that the viewers participate in 
art, and thus persuades them to adopt the artist's point of view, to "get 
into his skin". The game results in the intermingling of the levels, in the 
activation of the sphere between extreme oppositions, which consequently 
becomes the most important. Relativism against the absolute - this slogan 
sums up the basic ideological premise of Bernadette Huber's work. The 
overcoming of the binary model has numerous consequences. Relativism emerges 
on the surface of culture as the essence of humanity, as a right of human 
nature that demands to be implemented in real life. It is also the most 
provocative, blasphemous element in our culture. Postmodernism has been 
accursed, ridiculed and vilified for glorifying relativism. At the same time, 
relativism is obviously inherent in human nature. The experience of 
relativism is the most common. To put it simply, without too much 
ideologizing and overinterpretation - it is human. Subject to the domination 
of the binary model, our culture refuses to legitimize this experience. 
Entering the game between religion and sex, the extreme elements of our 
culture, makes us realize that no sphere of human activity can avoid 
involvement in such a game. The game is something total - it is the nature of 
man, or perhaps of a man of this culture only; it is also an indication of 
the present time. Well, the author of these words comes from this culture 
too. There is no way of getting out of one's skin. However, one can always 
feel more comfortable in it.