wideo, 2’
2003
In collaboration with Izabela Robakowska
Shot in a swimming pool, the video shows the artist breaking from the water with powerful, vigorous thrusts of his body. Splashing sounds are accompanied by the emphatically articulated words of the manifesto: ‘I want to tell you all that art is energy.’ This short, dynamic video epitomises one of the key categories of Robakowski’s art – its energy and vigour – which he highlights in his works and often refers to in his comments. Here, the qualities are identified with the vitality of the male body. In his early works, such as Test I and Test II, to capture the energy of light and colour the artist found references in Kazimir Malevich’s ‘pan-energetic universe’ and the concept of ‘the energy field’ (art as a production of energy) coined by Andrzej Pawłowski, the Polish photographer, designer and experimental filmmaker. In the later mechanical-biological recordings, the camera, shifted by the movements of the artist’s body, becomes an instrument of energy transmission – a medium of the body’s biological energy. Robakowski further developed the notion of energy communications in the Energetic Angles series (1975–1992), consisting of drawings, photographs and videos where abstract geometric forms serve as a medium of tension and energy. Triggering the energetic potential of art becomes for the artist a necessary condition of its potential to communicate.
