Józef Robakowski
What Can Still Happen
opening: May 23, 2019, 7 pm
the exhibition is on view through June 22, 2019 Tuesday–Saturday, 12 noon–7 pm
curators: Bożena Czubak, Fabio Cavallucci
Józef Robakowski’s multimedia project deals with the contemporary, with what is happening, how it is shown and communicated. It is a look at reality-in-the-making from a perspective characteristic of its creator – a documentarist, registrant and collector of images of the cultural, social and political reality – in whom those media images find their insightful analyst as well as manipulator.
Most of the footage used has been sourced from social media. In a constellation of dynamically changing images, we watch parades, marches and demonstrations of various political groupings, artistic actions, awareness campaigns about various aspects of life – all that is happening in the streets and public spaces these days, what is recorded, shared and distributed.
The Facebook effect, with millions in Poland and billions worldwide using the service, is, Robakowski argues, mainly about the distribution and redistribution of visual messages, about the opening up of a stage of uncontrolled information flow where everyone can be an author, producer or distributor of information. This open stage provides images of reality vis-à-vis which contemporary art has become increasingly helpless. What matters in the visual activism mobilised for various social and political causes are not the images themselves, but the ways in which they are used and abused.
In a mediatised network society the commonly available communication channels allowing people to broadcast their own news and express their opinions are, according to the artist, the places where the images of reality are most hotly contested.
Józef Robakowski is an artist, art historian and academic professor, and the creator of films, videos, photographic series, installations, objects, performances, multimedia actions and conceptual projects. Co-founder of a number of artistic collectives, e.g. Oko (1960), STKF Pętla (1960–1966), Zero-61 (1961–1969), Krąg (1965–1967). Co-founder of the Workshop of the Film Form (1970–1977), and Telewizyjna Grupa Twórcza Stacja Ł (1991–1992). In 1978 he founded (with Małgorzata Potocka) the Exchange Gallery (Galeria Wymiany) in Łódź, which he runs to this day. Initiator of numerous artistic events, curator and co-curator of several dozen exhibitions, publisher, author of texts and publications. He lives and works in Łódź. Born in 1939 in Poznań, he earned a degree in art history and museum studies from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, and majored at the Faculty of Cinematography of the Leon Schiller National Higher School of Films, Television and Theatre in Łódź, where, from 1970 to 1981, he taught and ran the Photography and Visual Advertising Unit. In 1995 he returned to the Łódź School, and ran the Studio of Multimedia Actions there until 2017. He also taught in the Faculty of Cultural Studies of the University of Łódź (1982–1983), at the Łódź College of Humanities and Economics (2001–2006).
