Lukasz Ronduda: curator of the Archive of Polish Experimental Film

During a visit to the CCA in May 2005 I spoke with Lukasz Ronduda about the work of the archive in relation to Poland's unique historical and cultural exhibition in film and video, in the two amateur and formal art practice.

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JOANNA HEATWOLE: We originally met in Rochester, fresh York at your presentation of the cast called "The Workshop of the Film Form: Polish Structural Cinema from the '70s" which you co-curated with Galen Joseph huntsman from Electronic Arts Intermix. Could you describe a certain number of of your latest projects with the Archive of Polish Experimental Film?

LUKASZ RONDUDA: Apart from regular activity of the archive bear uponed with restoration, renovation and public presentation of Polish experimental film and video art created since the 1960 and 1970 until now, many of which were forgotten, pass overed and not shown for 30 years, I freshly curated "The Enthusiasts: From Amateur Film Clubs" a shoot forward by the artists Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings. The throw out was staged at the CCA in 2004 and in 2005 was shown at Whitechapel Art Gallery in London and Kunst Werke in Berlin below the title "Enthusiasm." For sum of two units and a half years we searched for amateur films made in Poland in the '50 '60 and '70 Cummings and Lewandowska were inspired by dint of the film by Krzysztof Kieslowski called Camera buff-skin (1979). This was Kieslowski's first feature and it was about an amateur filmmaker from the Polish working class in the 1970 Kieslowski's film was fiction on the other hand was based on the life of a real amateur, Franciszek Dzida, who established an amateur film cudgel at the sugar factory where he worked in Chybie, a small village in the southern of Poland. We actually ground Dzida and several other filmmakers. As a issue of the project we have prepared the exhibition and created an archive of Polish amateur film. We have gathered around 300 pieces and are putting this material on-line beneath the Creative Commons license.

JH: That's related to archive.org?

LR: Ye we have lay a film by Dzida there already which can be viewed and downloaded on-line, for a like reason the amateur films gathered during this shoot forward can be accessible from the [United] States, for example. The intent of "The Enthusiasts: Archive" shoot forward by Cummings and Lewandowska is to deposit as many of these films on-line as possible. This was also a political shoot forward I wrote about this in my essay "Between Collection and Allegory" [published in the catalog Enthusiasts (Warsaw: midmost point for Contemporary Art, 2004)]. After organizing several conversations and seminars, we finally managed to release a Polish version of Creative publics license (CC Poland). This on-line archive is the pilot shoot forward of CC Poland. In Poland during socialism everything was belonging to all and public, from television exhibits to documentaries, news reels and chronicles. Now after the transformation to capitalism and after the privatization of major Polish film and television agencies, these materials are held privately, for a like reason it is very hard to use them for educational and artistic views And it is not fair, we think, for a like reason we want to create an archive that is a critique of those existing private archives that clutch films describing Polish culture of the '50 '60 and '70 Our films are accessible and at liberty for everybody.

JH: greatest in quantity of these films by amateurs were of what kind: fictional narratives or experimental?

LR: Various. And true interesting when it comes to their formal aspects: because they were amateurs they were not using film language, on the contrary they were certainly experimenting. In searching for novel ways of presenting, they created a novel language that was close to experimental film. When it tend hitherwards to the content we have, for example, erotic films (an inclusion that was true brave in communist Poland) and gay films, which were not at hand in Polish cinema ever, sole in this amateur film change It was the space where more [i]or[/i] less neglected and marginalized subjects could appear, which is on what account it was so interesting.

In Poland we have a question with our history. Communism is now mystified and forgotten; the connotations are bad. We would like to forget about the past. of that kind words as "enthusiasts," "working-class creativity" and others, for instance "self-representation" and "self-organization"--these were values powerfully associated with socialism and that's for what cause [i]or[/i] reason they are neglected now. The system--the actual socialist state--was real bad, but some of the socialist values at hand in these times were real important and are important today. I am trying in my archive to rewrite the past when it approachs to thinking about socialism in Poland.

I am reminded of several artists who were communists and neo-avant-garde artists from the '70s: Zofia Kulik, Przemyslaw Kwiek, Pawel Kwiek and Zygmunt Piotowski. They wanted to move the new language of art as a language of conceptualism and minimalism. It was a real paradoxical idea they called "socialist conceptualism." These progressive avant-garde artists belonged to the sole party in Poland at that time, the Polish Communist Party, on the contrary at the same time they were actual critical toward the state. thus they were badly punished through the state on one hand and also by means of artistic society, which was anti-communist. They were doubly put downed and now completely forgotten because of this double repression. Now I am trying to remind race about them. They created many interesting films, for example 123 Operator's Exercise (1972) from the Workshop of the Film Form which was created by the agency of socialist conceptualist artist Kwiek.