Artur Zmijewski - Julia Heslop
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art,
30th July - 9th October, 2010

Entering into the darkened exhibition space at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, the viewer is initially faced with a wall of confused noise; whistles, shouts, singing, blasts, brass bands, making the first experience of the exhibition rather disorientating. The noise is coupled with screens glowing out of the gloom, illuminating the space. This is Artur Zmijewski’s ‘Democracies’ (2009), which showcases fourteen films on individual television screens, each showing documentary footage of various marches, parades, strikes, protests and re-enactments around Europe and the Middle East. Playing simultaneously, these films are typical of Zmijewski’s raw, sometimes unedited style of footage; a refreshing change in a period punctuated with bad reality television and pseudo-documentary films. Each of Zmijewski’s short videos demonstrate a candid approach to the medium of the documentary film by recording socio-political events including a ‘Loyalist parade on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne, Belfast’, the ‘Weekly protests against the Israeli occupation, Bil’in, West Bank’, a ‘Re-enactment of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising – Battle of the Mokotow District, Warsaw’ and more sombre processions such as his recording of the ‘Funeral Ceremony for the victims of the shootings by Tim Kretschmer at Albertville High School, Winnenden, Germany, which, when set against the more vociferous films, is strange; like a funeral in a warzone.

In ‘Democracies’ Zmijewski is exploring free, public expression of opinion and a first-hand example of self-governance. He is able to move his work out of its customary field as a staged social experiment and present it as a realist documentary of public events. In this manner Zmijewski is able to situate his art within a contemporary socio-political context and, at a time when many artists are producing work that lacks any adherence to humanitarian systems of ethics, Zmijewski’s work shows a refreshing responsibility to engage with codes of morality in the current social and political reality. He demonstrates that art may re-establish its place as an accountable public voice; as a concrete force in society.

Another of the short films exhibited here is the particularly startling, yet moving ‘80064’ (2004). ‘80064’ stands for the concentration camp number of a 92 year old Auschwitz survivor, Jozef Turnawa. A number which is tattooed onto his arm but has faded over time. The film is set in a tattoo parlour where Zmijewski proposes to have the tattoo re-inked. Turnawa has evidently agreed to this off camera, however, once in the tattooist’s, the bewildered old man is having second thoughts. He is worried that, if re-traced, the tattoo will not be authentic. After much heavy-handed negotiating on Zmijewski’s part Turnawa, unwillingly, is persuaded to have it done. Afterwards, the resigned old man is ambivalent about the result and when asked by Zmijewski whether when he was in Auschwitz he ever felt the need to protest against the conditions and suffering that he was subject to, Turnawa replies ‘“Protest”? What do you mean, “Protest”? Adapt, try and survive… I’m a survivor you see… I survived it… one had to put up with it.’ Zmijewski’s original intention for the film was for it to be an experiment in remembrance whereby the re-inking of the tattoo would open the doors of memory for the old man. However, with the artist’s forceful tactics of persuasion and the old man’s ambivalence, Zmijewski becomes part of the play of power once experienced by Turnawa in Auschwitz, causing suffering and then subordination at his expense. In this sense Zmijewski abuses the capacity bestowed upon him in his role of film maker, the camera acting as his tool of coercion upon his subject.

In 1887 the historian Lord Acton stated ‘Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely’. In ‘Repetition’ (2005), arguably Zmijewski’s most powerful film in the exhibition, the artist is touching the heart of this statement, commenting on the culture of institutionalised punishment in the western world. ‘Repetition’ is evidentially a pivotal piece of pseudo-documentary filmmaking; a re-enactment of Professor Philip Zimbardo’s notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment which studied human behaviour when subject to prison conditions. Zimbardo employed 24 university students to act out the roles of prisoners and guards in a mock penitentiary in the basement of the Stanford psychology department. The planned two week experiment had to be ended prematurely after six days due to the humiliating and sadistic treatment imposed upon the prisoners by the guards. Zmijewski’s re-enactment of this famed experiment took place in a purpose-built prison and involved an almost identical set up, although this time with 16 unemployed Polish men in Warsaw, the artist’s home town. Over a number of days Zmijewski filmed their interactions utilising all-encompassing Orwellian-like surveillance, demonstrating Michel Foucault’s commentary in ‘Discipline and Punish’; ‘In discipline it is the subjects that have to be seen. Their visibility assures the hold of the power that is exercised over them. It is the fact of being constantly seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintains the disciplined individual in his subjection.'

Like Zimbardo’s experiment, Zmijewski’s re-enactment fell apart in a few days. Nevertheless, the 75 minute film is an interesting glimpse into the institution of the prison and the resulting rebellion that may take place when people are placed into positions of master and servant. Whilst witnessing the happenings of the film the viewer has a sense of the increasing patterns of power creeping up on both groups of participants. The tension between the two groups is intensified throughout the course of the film and the degrading treatment of the inmates is constant. In one section of the film all inmates are ordered to shave their heads. In this instance of authority only one prisoner consents, resulting in a literal stand-off between inmates and guards. In the same way that the schoolboys in William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’, when marooned on a deserted island, attempt to govern themselves, the guards in ‘Repetition’ may also be seen as self-governing. Both sources ultimately deal with questions of human nature when faced with an outdated form of feudal system. Golding’s schoolboys’ descent into savagery is almost mirrored in the circumstances surrounding Zmijewski’s two groups in ‘Repetition’. Their deterioration into a primal, almost animalistic state sees them experience progressively high levels of stress which leads from rebellion to reticence. By the end of the experiment, many of the participants show emotional instability.

When viewed against contemporary socio-political issues, such as the controversy surrounding Guantanamo and the Abu Ghraib human rights scandal, ‘Repetition’ becomes more significant in exploring the often sadistic nature of authority. The visual parallels of these cases and the imagery used in many of Zmijewski’s films are somewhat apparent. In ‘Repetition’ this is also reflected in the language that the guards use when they ‘demand … full corporal discipline’ in the belief that ‘There are certain rules that should be followed, otherwise life does not make sense.’ 

At the end of the film both groups meet and discuss their resulting judgement of the experiment. Here, the two groups actually come together in their distrust of authority, in their disillusionment with the artist and how the experiment was conducted. Their comments reveal much; ‘We were all jerks for $40 a day, that’s the truth;’ ‘He (the artist) humiliated us and acted like a son-of-a-bitch;’ ‘Every day, like all the guards, I was afraid that I would fail the task and get fired.’ Asked what their feelings were to being controlled and disciplined by the guards, the inmates mentioned feelings of ‘ineptness’, that they were ‘powerless’, and the experience was like ‘being reduced to a vegetable.’

Six months later the participants meet up and it seems that the experience is still with them. One man tells us that ‘Every day I am back in that prison… I was a man who was trapped, caught.’ Evidently the experience that they endured had difficult and long-lasting consequences for the participants, but at the heart of ‘Repetition’, and indeed the whole exhibition, lies a more universal code; that of questioning the social antagonisms and power structures which as citizens we involve ourselves in, both as practitioners and at the same time, as unwilling subjects.