19 # Lujza Magová // Artystka // Košice, SK

Nazywam się Lenka Magova. Pochodzę z Koszyc i lubię urozmaicać to, co nas otacza nowymi elementami rzeczywistości wizualnej.
Zaczęłam studiować rzeźbę i kamieniarstwo w 1999 roku. Najpierw w Szkole Sztuk Stosowanych w moim rodzinnym mieście- Koszycach na Słowacji, a potem w Szkole Kamieniarstwa i Rzeźby w Horicach, w Czechach. Ukończyłam ją w 2004 roku i kontynuowałam na Wydziale Sztuki na Uniwersytecie Technicznym w Koszycach. Spędziłam całe 6 lat, prowadząc własne badania z Jurajem Bartuszem w jego pracowni Wolnej Kreatywnści 3D na Wydziale Sztuki i Intermediów, z wyjątkiem zimowego semestru 2006/2007- był to czas mojego Erasmusa w pracowni rzeźby Josefa Petruka na Akademi Sztuk Pięknych w Poznaniu. Semestr letni 2008/2009 spędziłam w Otwartym Studiu Sztuk Performatywnych w Przestrzeni Publicznej Marty Jonville na Wydziale Sztuki w Koszycach. Zimowy semestr 2009/2010 w Ecole des Beaux Arts w Bordeux we Francji.
Od września 2011 roku jestem na studiach doktoranckich na Wydziale Sztuk Pięknych na Univesidad Politecnica de Valencia w Hiszpanii. Promotorem mojej pracy jest Elías Peréz, a jej tematem “Ciało jako żródło, referencja i podmiot Sztuk Wizualnych”. Skupiam się w niej głównie na wykorzystaniu sztuki przez reżimy totalitarne. Jest to bliski mi temat, ponieważ, zanim skończyłam 17 lat, osobiście doświadczyłam procesu dorastania w komunistycznym państwie. Badam metody sprawiające, że sztuki figuralne wpływają na nas bezpośrednio- dzięki neuronom lustrzanym, które powielają odbierane przez nasze ciało emocje, zamiast tylko pobudzać nowe wzory myślenia, co jest nie mniej istotne.
Czuję, że bardziej dla mnie ważne jest umieszczanie sztuki w miejscach publicznych niż w galeriach, gdzie jej wpływ na nasze doświadczenie jest założony apriori i może nie działać w kontakcie ze społeczeństwem. Ponadto myślę, że wciąż płaszczyzna ściany jest nieodłącznym elementem definiowania sztuki ulicznej- byłoby nieźle, gdybyśmy mogli zobaczyć więcej trójwymiarowej sztuki na ulicach. Z tego powodu widzę tam przestrzeń, gdzie chciałabym uczynić swój mały wkład we wzbogacaniu ludzkiej codzienności. Potencjalnie mogłoby to pomóc uczynić społeczeństwo szczęśliwszym i bardziej świadomym. A to sprawiłoby, że świat w którym żyjemy, byłby lepszy i przyjemniejszy. Jakkolwiek tandetnie by to nie brzmiało, bez tego poczucia prawdopodobnie nie byłabym w stanie w ogóle tworzyć.
Jestem zafascynowana możliwościami cielesnej percepcji i tym, że da się dzielić między sobą treści mentalne oparte na danych odebranych przez nasze ciało. Również niezwykle interesuje mnie komunikacja pomiędzy jednostkami, jaka zachodzi poprzez sztukę lub język. Zadziwia mnie, że jesteśmy w stanie dzielić się tymi treściami na poziomie, na którym wyłania się wspólnota jednostek o wielkim stopniu wzajemnego zrozumienia. Ta cielesna rzeczywistość w połączeniu z namysłem nad świadomością, tożsamością, układami społecznymi i kwestią prywatności przestrzeni itp. jest konceptualną bazą mojej sztuki, podczas gdy formalnie moje prace są głównie instalacjami złożonymi z figuralnych rzeźb w rozmiarze naturalnym albo prostymi interwencjami w przestrzeń publiczną. Przy czym zawsze używam najbardziej nietrwałych materiałów.
Zobaczenie pokory, miłości i świadomości, jaka drzemie w ludziach dało mi nadzieję, że jako społeczeństwo nie jesteśmy kompletnie skazani na porażkę, mimo że wszędzie panuje przywiązanie od symulakrów, tego, co nierealne i do rzeczy nieistotnych. Lubię patrzeć na moją sztukę jak na czynnik pobudzający pozytywne ludzkie myśli i emocje.
Kocham oglądać uśmiech na twarzy osoby, która właśnie obejrzała moją pracę.

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An adventure such as a long train ride, where a person is exposed to a variety of new, often unexpected, percepts, has a potential to educate, enrich and sooth, by providing the contact with the unknown. It can expand our comfort zone- and so can a piece of visual art or a book, taking our mind on a journey, in a similar way as a physical vehicle takes our body.

As a basis for my proposal for this summer workshop I took a parallel between the actual geographical journey we are going to take and four essays, exercises in political thought, by Hannah Arendt, from her 1961 book Between past and future. So as we travel through these four post-communist countries, at the same time we will move temporally, exploring four important aspects of their shared recent history. It seemed accurate to look for the conceptual analogy between my intended works and Arendt’s writing as both deal with the same subjects and are induced by similar experiences.

1st stop: Bucharest, Romania
Essay: What is authority?
Form: Performance

In this essay Arendt asks a question: How to deal with the totalitarian power and violence, when the authority, which works only without violence and assumes freedom, has disappeared from the modern world. She puts the totalitarian government in opposition to the authoritarian form of government as well as to the tyranny, suggesting that authority, which began to fulfill the same function as violence, forcing people to obey, has become violence: Everyone who calls modern dictatorships authoritative, or mistakenly regards totalitarianism as an authoritative structure, have implicitly equated the violence and the authority. These views are blurring the boundaries that separate totalitarianism from the other forms of government and bring controversial bases to the political thinking. The elimination of the only political element of traditional religion, fear of hell, as a consequence of Modern age secularization, have resulted in an unprecedented criminality bursting into politics under Hitler and Stalin.

The form of this work will be a performance: sitting on a tiny child’s chair next to the representative communist monument. The intention is to display single human individuals relative to monstrous structures they have constructed over time and the nausea evoked by the impossibility of proper creative conviviality among these structures. To show the society, purpose of which was to serve and protect human individual, to provide him freedom from life’s disquietudes, but which have eventually enslaved him. An arrangement that was supposed to be here for people, but turned against them, overgrowing them to the measures they can never reach. Another object relating to this natural human body is a baby chair representing suppressed spontaneity. According to Hannah Arendt, that the goal of totalitarianism was total domination, which can be achieved by eliminating spontaneity and thus destroying man as a moral agent and as an individual.

2nd stop: Budapest, Hungary
Essay: What is freedom?
Form: Public petition

Arendt distinguishes traditional philosophical, inner freedom, from the political freedom, which has a public space, common to all people, secured by political institutions:
The very assumption that the shelter of freedom should be the capacity of will, that substantial activity of which consists of dictation and command, must be really strange. However if we talk about the problematic of freedom we need to keep in mind the question of politics and the fact that a man is a being given the ability to act. Philosophical freedom does not require more freedom than the exercise of will, it does not depend on external circumstances or on the fact whether the set objectives were achieved. Political freedom on the contrary rests on the actual ability of a person to do what he should want to do- acting person is not free if he loses the ability to act.
The justification for the existence of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action.
Even thought the concept of the inner, non-political, freedom has strong influence in the tradition of thought, we could assume that one would not be aware of the inner freedom without getting to know freedom as secular, tangible experience beforehand. We first become aware of freedom, and of its opposite, interacting with other people, not inside ourselves.
Freedom is preceded by the liberation from the necessities of life; however the state of freedom does not automatically result from this act of liberation. Freedom also requires the company of other people who are in the same state- it needs a common public space, where free people could meet and interact. It needs politically formed world into which each one of the free people can be incorporated by his word and deed. Without politically guaranteed public area freedom ceases to have a place in the world where it could show itself.
In despotically ruled societies that banish their lieges into the constraint of their homes and prevents the formation of the public sphere, freedom is not the part of the secular reality.

Hungarian uprising of 1956 gave Arendt hope in mankind’s will to fight for their own freedom. This (contra) revolution (as referred to by Soviets), failed, mainly for the lack of promised support from the ¨western world¨. However the very ambition to defend ones liberty manifests mans right to be free. In Arendt’s words: Courage liberates men from their worry about life for the freedom of the world. It is indispensable because in politics not life but the world is at stakes.
Even though the revolution was unsuccessful and Hungarian nation had to struggle under communist normalization for decades, the same year the uprising took place Hungarian water polo team defeated USSR 4:0 during summer Olympic Games. This event is referred to as Blood in the water.
Symbols played a strong role in Hungarian revolution- the red soviet star being cut from national flags, 25 meters tall Stalin’s statue was removed from Heroes square in Budapest by people, and so on. I see water and its flow analogous to freedom that is innate to each life form, making it fitting symbol of freedom in this piece, as well as the lost blood game/ won water game events symbolism of 1956. Inspired by popular online petitions, this piece will take form of a request for change- petition, inscribed in the medium of water. Quite recent (pseudo) science experiments, like that of Masaru Emoto, suggest tah human consciousness has power to change molecular structure of water. We will focus our minds on water, which will eventually become part of the bodies of people, thus intending to change their approach to life. We will try to raise the awareness of future generations of people, encouraging them to act more responsibly and authentically, believing that the will, manifested, already becomes the reality.

3rd stop: Košice, Slovakia
Essay: Crisis of education
Form: Lecture + art tour

In this essay, Hannah Arendt discusses modern education after the loss of authority that is closely related to the loss of tradition. Authority was rejected by adults who refuse to take over the responsibility for the world into which they have brought their children.

It is constitutional for the human condition that every new generation grows into the old world, so preparing new generation for the new world would only mean stealing the chance of the new ones to create something new themselves.
The faith that the one who wants to bring about new condition has to start with children is a doubtful notion of tyrannizing revolutionary movements that indoctrinated children when they gained the power.
Disapproving of Rousseauist ideal in which education becomes the tool of politics, and the political activity itself is understood as a form of education, Arendt suggests that education cannot play a role in politics, as in politics we are always dealing with the ones that are already educated. Whoever wants to educate adults has to become their custodian and ban them of political activity.

In the education of a child there is joint responsibility for the life and development of the child, as well as for the continuity of the world. Arendt see a dichotomy in this responsibility, as a child needs the protection from the world, but so does the world need protection, not to be destroyed by the assault of the new ones that comes with each new generation.
Arendt suggests an implicit responsibility of anybody who educates the youth, for the world. Anyone who refuses this responsibility for the world, even though he did not create it, should not have the right to participate in the education at all.

In education this responsibility for the world has a form of authority. In totalitarian communist regime, the violence that has substituted the authority is also present in art. Official, ideologically oriented, art was Socialist realism, also referred to as Sorela. The purpose of sorela was to further pursue the aims of communism, glorifying the regime and its working class, often in a form of monstrous figures, depicting the reality as the regime wished it would look.

In the situation where socialist realism was dominating the artistic production, interesting events took place in Kosice. A series of workshops was organized between 1967 and 1973 by artist Juraj Bartusz, in cooperation with local steelworks company. A number of high quality public art pieces made of steel were produced by national as well as international artists. International participation along with the minimalist form of these sculptures are a rarity in communist Czechoslovakia, however, very little was written about them. This piece is going to have a form of an event: a lecture and the art tour, where I will present some of the pieces made during the workshops that still exist, as well as ones that were removed, either during the communism or after its fall.

4th stop: Warsaw, Poland
Essay: Crisis of culture
Form: Street art

Crisis of culture deals with the shift in cultural production and consumption that took place with the appearance of the mass society, after the whole mass of citizens was integrated into the society, and the relationship between the mass culture and the mass society in a situation when culture is available to the whole population. All the escape routes were closed and the impossibility to flee the society brings despair. It seems artist remains the last individual in the mass society, and it is this creator of eminently cultural objects that turns against the society- what actually gave rise to the entire progress of the modern art, the greatest achievement of our times, along with the advances in science. Artist, the producer of cultural objects that are persistent testimony of the soul of its civilization. For Arendt this demonstrates the antagonism that preceded the formation of the mass society.

The only extra-societal criteria for assessing cultural objects, these tangible evidences into which the history of mankind is inscribed, is their relative permanence and stability. The permanence of cultural objects happens as a result of their lack of functionality- which makes other objects disappear from the phenomenal world as they are being used.
Once the immortal works of art of the past become objects of social and individual refinement and associated status, they lose their essential value, the ability to seize the perceiver and lead him through the centuries.
If the work of art is used with an ambition of self-improvement and self-education, it is being abused, just as if it would be used for any other purpose.

Arendt suggests that the disintegration that have entered the European culture, before the commencement of modern art, made it a social merchandise. Culture became a value, a subject of commerce and have lost its ability to seize the attention, and set a mind in motion, in the trading process, which have lead to devaluation and consequently to the total sale of cultural, as well as moral values.

This piece will take a form of street art- ephemeral interventions in the public space. Art pieces whose only value lies in the moments of unexpected perceptual experience, which they allow passers by without any extra, ones that lack any extra-social value which would let them be appreciated and traded like a merchandise.

Thanks to perception, moments are being created in persons mind. Upon entering the reality, perceived moments become its part.
If we let our minds wonder in the realm of magical thinking, the law of contiagion would make us assume that reality once perceived by a person becomes an inseparable part of this person. The percept becomes a part of the sensorially gathered data equipage of this person’s consciousness, and can be freely used, and even mediated to other people via communication, like for example through another art piece.

If we take this assumption even further, we may as well hypothesize that the fact that this man was once a part of the world implies he is forever part of this world, thus every percept, every moment, lasts forever.
This may be true or not, but it is the interpretation of the situation that has impact: things are real if their consequences are. Reality is formed by perception, it is not objective. Moments might be more prone to realness and permanence then tangible objects of the phenomenal world.

Lujza Magova – Smile

Art pieces are objects with no immediate practical value. Their common constitutional property is the ability to reflect reality. Art is a kind of a mirror reflecting the world that surrounds us, reflecting the reality we contain. Even though art reflects the present state of things, this reflected situation was not constructed by the present inhabitants of the woorld, it is a result of an ongoing process.

Whatsmore, art is a mirror that can be trespassed, like Alice´s looking glass, rather than the mirror we look into each morning, the one that makes us forget our dreams, see the same reality every day. It allows us see realities not yet materialized.

Now that we have reached a point where the unsustainability of the system we have created is clearly present and visible, art can provide us a factor to raise the awareness in this situation, help us realize that we are one of the elements on which this system stands and falls.

On top of this, art can soothe and make us feel better. Our bodies copy emotions we perceive on people we interact with, or images of people. The most pleasant emotions manifest themselves as a smile on a face. Even image of a smile in its simplest, stylized form is and archetype representing and producing happiness.