Absent for people, yet present

Stach Szabłowski talks to Zuzanna Janin

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Interview

Wherefrom did you get the idea for "I saw my own Death"?

Zuzanna Janin: The idea had been emerging for quite a long time, it was a process that I was not aware of. It is this dream or this fantasy: what will it be like, when we are dead? What will our funeral look like? I wanted to bring about this situation and study this impossible thing on myself, to come as close as possible - and to see.

You wanted to look from the point of view of somebody who has departed?

Please note that the issue of death is viewed through the notion of dying. The dominant perspective is the one of a living person who is watching a dead one – i.e. the death of the Other. Whereas I attempted to simulate, artistically, the experience of watching my own death, from the point of view of someone who-is-apparently-dead, but who still exists and operates in some indefinite space. This person sees all and is present, though others believe her to be absent.

Is this person in the so-called other world?

Let us say that this person is located in the space of artistic experiment and from there can share this experience with others.

You talk about the artistic experiment, yet in your action you moved beyond the convention. There was a cemetery, funeral procession, an obituary – everything looked extremely real.

These were all fictitious, conventional elements. The convention was vested in the uncertainty, in the rough edges of this mystification. The information about me departing this world, published in the press in the form of obituaries, was a sort of a manifesto (quite legible to a majority of people) – now I shall be experimenting on myself. Or: I shall be absent, for a few days, from the world, in myself, out of myself. Now I shall be making art. about complete absence, both social and mental. Please, do not disturb. I assumed that this information would be comprehensible, although not easily acceptable and quite difficult to rationalise, since we are not accustomed to such strange messages.

You let very few people on this idea.

I told the ones who are close to me and a small group of collaborators. Apart from yourself, I gave the details to, amongst others, Wiesław Borowski from Galeria Foksal, where I prepared the first edition of the project, Anda Rottenberg and the film crew: Róża Fabjanowska, Sławek Majcherek, Paweł Wendorff. In fact all those whom I let on the secret reacted wonderfully, supported me, came to the action, created it with me. Also those who were not fully informed, e.g., Wojciech Krukowski, whom I had forewarned, but only partly. I am talking about those who, for a moment, felt consternation, but who simply let me do it. Lots of people called me; I took some phone calls in the course of the experiment, some after it was over. I had no problem with it. Neither did my friends. The problem was with those who were remote, unknown but insisted on instigating some reaction, who would repeat many things about my action which were not true.

Did your idea succeed? Did you manage to come closer to the secret you wanted to unveil?

Yes. I felt my own death in the mental and social sense – the absence, inevitability, lack of will. I was at the fictitious ceremony. I saw all the stages of the funeral. There was nothing I could do – because that was what I wanted. I was simply there. Absent for the people, yet present.

Was this a purifying experience?

Not immediately. But in a longer perspective, yes. Such an experience does not just take a second, and that’s it. It is a process. It is a change in perception. Radical, yet gradual. All the world, the reality, the people’s behaviour, my place in this world and in the art has changed and continues to change. At the beginning, as the action was still under way, this feeling was very heavy, acute, colourless but not neutral. A powerful, cruelly painful broadening of perception. Then the pain is gone, but the feeling goes on. Right now, I am a very happy person. Happier and more joyful. But also a sadder one. It all gained new depth. I pushed the death right into the centre of life. I did the impossible, but, well, I only gave people an image, I challenged them to think.

This emotionally exhausting, socially controversial gesture constituted but the first stage of your entire project.

The first yet the strongest one. An experiment in a dangerous, unknown space. I could not prepare for it, anticipate things, such as, e.g., the exhaustion I experienced, nor the attacks against my family, children. I had not anticipated such a huge hysteria. I was so intent on the meanings constituting the semantic layer of my work that I practically did not take into account the fact that such things might actually happen.

Many people started assessing your project immediately, when the action was over, whereas you yourself treated the funeral not as a work in itself but rather as a raw material...

This is the basis for further work. The funeral constitutes the material, or – better still – the matter in which I work. An experience, not only a personal, but also a general one, which has emerged between myself and others. I have always been interested in the state of transition, the "in-betweens". My previous work: sculptures made of cotton candy, sculptures made of mist, the "Fight" video focused on whatever is located "in-between", processes in time, the passing of things.

Well, in fact, this work is constructed on a purely conceptual level. Yet it seems to me that this experiment, the live action was absolutely indispensable. Were it not for the actual and real things that happened at the cemetery, your work would be nothing more but just weightless speculation. It is about the dream of knowing about the human being, gaining knowledge that cannot be gained other than by way of a transgression – and this is how I see the ceremony you arranged.

Yes, this knowledge cannot be gained, yet you can come closer – thanks to art.

Coming back to the action itself: at the cemetery, the mystification was disclosed immediately and instead of calm processing there was a lot of fuss.

Not really instead of, rather along with, simultaneously; the processing started in a fuss. The scale of the fuss amazed me. I trusted my professional friends, people with whom I had worked and those who took interest in my work. Many of them simply let me down. They acted mean. They deserted me. They would say different tings, criticising my work behind my back. They got scared. Some of them would refuse collaboration and deny any knowledge about the project. Some others were trying to manoeuvre me into things that had nothing to do with art, I was judged against the standards of normative ethics, mainly on the basis of gossip and lies. The comments on the Web were the most telling: "kill her", "bury her alive", "throw her in jail", "bury her children", "so if she is dead – let her disappear from the art scene". People are so hungry for death, dead bodies and blood in the media, so demoralised by cruelty, that they do not even notice when they go over the edge and lose control of the lines dividing the realm of life – art – media. If we were to apply the same standard to all types of human activity we shall have to condemn the doctor for dissecting dead bodies, condemn a painter for painting naked ladies, and just after that we shall condemn the novelist for telling us things that are not true. We must remember about the conventionality, the nature of various professions, which cannot be moved into the normal life and judged by the rules that are applied by the average citizen. Totalitarian systems already tried to apply this form of mental control.

Do not forget that you went out of the gallery space, that you arranged a convincing funeral ceremony at a real cemetery. You left that conventional space and thus exposed your art to non-artistic judgement.

I did go out of the gallery, but I never left the artistic niche. All the way through, the thing was fully conventional, and this was an artistic action. To watch one’s own, fictitious funeral is obviously a transgression, at many levels. This was meant to be a transgression! – but transgression into the realm of meanings, of art, rather than into the realm of a public scandal. The assumption was to introduce myself and the audience to the emotions, to the awareness of somebody’s sudden, unexpected departure. And then her return. I was guided by the urge to do the impossible, to conduct a cruel experiment on myself and then share with others whatever I can learn about the human being. This is the great Impossible. It was tempting. The awareness of the transitory nature of things, the feeling of pain, kept growing and I could no longer simply circle round the problem – I wanted to go and touch it! I was looking for a work that will move, that will shake. A work of pain and fear overcome – a work that provokes discussion. But the physical aspect of death did not interest me.

Physical? In what sense?

For instance experiments on the body or an experience verging on clinical death. I was looking for a mental, social experiment. I withdrew from the world of the living for a few days. This withdrawal was conventional, yet located in a specific reality – this gave me an opportunity to conduct a serious experiment. I had to build a sort of a research laboratory. Obviously, it was risky, in all respects. I was accused of a manipulation, because I had not informed everyone that the funeral was fake. Well, how on earth was I to experience it all, if I were to forewarn everyone, not just my family, my closest friends and collaborators?

If all participants of the event knew about its real nature, it would have turned into a theatrical performance, a staging of an event, in which you would have actors rather than participants.

Yes. In this case I was the "gallery". I was the convention. People came into my space. And everyone would like to go beyond the conventional: ever since the time of our childhood the dream of overcoming the norm is with us at all times. We also want to go beyond death, to conquer it. There is just one place where it is allowed to breach the norm, in accordance with some liquid, ever-changing rules – and this is art. And everyone who has the courage of signing such a transgression with their own name have the right to do just that.

You decided to go beyond the conventional, because you felt that the conventional means used in art were not sufficient.

They are sufficient, but this does not preclude looking for new ones. I was looking for new means of expression, for their cognitive value, rather than the aesthetic one. I need means of expression that will allow me to change the way I see this problem. This is what I have been looking for. I would like to make my own contribution to the changing of the way things are perceived. In my opinion the world is described in a frightfully mendacious way, and the media, plus the "media policy", the worst invention of our era, keep pushing it farther and farther in this direction.

I noticed this already in your previous work – the boxing one (vide "Fight / IloveYouToo") – an attitude that I read as a lack of trust in the traditional artistic means of expression, a hunger of real experience, a need to experiment on oneself.

This is in me. I leave this behind. And I experiment with the new.

So you are your own guinea pig? The way I understood it, at the cemetery, you were both the active subject and the object of the action, you were its main, and in fact the only, audience, and it is only later that you share this experience with others, after you have processed the action, the impressions and the conclusions into your work.

Yes. But it appears that to contemplate one’s own absence means to watch a situation in which also other persons are involved.

Death is a social fact.

Certainly yes! And this was also an important element of this work – to come to your own funeral, to be there with others. Made up and dressed up to look several dozen years older. This was the only way to keep my identity, to move myself forward in time – at some point I will look like this, perhaps then this moment will come. The fact that I was surrounded by more than a dozen members of my own family, who all bear some resemblance one to the other, made me feel relatively safe. I did not want to talk to anyone. I wanted to be and not to be.

What did you feel, as you walked behind your own coffin, like a ghost?

Firstly, I was intent on not blowing it up, I wanted to make it. Not to waste this, one and only, opportunity. Secondly, I felt that I was touching upon the inevitable. Emptiness, inevitability - this is what our death is about. This was a situation in which your own will becomes meaningless. It was similar to laying in a hospital, disempowered, unable to do anything. I think that people who realize that they have been condemned, by a disease, by a court ruling, those who feel threatened at times of war or accident – they know full well that there is no escaping the fate, yet they remain calm and present. They succumb to what the fate brings.

And how did you feel afterwards?

I felt satisfied, having done something I had wanted and planned to do for so long. I was laying flat, exhausted, yet somehow proud of myself... I was not sure if I could get up again. A lack of understanding, a destruction of my work before it ever came into being, manipulation and betrayal by my "friends" – this was the worst part. I suffered attacks which were, in a way, a murder committed on me and on my project – never mind whether premeditated or done in the heat of the moment. This was social and artistic murder for me and my art, retribution for my independence, otherness, experiments. Had it not been for the people who are close to me, had they not given me support, I do not think I could have managed to survive. Attacks, lies, destructive pressures on my work, they were a horrible burden, they affected my family, my children, and it was only then that I started having suicidal thoughts. I did not know what to do – protect my children? myself? my work? the exhibition? A number of non-authorised statements were published, then they got maliciously manipulated, etc. Some people were making a huge effort to disavow me, to the enjoyment of others, who were malevolent towards me. Then the attackers slowly lost some steam and more normal, serious opinions saw the light of day.

I know that for some people this is too heavy, but I happen to like this weight. And if this work is so scary, why did it trigger off a discussion almost in the entire country? People struggle with this artefact. Those who bicker usually also like each other.

Did you learn anything about the artistic milieu?

The group of people who think about art in a deep, honest and sincere way is very narrow. Many people cuddle up to art, perhaps because they have not been able to make it anywhere else. Apart from that, many people seemed to have lost their distance. Others were afraid. Afraid, but of what?

Do you believe that the art milieu is prepared to take on a true moral and artistic risk?

Taking risk is one of the main precepts of the world of art. Leonardo, Goya, Cezanne – they all took risks and shocked their contemporaries. But today we seem to have forgotten about it. Today many people apply the "safe risk" strategy. Or else they draw upon the achievements of other people and pretend to be oh so brave – take what others have done and put it into their own safe art.

There is no way to avoid talking about suicide, as we consider the things you did. Was this action a symbolic suicide? A suicide projection, a substitute?

Definitely not! Quite the opposite, it was rather a symbolic triumph over death! If an artist focuses on suicide, then his or her work is about suicide. If one sees one’s own funeral, the work is about this funeral and whatever happens afterwards, and about coming back from it. An embodiment of fearful fantasies. This work is the saddest yet extremely optimistic work about revival. There is no doom, no annihilation. The message about my departure was a symbolic manifesto – I shall no be here for a while, because I will be there, in the place where we are not. I shall be "in-between". It was obvious that I would be coming back – because I operate in the conventionality of art. I believe that as people do not want to talk about death, this strategy consolidates fear and inability to talk about death. In my case, the fact that I reach out to touch death does not mean that I want to die but that I want to talk about it in a conscious manner. I want to live without ignorance. Perhaps this is even a desire to live without the fear of death, that of my own and that of the others. A desire to make the unknown somewhat more domesticated.