Essay on Wojciech Bruszewski Art Works

Introduction

Wojciech Bruszewski was a multimedia artist with prominent works in film, photography, installation, video, and computer graphics (Kluszczynski, 2012). He was also a member of the Film Form Work between 1970 and 1977 and Zero-61 group between 1965 and 1968. He was born in Wroclaw and spent the most part of his life living and working in Lodz. He pursued a carrier in photography and film in National Film Academy and graduated in 1975.

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In 1981 he started his working experience by lecturing at the National Higher School of fine arts in Poznan. It is at the same institution where he pioneered the Computer Graphics and Design Workshop. After several years as a lecturer, he became an associate professor in the year 1999 at the Department of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun (Kluszczynski, 2012). He also received several awards due to his outstanding work and performance in the arts industry in Poland. He received recognition as a professor of fine arts in 2004 from the president of the Republic of Poland. He earned several titles due to his prevalence on media work such as the author of advertisement for television and radio, author of film, video, photography, computer works, and video installation, and creator of text-art and literature.

Most of his early works had a close connection with the activities of the Film Form Workshop. He was a co-founder of the Film form workshop since the workshop was founded by graduates and students of PWSFTviT higher film school, Lodz film school, in the year 1970s. The workshop assisted in defining the moving image avant-garde in Poland in the mid-1970s. The workshop was a highly influential and a pioneering collective (Kluszczynski, 2008). It championed the analytical experimentation is several multidisciplinary practices. According to Wojciech, the analysis involved the researching and developing a connection between the audio and the visual components of films.

Example of his early works includes the film Klaskacz of 1971. The film is simply a music video that is related to the found footage set to 'summertime', an item of George Gershwin that was performed by Janis Joplin (Dziamski, 2014). While Wojciech was working on the video clip, he conducted several operations and manipulations on the archival tapes. He transformed the tempo and orientation of the playback. He also added repetition s and pauses. He also participated in the creation of first Polish production on videotape in 1972 which was named the Image Language. It was dealing with photographs. He participated in the creation together with Piotr Bernacki. The whole concept involved the attempt to visualize language by relating certain letters of the alphabet to certain corresponding features of the landscape. For example, the letter E was used to represent a plowed field. In the later years, they managed to create a text based upon image language. It was a piece that contained information regarding the transportation of language by the Polish airline LOT. The process involved the use of an outside broadcast van and four cameras.

Other popular examples are the film Little Spoon created in 1974 and the Pack of Matches Created in the following year 1975 (Iwanowicz, 2008). Both the two films were founded upon the deliberate separation of audio and visual components. The process objected the ideology that the film technique conveys reality objectively. The film Little Spoon involved a spoon hitting a windowsill several times and each and every hit represented the sound of a spoon hitting different objects. On the other hand, the film Pack of Matches, involved the hitting a windowsill with a pack of matches and every sound that was produced while the matches hit the windowsill was shifted and compared with an image. The images and the sounds were only synchronized during the first and the last hit. In another example such as the Tap of 1976, he used photographic tricks. The trick involved the manipulation of the image of water flowing from a tap. The water shown in the film was made to appear as if it was flowing upwards from the tap to signify that it was disobeying the law of gravity.

Wojciech extensive knowledge and experience in the art also led to him constructing installations and objects that reacted to images or sounds. One outstanding example of such works is his lecture at the open air in Osieki in the year 1972 (Helfert, 2007). The lecture room was only light with a single light bulb. The bulb responded to the voice of the speaker. When one shouted while speaking it meant maximum brightness for the bulb while silence meant darkness. He also came up with the Television Hen in 1979 which was a device that produced the sound of a hen cackling. The sound of the animal shifted according to the images displayed on the television screen.

Conclusion

Bruszewski exceptional contribution media art earned him popularity and influence in media in Poland. He was not only recognized in his home country but also in other parts of the world. He pioneered video art in Poland and also participated in the international movement Structural Cinema and the prestigious art exhibition of such as Documenta 6 and Documenta 8. He also received the stipend from DAAD in West Berlin. All those contributed to his popularity and enabled him to join the list of the artistic international elite.

Reference

Dziamski, G. (2014). Polish Files in the Lomholt Archive of Mail Art. Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts, (XVI (XXV)), 138-146.

Dziamski, G. Polish Proto-conceptualism.

Helfert, H. (2007). Technological Constructions of Space-Time.

Iwanowicz, J. (2008). Polish video art in totalitarian times (Doctoral dissertation, Masaryk University, Faculty of Philosophy).

Kluszczynski, R. W. (2008). From Media Art to Techno Culture: Reflections on the Transformation of the Avant-gardes. na.

Kluszczynski, R. W. (2012). Spaces of generativity. An introduction to the art of Wojciech Bruszewski. na.