Jan Świdziński

Art is a Fact

Art is a Fact. Poster. Collaboration with Jan Swidzinski to mark the 20th anniversary of Contextual Art in 1997. Syntax Arts Society, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Notions such as art, artist, the world of art, function only as convenient identifiers which are useful only so long as they can serve in a given situation. As soon as the situation changes they can be rejected. They have a function but they have no independent value – their value is only in their current usefulness.

Art does not destroy or construct or create anything. Art is just a ‘performative’ activity, one of many movements. Art participates, not at all unrestrictedly, in the process of constant changes.

Those who deal with art today are in a similar position to someone driving a car as a tourist. He can stop for a beer, stay in a motel, meet other tourists like himself, whether belonging to his own culture, or some other culture subject to the influence of other myths. He drinks a beer with these acquaintances, exchanges some comments and then gets in his car and continues his journey. He does not want to persuade, convert, or argue someone’s point of view. What others communicate to us does not have the character of a statement. We do not know if it is true or false. And likewise do others see us.

There is the fact of a meeting and a performance-my own and that of the others involved; the action of forces which influence, stimulate and inspire one another and which cause unpredictable effects, which in turn produce even more effects.

Art is not similar to life, it is a part of life. Art is neither natural nor artificial, it is the way it is, the way it happens to be.