What Is Art for?

The project attempts to answer the banal yet canny question about the raison d' être of art. MOCAK will be putting the question to various social groups: youth, art students, young artists and writers. It is envisaged that this project will continue for a number of years and the findings will be presented in the form of interviews, films and exhibitions.

So far, our investigation has been conducted jointly with the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow. During a year-long seminar conducted in the painting studio of Professor Andrzej Bednarczyk and Witold Stelmachniewicz, PhD, as well as in the interdisciplinary studio of Grzegorz Sztwiertnia and Zbigniew Sałaj, discussions have taken place about the point of art, whether in a social, educational or individual dimension. These brainstorming sessions have came to fruition in the works of young artists which, since October 2012, have appeared at MOCAK and all over Zabłocie.

The artists taking part in the presentation:

Anna  Askaldowicz, Tosia Dyblik, Karolina Jabłońska, Aleksandra Krawczyk, Tomasz Kręcicki, Kamil Kuitkowski, Cyryl Polaczek, Michał Kastory, Anna Pietrzak, Filip Rybkowski, Karolina Spyrka Mateusz Szczypiński, Radek Szlęzak, Kinga Zmysłowska.

As part of the project, the book What Is Art for? Conversations with Writers has been published. It has been edited by Tadeusz Nyczek and contains nine conversations with Polish writers: Janusz Anderman, Janusz Głowacki, Jan Gondowicz, Ryszard Krynicki, Mark Nowakowski, Jerzy Pilch, Olga Tokarczuk, Krzysztof Varga and Adam Zagajewski.

The second volume of similar interviews is being prepared by Grzegorz Jankowicz.

We have also asked artists to reflect on the essence of art. As both its creators and recipients, they are in a position to open up new, interesting directions of investigation. We invited artists to work with the Museum on the visual edition of its magazine  MOCAK Forum. Each artist, in structuring his answer, employed the artistic form closest to his heart, although this proved not so easy in practice. Video artists and performers were supposed to transpose their activities onto a 2D piece of paper, and painters - to construct a narrative composed of paintings.

Authors of visual essays:
Agata Bogacka, NeSpoon, Róża Litwa, Ada Karczmarczyk, Jerzy Lewczyński, Tomek Baran, Pola Dwurnik, Marta Deskur, Łukasz Skąpski, Artur Żmijewski.