Seeing Ourselves Through the Eyes of Others

Bożena Czubak: In the projection Guests, as we repeatedly announced, the protagonists are immigrants, Others, strangers. But the situation is by no means unambiguous, because the titular ‘guests’ can be located on either side of the windows, while the immigrants themselves are as much different as they are, one might say, the same. The category of the Other, which is certainly crucial here, is troublesome insofar as it serves many very different Others. What I mean is that this universal Other in your work is nevertheless historicised. In the case of Guests, these are the masses of Vietnamese living in Poland, Chechens wandering through Europe, Moroccans working in Italy, immigrants arriving in Europe from different places. They are also specific people and their stories, except that they are concealed behind panes of glass and cannot be fully recognised.

Krzysztof Wodiczko: On the one hand, this is the Other in the psychological sense: the one who is within me, not one of us, the foreigner. The one against whom identity is defined through denial—one is not other, but one of one’s own. Yet each of us can become an Other and find ourselves in a situation like theirs. It is their situation that is different and makes them appear different to us. Any one of us could find ourselves on the other side, behind the projection windows. At one point an intellectual appears in one of the windows and we feel that he should not be there, that his place is on our side. We do not want to see strangers up close because we too were once strangers and may one day be forced to become them again. We were a great mass of emigrants and immigrants in the world, working illegally, humiliated and often below our qualifications; we felt ‘declassed’. We do not want to see the full, excessively painful truth of what happened—and what is happening, because it appears before us again in the form of strangers—but it remains in our unconscious and comes to light as a rejection of strangers’ presence: to a greater or lesser degree, we separate ourselves from them. We draw the dividing line, which in relation to immigrants runs contrary to other divisions, including those of class.

B.C.: In the Venice pavilion, that dividing line—one that divided but also connected—consisted of the windows, with their dialectic of opening and closure, translated visually into revealing and obscuring.
K.W.: We feel ill at ease with those who are not our own. We do not recognise ourselves and are surprised by our negative reaction to their presence. In order to feel at home, we reject those who are not our own. To let them speak and be heard, a special situation has to be created for them and for us: an intermediate space in which strangeness reveals itself as both strange and familiar. The Venice projection continually balanced between drawing near and marking distance, between attraction and the impossibility of recognising the figures of the Others, the strangers, and identifying with them.

B.C.: This sometimes provoked resistance from viewers frustrated by the impossibility of identifying with the Other, putting themselves in their position, experiencing some shock through which to settle their own emotions.

K.W.: Brecht already warned us against emotional identification, against empathy. More important are distance and our surprise upon learning about the existential conditions of strangers’ lives, which leads to an understanding of their situation—and of the limits of our understanding. What mattered to me was drawing people into a situation that in itself explains, suggests and interprets nothing. This work requires effort on both sides, a mutual overcoming of estrangement. Viewers must be helped to draw closer and open themselves to Others, so that the latter are not rejected as a result of defensive reactions or, far more dangerously, displaced aggression. On the other hand, those who feel alienated must be helped to open themselves to us without fear of rejection. The translucent, misted pane gives them the comfort of feeling safe—they are, after all, the object of surveillance by the authorities—and protects them from the appropriating gaze of the camera and viewers. At the same time, the pane helps us draw near and listen to strangers without fear of overly close contact. Matters of strangers and strangeness must be handled tactically. In the Venice installation, it was important to sense the spectacular occasion of the Biennale and play it subtly—or even ‘play upon’ viewers’ aesthetic expectations. It was better to meet those expectations than to risk a frontal attack, an intervention for which a festival audience was unprepared. Without understanding the complex psychosocial and existential situation of strangers, and without attempting to reflect upon their own psycho-ideological conditioning, the audience would have rejected the work. What is at stake in playing out this situation is securing viewers’ attention, not that of art critics. Critics may, however, become viewers and learn something about themselves in relation to strangers, or about themselves as strangers. Some viewers, in turn, may become critics. In the context of the Biennale, it is more effective to appropriate the aesthetic ‘atmosphere of art’, using the tactic of slipping into viewers’ unconscious by engaging their sensibility, awakened through perceiving the multitude of works around them. Amid competition from the other pavilions, viewers must be detained by the pavilion’s aesthetic ‘hospitality’ and the duration of their visit extended. A tactical enchantment of the viewer is necessary, helping them perceive their own hazy image of the world and the darkness of their own interior, their unconscious: that hidden reality which ‘comes to light’ through the misted windows.

B.C.: In the Venice projection you enchant with aesthetics, but at the same time set a trap for those who allow themselves to be seduced by the beauty of the images. In any case, the aesthetic dimension has always been an exceptionally important element in the effect and attraction of your projections.
K.W.: Viewers must first be seduced by the work’s ‘beauty’ so that they can then be critically misled, led ‘astray’ into critical thought. Aesthetic methods and means have to be organically suited to the circumstances. In Venice I used the character of the interior, the pavilion’s neoclassical architectural order—with references to Roman imperial tradition and the Enlightenment tradition of garden architecture—and the symbolism of the place (the Polonia Pavilion versus the European Community). In ‘external’ projections, I always take into account both the aesthetic and symbolic character of the building or monument, just as in specially designed performative instruments I strive for their aesthetic, ‘functional’ transparency. In the aesthetically ‘ennobled’ open spaces of urban centres, I do not reject the opportunity to enter into the ‘popular cultural context’. I combine techniques of tactically blending into the cultural context with a technique of disturbing that context through the dissonance of a different narrative—for example, the words and gestures of contemporary strangers. In Venice, this involved introducing into the art world’s context the expression and existential consciousness of people who slipped in like apparitions from beyond this privileged field of vision: strange, uninvited guests who unexpectedly had a chance to tell us something about themselves. By using projection technology—in the words of the ancient Greeks, by practising and developing techne—I pursued in the pavilion a political and ethical practice, relating as much to the situation of strangers as to all of us, and a clinical and health-oriented practice (diagnosis, prevention and intervention), in order, through working with strangers in the field of art, to treat immigrant traumas and xenophobic symptoms. Here I draw upon Foucault’s thought and his references to parrhesia and parrhesiasts, wondering how they would act in today’s democratic world of refugees and immigrants, where the art of cultural navigation must intermingle with medicine and political critique. Using aesthetic means, I connect the popular image of the world—reproduced by the media, sanctioned by authority and accepted at face value, in which seeing ‘social order’ presupposes aesthetic expectations of art—with the world in which people ‘from outside their world’, invisible to viewers, live and work. This is a tactical game in which contradictions reveal themselves between the ‘beauty’ of art and the aesthetics of its exhibition space—seen as an interior-shelter, as a metaphor for our inner world, a world of escape into art, a world concealing our imagined phantasm of reality—and the world of the far from beautiful truth about the lives and modes of survival of Others. The world of Others who are alien to us and, at the same time, terribly and uncannily close; a world we have hidden in our unconscious and which, through the projection, is to ‘come to light’ and be restored to our consciousness. It is a dangerous world which, if disclosed directly, may erupt defensively in the form of xenophobic displaced aggression. Aesthetics helps to disclose it gently, to ‘acknowledge’ rather than reject it and turn it either into right-wing nationalist campaigns against strangers—the kind Le Pen once attempted in France—or into left-wing integrationist slogans about incorporating strangers into our better, ‘egalitarian civilisation’, against which Kristeva warned.

B.C.: While working on the projection’s installation, at one point you wanted to coordinate the images displayed on the individual windows in such a way as to create the impression that viewers were surrounded by immigrants, that they were inside a space from whose windows figures of immigrants armed with tools emerged on every side. In the pavilion’s vestibule, you placed a kind of motto from Hannah Arendt stating that nomads are the future of the world. The Guests, who at one point seem to occupy the pavilion from outside, remind me of your much earlier work from 1989, New York City Tableaux: Tompkins Square, a projection at Exit Art in New York. There you equipped homeless figures with weapons and props that prevented their images from fitting the stereotype of helpless victims. In Guests, too, you avoid any stigmatisation of immigrants; on the contrary, they are skilled workers, a poet or, as you yourself said, an intellectual.

K.W.: The immigrant is a product of labour; everything in their life is subordinated to work. Immigrants are working people. They work more and have to work more, although they earn less and are treated as an inferior element. Their tools are their weapons in the struggle for existence, which is why I armed them with them. But it is also worth realising that these tools can become weapons—paradoxically, more dangerous—when they cease to be used. We do not even have to imagine what would happen if immigrants stopped working; it is enough to turn to New York’s recent history. The attempt to eliminate illegal immigration in the second half of the 1980s, with mass arrests, paralysed the city. It was an example of immigrants’ hidden strength and potential, their being armed with what is essential to us. But it is essential to them as well, because work is their basic point of reference; when they have no work, they cease to exist. In the projection, I wanted to articulate work aesthetically. Window cleaning is presented as a kind of art, a virtuoso display of their own skills, an almost Baroque performance. For Kristeva, immigrants are Baroque personalities: they use a complex symbolism of signs, speak many languages and communicate through virtuoso gestures. In the projection, the panes they clean become pictures—their pictures—upon which they paint themselves through a pantomime of movements, through the way they wipe away the liquid and the continuity of gestures, which may be exaggerated in their elegance but also demonstrate the significance and strength of those gestures, which may prove to be gestures of revolt.

B.C.: The performative character of your works—the Instruments, Vehicles and Projections—is very often emphasised. This can be applied particularly to your most recent works: War Veterans’ Projections in Denver last year and in Liverpool three months ago. The vehicle used in these projections fired sounds and images of texts written by veterans. What happens before the project’s presentation, during its production, is very important. Work on Guests involved many hours of meetings with immigrants; some of them, particularly during filming in the studio, were deeply involved in the project. What we call performativity takes place above all ‘behind the scenes’, before the project’s public presentation.
K.W.: The point is not for those participating in the project to begin confessing or preaching, but for them to present their situation and give us an opportunity to understand them. These are often people who previously could not find the words and did not possess a language in which they could express themselves. While working on the project, they meet, speak with one another, exchange thoughts and develop the ability to communicate. It is a kind of workshop. I think they are helped by the knowledge that they are becoming involved in activities within the culture of the country to which they have come, and participating in a project carried out under the auspices of the National Gallery. But conducting such workshops successfully requires the efforts of many different people. In Rome, we could not have managed without the assistance of various organisations. I learnt a great deal about immigrants’ situation at the Legal Aid Centre, which helped me establish contact with them. In Liverpool, psychotherapists, lawyers and social workers played an exceptionally important role in working with veterans. Among those helping me was the head of Combat Stress, himself a veteran and former soldier. We succeeded in persuading a married couple to participate in the project: a veteran and his wife, who is still fighting a war to bring him home—a very difficult war to make him return not only physically. Through therapeutic work, they began speaking about it with one another. But one must create free conditions that allow them to develop their capacity for expression, what, following Winnicott, we might call ‘potential space’. Or what young people now refer to in Rancière: the necessity of balance between teacher and pupil, and of being an ‘ignorant schoolmaster’.
B.C.: In all this, the traditional role of the author recedes into the background; you relinquish copyright over what has been said.
K.W.: I understand the artist’s role somewhat differently, closer to Winnicott’s concept of the ‘good-enough mother’: being distant enough to allow others to develop creatively, so that they do not feel supervised, while remaining close enough to be at hand when necessary. To invoke Rancière once again, the point is not to exercise control over what is said, but to initiate and create situations in which others can express themselves and speak freely. When working on a project, I build a space of trust in the studio or social organisation. It must be protected, not destroyed by predetermined situations in which Others are treated like pawns in someone else’s game. In the case of immigrants, they must be given an opportunity to speak about themselves. In the Venice installation, effort is required on both sides of the windows: immigrants are strangers to us, but we are strangers to them too. The work requires viewers to participate, walk and listen to what the immigrants have to say about a situation that concerns not only them but, to some degree, all of us. Hence the situation’s open-endedness: it offers no promise of consolation and no binding truth. If anything, to draw upon Foucault, it offers not the truth of confession but the truth of the Cynics, the truth that disrupts, which is always spoken in one’s own name and exposes itself to every institution that produces truth. Many of the great Cynics were foreigners, beginning with their master Diogenes. These foreigners advocated equal rights for women and slaves. Imagine including women, slaves and foreigners in the aristocratic polis. Foucault’s return to the Greeks and his fascination with the tradition of parrhesia are highly instructive.
B.C.: The work presented at the Biennale was produced with an international audience in mind, above all one drawn from the European community. The titular Guests are immigrants arriving in Europe, which, while abolishing its internal borders, increasingly fortifies its external ones. While working on the project, we read in the press about the consequences of sealing the southern borders—including the incidents on Lampedusa—and ideas connected with controlling the eastern border, such as relocating refugee camps outside the European Union. This is connected with Poland’s position within these borders. We are part of this fortifying Europe; Warsaw is home to Frontex, the European agency responsible for border management and assisting, among other things, the removal of illegal immigrants. Yet the question of immigrants is addressed only sporadically here, as though the problem did not concern us. Are you not concerned that Polish audiences will have no interest in the projection’s subject?

K.W.: I believe that this makes it all the more important for us to work on our vision of Europe. It is very important to me to see this work on Polish ground and thereby to look at Poland on European ground. By showing the projection to a Polish audience, I hope to bring them closer to the people who appear in it, to the immigrants of whom so many live in Poland. Perhaps it will be easier to confront this situation when the work is shown here, when they are ‘guests’ of this country—which is, after all, also a European country. Naturally Europe is not uniform, and in countries situated at its edges, such as Poland, matters concerning immigrants are a subject that remains unnoticed, unlike in France, for example. In the central part of Europe, awareness of colonial experience is very distinct. I have the impression that certain Sarmatian clichés still persist here, a perception of newcomers from the point of view of a tradition that forms the basis of identity and is religious in character. Looking at strangers forcing their way to us from the East across our—now European—border requires a critical look at our colonial history in relation to the East. It requires a critique of an identity suffering from amnesia and an unconscious that remains untouched. Unfortunately, for many of us, joining Europe is an escape into our imagined Europe, a Europe without memory of what it was to others. We now avert our eyes from the strangers coming to us from the East because we may unconsciously feel that they have something difficult to tell us about our falsified ‘historical’ identity, our self-absorption, and what we do not wish to acknowledge. Historically, Poland was a multinational, imperial country, but there was also this dominant quality of familiarity, resonating in the endlessly repeated invocation: O Lithuania, my homeland! At last, we ought to address the subject of Polishness and the colonial past. There has never been a deconstruction of the way we think about ourselves in relation to the minorities inhabiting this country. In practice, the subject does not exist in conversations about culture. By contrast, consider the critical analyses of the colonial past in France. We have never had a discussion of this kind, even though in the seventeenth century we were part of colonising Europe. We colonised the East: Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and Moldova. Our contemporary thinking about ourselves, about ourselves in relation to Others, is devoid of any critical analyses reaching back to what Poland was, the extent to which those Others were part of this country, and our colonial relationship with them. Perhaps we still colonise them unconsciously? Our understanding of Europe has been cleansed of any critique of Europe. We do not participate in critical discourses about Europe. We are excluded from them; we have excluded ourselves as victims and cling stubbornly to that role. That is why, in my view, it is so important to see ourselves through the eyes of Others, of strangers, because we have never looked at or seen ourselves as viewed through the eyes of Others.