D O C U M E N T / I N T R O D U C T I O N

INTRODUCTION TO “COMMON
SPACE AND INDIVIDUAL SPACE:
COMMENTS ON A GROUP TASK FROM THE FIRST

HALF OF 1993,” ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, WARSAW

lidia klein

“Common Space and Individual Space” was published in the fourth
issue of Czereja, a magazine created by the students of Kowalnia, a stu-
dio for fi ne art students run by Grzegorz Kowalski in the Department
of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. The Document
compiles the accounts by Monika Zieli ´nska, Jane Stoykow, and Artur
Z˙ mijewski of a performative group activity entitled Pieroz˙ ek drewniany,
zimnym mie˛sem nadziewany (The Wooden Dumpling, Filled with Cold
Meat) from the 1992–93 academic year.1 The Wooden Dumpling was
the eighth in a series of such activities (which Kowalski called “tasks”)
that had begun in 1981–82, cumulatively called Common Space and
Individual Space. The students described The Wooden Dumpling from
their separate perspectives, focusing on their individual experiences
rather than providing an exact ordered reconstruction and coherent
report of the facts.

The text published here should therefore not be read simply as

an inert art document, but as a part of the creative process within
The Wooden Dumpling. Even though the commentary was written after
the activity was completed, it does not offer rationalized and ordered

The participants in the activity were Grzegorz Kowalski (referred to in the text as G.K.),
Roman Wo ´zniak (R.W.), Monika Dzik (M.D.), Jan Kubicki (Mita´s), Monika Leczew,
Mariusz Maciejewski (M.), Grzegorz Matusiak (G.M.), Anna Mioduszewska, Je¸drzej
Niestrój, Jane Stoykow, Monika Zieli´nska, and Artur Z˙ mijewski.

https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a_00228

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Ilya Kabakov. “Czereja” issue 4,

1993. Scanned magazine cover.

Image courtesy of The Museum

of Modern Art, Warsaw.

conclusions, as we might expect from a post-factum account. Eher,
the reader is provided with three parallel streams of thought, welche
reveal different takes on the same situation and which, with their juxta-
Positionen, enter into dialogue with one another. In its emphasis on
offen, unrestrained (even chaotic) thinking and on the role of images
and experience in attempting to transcend the limitations of the lin-
guistic domain, the text can also be treated as an artwork itself in
which the reader can take part. The text provides access to the charac-
ter of Kowalnia’s practices—a pedagogical experiment anomalous
within the fairly traditional art education systems of Central and
Eastern Europe of this time. The importance of Kowalski’s practices
extends beyond artistic discourse. Even though Kowalski’s methods
did not find followers in other Polish art academies, Kowalnia produced
a generation of artists focused on challenging the status quo of post-
communist Polish society and exposing its hypocrisies. Their practices
became widely discussed beyond art circles and had a meaningful pres-
ence in the broad social discourse of 1990s Poland.

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The discussion around The Wooden Dumpling provides a valuable

account of Kowalnia from the perspective of its own graduates, just
prior to their entrance onto the Polish art scene. Zieli ´nska’s, Stoykow’s,
and Z˙ mijewski’s accounts reveal the tensions between the students and
their professor, their dissatisfaction with aspects of Kowalski’s peda-
gogy, and their skepticism regarding the possibilities of the nonverbal
artistic communication he promoted. Gleichzeitig, the docu-
ment’s importance goes beyond detailing the work of Kowalski and his
students, by providing insight into the condition of Polish art and soci-
ety post-1989 and by raising broader theoretical questions about the
possibilities and limitations of artistic communication.

The first issue of Czereja was published in 1992 in Warsaw. Der
issue was made up of six black-and-white photocopied, A4-sized sheets
of paper stapled together. The editorial board, Verlag, and printing
house comprised three people—Monika Dzik, Monika Zieli ´nska,2 Und
Artur Z˙ mijewski—all of whom studied at Kowalnia. Z˙ mijewski, WHO
had already produced art zines prior to his education at the Academy,
was the principal force behind the magazine. Already before Czereja, Er
had expressed the urgent need for critical discussions about art practice
and pedagogy, and for the creation of a space for the exchange of ideas
within the rather traditional and conservative Warsaw Academy of Fine
Arts.3 Czereja continued this spirit of conducting critical discussions
on art in the form of spontaneous, informal, and often emotional
commentary rather than academic reflection subject to the rules of
scholarly coherence and logic. In the words of its editors, Czereja was
a “reaction to the lethargic atmosphere within academic circles” and
an attempt to “create a possibility of expressing ourselves” against the
dominant “mode of education based on a passive absorption of the defi-
nitions and ways of artistic actions and thinking . . . [welche sind] nicht
helpful for forming individual modes of expression.”4 Czereja gathered
theoretical essays and critiques of particular works that emerged within

Zieli ´nska’s father ran a law firm and let the editors of Czereja use its resources to print
the magazine.
He was known, zum Beispiel, for sticking short comments and quotes related to students’
projects on the Kowalnia studio’s wall. All facts concerning the emergence of Czereja
are drawn from Karol Sienkiewicz, “Konflikt i porozumienie: ‘Czereja’ w pracowni
Grzegorza Kowalskiego,” Ikonotheka 20 (2007): 183 –200.
Quote taken from an application for the Pro Helvetia Foundation Grant, written in 1995
by the editors of Czereja, as cited originally in Karol Sienkiewicz, “Konflikt i porozumie-
nie,” 186.

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Kowalnia, as well as commentaries on artistic tasks carried out collec-
tively within the studio. In most cases, obwohl, the editors hardly pro-
vided any clear documentation of the actions and projects described.
Czereja was, stattdessen, especially in its first issues, a platform for
exchanging views and enabling the circulation of ideas, selbst wenn sie
were still not fully formed. The importance of Czereja thus lies in its
immediacy and in its perspective based on the participants’ experi-
zen. Its accounts are often chaotic and challenging for the reader, Aber
they also offer direct, unmediated access to the art practices discussed
in its pages.

Czereja only released six issues, zwischen 1992 Und 1998. Der erste
four were produced using a DIY technique (the texts and illustrations
were assembled together and reproduced on a copy machine) Und
were freely distributed mainly among students and friends within the
Academy and nearby circles, such as the Institute of Art History at the
University of Warsaw. The fifth and sixth issues were professionally
offset publications with improved layouts and higher-quality illustra-
tions and were printed on higher-quality paper, owing to financial
aid received from Poland’s Culture Foundation (Fundacja Kultury).
Beginning with the fifth issue, the magazine was made available in
Polish bookstores for purchase.

With its rather strict divisions into departments such as media,
painting, or sculpture, art education in Poland during the 1990s was
pedagogically traditional (and it continues to be today). Within each
department, students would choose studios run by different professors,
who mentored them until they graduated. This structure reinforced the
traditional dynamic between master and apprentice, and with it the
hierarchical nature of artistic education within Polish art schools.
Grzegorz Kowalski’s teaching philosophy sought to break with this
tradition. He defined his method as “partnership didactics” (dydaktyka
partnerska), continuing a style of artistic pedagogy based on dialogue
that Kowalski drew from his education in the workshops of Oskar
Hansen and Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz. After he replaced Jarnuszkiewicz as
the head of the diploma studio in the Sculpture Department in 1985,
Kowalski began looking for ways to further develop this dialogical
model of education. As he explained in his teaching statement To
Teach Art or to Educate the Artists?, the students rather than the
professor should play the decisive role in the studio. Repeating after
Jarnuszkiewicz that “the studio is created by the students and the

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pedagogues” (and adding: “in this exact order”), Kowalski described his
teaching approach as “a mutual flux of impulses,”5 a creative dialogue
in which the professor should not be the dominant party. Since open-
ness and freedom of expression were Kowalski’s priorities, the students
were not limited to traditional sculptural materials like clay, wood, oder
marble, in spite of the fact that the workshop operated within the
Department of Sculpture; they instead used a much wider variety
of media, including performance and video, to produce their works.
One of the strongest examples of Kowalski’s “partnership didac-

tics” was Common Space and Individual Space, practiced in the studio
starting in the 1981–82 academic year. Its aim was to test the possibili-
ties and boundaries of artistic communication and to examine the
t ension between the individual (artistic expression) and the common
(social context). Most of the tasks lasted several weeks, during which
the students returned to the workshop with their artistic responses to
the actions of other members. The key principle of Common Space was
that its members used only nonverbal means of communication—“the
language of gestures, signs, Formen, and colors—the entire repertoire of
visual arts as well as sounds.”6 Verbal commentary was incorporated
only after the task was over. Each task began with a specific situation,
usually involving a combination of objects and students’ bodies as set
up by Kowalski. Zum Beispiel, in the 1989–90 academic year, the situa-
tion opening Common Space involved a wooden table with large holes
carved into the surface. The students placed their heads through the
openings so that their ability to move was limited and their bodies were
not visible to other participants from the chin down.

The Wooden Dumpling task discussed in the Document translated

Hier, staged in the 1992–93 academic year, similarly started with the
presentation of a wooden chest, with one of the students—Mariusz
Maciejewski—lying inside.

The participants responded to this initial situation with various

Aktionen, mainly focused on Maciejewski’s body.7 For instance,

Grzegorz Kowalski, “Uczy´c sztuki czy kształci´c artystów? (Kilka spostrzez˙e ´n szarlatana),”
proceedings from the conference Polskie Szkolnictwo Artystyczne: Dzieje, Teoria,
Praktyka. Materiały LIII Ogólnopolskiej Sesji Naukowej Stowarzyszenia Historyków
Sztuki, Warszawa (October 14–16, 2004), 22.
Kowalski, “Uczy ´c,” 24–25.

6
7 What follows is not a description of the task in its entirety, which is too lengthy and com-
plex to detail here, but instead only a description of the parts of the exercise that are
related by the participants in the Document.

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Z˙ mijewski filled the bottom of the coffin with melting snow. Dzik
placed gold-painted casts of human feces (later drowned by Kowalski
in jars filled with water) next to each participant. Using a black crayon,
Matusiak drew lines on Maciejewski’s body, dividing it into parts.
Zieli´nska planted watercress around his genitals; the watercress was
then cut by Zieli´nska and served on a baguette to the participants.
Kubicki shaved Maciejewski’s face and later drove nails in the coffin’s
sides. Leczew stepped inside the coffin, drinking beer and smoking
cigarettes with Maciejewski. Je¸drzej Niestrój lined the inside of the
coffin with a tarp and filled it with water; the participants then pierced
the tarp, causing the water to leak and squirt out.

In the task’s later stages, the students worked with the empty

coffin and transformed the space surrounding it. Z˙ mijewski placed
Maciejewski on a metal bed frame suspended over the empty coffin
and rotated the structure; Stoykow turned the coffin upside down,
creating a table; Kubicki placed inflated balloons in the coffin; Und
Mioduszewska poured loose dough over openings in the bed frame’s
lattice and later cut twelve openings into the coffin. Mioduszewska
joined Maciejewski (now dressed in a tailcoat) in the coffin, and the two
danced together to joyous music. Niestrój put a large lattice cage over
the chest and the participants. He placed tram handles on the top,
which the participants held while Leczew stuck green leaves to the
cage’s outer walls. The chest and the cage were then connected with
paper stashes adorned with pictures of Maciejewski, which Kowalski
in turn burnt. Kowalski concluded the task by asking the participants
to dress in either black or white and to paint their faces accordingly.

Common Space

Individual Space 1992/93,

photograph.

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For Kowalski, the significance of Common Space was that it did not
“assume any specific, final effect in the form of some kind of art work.”
Eher, he argued:

we initiate the process, which can lead us to unknown destina-
tionen. . . . We are suspending the usual hierarchy: professor-stu-
dents, we are facing the challenges as equal participants. . . . Bei
the beginning everyone has a precisely defined “individual space”
within the “common space.” . . . The individual space is a private
Boden, the common space a kind of agora. . . . The need for com-
munication is the driving and constructive force of the process.
Moreover—it is an ethical measure of our behaviors and the ability
to be in the community. Every kind of destructive behavior can
destroy the communication.8

Difficulties with communication proved to be an important con-

cern within Czereja, sowie. As Karol Sienkiewicz has noted in his
study of the magazine, the texts published in Czereja were addressed
mainly to readers familiar with the context of the studio; as such, Sie
rarely offer coherent descriptions that would explain, Zum Beispiel,
the chronological sequence of events taking place within each task.9
Darüber hinaus, the tense used in the accounts often changes freely between
past and present, and the punctuation remains incorrect and often
confusing. daher, for any reader outside the workshop’s circle, Die
accounts of The Wooden Dumpling stand out as somewhat opaque and
difficult to follow. Visceral, often vulgar, Sprache, poetic metaphors,
and neologisms (“human repeated but cold”; “a necrophiliac flower
bed”) invite the reader to understand the text through images, feelings,
and evoked experiences (“the cadaver soaked in putrid juice”; “this
smells like lunch, like a nap after lunch”). The authors freely jump
between loose associations and digressions, often referring to events
and people important to the Kowalnia students—for example, Die
death of Jerzy Stajuda, a charismatic professor of drawing at the
Academy whom Z˙ mijewski mentions—without further explanation.
Through unhampered flows of thoughts filled with neologisms and
allusive poetic phrases, the texts published in Czereja offer a metaphor-
ical and viscerally charged form of signification. Gleichzeitig, Sie

8
9

Kowalski, “Uczy´c,” 24–25.
Karol Sienkiewicz, “Konflikt i porozumienie,” 195–96.

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100

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Czereja issue 4,

1993. Scanned

page 10 of the

magazine.

Image courtesy

of the Museum

of Modern Art,

Warsaw.

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are more than personal accounts. Read together, they help map
Kowalnia in the nineties from an insider’s perspective, free from the
conventions and restraints of mainstream art criticism.

The accounts of The Wooden Dumpling, especially Stoykow’s and
Z˙ mijewski’s, also allow us to experience some of the tensions present
within the workshop. As Stoykow claims, “everything ended before it
really started and gained speed,” because the conventions of courtesy
and social norms precluded the transgressive potential of the task.
“I felt tired,” writes Stoykow, “from the self-control,” and describes the
Erfahrung (rather enigmatically) as “something like a birthday party

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101

organized by the family, [I had wanted] more than that, a meeting of
friends after which I wake up, I don’t know when or why, on a park
bench, full of weird images, full of the will to return, to explain [Und]
build something new. . . . This is what I am still looking for—rebellion
and speed.”10 The Wooden Dumpling reveals the students’ dissatisfac-
tions with the discrepancies between Kowalski’s philosophy and his
üben, accusing him of falling into the pitfalls of traditional precon-
ceptions about pedagogy, Kunst, and communication. Thus Z˙ mijewski
criticizes Kowalski’s allegiance to language, impeding the process of
nonverbal communication, which should form the ground for a com-
mon space. Despite his declared intentions, according to Z˙ mijewski,
Kowalski imposed rules of reason (by “arranging [the events] In
sequences of logical successions”) and language (by “creating a vocabu-
lary, searching for an alphabet, consecutive actions assigned to letters,
signs”). For Z˙ mijewski, Kowalski “favors language, sequences of inter-
related forms, he looks for a coherent, metalogic transformation, Ergebnis
from a result”; Z˙ mijewski, andererseits, had been looking for a
“sequence in the content, in the meaning of shapes, interpretations of
the actions.” The Wooden Dumpling, Z˙ mijewski writes, ended with a tri-
umph of reason—it was a “pedagogical product, an amputation of an
unfolding chain of reality in creation, a kind of consensual inside-the-
brain abortion.”11 For him, the potential of artistic action, instead of dis-
rupting social order and establishing new channels of communication
beyond verbal constraints, turned out to be tamed by societal norms
and presented as a rationalized artifact.

The comments in the accompanying Document not only provide
perspectives onto the studio practices within Kowalnia, but they also
speak to the broader context of Polish art and society after 1989. Der
massive political, sozial, and economic changes brought by the sys-
temic transformation of 1989 shaped the world the Kowalnia students
would face after leaving the studio. As Poland established itself as a
democratic state and the centrally planned economy was replaced by
the free market system, years of official censorship were replaced by
liberal ideals of free speech. Jedoch, the post-transition reality quickly
began to disappoint, and the 1990s revealed deep inequalities rooted in

Jane Stoykow, “Obszar wspólny i obszar własny: Komentarze do zadania grupowego z
pierwszej połowy 1993 roku,” Czereja 4 (1993): 9.
Artur Z˙ mijewski, “Obszar wspólny i obszar własny: Komentarze do zadania grupowego z
pierwszej połowy 1993 roku,” Czereja 4 (1993): 14.

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economic differences, as well as exclusions based on sexual orientation,
Geschlecht, and disabilities. The source of oppression changed from one
that was clearly defined—the Communist state—to the dispersed but
equally strong powers of societal norms within a rather conservative
society. Developed before Stoykow and Z˙ mijewski graduated from
Kowalnia, The Wooden Dumpling foreshadowed some of the failed
aspirations of Poland in the 1990s that they would soon encounter and
critically engage. Although designed to experiment with artistic com-
munication and its limits, to negotiate the borders between the individ-
ual and the social sphere (or “agora,” in Kowalski’s words), and to test
the “ability to be in the community,” The Wooden Dumpling proved, bei
least partly, a disappointment in the dual projects of constructing a
“common space” and of generating “nonverbal communication”
through art.12

Soon after graduation, artists such as Paweł Althamer, Katarzyna

Górna, Katarzyna Kozyra, Jacek Markiewicz, Monika Zieli ´nska, Und
Artur Z˙ mijewski instigated intense social protests through their
Critical Art13 and would become icons of the ongoing discussion on the
limits of artistic freedom and free speech. Z˙ mijewski further pursued
his exploration of the tension between individual artistic expression
and the social sphere as a member of Krytyka Polityczna (Political
Critique), a network of leftist activism established in 2002. For Krytyka
Polityczna, visual and performative art is crucial for fostering a pro-
gressive social and political agenda. Seit 2004, Z˙ mijewski has also
served as the artistic editor of the journal published by Krytyka
Polityczna, and he regularly contributes texts exploring the role of art
in society. His theoretical reflections within Krytyka Polityczna often
elaborate on issues explored in Czereja. That continuity is perhaps best
seen in “Applied Social Arts,” a text published fourteen years after The
Wooden Dumpling, in which Z˙ mijewski develops questions he and the

12
13

Kowalski, “Uczy ´c,” 24–25.
Although this term lacks clear definition, it is used in Polish art history to name the
socially engaged art that emerged in post-’89 Poland. “Critical” artists employed strate-
gies of body art, abject art, and performance in works that aimed to instigate public
debate and raise awareness of issues repressed by society. Instigating social dissent and
provoking discussion were considered integral parts of an artwork, understood as a pro-
cess rather than an object, an approach crucial to the idea of Common Space. Siehe auch
Ryszard W. Kluszczy ´nski, “Arty´sci pod pre¸gierz, krytycy sztuki do kliniki psychiatryc-
znej, czyli najnowsze dyskusje wokół sztuki krytycznej w Polsce,” EXIT: Nowa sztuka w
Polsce 4, NEIN. 40 (1999): 2074–81; Izabela Kowalczyk, Ciało i władza: Polska sztuka krytyc –
zna lat 90 (Warszawa: Sic, 2002).

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103

other students had first asked in the Czereja Document into a broader
diagnosis of the place of art within society: “Does contemporary art
have any visible social effect? Can we measure and verify the effects of
art practices? Does art have political meaning apart from being a scape-
goat for populists? Can we converse with art, and is it still worth it?”14
As developed in The Wooden Dumpling and later elaborated by
Z˙ mijewski, the question of “common space” versus “individual space”
is not only relevant to our understanding of Polish art in the 1990s
but can provoke broader questions about the feasibility and efficacy of
socially engaged art practices, as well as about the communicative strat-
egies employed within them. “Common space”—a democratic agora
where the individual expressions of each member are considered and
respected—is a figure both for the ideal pursued within Kowalnia and
for the hopes that Polish society placed on the return of democracy
nach 1989. As Poland’s recent sharp turn toward nationalism suggests,
the “ability to be in the community,”15 which The Wooden Dumpling
was intended to test, remains an unfulfilled ideal.

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104

Artur Z˙ mijewski, “Stosowane sztuki społeczne,” Krytyka Polityczna, NEIN. 11–12
(Winter 2007): 15, http://krytykapolityczna.pl/kultura/sztuki-wizualne/
stosowane-sztuki-spoleczne/.
Kowalski, “Uczy ´c,” 24–25. D O C U M E N T / I N T R O D U C T I O N image

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