Gerhard Jürgen Blum Kwiatkowski shows how art changes the city

Krzysztof Cichoń: Do you remember when you came to Łódź for the first time?
Gerhard Jürgen Blum Kwiatkowski*: Not exactly. I think it was in the 1940s or in the early 1950s.
Do you remember why you came here?
Yes, I came here to see the Museum of Art. In those times, a journey from Elbląg to Łódź was a real odyssey. It sometimes took a couple of days and you needed to take packed lunch with you.

What would it be?

Potatoes. You don't even realise how delicious a boiled potato can be.

By what means of transport did you travel with this packed lunch?

By trains, of course, sometimes in goods carriages.

You arrived here from the north, so you probably got off at the Łódź Kaliska station...

I don't remember that.

Do you remember what you liked most then?

Then – Jankiel Adler. It's an example of the fact that tastes change, in fact. Anyway, I was impressed by the whole collection. It was something extraordinary. You couldn't see it anywhere else. I could spend hours in every room.

Do you think that now, in 2009, it may still happen that someone will come to Łódź to see something in a museum?

Yes, of course.
I've heard that it's worth coming to Łódź because there are wonderful market places and shopping centres.
One thing does not exclude the other. Shopping centres are everywhere, and sooner or later people will start looking for something special in their lives. This is what distinguishes us from ants.

What's your opinion on the project of the New Centre of Łódź in the area around the Łódź Fabryczna station?

I don't know all details but the project of the Special Art Zone building that I have seen is perfect. It's simple and clean.

It reminds me of what you do. For many years, your installations, made of identical cubes, have been equally enigmatic. It's difficult to understand what story they tell, what they mean.

Nothing. They mean nothing, they don't tell any story. Look: you live in a world where someone, or something, talks to you, tells you stories, agonizes over something, persuades you, buzzes over your ears all the time. First of all, art needs to be separated from everything else. Instead of telling audience another fantastic story, it should give us opportunity to hear ourselves. Maybe we also have something to say. It's similar with buildings which are supposed to serve art. I believe they cannot be too loquacious and focus all attention on themselves.
Then they will be unattractive. There will be people saying that they are simply boring...
I have never done what I do for idiots and this is my advice for you. People who cannot spend a moment with themselves are miserable.
Some people say that Łódź is a city of poor, miserable people.
We will not change it by creating illusions, gathering more attractions, using tricks. We need to do it without imagination.

Without imagination?!

Yes, without imagination. If I am led by imagination and I have certain expectations, I might be disappointed later, because my imagination cannot even predict what will happen in the next few minutes. I have learned to live without fear and hope. Life pushed me in different directions, and I would rather not lose a second from what I've experienced. Anyway, I was dead already. I had a car accident and I was dead for a while. What they write in all those ‘afterlife’ stories is rubbish. When you die for real, all you can sense is existence. There is no colour, tunnel, there is nothing material. It's not even a feeling, it's a kind of superior consciousness based on the confidence of remaining in this state. I've felt many emotions like that which still give me the opportunity to be ahead of what is being imposed on me. School, home, everyone tried to impose something on me, they told me to think in a given way. For example, Hitler said: ’grass is green so it should be painted green, the sky is blue - paint it blue, roofs are red and who will not paint them red, practices degraded art.’ Imagination, whether our or others', always limits us. We should follow what the Unimaginable tells us to do.

My intuition tells me that, for example, officials and politicians lack imagination, as opposed to ‘artists’, who are gifted with fascinating imagination.

It is not true. I always tell the mayor of Hünfeld: ’Sir, you are a greater artist than I am. You have people at your disposal. If you played them, you would make a harmonious orchestra which would serve everyone. But if you wanted to decide for everyone else, it would be disharmony. You wouldn't make use of all the sounds. There are different ways to rule without ruling. You have to give people a chance and trust...’

If the ’mayor of Łódź’ was an artist, trams would be four times more expensive than they are.

You already know how much they would cost? Maybe they would cost nothing? Maybe we could use them for free?

I am sorry, I think trams are not really the right for the EC1 Arttraction Railway Journal, all the more ’for free’. Let's finish this subject saying that, unfortunately, mayors have poor music education. Talking about things for free’ – do you think art should be subject to the laws of the market?

I do not know what market is. I'm beyond market. That's why you won't see my works in galleries profiteering from art. You will see them in places where people want to use creative energy for dialogue.

Then you should come to the Kobro Square in a few years. Going back to the project of the building for the Special Art Zone – some people might say that you support your own kind. In the end, it was a German group that has won the contest.

Excuse me, my family who lived in Prussia always used two names: Blum and Kwiatkowski. When the Nazis came to power, it was forbidden and my family used only one surname: Blum. After the war, I came back to the original form, but I have not become someone else, as many people think. I have always been in between and I have done my thing, whether in Elbląg or in Germany after 1974. In Poland, I was made a runaway and a traitor, in Germany I was regarded as a communist who came from the East for a long time. Nationality means nothing in art. In case of this project, it is enough to have a look at other projects.

Actually, we also like it but we are a bit worried because it's so big – seven 250-metre floors. It's hard to imagine what for we need something like this in Łódź

Do you think that in the early 1960s in ruined Elbląg anyone would think that there was any sense in organising exhibitions of modern art all over the city? Ask now what was happening in the early 1960s in this city with the population of 70 000 people? People always begin with the Biennale of Spatial Art. It was the first undertaking on such a scale in Europe. After the exhibition in Elbląg, a similar event was held in Aalborg, Denmark. At that time, I was invited to stay in Western Europe, I had the possibility to lecture in the Dutch Academy of Arts, but I didn't want to. We should do our job where we started doing it. A similar case was in Hünfeld – a happy city with very large plants of the Wella concern, golf courses and virtually no unemployment. Nobody had missed the Museum of Modern Art before I founded it. If the inhabitants of Hünfeld are proud of anything, then it's not a golf course but the museum and the fact that Konrad Zuse, one of the inventors of the computer, used to live there. And it's the only city in Germany free from spray paintings.
The authorities of Łódź would be glad to buy the licence from you because they have to paint over the ‘paintings’ which appear on the walls every now and again.
Well, many cities in Germany wanted to get the permit for copying the idea, they wanted to pay...
and?
What I do is not for money. In Hünfeld I can be sure that what is called City – an Open Book (Stadt-Offenes Buch) is still well done.
What does this project consist in?
It's simple. Each time, I receive a permit from the owner of a building and then we put an excerpt from poetry or an author's motto. In various languages. At first, people were distrustful. Why should an excerpt from Malewicz's works be put on our wall? Now, there is a queue of people waiting to have something like this. Having a map, you can go sightseeing Hünfeld following a route of quotations.

How many quotations are there?

About 140. The idea is still continued, I have a few projects and we will complement it.

How does it stop spray painters?

When they see that someone has already done something, they respect it.

I don't believe that art changes people...

I've never been afraid of confrontation. When you do something, there will always be people trying to pick up a quarrel. I was able to talk with them. A couple of times their parents asked me what I had told them because they came back with their heads full.
Does Łódź stand any chances of getting your permission to repeat the idea of City – an Open Book?
When we organise such a big undertaking as the Special Art Zone, then, of course, we are going to promote the project as well as we can, and it certainly has high chances of success in Łódź. I have talked with many writers, Polish as well as European, and they all will willingly give us their texts.

As opposed to your works, which do not tell us much, we can learn a lot from your biography. Since art is supposed to be a chance of meeting others, we will not avoid asking you one more time what the essence of your life is. You have already mentioned leaving to Germany in 1974. Can you tell me why you left when in Elbląg you had managed to set up a successful gallery, El, which organised an important biennale, and even, as some people say, clear Elbląg of debris...

Clearing the debris from the city is an interesting story. When Ochab came here, the Old Town was all in ruins. He didn't like the idea of modern art among ruins. Later, the City Committee called me in order to ask what we had been talking about. I made a joke saying that Ochab told me that he should send Józef Cyrankiewicz to Elbląg in order to make the place tidy and clean. All working places were mobilised. On Sunday, two thousand people were clearing the debris of the city and we sowed grass.

In the past, it was easier indeed. And the departure?

It's a personal issue. My wife lived in Germany then. My son was terminally ill; I received a telegram and went to them. When I was coming back, I had the car accident I have already spoken about. Before I left hospital, I had been dismissed from work in Elbląg. There was an attack on me, I was called a spy in newspapers. What for would I go back? Then I thought that they didn't know any Polish people in the West. I thought: ‘I'll show you a spy. I'll do anything it takes to show Polish art here.’ After leaving the hospital, I moved to my brother's place but I didn't feel well there. I asked him to lend me a tent because I wanted to go somewhere.

Where?

Simply straight ahead.

Until you reached the ruins of the monastery in Cornberg?

Yes. After three days, the police came because they’d been notified about someone putting up a tent among the ruins. They told me I could stay there, but I needed a permit. So I wrote an application to the mayor, and he agreed.

So the history from Elbląg, 1961, repeated itself – when the El gallery was to be set up, you wrote a letter to the Town National Council asking for a permit to utilise the ruins of the Dominican church in exchange for taking care of it.

Yes.

Did you spend the first winter in Cornberg in a tent?

Yes. I put many wrapped newspapers there, I had a heater. Later, it was easier. Television came to me, they made coverage and spread the news that there was a mad man who wanted to practice art.

How many art stations have you established since then?

Cornberg, Schloss Rittershain, Fulda, Bad Salzschlirf, Bad Heresfeld, Eschwege, Kleinsassen and Hünfeld. In Poland, there is a station in Świeradów-Zdrój. And, of course, first of all there is the Museum of Modern Art in Hünfeld.

How many people work with you?

Up to today I have done everything on my own. Only one lady comes to the museum for three hours a day to keep watch. I am a one-person institution.

How do people in Hünfeld see you?

Now, I enjoy respect.

But it wasn't like that from the very beginning.

Of course not. I was nobody when I came there.
As an ex-nobody, maybe you could give some advice to people willing to build the New Centre of Łódź near the Special Art Zone?
Everyone is responsible for what he/she does. Art has no right to convert, to suggest anything; it has no right to anything whatsoever. It must exist. Its very existence is its value. It's your decision whether you want to have contact with it or not. It's also up to you if the contact changes anything in you. This is what freedom really is. Command has nothing in common with liberty. Łódź may be a perfect place to contrast works of many authors, thanks to which you can see the world from many perspectives. The city lies in an interspace – neither in the West nor in the East. The truth doesn't lie on the left or right, it is not present in provocation or in reaction. It's always in between, in the interspace.

From the beginning, this city has existed and developed in order to produce and serve the rest of the world. Today, 740 000 people live there. From the beginning, nothing has been designed especially for them. It is as if there was no reason for them gathering in this place. We want to change that. We don't want to spend all the time searching for real life somewhere else.

We should remember that such undertakings require good ideas, otherwise nobody will pay attention to them.There was a similar case in Elblag. At first, you don't really think about the results. You just do something. My friends saw me repairing the roof of a ruined Domican church and said: ‘We'll help you.’ When you started doing something, simply keep on doing it the following day.
We really like it because the project of rebuilding the Lodz Fabryczna station is created in a similar way.

*Gerhard Jürgen Blum Kwiatkowski
born in 1930 in Faulen, East Prussia. In 1945, he was taken by the Russians as a shepherd of captured cattle. After three months, he ran away from the area near Leningrad on a horse. After the war, he settled in Elbląg. In 1962, he set up the El Gallery – the Art Laboratory, which is one of the most important places for Polish post-war art. He was its manager until 1973. He was the originator and, since 1965, one of the main organisers of the Biennale of Spatial Art held in Elbląg. He lives in Hünfeld. In 1985, he initiated establishing of the Free Academy of Art (Wolna Akademia Sztuki), which functions to this day and admits students regardless of their age and educational background. In 1990, he established the Museum of Modern Art presenting his abundant art collection in the buildings of former city gas works. He played a tremendous role in popularising the achievements of Polish artists in the West. In 2002, he was awarded the Katarzyna Kobro award. He says about himself: ‘I'm a student of Stażewski, and his aim was universal beauty’. A man who consequently lives on the edge. He spends most of his time in a red van. If he wants to organise an exhibition, he still can go from Hessia to Madrid and come back in one day. An uncompromising supporter of the theory that art is a kind of spirituality, not production of goods. He is consistent in developing the concept of intelligible art which directly refers to reasonable elements, beyond and above words.