Do you also tend to find reality ambiguous and contradictory? I often wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because, at its core, reality is fluid and interconnected, and when we try to arrange it in our own way (in a cognitive or ethical sense), it starts messing with us, setting traps, using irony or simply mocking us. Many people, and even entire nations, are unable to come to terms with this situation. They inflate their balloons and drift towards idealism. Others give up, becoming apathetic, passive or even depressed. There are also those, a decided minority, who can savour this condition intellectually and aesthetically. Andrzej Wasilewski is one of them. He learnt this art from the grand masters, William S. Burroughs and Karel Čapek. And he put it in practice on a daily basis – not without a doubt and frustration – while living in Poland. At the Boxes Art Museum in Foshan, China, September was the last month in which the public could see his monumental exhibition, “The Absolute Factory”, a tale of self-destruction that is an inherent part of human DNA.
Wasilewski’s art does not provide any new knowledge, it does not discover anything, nor does it point to any solutions. His works are a kind of laboratory-like, philosophical and quasi-scientific situations within which we can look at our existential struggle. He is interested in a state in which we can no longer remain in indeterminacy, we must make a move. At the same time, our actions do not bring us any closer to fulfilling the dream of a world where people respect each other and the total magnitude of misery is gradually reduced. This brief moment of suspension and quivering stillness, held in place in accordance with the law of contradiction, is brought to the point of boredom that begins to create space for reflection and humour. It is, of course, black humour, devoid of any hope, but at the same time highly self-reflective humour that loves irony, surrealism, and absurdity.
To say that in “The Absolute Factory”, Wasilewski has created by far the gloomiest and the most suffocating environment in his art, is a huge understatement. “The Absolute Factory” stops us at a point when we take a deep breath, and before exhaling, we realise that instead of clean mountain air, we have inhaled a mixture of toxic smoke full of chemicals. The ventilation system, which is supposed to provide clean air inside, is covered in dirt and coal dust. It operates with a loud buzzing sound and seems to pump carbon dioxide instead of oxygen. Hundreds of pinned-up, graphite-black insects and an immobile Foucault’s pendulum, weighted down by a fifty-kilogram net filled with hard coal briquette, stop time for us, so that we can enjoy the moment a bit longer. In another room, Geiger–Müller counters generate warning sound waves based on the measurements of radiation values for coal samples encased in lead sarcophagi, while the “Carburetor”, which is actually a moonshine distillation device, seems to condense this fraudulent absolute. As is usually the case, Wasilewski provides all this in a way that is distanced and emotionally engaging at the same time, both amusing and utterly bleak.
In Wasilewski’s art, contradiction and paradox are the fundamental structuring principle, both on the semantic and formal level. The author achieves this effect through clever interventions in the operations of mechanical machines, digital reality, algorithms and artificial intelligence, using logical tautology, internal entanglement, and cognitive dissonance. It can be said that the structure of his works reveals the structure of human experience based on the ambiguity of the world. In “The Absolute Factory” paradoxes centred around the cultural category of coal became the starting point for the exhibition design. Carbon is a chemical element forming a vast number of compounds, showing multiple properties, constantly circulating in the environment and being, next to oxygen, the main component of all living organisms. Humans’ discovery that coal is an efficient energy source was a decisive factor of its remarkable career which lasted for around 262 years (counting from James Watt’s invention of the steam engine), ending in front of our eyes. Coal’s share of the global energy mix is projected to fall below 50% in 2025. It has gone from being “black gold”, an engine of rapid global civilizational progress setting the stage for development, to the culprit of global environmental crisis and the symbol of global catastrophe. As such, it is subject to class and ecological discourse, social unrest, as well as economic, political, and ideological conflicts.
Wasilewski’s “Factory” utilises these multifaceted meanings, drawing on specific contexts and discussions. It is worth noting that it was first presented in post-shipyard Szczecin in Poland, in a country that is more attached to the mining ethos and coal energy than most European countries. There was also the idea of bringing “The Factory” to represent the Czech pavilion at the Venice Biennial in the context of the much-publicised conflict between the Czech Republic and Poland over the borderland Turów coal mine and power plant. The Czech Republic filed a complaint against Poland with the Court of Justice of the European Union, raising allegations about the mine’s impact on the environment, including the outflow of groundwater and water shortages in nearby wells. The idea ultimately backfired, but “The Factory” was presented in China, a country that owes its spectacular economic growth to coal. China is experiencing the greatest growth in energy demand and a continuous increase in greenhouse gas emissions, being the country where new coal-fired power plants are being built, while at the same time declaring carbon neutrality by 2060 and leading the world in the transition to renewable energy sources. Its dominance in the green technology sphere is so extensive that the USA and EU are accusing the country of price dumping and block it with import levies, thus delaying the fulfilment of its commitment.
From the Western perspective, China is full of contradictions, where learnt and obvious cognitive matrices prove inadequate. All the more reason for us to confront our dualistic point of view, based on the law of contradictions, with the Taoist approach, positioned at the core of Chinese spirituality and organisation of everyday life, which treats paradox as a reflection of the complex nature of the world.
Wasilewski has been visiting Asia since 2009, and first travelled to China in 2015 on the occasion of an exhibition of Polish art at the National Art Museum in Beijing. I believe this experience has influenced his projects, continuously discussing dualism, which is treated as the cornerstone of Western culture. His apocalyptic, dystopian machines which he then constructed, and continues to construct, resemble an imperfect, lost human cognitive apparatus: they produce erroneous measurements and interpretations, make mistakes, have limitations and insufficient energy resources, as they do not know what they are for, and why they keep doing the things they do. I think that many Europeans experience such feelings in China. How do you come to terms with the fact that you can drink alcohol everywhere, even at the airport just before check-in, but you are not allowed to lie down on a bench near a contemporary art museum? Why doesn’t anyone care about red lights at pedestrian crossings when ubiquitous cameras are constantly scanning their faces? What does chopping of all types of raw meat in public do with the obsessive packing of even the tiniest items in plastic bags? Many more such questions could be asked. Far more understandable is the fact that electric vehicles in China are mostly powered by coal, as Wasilewski jokingly notes. It would be similar in Poland if we could buy such cars as cheaply as in China. It is possible that in the fight against smog in our cities, not to mention the quality of public transport, Polish hopes should be sought in Chinese factories and aggressive exports rather than in EU regulations.
According to Taoism, our stance should be flexible, and if we encounter an obstacle, we should swim around it instead of colliding with it. The Chinese have proved that it is possible to apply these precepts in street traffic, but can we swim around the impending catastrophe? I would be interested to see how China would fare if it turned out to be a global leader who has to take responsibility for the survival of our planet. Needless to say, the Americans have ruled themselves out of this role with films such as “Don’t Look Up” (2021).
The various complex meanings and tropes associated with the issue of coal, too extensive to merely mention them in this article, add to the semantic richness of Wasilewski’s installation. I think that the author himself, when asked about his work, would not be able to exhaust all the themes. It is woven like a spider’s web into which we all fall, including the author. Simply because we all need energy. The coal dust which covers the ventilation system attached to the ceiling reminds us of the immense carbon footprint the artist left when travelling from Europe to Asia to assemble and then dismount the installation. An online calculator proves his responsibility for emitting more than 5 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But, let’s not fool ourselves that his resignation from showcasing “The Factory” in China would change anything. Polish tourists fly from Warsaw to Doha, and petty traders buy things cheaply in China and sell them for huge profit in rich Arab countries, travelling along a route between Doha and Guangzhou. I hope I am accurately explaining the author’s intentions when I say, the point is that one move in a specific direction may provoke a sequence of events leading in the opposite direction, while at the same time anything we do as individuals is unlikely to have a significance on a global scale. It is difficult to say what guidance this provides. Should we give up on all our actions or rather stop caring about anything? Wasilewski’s work does not give us any moral or ethical guidance. These issues have to be solved individually, within ourselves.
“The Absolute Factory” aligns in an intriguing way with the context of production and economic relations between East and West, while provoking the artist to play a game with himself. Apart from the DIY electronics controlling Geiger-Müller counters, the lead sheets and radiating coal samples that he brought in an aeroplane suitcase, all parts of the installation were recreated on site. The ventilation duct („Sound system or a score for eight fans”) was manufactured by a Chinese factory (employing workers from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia) which delivered it to the gallery and mounted it under the ceiling based on their design. The carburetor was purchased from the TaoBao online platform and placed on an electric heater (at Trafo, the carburetor was heated by gas), and coal slates with traces of extinct prehistoric plants which were to be burnt (erased from history) in an act of barbarism to obtain Dionysian moonshine, was lost somewhere between the shopping platform and the gallery. China is adopting Western lifestyles, borrowing patents, designs and technologies, buying European buildings and entire towns. And they are flooding the world with cheap products. They do it so well that they lose the distinction between the original and the copy, they reverse the relationship, becoming a point of reference for the West. By copying the exhibition, the artist is not so much mocking this relationship, as becoming part of it himself, which I believe lends credibility to his stance as an artist. I appreciate when artists are able to juxtapose their natural desire to be on top of (dominate) the situation they are creating with the need to be regarded as one of many elements of their work. Wasilewski has succeeded in this. He has created a copy of his exhibition in China for Chinese audiences that is larger, more precisely made, more powerfully affecting and richer in context than the original one.
The Boxes Art Museum in Foshan, into which Wasilewski incorporated his installation with clockwork precision, is a beautifully located museum managed by Curatorial Group of the Oil Painting Department at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. The unique, lightweight body of this young building sits in the spacious, waterlogged ecosystem of Shunfeng Mountain Park, which seems to be devouring it. The mould on the façade gives hope that the institution’s model is more than just copying Western trends that emphasise an educational mission and awareness of the local context. What has defined contemporary art in the West (including the entire institutional context) for at least 150 years is not externality, but a constant internal struggle and search for problems within oneself. Boxes are different from the dehumanised architecture of glass skyscrapers typical of Foshan and contemporary Chinese cities. It is enough to compare them with the He Art Museum (HEM) located nearby in a building designed by a Japanese Architect Tadao Ando. The museum’s impeccable office and commercial neighbourhood could be the setting for Jean Baudlliard’s wet dream in which Corbusier identifies with the simulacrum. Even the trees appear to have been trimmed according to the original visualisation. Numerous cutting-edge art museums closely related to the construction and development industry were built in China in recent years. Looking out of their windows, it’s impossible to see the stacks of power plants providing electricity to these buildings and the entire lower class they symbolise. Complex urban developments, office and apartment buildings are their natural context along with magnificent parks and landscapes where upper middle-class children hang out and get bored. The art and its space are separated and cleared, require no editing in a photo app and can be instantly saved in the wallpaper gallery.
The fact that the bottom should be distanced from the head can be taken as an interspecies anthropological rule, obvious to all homo sapiens. But equally understandable should be the suffering of the unfortunates whose windows overlook the huge smoking stacks of coal-fired power plants somewhere on the outskirts of cities. Wasilewski’s “Absolute Factory” reduced this distance, but it is difficult to say whether and to what extent the audience has understood that. Wasilewski, with his characteristic ironic subtlety and aesthetic sensibility, deliberately placed the head of a contemporary homo sapiens in his bottom, so that he could better sense the truth about the nature of his daily presence on planet Earth.
Written by Łukasz Musielak
Chinese translation by Liang Guojian KENBO
Chinese edition by Deng Zhiting
Photos by Wu Bingze
Photos and video by Huang Zile
“The Absolute Factory”, 2024.06.26-09.02 Boxes Art Museum, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, China
curators: Stanisław Ruksza, Gu Zhenqing
The project “the absolute factory” consists of 5 installations:
- Carburetor” (distiller, coal shale, sugar-yeast mash (turbo-yeast))
- Foucault’s Pendulum” (steel rope, hard coal)
- Composition for 16 dosimeters” (DIY Geiger-Müller meters, 16 speakers, samples containing carbon emitting α and β radiation enclosed in lead sarcophagi)
- Sound system or a score for eight fans” (500 meters ventilation ducts, culm, dust, air fans) – in the collection of Roof Art Center, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
- The Museum of Lost Species”, 1000 insects covered by graphite, 600 wooden displays – in the collection of Refrain Mountain College, Ning Xiang City, Hu Nan Province, China
安德烈-瓦西列夫斯基作品“中国的绝对工厂”在盒子美术馆
作者：卢卡斯-穆斯勒
您是否觉得现实模棱两可自相矛盾？ 我时常思考缘何如此。或许现实是流动的，相互关联，当我们试图用自己的方式，从认知或道德意义上铺排，它就会从中搅局，设坑讽刺，甚至嘲笑我们。总所周知整个国家都无法接受这种情况，他们总是把理想主义的气球吹得越来越大。有人漠然处之，沉默被动，也有少数人从中心领神会，安德烈-瓦西列夫斯基为其一。他从大师威廉-巴勒斯William S. Burroughs和卡雷尔-恰佩克Karel Čapek那里得到启悟，并将这门艺术付诸实践在波兰，其中不乏疑惑和挫折。二零二四年九月，是他在中国的最后一个月，公众可以看到他的纪念性展览“绝对工厂”在佛山盒子美术馆，呈现一个人类DNA与自我毁灭的故事。
瓦西列夫斯基的艺术并没提供任何新知识，没有发现任何东西，也没有指出任何解决方案。他的作品是一种类似实验室、哲学和准科学的情境表现，事关生存斗争，他志趣于此：我们不能再停留在无以名状，我们可以审视其中，必须有所行动。 但实际上，我们的行动并未实现（或更接近）这样一个梦想：在这个世界上，人们相互尊重，痛苦渐减。暂停键悬浮着颤抖着，矛盾法则被锢原地，带入无奈之境，幽默创想，以作反思。这是一种戏谑荒诞的超现实主义，当然这是一种不寄任何希望的黑色幽默，但同时这种幽默高度自省。
如果说瓦西列夫斯基在“绝对工厂”中创造了迄今为止最阴暗、最令人窒息的环境，对他的艺术作品那也太轻描淡写了。当我们深吸一口气时，“绝对工厂 ”会让我们停下脚步，在呼气之前，我们会意识到我们吸入的不是清新的山间空气，而是充满化学物质的有毒烟雾混合物。本应为室内提供洁净空气的通风系统却布满了污垢和煤尘！通风系统发出巨大的嗡嗡声，似乎在抽取二氧化碳而不是氧气。数百只钉在一起的石墨黑昆虫和一个固定不动的傅科摆，被一个装满硬煤球重达 五十公斤的网压住，它们让时间停止，让我们可以享受多一会儿。在另一个房间里，盖戈-缪勒计数器根据对包裹在铅石棺中的煤炭样本，辐射值的测量结果随机产生警告声波；而 “碳化器”（实际上是一个月光蒸馏装置）似乎在浓缩这种欺诈性的绝对值。与往常一样，瓦西列夫斯基以一种疏离而又充满情感的方式讲述了这一切，有趣又令人黯然神伤。
在瓦西列夫斯基的艺术中，矛盾和悖论是语义和形式层面的基本结构原则。作者通过巧妙地干预机械电器、数字现实、算法和人工智能的运作，利用逻辑同义反复、内部纠缠和认知失调来达到这种效果。可以说，他的作品结构揭示了基于世界模糊性的人类经验结构。在 “绝对工厂 ”中，围绕 “煤 ”这一文化范畴的悖论成为展览设计的出发点。 碳是一种化学元素，可形成大量化合物，具有多种特性，在环境中不断循环，与氧气一样是所有生物体的主要成分。人类发现煤炭是一种高效能源，这是其辉煌事业的决定性因素，这一事业从詹姆斯-瓦特发明蒸汽机算起持续了约 262 年，最终在我们眼前结束。 预计到 2025 年，煤炭在全球能源结构中所占的比例将降至 50%以下。 煤炭已经从 “黑金”全球文明快速进步的引擎发展舞台，变成了全球环境危机的罪魁祸首和全球灾难的象征。因此，无论从阶级和生态话语、社会动态以及政治经济包括意识形态冲突，都受其影响。
瓦西列夫斯基的 “工厂 ”利用了这些多层面的含义，借鉴了特定的背景和论调。值得注意的是，“工厂 ”最初成型是在波兰，而波兰比大多数欧洲国家都更重视采矿精神和煤炭能源。此外，在捷克和波兰就边境地区图鲁夫煤矿和发电厂冲突的背景下，更备受关注，“工厂 ”曾有代表捷克馆参加威尼斯双年展的想法。捷克共和国向欧盟法院起诉波兰，指控该煤矿对环境造成影响，包括地下水外流和附近水井缺水。“工厂 ”这个想法最终剧情峰回路转， 却远在中国上演。当今中国惊人的经济增长其中得益于煤炭， 能源需求极速，温室气体排放持续增加，是新建燃煤发电厂最多的国家。此时，中国还宣布到 2060 年实现碳中和，并引领世界向可再生能源过渡。 中国在绿色技术领域的主导地位广泛如此，以至于美国和欧盟指责该国进行价格倾销，并通过征收进口税来阻其发展，从而推迟了其承诺的履行。
以西方的视角观点，中国充满矛盾，在这种情况下，我们学习和认知阵矩明显不足。因此，以矛盾法则为基础的二元论观点与道家方法，我们更有理由将两者对立起来，道家方法是中国精神和日常生活组织的核心，它将矛盾视为世界复杂本质的反映。
瓦西列夫斯基自2009年起开始访问亚洲，2015年在北京中国美术馆举办波兰艺术展之际首访中国。我相信这段经历对他的项目产生影响，他不断讨论被视为西方文化基石的二元论。后来他陆续构建了世界末日般乌托邦式的机器，就像一个不完美的、迷失的人类认知装置：它们产生错误的测量和解释，犯错，局限，能量资源不足，因为它们不知自己所为，也不知自己何故而为之。我想，许多欧洲人在中国都身同感受。
道家认为，我们理应灵活变通，如果遇到障碍，我们应该绕道而行，而不应与其相冲。以中国人的经验之谈，在街道交通中应用有规可循，但试问我们能否绕过即将到来的灾难呢？我很想知道，倘若有天中国成为一个愿意为我们地球的生存负责的全球领导者，其表现将会如何。无须多言，美国已经通过2021 年《别往上看》等电影将自己置身度外。
与煤炭问题相关的各种复杂含义和套路，在本文中无法一一列举，但却为瓦西列夫斯基的装置作品增添了丰富的语义。我想，当被问及其作品时，作者本人也无法穷尽所有主题。它就像一张蜘蛛网，包括作者在内，我们都会落入其中，因为我们都需要能量。但是，我们不要自欺欺人，别以为他中国展出 “工厂 ”作品就能带来什么改变。其实波兰游客从华沙飞往多哈，和路上所遇的小商贩在中国廉价购买物品，然后沿着多哈和广州之间的路线，在富裕的阿拉伯国家出售牟利者，做功一样。覆盖在天花板通风系统上的煤尘提醒我们，艺术家从欧洲到亚洲组装和拆卸装置时留下了巨大的碳足迹。 在线计算器证明，他向大气中排放的二氧化碳超过 5 吨。我希望我能准确地解释作者的意图，那就是，朝着一个特定的方向迈出每一步，可能会引发事件反向的骨牌效应。与此同时，我们个人所为并不足以撼动全球，更难言表其贡献，但我们是否就此罢休，改变姿态而事不关己？瓦西列夫斯基的创作作并没有给我们提供任何道德或伦理方面的指引，这些问题涉及自身宿命论，让我们三思吾身。
引人入胜的“绝对工厂 “，与东西方之间的生产和经济关系背景相吻合，同时激发艺术家与自己玩一场游戏。除了控制盖革-缪勒计数器的 DIY 电子设备、他用飞机行李箱带来的铅板和辐射煤样品之外，装置的所有部分都是在现场重新制作的。通风管道“声音系统或八个风扇的乐谱”由一家中国工厂制造，他们雇用的工人来自老挝、越南和柬埔寨。该工厂将通风管道运送到画廊，并根据他们的设计将其安装在天花板下。化油器是从淘宝网上购买的，放在一个电加热器上，在特拉福，化油器是用煤气加热的；带有史前灭绝植物痕迹的煤板在购物平台和画廊之间的某个地方蒙太奇般找到记忆：狄俄尼借酒行凶，这些植物在野蛮的行为中被烧毁，从此消失。中国正在仿效西方的生活方式，借用专利、设计和技术，购买欧洲建筑和整个城镇。廉价产品充斥全球，他们做得如此之好，以至于失去了原创和复制之间的区别。他们颠倒了两者之间的关系，成为西方的参照点。通过复制展览，艺术家与其说是在嘲笑这种关系，不如说是自己成为了这种关系的一部分，我相信这使他作为艺术家的立场更加可信。我很欣赏艺术家能掌控并主导他所缔造之境，将其作品众多元素与其所需通通并置，瓦西列夫斯基在这方面取得了成功。他为中国观众复制了他在中国的展览，这个展览比原版更大、制作更精确、感染力更强、背景更丰富。
位于佛山的华侨城盒子美术馆由广州美术学院油画系策划组团队管理，地理位置优越，瓦西列夫斯基将其装置作品精准地融入其中。这座年轻建筑独特而轻巧的主体坐落在湖山滨水之间，而顺峰山公园抱揽其中。建筑展现的活力让人看到了希望，该机构的模式并不仅仅是照搬西方潮流，而是强调教育使命和本土意识。至少 150 年来，定义西方当代艺术（包括整个机构背景）不单在外形，而是不断的内部革新和对自身问题的探寻。盒子美术馆所体现的人性化不同于佛山和中国当代城市中典型的玻璃摩天大楼建筑，将其与附近（由日本建筑师安藤忠雄设计）的和HEM美术馆进行比较，就足以说明这一点。博物馆内无可挑剔的办公区和商业区可以说是让-波德利亚尔的梦想之地，在梦中柯布西耶与 “假象”simulacrum达成了一致，就连树木似乎也按照最初的设想进行了修剪。近年来，中国建造了许多与建筑和开发行业密切相关的前沿艺术博物馆。 从窗户向外望去，根本无法看到提供电力的发电厂，这些能源建筑所象征的是整个下层社会系统。复杂的城市开发项目、办公楼和公寓楼构建的自然环境，还有壮丽的公园和景观。中上层阶级的孩子们在那里闲逛，但看上去这是多么无趣，他们沉浸在手机的虚拟世界与现实艺术品空间毫不相干，手到拿来的图片无需加工就可以在应用程序直接保存到壁纸库，毫无感受体会。
事实表明，阶级总是保持距离，这一事实可以被视为一种不同物种的人类学规则，对所有智人来说都是显而易见的。同理可解，人们平时透过窗户瞭望着城市郊区某个地方燃煤电厂巨大的烟囱，痛苦的不幸却在瓦西列夫斯基的《绝对工厂》大大缩短了这种距离，但很难说观众是否能理解这一点，也难以捉摸观众理解程度有多深。
他的作品给人们带来重要信息： 作为人类，我们正站在历史的转折点上。进步、经济增长、生活质量提高所带来的喜悦可能并不像看上去那么可持续。我们不应掩盖事实，虽然全球视野广阔，但并不乐观。无论我们生活在哪里，身处纬度何地，姑且勿论我们的社会和经济地位如何，命运共同体，我们俨然都在同一辆已经超速的列车上！
中文翻译：健伯
中文编辑：邓芷婷
照片：吴冰泽
照片：子乐
绝对工厂，2024年6月26至9月2号，中国广东盒子美术馆
策展人：斯坦尼斯瓦夫·鲁克萨，顾振清
绝对工厂展览由五个装置作品组成：
- 碳化器（蒸馏器、煤页岩、糖-酵母混合物（涡轮增压酵母））
- 傅科摆（钢索、煤）
- 十六个剂量计的组合（DIY盖革-米勒计数器，十六个扬声器，含碳发射α和β辐射的样本，封闭在铅石盒中）
- 声音系统或八个风扇的乐谱（五百米通风管道、风、尘、风机）—— 中国广东省广州屋顶艺术中心收藏
- 失落物种博物馆” 石墨覆盖的一千只昆虫，六百个木制陈列架 —— 中国湖南省宁乡市迭奏山学院收藏
卢卡斯-穆斯勒
出生于1979年，哲学家、艺术理论家、艺术评论家、书籍编辑，发表了50多篇关于当代艺术的文章，这些文章发表在目录、书籍和领先的波兰艺术杂志上，如Obieg、Szum和Dwutygodnik。他在什切青艺术学院担任讲师已近10年。他的博士论文聚焦于齐格蒙特•鲍曼的后现代社会学的人类学和伦理基础。他对艺术和其他视觉文化表现形式感兴趣，将其作为理解当代后后现代人类状况的一种方式。
