The I in AICA: Małgorzata Kaźmierczak
Who is AICA beyond Switzerland? Here we present the president of AICA international Małgorzata Kaźmierczak and ask her about her writing practice.
What are you writing at the moment?
I’m writing a new book about the International Performance Art festival that took place in Poland between 1993 and 2006. I treat the festival as an indicator of the transitional period in Poland during the years after the fall of the Iron Curtain and analyse it in relation to the political context and events. Performance art often is much quicker than other art forms to grasp the essential significance of its time. So, I would like to write the history of this time through the lens of performance art.
What do you do when writing isn’t working?
I watch movies! Movies that are related to the topic.
Who do you write for?
I try to always think about the reader. I have come to realise that often certain facts that are obvious for Eastern Europeans, for example, are not so obvious for a general public, even in the academic world. So, I try to be as simple as possible and as broad as possible.
What’s a brilliant text you read recently?
This is not easy, because I read a lot of good texts … I was recently in Argentina, researching performance art in the 1980s and I read a lot of excellent catalogues and art reviews. I suddenly realised that the level of art criticism and research in Argentina is extremely high; it was really a pleasure to read all these texts. And I also had several meetings with AICA members in Argentina. This I enjoyed as well.
Which text annoyed you recently and why?
In general, I’m annoyed by texts if they offer me the perspective of a privileged person. That could be a generic feminist text written from the perspective of a man or a woman who has a very fortunate position and who cannot see that a good portion of the world is excluded from this viewpoint. And then there are even texts written from a Western European perspective trying to teach us about the situation in Eastern Europe with a kind of colonising approach. These texts just lack research – and maybe also empathy.
Can you make a living from writing?
Well, writing is part of my job at the university, so yes. But if I were an independent critic, of course not. Part of my job is to teach future curators and art critics, so at the university we also teach about art criticism. And I would say the only difference between the fact that a text is classified as academic and not criticism is the distance in time. There are a lot of elements of art criticism in academic writing.
Have you ever regretted publishing a text?
Not really. Maybe only if the text wasn’t edited correctly.
AICAramba! What should change?
We’re working on it!
As an AICA President – what are the plans for the future of AICA International?
I would like to have more political impact in and with AICA, and for it to be some kind of opinion-making body when it comes to policy making. To achieve this, we’ve been more vocal about issues like freedom of expression, which is always under threat. We are writing statements of protest against this but also on more general topics like the destruction of heritage, in Gaza, for instance; about policy in Argentina; and in Slovakia. Of course, these letters are not going to influence the situation, but we are sending them to the United Nations and to UNESCO, and to the Council of Europe. I think slowly we are starting to become partners. And we are having more and more international impact.
What’s your vision for AICA International?
We are not only the oldest but also the biggest association of art professionals. And we want to get more recognition for that, become partners on many levels and be taken into account when it comes to these topics and measures. We cannot wait until somebody invites us; we have to actively communicate just to present our opinions.
The next general assembly of AICA International will take place in Bucharest from 4-8 November 2024. What can one expect there?
Well, the art scene is very vibrant in Romania, but the country is not very well known. The topic «Becoming Machine. Resisting the Artificial» is extremely relevant for today’s discourse; the programme with more than 70 contributions from many different AICA sections is very interesting and promising!
Małgorzata Kaźmierczak, born in Krakow in 1979, PhD in history, freelance curator and publicist since 2004, especially in the field of performance, lives in Krakow. She is an assistant professor at the University of the National Education Commission in Krakow. She was Vice-President of AICA Poland from 2020-2024, Vice-President of AICA International 2021-2023 and has been President of AICA International since 2024.