Performativity of Conceptual Art

The first part of the text is a kind of dictionary of conceptual art. It includessuch phrases and words associated with conceptual art as readymade, blank sign, signifier/signified, tautology, anthropoligization, contextualism, modernism and postmodernism. The phrases and words are more precisely defined in the context of art’s dynamic nature. That more dynamic forms of art is not only the result of actions and performances in arts of the 1970’s. Also, they are influenced by the fact that the reality was combined with art, culture, life practice, the condition of the different people. I consider those phenomena in the contex of ‘presence’. New artistic means contributed to an overall change in the nature of art— its performatisation. Examples of conceptual art discussed in the text come from Polish art. However, they are not direct references to popular and frequently discussed art-forms. They are shown through the prism of existing overviews approximating the history of conceptual art in Poland. These are the texts by Morawski and Kępińska, which attempt to summarize Polish conceptual art in the 1970’s, and contemporary text by Dziamski on the same subject. While analyzing the texts, I point out to the way in which their authors dialed with problem of documentation. Documentation is intrinsically connected with ephemeral forms, such as conceptual art and actions, and this is the way it is considered in the listed studies. However, as the result of subsequent evolution of post conceptual and postmodernist forms, such as installations and performances, and widespread complex projects embedded in a social and cultural context, documentation has gained a new, independent role and contributed to the emergence of transmedial forms. This change in the role of documentation is connected with changeable forms and processes. Art has assumed a form of critical discourse, both artistic (inner-artistic) and non-artistic—political, social, cultural. In this way performantization of art is connected with global performance in all aspects of operation in the modern world (John McKenzie)