/hacker with a camera, and bush's new clothes/
On May 13th, 2003, the Polish magazine Przekrój ran a cover featuring a photograph of the war in Iraq. Nothing remarkable in that - war conflict, natural disasters and social upheaval are among the favorite themes of media coverage. But in this picture something was amiss - it showed happy Iraquis welcoming American troops as their saviors. It looked like a perfect illustration of the proclaimed struggle for liberation. Perhaps too perfect, as none of the typical attributes of welcoming scenes were missing - the clasping of hands, the tears of joy, and, of course, the flowers. Thanks to all this, the effect was more of a parody of White House war propaganda rather than genuine reportage.As a matter of fact, it was the work of the Polish artist Zbigniew Libera (b. 1959) from symptomatically titled cycle, Bush's Dream. He created these photographs in his Warsaw studio even before the military operation took place, and then printed them in small format on adhesive stickers. He then posted this series of stickers in public spaces: at bus stops, on tramway cars or in pedestrian underpasses. Part of the project were also interviews where Libera consistently put himself in the role of a passionate reporter (”I packed my camera and the bare neces- sities and went with a transport of Polish troops to the front... I wanted to capture the events truthfully, as they really happened...“).
Zbigniew Libera's strategy can hardly be described within the conven- tional terminology of art history. He employed the tactics of computer hackers, applying them to the social surroundings. He penetrated a certain system and created a duplicate of a given situation, with only minor modifications - enhancing some features, diminishing others. In the crucial final stage - the devastation of the system by a social virus - the artist merely passively looked on.
It is hardly surprising that Libera has been labelled a controversial artist. In his curriculum vitae, we find not a single reference to training in art, but countless instances of complaining. At the time of martial law in Poland, he spent a year in jail for distributing samizdat comics. He was active in the punk band Sternenhoch, founded the avant-garde art group Kultura Zrzuty, and also made several attempts at painting. At some length in the 1980s, he shot several videos on the themes of hospitals and death that first won him the attention of the international art scene. His videos Intimate Rites (1984), Mystical Perserverance (1984) and How to Train Little Girls (1987) featured at a number of shows abroad, and did not escape notice of the press. It was not only due to their potential for scandal that these works made Libera the pioneer of Polish video art, and at the same time heralded the return of corporeality to contemporary art. In comparison to the fury unleashed around the Polish artist in the 1990s, however, all of this was mere child's play.
The cause of the uproar was a seemingly innocuous series of multiples inspired by toys for children, Correcting Devices. The first was created in 1995, bearing the title Ken's Aunt. Instead of a sexy Barbie doll, the familiar-looking pink box concealed Barbie's ironic paraphrase - a figure old, fat and badly dressed. A total antithesis to the contemporary ideal of feminine beauty, as presented by the mass media.(full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)