DECALOGUE - poster exhibition in a public space / 2004

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DECALOGUE - installation of posters in a public space / The Palace of Culture plaza, PKiN, Warsaw / VI-VII 2004

Posters by Beata Konarska

Project by Beata Konarska, Paweł Konarski

Marek Krajewski

Broadening the Imagination – On Beata Konarska’s Decalogue

Examined today, the idea of ten simple laws that apply to all people and are unconditionally observed seems utopian. How do we reconcile human diversity, multiple ways of living and various concepts of good and evil in ten simple sentences, which apart from everything else are not a literary text but must be actionable, act as a basis for human activity? Answering that question is difficult today, and the Decalogue itself seems feasible only where individuals are the same and have no knowledge or suspicion that they can live differently, that law, morality or customs need not always be identical to their own.

General agreement on the values upon which the life of a community is built need not be, and usually are not, a function of identification, love or the strength of community bonds. Rather, it derives from shortages of imagination, which in turn have their source in power, are a form of its execution. To not imagine laws other than those accepted by all is to believe in a world formed to create this all, a community, to believe in its founding texts, heroes and myths. The Decalogue is primarily a text that defines a community – not because it constitutes an expression of the community’s beliefs, but because it actually calls the community into being. It is not a social contract, but something external that creates a community. Thus perceived The Ten Commandments are foremost a revelation of power whose purpose is to transform an atomized mass into an integrated and efficiently operating social organism. Hence, they are necessarily saturated with violence, though it is often suggested they were created to limit violence. Their transcendental origin and universality guarantees their effectiveness: their violation is a strike at both their issuer and the community founded upon them. Above all, the Decalogue regulates the imagination, excluding everything alternative to the world it has created. In regulating and creating, the Decalogue limits and excludes, enforcing the conviction that without a universal morality the world would descend into chaos, the community would transform into an amorphous mass.

Beata Konarska’s Decalogue is only that by name and by the number of rules it includes. All else within it broadens the imagination rather than pacifying it in the name of legitimizing order. It is neither a founding text nor an amendment thereto, but the private voice of someone who has contemplated its contemporary status.

The essence of the Decalogue, the project’s author suggests, is no longer universality nor its originally sacral nature, but above all the rupture between what is acknowledged, declared and what is realized, between ways of living and how the world is structured. It resides in the rupture between “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and playing God through genetic manipulation; between “Thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain” and turning that name into a pop icon; between “Thou shalt not kill” and killing in the name of peace, killing to prevent other deaths, etc.

Beata Konarska sees these inconsistencies not as a matter of individual choice, an accident or unfortunate coincidence, but as deriving from the logic of the contemporary world. Thus, she refrains from accusing the victims and says nothing of the hypocrisy of individuals, speaking instead about the context in which they operate, which constitutes the framework for their choices.

This rupture between the laws legitimizing order and the principles that derive from the logic of that order is emphasized in the poster “Thou shalt not steal.” A photojournalist’s image of a specific individual’s private death is no different than killing that person, both acts committed within the frame of the commercial violence perpetrated by giant corporations. The present is thus characterized by a systemic tendency to treat each of its aspects as a potential representation capable of promoting a new product. Every gesture, action and fashion is a possible link in long promotional chains in which everything promotes everything and can be transformed into an exchange value. The latter becomes the fundamental value to which all others are reduced. The media and corporations steal privacy, life, suffering, birth and death because they need visual variation to draw consumer and viewer attention, and to enable sales. This likens those who kill to those who film death: the first kill to get their ideas on the air, the second film death to attract more viewers to their station. The first thus kill because television needs hot news items.

Signs of this systemic logic are also evident in the poster “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” This commandment contradicts the biological and socio-biological theories on the naturalness of infidelity, often cited in advice columns and glossy magazines. Men commit adultery because genetic wisdom directs them to increase their reproductive chances, advance their biological legacy through greater numbers of offspring. They are not guilty because they are guided by nature, which is independent of them. At first Freudian glance, culture represses nature while the key to freedom and happiness lies in liberating one’s instincts, casting off the yoke of morality. However, this logic is promoted selectively, i.e. wherever the aim is to broaden the range of accessible pleasures and justify the universal hedonistic culture.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” also expresses the substance of the context in which we make our choices. This poster offers a standard warning against the deadly effects of nicotine addiction in a light and attractive form that suggests the warning is none too serious. Threats must be made light of because overt revelation of danger means commercial catastrophe. Winking at the customer is not only an effective marketing strategy; it also absolves consumers by suggesting that “this is only a game,” one that can have no serious consequences.

It deserves emphasizing that the ruptures in our cultural and civilizational programming which Beata Konarska points out are not an introduction to cheap moralizing. The artist neither instructs nor educates, she does not aim to speak of sin; rather, she highlights inconsistencies, mentions what usually goes unmentioned. Apart from all this, the project is situated in public space, which in Poland does not denote pluralism and variety. Rather, public space is uniform (national, male, Catholic, heterosexual), its democratic character merely simulated through acceptance of diversity in clothing, cosmetics and cars – but diversity of opinions excluded. Konarska thus articulates what is unmentioned in a place most inappropriate and thereby comments on how things are most often said and on the quality of the space where speech is allowed. It is no accident that these posters of the commandments avoid the iconography and aesthetics characteristic of the subject matter. Instead, we have extremely modern and varied forms that are an interpretative trap for viewers: visually appealing, suggesting pleasure, the posters pose painful questions. Each commandment is additionally expressed in English. Though at first this might suggest their message is universal, in the domestic context it denotes that the speaker is culturally foreign. This foreignness lies in using a language other than that used by most, but especially in the attempt to remain private while speaking – in the public realm and in one’s own voice – about what is shared.

Decalogue thus shatters this human mass ornament, this efficiently functioning social organism based not so much on agreed values as on the denial of differences. The purpose here is not to establish a new order; rather, it is to smash the frame of collective imagination by offering personal comments on one of its founding texts, by expressing a private interpretation thereof in public place. Beata Konarska is merely exercising her constitutional right to freedom of speech, but in commenting on what is not discussed she emphasizes that this right is purely declarative. Her project is not so critical of the Decalogue as it is of all claims regarding the universality and quality of public space in Poland. These two matters constitute her main theme.