THE  POLAND-U.S.  ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE  EXCHANGE  PROGRAM

Bruce Checefsky, Cleveland, OH @
A-I-R CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
Residency: November 2004 - January 2005

Bruce Checefsky
IN NI (OTHERS) – a film based on a script by Andrzej Pawlowski

Project presentation: Kino / Audytorium, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, January10, 2005

Bruce Checefsky, still from IN NI, 2005

Polish avant-garde and experimental film has been the focus of American artist and art theorist, Bruce Checefsky, for some time. Following his remake of the 1930 classic by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, Apteka (Pharmacy, 2001), and a film based on a published but unproduced 1930 script by the surrealist poet Jan Brzekowski, A Woman And Circles (2003), he became interested in Andrzej Pawlowski’s legacy.

Checefsky’s artistic strategy is the interpretation of important avant-garde films, lost or never realized and existing only in the form of sketches and scripts. The artist’s approach is defined by historical sensitivity, a feeling of responsibility for the past. It is in apparent opposition to the elimination of stress between past and present so dominant today, and as such, it undermines the very foundations of our overall cultural amnesia. By means of the historical “rentals” created by him, Checefsky destroys the hopes of the relativistic trend of postmodernism for entering a post- or a-historic epoch.

During his residency at A-I-R CCA, Bruce Checefsky undertook to realize Inni (Others) on the basis of the script and 11 sketches  found in the archive of Andrzej Pawlowski.. Before he started shooting in Warsaw, Checefsky devoted a year to research and preparations, including interviews with Pawlowski’s family, friends, and collaborators, a search for documents previously unknown, and the development of a deep and very interesting interpretation of Pawlowski’s aesthetics.

Andrzej Pawlowski (1925-1986) was painter, sculptor, photographer, and author of experimental films. His work Kineformy (1957) is one of the most important achievements in the history of Polish experimental film. At the beginning of the 1960’s Pawlowski wrote a script for Inni. It was based on the diary of a patient in a Krakow asylum, written in the years 1939-44. Pawlowski had found the original diary, which no longer exists. Unlike Pawlowski’s previous works, this film was to have been based rather on figurative, representational elements than on abstract ones. The script was not realized during Pawlowski’s life.

All that was left of Pawlowski’s idea were 11 sketches and a completed script of Inni kept in Pawlowski’s archives. The Pawlowski family generously agreed to lend the documents to produce the unrealized film. Bruce Checefsky directed and shot the film on location in Warsaw. The 12-week project involved local actors, art historians and theoreticians, and film industry specialists. Actors were chosen during casting. The post-production took place in Warsaw. The film incorporates music by Polish contemporary composer Pawel Mykietyn. The project was coordinated by Łukasz Ronduda, curator of the CCA’s Archive of Polish Experimental Film, and Marianna Dobkowska, curator of the CCA’s artists-in-residence program.

The project was realized in cooperation with the Ohio Arts Council, the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, and the Archive of Polish Experimental Film, CCA Ujazdowski Castle.

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