Sebastian Buczek

14.11—20.12.2014

I’ve never been too much interested in my ancestors. I heard from my mother that one of my great-great-grandfather’s name was Sebastian and he was born out of wedlock. Count Tołoczko was supposed to be his alleged father. Therefore, I have some admixture of an earl’s, blue obviously, blood. I was equally little interested in my paternal part of the family. Of course I knew my grandmother, who was a socialist / positivist teacher in the suburbs of Józefów Biłgorajski (she used to make daily dications for me and my brother during summer holidays). I knew my grandfather better. He was a partisan of the Home Army. When they were smashing a gendarmerie station, a German bullet burnt his cheek and hit his comrade. My grandfather willingly shared the heroic stories of the war. However, I did not understand from where arised the resentment and irritation present on the faces of my father, Marian, and my aunt Ala, when during family gatherings grandpa jumped out with a rifle, tore through the thicket or on horseback rushed with a message to the troops of the Peasants’ Battalions. I have lived with this small puzzle for quite a few years. Only recently, guided by the need to explain the psychological and emotional complexities in the bosom of my family, I started to penetrate the subject more consciously. Where do the strange behavior of my father towards my grandfather come from and why did he explain anything to me so rarely and never express feelings? Is it really because of his great modesty and noble self-restraint? The naive image of a father crumbled quite recently, when my dad insisted that I was a hypochondriac even when the results of the research clearly stated the presence of a parasitic infection. He suggested that I should go to a psychologist or, even better, a psychiatrist. I realized that our relationship is illusory and that I was stuck in a nightmarish unconsciousness for years. As I am sort of restless – maybe it’s the admixture of blue blood – I became interested in the past and I started to ask grandpa questions not only about times of war but also of the postwar period. As it turned out some minor inaccuracies appeared. According to the most recent version of events, grandfather didn’t actually serve in the militia after the war! He did not walk with a gun and did not catch thieves. He was in the militia only on paper, at the behest of the Home Army command, which recommended such behavior to protect its soldiers from deportation to Siberia. Why did he lie, why did he tell me false stories?… At that moment, my doubt about my father’s moral backbone started to connect with a concern about my brother’s moral backbone. The story of how through the intercession of a neighbor from the village, he was released from UB (secret political police) was suspicious in and of itself -m aybe it was a coincidence, or maybe a collaboration. And then BANG! How could I not pay attention to this?. MARIAN BUCZEK – my father who was born before the death of Stalin was named after a great communist – Marian Buczek. And grandpa for many years held a post in the municipal plant in Józefów Biłgorajski. He was a member of The Polish United Workers’ Party. This subject, of course, neither existed, nor was ever brought up. Maybe it was an accident and my father was named so because he was supposed to be a girl – Marysia. Maybe my grandparents didn’t know about Marian Buczek the communist because they came from a small village? Of course, I may be wrong in my assumptions, but it seems to me quite clear that from all of this, from this shameful cowardice of my ancestors, from this totally ridiculous and irrelevant great mystery, has risen various emotional oddities, complexities and fears that have the incredible power to shape the fate of the whole family! (Exactly as the great psychoanalysts suggests). If only I had realised the presence of this “shameful secret” a few years ago – how different would my fate have been? I would have looked differently at the guerrilla ceremony in Osuchy, the cap with an eagle, stitched stars. How less seriously would I look at the face of the formidable father from my childhood? I bought a postcard with a photo of the ship “Marian Buczek” on Allegro, and by the way I bought another card, with the amiable ship “Fafik” from Świnoujście. How different would the life of the family have been if it’s name was Fafik? – I thought.

Sebastian Buczek

What is a reproduction if the record disappears? It is an object suspended between the virtual and the real and, not belonging to any of these orders, it haunts them both. Sebastian Buczek is an artist who is also difficult to categorise. Stories about his achievements focus on the material side of his activity. They tell about disks made of beeswax and chocolate, which have a very limited life, and each play is done with the awareness that at the same time it is an act of erasing the auditory information stored on them. Another important element of Buczek’s legend is Jan, a mechanically actuated dummy that accompanies him at concerts and other actions. Buczek is constantly looking for mediums that push the frontier of what is possible. His inventions are expressive of the archetype of a hunter of new technologies embedded in contemporary digital culture as much as they represent the lone inventor. The first archetype is determined by a way of thinking about the media as a carrier of immaterial and abstract ideas. The second one refers to tools that, even if they were ever invented, never came into general use, as they did not match the current needs of society. Buczek is interested in the noise produced by these imperfect machines that are not capable of illusionistic reproduction. Noise, if it comes up in contemporary art practice, is mostly an expression of nostalgia for the media in which the compression was visible and audible. In noise Buczek sees something more. It is an aesthetic strategy which comes from the challenge of reproduction. It shapes phantoms, reflections of reality, which turns out to be far more interesting than the output information. Double, print, copy, extrudate – are the notions that can be used to describe his objects. All are appropriate, with the little problem that in and of themselves they already contain an emotional charge that embeds them in a position inferior to the original. However, the source is hidden. Buczek’s art stems from the specific and radical use of acousmatic sound – a puzzling effect that separates sound from its source. Buczek also sees acousmatic properties in objects. He is looking for a new way to relate activities for which the objects are created and their material structure. By this means they are in constant semantic and subtle motion and “range”, suspended between the abstract and the concrete.

Daniel Muzyczuk

Sebastian Buczek – born 1975, studied graphic design and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice and animation at the National Film School in Łódź. His work can be classified between visual art and experimental music. He performed at many festivals (Festival in Landscape in Inowłódz, Garage in Stralsund, Wien Modern in Vienna, the BFI in London, Audio Art and Warsaw Autumn). He participated in such exhibitions as: “Gone To Croatan” at the CCA Toruń and HMKV Dortmund. He is the author of music albums: “Wabienie Dziewic” Mik Musik 2001 “Pogorzelec” 2012 Altanova Press. He is co-author and publisher of scientific books “Atlas of Human Parasites” and “Parasitic diseases, epidemiology, diagnosis, symptoms” (awarded by the Ministry of Health). He traveled to the Brazilian Amazon. Buczek conducts an independent experimental record label that promotes / publish artists of the independent scene.