M25 Tadeusz Kantor
The Emballage Manifesto (1964)
The experimental artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor (1915–90) was a leading figure in the radical art world of mid-twentieth-century Poland. He had originally been an advocate of Art Informel – an umbrella term for European gestural abstraction – but after Socialist Realism became the official, state-sanctioned art of Poland in the late 1940s, he concentrated his energies on theatre and performance, helping to establish a thriving underground avant-garde art scene.
Emballage (French for ‘the act of wrapping up’) was a new artistic process invented by Kantor, in which objects, people and works of art were hidden and made inaccessible. Kantor believed this action to be significant, partly as a means of protection and concealment – important in a country with strict censorship rules – but also as a way of critiquing artifice in art: the act of unwrapping exposes, or unmasks, the truth.
Kantor wrote ‘The Emballage Manifesto’ in Switzerland in February 1964, while staying at the house of the art collector Theodor Ahrenberg; but it was not published until September 1968, when it appeared in the sixth issue of the French contemporary art journal Opus. It became the unofficial manifesto of the Polish ‘happenings’ culture of theatrical, improvisational events, and went on to inspire many other conceptual artists.
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Emballage –
one ought to
categorize first
some of the attributes
that define it.
be wise to generalize
or to create ready-made formulas.
Anyway, it would be almost impossible to do so.
Emballage, Emballage.
Because a discussed phenomenon
has many meanings –
worse than that,
it is ambiguous –
I should state at the very beginning that
Emballage actually exists
beyond the boundaries of reality.
It could thus be discussed –
Emballage, Emballage, Emballage –
in terms of metaphysics.
On the other hand,
it performs a function that is
so prosaic,
so utilitarian,
and so basic;
it is enslaved to its
precious content
to such a degree that
when the content is removed,
it is functionless,
no longer needed,
a pitiful sign of
its past glory
and importance.
Emballage, Emballage.
Branded
and accused of
a lack of any content,
it is bereft of its
glamour and
expression.
I must objectively note here
that it is a victim of
the fates’ injustice.
First, an extremely high honour
is bestowed on it
because one’s success depends on its
looks,
opacity,
ability to convey,
expressiveness,
precision.
Then
it is ruthlessly cast aside,
exposed to ridicule,
doomed to oblivion,
and banished.
Such an ambiguous behaviour towards it
leads to further
misunderstandings
and contradictions;
prevents any serious, legitimate
attempt to classify it.
Emballage.
As a described phenomenon, it
balances at the threshold –
Emballage, Emballage –
between eternity
and
garbage.
We are witnesses of
a clownlike tomfoolery
juggling
pathos and pitiful
destruction.
Emballage, Emballage, Emballage.
E m b a l l a g e.
Any extra activity connected with it
must be
a completely disinterested service
because one should remember
it is performed with a full awareness of
the fatal end.
Let us discuss some of
the stages of this ritual:
f o l d i n g,
whose complicated strategies
requiring some mysterious initiation
and a surprising end effect
bring to mind magic
and a child’s play;
t y i n g u p,
the knowledge of various type of knots
touches almost on
a domain of sacred knowledge;
s e a l i n g, always full of dignity
and complete concentration;
this gradation of actions,
this adding of
surprising effects,
as well as human need
and desire to
store,
isolate,
hide,
transfer,
becomes an almost
autonomous process.
This is our chance.
We must not overlook
its emotional possibilities.
There are many such possibilities inside it:
promise,
hope,
premonition,
temptation,
desire for the unknown
and for the mystery.
Emballage –
marked
with the symbols of fragility,
of urgency,
of hierarchy,
of degrees of importance;
with the digits of its own time,
of its own language.
Emballage –
with the address of receiver,
with the symbols of power,
with promises of
effectiveness,
durability,
and perfection.
It shows up in
special,
mundane,
funny,
grand,
and final
circumstances of
our everyday life.
Emballage –
when we want to send
something important,
something significant,
and something private.
Emballage –
and protect,
to preserve,
to escape the passage of time.
Emballage –
when we want to
hide something
deeply.
EMBALLAGE –
must be isolated,
protected from trespassing,
ignorance,
and vulgarity.
Emballage.
Emballage.
Emballage.
(1964.)