M47 Jarosław Kozłowski and Andrzej Kostołowski

NET Manifesto (1972)

Devised by the Polish artist Jarosław Kozłowski (b. 1945) and the art historian Andrzej Kostołowski (b. 1940) in 1971 and created in January the following year, the ‘NET Manifesto’ (‘Manifest SIEĆ’) was an ingenious work of conceptual art, which took the form of an autonomous, self-proliferating network for the open exchange of information across international borders. At the time, strict censorship rules and travel limitations in Poland made it difficult to access art and ideas from outside the Eastern Bloc. So Kozłowski typed 350 manifestos and sent them to international artists and critics, proposing a dialogue. In order for the manifesto to get past the post-office censors, the artist wrote the document in a deliberately bureaucratic way, even stamping it with the word ‘NET’. While this enabled it to pass through the postal exchange uncensored, it was also a way of ridiculing the socialist government’s obsession with red tape.

The response to the manifesto was overwhelming, with Kozłowski receiving books, journals and art ephemera from all over the world. In late 1972 the artist decided to present the responses in a private exhibition, but he was denounced to the authorities, the security services invaded his apartment and everything was seized. Both Kozłowski and Kostołowski were interrogated, in the belief that they were members of a fledgling anarchist organization intent on overthrowing the state. Over the next year they were questioned several more times before the material was returned to them, after which Kozłowski exhibited the documents in an official venue to avoid suspicion. Some of the artists who had responded to the manifesto were later invited to Poland to exhibit in Kozłowski’s space, Akumulatory 2, in Poznań, keeping alive the original purpose of the manifesto.

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NET

— a NET is open and uncommercial

— points of the NET are: private homes, studios and any other places where art propositions are articulated

— these propositions are presented to persons interested in them

— propositions may be accompanied by editions in the form of prints, tapes, slides, photographs, catalogues, books, films, handbills, letters, manuscripts etc.

— NET has no central point nor any coordination

— points of the NET can be anywhere

— all points of the NET are in contact among themselves and exchange concepts, propositions, projects and other forms of articulation

— the idea of NET is not new and in this moment it stops being an authorized idea

— NET can be arbitrarily developed and copied

Jarosław Kozłowski

Andrzej Kostołowski