The Red Catechism | Maciej Kurak

The Red Catechism
Maciej Kurak
27 November 2018 – 12 January 2019

Faculty of Social Sciences
Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
ul. Umultowska 89a, Poznań

The Red Catechism
The commercialisation of culture is a fact. The attitude towards profit provokes changes in the processes of creation and affects customs at the expense of social involvement.
Consumerism and common patterns of behaviour polarise society, dividing it into the rich and the poor. The market machine operates and benefits from the resources of social capital adversely affecting anti-patterns and forces us to accept the world the way it is. Capitalism increases the need to get rich, imposes emergency measures and stimulates an aggressive control policy.
The example is a new form of work organisation related to cognitive capitalism, which is based on a specific model characterised by greater autonomy, irregular work mode with fluctuating availability and thus unspecified rest time. It is often a combination of passion, profession and livelihood. This type of ‘specialisation flexibility’ escalates the phenomenon of employment based on junk contracts. The system makes it possible to introduce changes in the forms of employment but it does not reduce exploitation and social inequalities; it even intensifies them. Stability replaced by liquidity triggers uncertainty corresponding to two parallel culture-related phenomena.
The first of these is associated with a small lifting of cultural and moral canons. However, the aim of such actions is not to create but to maintain and consolidate economic models based on the rules of the free market. The norms of behaviour are determined by culture, which, being a producer of creativity, is entangled in the mechanisms of the market functioning of society. There is no concept of anti-patterns breaking the stereotypes of thinking. There are only undeniable schemes for generating profit.
The second phenomenon reveals a tendency to ignore small uncertain narratives and promote superficial volatility. In this way, half-truths are born, combined with multiphrenia, a disturbed state of consciousness that is a consequence of many stimuli to which we are exposed and must respond, regardless of whether we like it or not. There are many hidden truths, reluctantly revealed myths, manipulated information and learned cultural patterns that co-create the invisible structure of the world. By stimulating perception, these half-truths
suggest a specific way of functioning and reception of the environment. They are usually one-sided and far from the actual contexts. In everyday life, they become aggressive and impose convenient ways of valuing the world, regardless of how much they deviate from the truth. They can be camouflaged, invisible images, unspeakable or forgotten thoughts and seeming images – myths that arise when the signifier is detached from the signified. When they take a visible form, they become an actual state of affairs, acceptable because of conformism, comfort or habits.
Art is the premise that makes certain things visible. It is a system of displaying a certain form of visibility. It presents the social structure, conflicts and the identities of social groups. Only then is it a policy when it keeps its functions at a distance through the introduced type of space-time, the way in which it divides time and fills the space. It is a certain suspension of the usual form of sensual experience.
The Red Catechism presents a model of thoughts, beliefs, systems and norms of the society. It refers to the principles of faith and morality. The work is composed of twelve watercolour paintings displayed in a white room referring directly to an ‘ideal’ gallery space, the white cube. The exhibition space is a regular prism of ‘golden ratio’ proportions, designed so that space can be moved. The works displayed in the interior are a record of thoughts about the canons of behaviour. The works are part of considerations concerning imaging and ways of seeing the ‘imagined’. These are myths and ideological visions that stimulate perception and consider the value of phenomena.