The increase of uncertainty Justyna Kowalska

Grzegorz Drozd's Information can be described as a several-day performance held at one of Warsaw's main crossroads. Drozd constructed an aesthetic booth resembling a guard booth or a box office with an inviting neon sign: information. He stayed there for a couple of hours a day providing any necessary information to all those who wanted to ask for it. Information is general. You can ask about anything – Drozd explained to the intrigued and confused passers-by. Unlike information art based on interaction with computers processing large amounts of data, here Drozd was the only source of information, although an imperfect one. He didn't use any teaching aids. In the age of the information society accustomed to fast assimilation of knowledge Drozd gave up the idea of a global village, built on an immediate virtual contact, in favour of face-to-face confrontation. Instead of using Google or Wikipedia's resources he offered a physical presence, and served non-scientific knowledge, totally subjective and selective. Drozd's information was often superficial or even misleading, but instead of encyclopedic knowledge he gave people what a machine lacked, i.e. emotional intelligence.

The essential aspect of Information was social interaction, which Nicolas Bourriaud calls relational art. The French curator regrets that there are no more wake-up calls when a real person used to talk to us. Nowadays we can only hear a machine voice instead. Bourriaud perceives art as a space for closer relationships and new social situations. He believes this intersubjectivity becomes quintessential in artistic practice.

The same trail can be traced back to the earlier opinions on performance. For instance, Vito Acconci

claimed that If an artist performs his action, his sole presence creates signs and signals. Information conveyed by the artist refers to the source of information and so to the artist himself, and they cannot be related to that which is absent. Information deals with general relations between an individual and that which happens. Embodied information. Drawing attention to body which manifests information. Concentration on oneself being a filter (filtering through oneself)1. Similarly states Jan Świdziński: To perform is to inform and information is the aesthetics of performance2. Drozd's action can be seen as literal visualization of those interpretations, the more so that the subversive strategies practiced by Grzegorz Drozd are always noticeable for a sense of humour.

The definition of information says its key role is to diminish uncertainty. Was this the aim of Drozd's action, or the opposite? Did Grzegorz provide his interlocutors with a new knowledge or experience allowing them to ask questions? Is the increase of uncertainty to be considered a loss or a profit in this case? Information is an ironic transposition of the traditional belief that the artist perceives more, and art is to make us know more about the world. In fact, this information was often misinformation. What knowledge then can we get from art? Maybe it turns out that art tells us no more than we have already known ourselves.

2Por. http://www.swidzinski.art.pl/guzek.html