Disintegration. In Summer Love, the visual aspect is accurately and vividly expressed without knocking away the tension the film suggests. Each moment is a picture to me: you could de-compose the whole film, »disintegrate« it by printing each single frame. 

Each moment is a picture, I very much agree. I was looking for a certain viewing tension where the fibre (sets, costumes, make-up, guns, faces, etc.) would be authentic but the viewing experience would be nothing like you’ve seen in westerns. More like an old school »avant-garde« film experience where you’d have whole sequences with no sound … A hypnotic experience. This was the aim. I thought it was the only way I could make a Polish western, a film like none other. In a sense I was going back (if you will) – instead of making a technological marvel, I’ve tried to »stop« the film, the story. In a very traditional, old school way; Brakhage, Cocteau …

Summer Love is the result of a long process that lasted about seven years, which started with framed portraits shown in galleries. Could you describe the process that led to a movie?

First, the paradox: cultural impossibility. On a very conceptual level, the work was finished with these photos I made it in 1999. However, the photos had a greater impact than I had expected and I met some film people who challenged me to turn it into a film. Some years later I got more and more interested in the public sphere, in art or in culture in general. A wide resonance, cultural schizophrenia. Then the portfolio with some 16 photographs was no longer enough to convey the »Polski Western«. I had to make a feature film that could play with mass expectation.

Your work was often very closely knit with the world of the Nazis series are posters or film stills taken from Hollywood B-movies, the pavement constructed for Gavin Brown’s club is a reproduction of Saturday Night Fever’s dance-floor, the use of a stuntman in Full Burn for Manifesta II is a de-contextualization of the special effects practice in movies etc. What is it that really draws you towards it?

The reasons are very different because there is at least a ten-year gap between some works: if we presume that art or other creative activity is capable of reflecting the truth about human existence, I believe it should not mimic that existence but to create an artificial reality/form through which you may or may not eventually get to the »truth about life«. Therefore I am all for artifice. Perhaps this could be a common denominator. The films, movies I prefer most are those that are less successful at their narratives: Exploitation films, B-films, Italian »bad« westerns. Perhaps that’s the paradox that draws me to this medium: they so-o-o-o want to reflect life, and fail so beautifully.

Why do you think that more artists feel the need to do a movie now? Does it come from aIs it because of the chance they are given to them by an industry that supports them, a search quest for visibility outside the art borders, or is it more an expression of a contemporary need?

On the one hand, yes, of the above. On the other hand, what do you mean by »now«? Cocteau made a film with Yul Brynner in the 1950s. Warhol and Morrissey made two films (Dracula and Frankenstein) for De Laurentiis in the 1970s. David Lamelas, too, made a film in Hollywood. And then you have Cindy Sherman, David Salle, Robert Longo, Julian Schnabel (1990s). What’s ›now‹? Matthew Barney, Douglas Gordon, who else? Everybody is talking about making films, but who eventually makes them in the end?

I see, but I think the art system, due to the economic power it embodies today, is the only art expression capable of reabsorbing the others. It is a big pot licensed to digest fashion, theatre, music concerts, etc. Summer Love is conceived to be shown in theatres. How would do you react if you were asked to present it in a museum or a gallery one day? (Out of its context, but within your originative context)

Well, I think that the change that has occurred in the art system as a consequence of this tremendous influx of money (last 10–15 years) is one thing. A very interesting discussion, but maybe some other time. I don’t think I would be able to make such a ›big‹ budget ›avant-garde/art‹ film otherwise. Now, regarding absorption … I think a good exploitation film can do it effectively just the same – Snakes on a Plane? 
About Summer Love’s distribution, this was an important issue before the film was shown anywhere because it has so much to do with the film’s identity. I didn’t want to pigeonhole it. But now, after showing in Venice and other festivals (Stockholm, Athens, Warsaw, Sao Paulo, Bratislava, etc.) it doesn’t matter so much. I would show it in the museum if it has a theatre. This context no longer has the power to label it an art-world film – even if it goes straight onto DVD with no distribution.

The relation between the gallerist and the artist seems to be changing. I witness a new attitude towards the artist in which his needs, the conditions and the autonomy of his creativity are respected, which is basically a turning away from the attitude that was common in the 1980s and 1990s. On the other hand, the market is wealthy, so really hungry, always asking for more. As an artist do you believe that your creativity receives the respect it deserves and do you generally feel under pressure?

I don’t think I receive the respect due to me, but if I thought any differently it wouldn’t be very healthy. I don’t think there is any particular pressure coming from outside. I always had quite a big self-imposed pressure, so the one from outside was never bigger. I think this situation could be a real problem for artists who are not interested and not willing to engage with an outside world, you know, »I just want to be in my studio doing my thing«. Nothing wrong with that, but then the pressures from the outside world can be devastating.

This organisation around art tends to make the artist non-guilty. Everything tends to move towards an explanation or a justification of whatever you do, »in the name of Art«. Criticism becomes more and more fused with marketing. How do you place yourself with this attitude?

I never let myself get too invested in the criticism. Therefore, the fact that it does or does not become infested with advertising bothers me on a more personal level only. Regarding the non-guilty artist, I am not really sure what you mean. If you mean that lazy, bad artists get away with this, it would worry me, but if you mean artists who are mean-spirited, bad-boys, or unethical – I couldn’t care less – If the work is good, that is.

Like in the Nazis series, Summer Love deals strongly with repulsion, which I find an effective way to introduce seduction. Summer Love is really seductive. The characters are unable to communicate except through violence. Each little personal hope soon dies due to verbal, physical or psychological violence. The ugly and the malign figures do not embody an official status but are everywhere, spread among the people, which is much more compelling and scary. Is this a look at contemporary society?

At life. I am a pessimist.

The story and the surrounds settings don’t seem to to take over thehave any influence on the characters’ identity development (so stereotyped that they don’t even have a name but a definition-role): whoever you are, the Boss, the Servant, the Lazy, the Stupid, the Willing, the only way to act is through violence. Violence is more a symptom of non-communication. But using these stereotypes you overstep the genre, making something experimental but within a defined category. To whom is this film addressed?

I think in most of my works I try to reach a few audiences at once. The immediate one and the one that is more in the know. The immediate one is a part of each project, so to speak. In case of Summer Love you first get the most predictable immediate audience (that goes to see violent genre films, with Val Kilmer, etc.) – which often gets disappointed. And an ultimate one, like you perhaps. But without the first audience the second audience would view the project differently.

This is a sophisticated approach towards your audience. But although the only possible language seems to be violence, the indefinite space where the movie is set, the economical crisis and depression expressed in it, create nostalgia and melancholy more than pain. Are these feelings more potent than pain?

I think so. Pain is more definite, therefore less projectable. I think we can talk some more about violence here. You mentioned it quite a few times. I think that the violence in Summer Love is a graphic sign rather than graphic violence. It is a quotation. And I believe that the element of tragicomic serves a similar role; it puts a certain quotation mark. I think it was necessary to construct a »product« where you have to constantly re-define to what extent you are to believe what you are seeing. In and out. Like sex.

Comedy and violence. Violence is levelled with a sharp humour, making the scenes tragicomic. Do you see life as tragicomic?

I think quite a lot of the mainstream audience, in Poland for example, found it troublesome.

You think they didn’t catch get the vivid humoristic aspect?

They did. But then they had a problem with defining whether this film was »serious«  or not.

But should it really be defined?

Of course not. I tried to push the dichotomy as far as possible. And the Polish audience viewers proved to be the perfect audience/victim because they projected so much onto this film.

You once defined yourself as a fanatic about your work. Would you define your work as a job?

More addict than fanatic. My work is a job.

Appropriation is a common practice in your work. I could mention a good number of twentieth-century masterpieces that I believe explicitly inspired your works, like Warhol’s 13 most wanted men (The Nazis), Dali’s Voluptate Mors (Skull), Matisse’s collages (The Bomb)… In Summer Love, I noticed that you don’t refer to other artists’ works but to your own. An appropriation of yourself. Is that true?

I refer to other filmmakers, writers. They are artists. But it definitely is a form of self-exploitation.

The two main characters (The Stranger, Karel Roden and The Wanted, Val Kilmer) never say a single word. And how did you manage to convince a Hollywood movie star not to speak?

Well. Kilmer is dead – he can’t speak. And of course, it would not be that difficult to write a flashback scene where he does speak. But I was very interested in concept-casting: American star power, wasted. And then the obvious reference when one has to have an American actor for the western to sound like an American (authentic) production. Karel’s story is just a bit different. His looks always made me think of him as an eastern European Clint Eastwood. Man with no name and of a few words – in fact even no words at all. In the original version of the script there even was a comment spoken towards the end of the film where he (Karel) is a mute. It is very difficult to convince a star to play a role like this. Mickey Rourke considered playing in Summer Love either of both roles, but because there was no dialogue, he eventually turned it down.

I want to go further in this. The only American actor in the cast – as The Wanted, he represents the treasure – is the key to a new, wealthy life. He lies dead on the ground staring at the events. Is this subtle and courageous choice a premonition of the forthcoming political order?

Jesus. I love it. GWB versus Korea.

The sheriff’s instability, drunkenness, the banal dogmatism referred to his role of law keeper, underlines a crisis of the authority figure, or its original intrinsic absurdity?

Actually, for the first time, I have to contradict you.
For me the sheriff is a self-portrait.
A drunken artist.
Hoplessly in love.
Pathetic.
Pitiful.
And a first billed main character of Summer Love. 


FRANCESCO STOCCHI is a curator and writer based in Rome.

PIOTR UKLANSKI, born in 1969 in Warsaw, lives in New York and Warsaw.

Represented by GAGOSIAN GALLERY, New York/Los Angeles/Paris/Rome/Athens/Geneva/
Hong Kong/London; GALERIE EMMANUEL PERROTIN, Paris/Miami; GALERIA MASSIMO DE CARLO, Milan