To a large extent, the 1990s were in Eastern Europe countries a decade of tremendous changes. Here is the view of three people involved in net-art in Poland.

Fluctuat.net : Internet appeared in Poland in the early 1990s, at the same time that freedom of expression was allowed again in this country. How did Polish people use this ’’new media’’ ? [French version]

Martha Van der Haagen
Webdesigner, webmaster for Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) (http://csw.art.pl), organizer of the first “Internet workshops” in the CCA in 1996-1997.

“Officially the Internet started in Poland in the summer of 1991, but already in 1990 the Polish academic network got connected to the European network EARN/BITNET and the email connection was working even before that. A number of researchers participating in joint programs with Universities in Germany, Denmark and Switzerland obtained accounts on the University computers there, which they could access also from Poland via international calls.
Summer 1989 was a very interesting period in Poland, the time of the Round Table meetings. It is also the time when a group of physicists from Warsaw University started a daily news bulletin called Donosy (The title was a joke. It means: informing in the bad sense) Donosy gave short, independent reports (with a juicy commentary) from inside the country about political and economical changes. It was addressed to the Polish emigration as well as to scientists temporary working abroad. After a few weeks there where 1600 subscribers. The material and distributed in printed and on some of the Polonia radio stations in. Now the legendary “Donosy” might be read on the Web : http://www.fuw.edu.pl/donosy/

Later in July 1990 started “Pigulki”: an electronic collection of news analysis, press reviews, and humor from/about Poland and the Polish community abroad that was published irregularly.http://www.pigulki.org/

As far as I know not many artists anywhere in the world used Internet as a medium before the browser Mosaic was made available in 1993. Mosaic made it possible to publish hypertext and pictures. The Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (http://csw.art.pl) was the first Polish cultural institution with an Internet home page in February 1995 – regularly updated from April ’95. Later that year appeared the first digital gallery DDG. It was very special time when artists and technical guys from universities would work and learn together to discover the new possibilities.
In 1996 and in 1997 The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle organized two Internet workshops for artists. For most of the participants this was their first introduction to the net. Before that many people would talk about it but wouldn’t touch it. Now a large group of artists not only saw the net but where encouraged to make their own WebPages. Some continued. Perhaps the best and the most interesting result was that CUKT (Technical Culture Center Office) got it’s first WebPages. Piotr Wyrzykowski together with CUKT were the Polish artists that were using Internet most consistently. Their biggest project (not only on Internet) was to take part in the presidential election in 2000 – using a digital personage Wiktoria Cukt. People could propose online in a webpage election slogans and could answer questions from the press in the name of Wiktoria. http://cukt.art.pl/wiktoria

In February 1997 ICM Warsaw University registered the art.pl domain and gave away sub domains for artistic and non commercial projects free of charge. At this moment more than 3000 people and organizations took this opportunity, from the National Museum of Art to individual 3dstudio Hero’s. This is an online phenomenon that is unique in the world.

Tomek Dubialawicz
25 ans, net-artist (http://w3crew.art.pl)

’’Well, I'm not a pioneer, I discovered the net relatively late, in 1998. I can’t tell you how other people used internet then. I can tell you what I was doing. I was dreaming about working online. Now it's normal. And that’s great. But then in Poland that was unthinkable. Now it is better, probably because young people are making money over the net, and they understand pluses [minuses also] of remote working.
I was chating on IRC, browsing porno sites, writing emails... the same what all people do when they start their adventure with the net. I saw lot of art over the net, many galleries, many artist. Everything: body modification, painitng, drawning, graffitti. And I was wondering why show in this medium real stuff instead of doing what for instance www.jodi.org did > making stuff what is invented only for web and exists over the web.
I think, here in Poland, we still can't do this. To play with web, with all these protocols, transfers and pings. Sometimes it seems like we look abroad to much although we have lot of potential here. That's makes copy of copy of copy... Dead-end street, isn't it ?’’

Lukas Gorczyca
30, director and founder of cultural webmagazine http://raster.art.pl

’’I don’t really think there is a direct link between both phenomenon, freedom of expression and the Net. The generation of polical struggles in Poland is much older than the youngsters that experienced the Net in the 1990s. The latest’s main problem is that they got troubles to set ambitious projects on the Net because there was very little money invested in this area.
When we launched the Internet version of Raster a couple of years ago, we were partly funded by AMS, a Polish company owning 90 % of street advertising billboards in Warsaw. AMS was then a mecene for all kinds of contemporary art in Poland. But this position has been jeopardized, because the director has changed and the company is now part of an important American media condominum holding Gazeta Wyborcza, the first Polish daily newspaper. That’s what we try to get some ressources from public institutions, for instance the Wysegrad Fund, located in Bratislava : a 30 000 euros yearly amount, granted for educational and cultural projects by the ’Wysegrad Pact’ governments : Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary’’.

[French version]