DZOP* Dynamic Personal Potential Management

 

Performative workshops using the DPPM method, i.e. Dynamic Personal Potential Management, were carried out for the first time within the framework and on the invitation of the Malta Generator in 2017 in Poznań. The originators of the DPPM program are: Justyna Dziabaszewska, Ula Lucińska, Michał Knychaus, Dominika Święcicka and Rafał Żarski.

The conducted trainings only seemingly consisted in developing individual solutions which would serve creative and uncompromising self-development. Using aesthetics, methods and language of popular coaching, mentoring and consulting programs, the artists questioned the meaningfulness of unconditional productivity and the blind race to maximize potential.

The DPPM practice therefore consists in creating a “loophole,” which was discussed by Stephen Wright. It has the potential to deactivate its real counterpart – in this case, real coaching companies. Wright emphasizes the role of this type of activities, writing that “Artists as users are in a way particularly well equipped to exploit such grey zones inasmuch as one of the reflexes of artistic competence is ‘détournement’ – never responding forthrightly to expectations, nor refusing to engage, but rather countering obliquely.”

The tool of DPPM was primarily a bold sense of humor, which balanced on the edge of seriousness and sincere and engaging interaction with the participants of the classes.

During this interactive project, artists played the role of specialists who comprehensively took care of the development of competences in the field of selected and imagined areas of self-development which are clearly associated with success. They included, among others: fitness, beauty & relaxation, office selfdefense, motivation training, and creativity improvement as well as relations building.

The second edition of the Workshop with the DPPM Method was prepared at the invitation of the Jan Tarasin City Art Gallery of Kalisz. The presented exhibition and series of workshops differ, however, from their original – it can be said that it is a DPPM which “has gone through trials and tribulations.”

In this case, despite all expectations, we are dealing with a conscious violation of proven methods – embossed in the narrative framework of the identity crisis of burned-out mentors. The new DPPM explores the dark side of coaching. The creators assume the role of people who after a period of unconditional productivity and self-confidence pumped up to an incredible degree, were affected by the crisis of self-development. According to the terminology invented by the DPPM, this state is described as “burnout crisis” or “rebel outbrake.”

The exhibition itself is built of objects that are “activated” by means of looped video instructions which challenge the visitors. They encourage one to break not only with the safe, gallery distance built between the work and the recipient, but also to break your personal boundaries and inhibitions. In this context, they lose the rank of artistic artifacts, becoming functional, albeit somewhat absurd, tools.

The new form of the Workshops using the DPPM method, in accordance with the criteria of applied art, fulfills relational assumptions with even greater power and awareness, bringing new uses and inviting to an active, temporal entry into its fictitious structure. Instead of artists-authors we are dealing with initiators and the workshops and the exhibition would not exist without the active support of all users.

 

[1] S. Wright, Toward a Lexicon of Usership, Warsaw, 2014, p.74.