1. Katarzyna Swinarska, Dygresyjna tożsamość, 2015 [00:14:07]
Katarzyna Swinarska works with painting, video works – often following the conventions of video performances, and multimedia projects where she combines projection and sound. What is most striking in her works is the analytical approach to image. In 2015 she curated the multimedia exhibition Love Me, or Leave Me on the origins of the Institute of Visual Arts in Sopot; she presented two individual exhibitions in Poland and one in Belgium. She is currently preparing an individual exhibition Silent Heads in Grodno and working with Elvin Flamingo on a joint project Us – Common Organism. Her paintings form part of private collections in Poland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the US and have been purchased by the State Art Gallery in Sopot and the Wyspa Art Institute in Gdańsk. She lives and works in Sopot. She is the finalist of the 2nd Triennale of Pomeranian Art in Sopot in the Sculpture and Video Installations category (2015), holder of the art scholarship of the city of Sopot (2016 and 2014), nominee to the 3rd Contemporary Art Triennale in Rzeszów awards (2013), holder of the Mobility Fund scholarship awarded by Gdańsk (2012), Cultural Scholarship of the City of Gdańsk (2010), scholarship awarded by the Governor of the Pomeranian Province for creators of culture (2010) and a three-month art residency in Switzerland (2010). In October 2014, she obtained her PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdańsk.
The film A Digressive Identity was created as a one-off video performance inspired by Olga Boznańska. The artist adopted Boznańska’s costume as her point of departure: the long, old-fashioned dress and white apron the painter wore at her studio. She loaned a dress from the theatre and arranged her house to resemble Boznańska’s Parisian workshop. The impractical, lavish dress was old-fashioned even in the photographs of the painter in her studio – it was to serve as a pretext to analyse the aging process of the painting medium. However, the presence of viewers during the performance and growing tension provoked Katarzyna Swinarska to a reflection on corporeality and the aggressive, assessing look. The monologue was entirely improvised. The material was shot by Andrzej Wojciechowski in late 2014; a fragment was later used by Anna Baumgart in her film The Dark Matter of Art. The performer edited the film herself several months later thanks to Agata Jakubowska, who became interested in her concept of impersonating female artists described in her 2014 doctoral thesis.
2. Susan Kataifan, Olga, 2016 [00:10:05]
3. Ada Kobusiewicz, TARA 01, 2015 [00:03:47]
There are different ways to theatricalise video art. My way has to do with the light atmosphere which I applied to my video works. I was working more then 7 year in theatre with the stage light. First as a light technician and then as a light designer. This experience allowed me create a magic theatre atmosphere in some of my works, like Tara Project. In the creation of this pice was very important for me to use the right light position, as same as we do in theatre, to design expected atmosphere, to create a space using the light. Tara develops in the world of a newborn baby, putting emphasis on her body movements provoked by different emotions. Tara´s body movements have amazed me since the early days of her life, they are something new, something I was not aware of before, which I find extremely fascinating. They provoked me to reflect on the adult world, my world, so different from the world of Tara, especially on the emotional level. Taras mind and body interact. Her emotions directly affect her body. Her physical, tangible sphere, extended in space, interacts with the intangible, private world, ordered in time but not in space. Ideally, the video should be projected in a huge, dark and noiseless space with the maximum possible size.
She was born in Poland in 1978. In 2004 she moved to Spain where she studied at the University of Granada, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts and at the Andalusian Institute of Arts where she completed different courses related with stage light design. In 2012 she finished MA Degree in Art, Research and Production at the Academy of Arts in Granada, Spain and in 2014 MA Degree in Light Design at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, Serbia. From April 2014 she is researcher of PhD programme in Research in Arts at the University of Basque Country in Spain. Her background revolves mainly around space, body and light. For her, light increases and experiments with the dimensions of a space through new technologies, improvisations and sometimes through vast and unexplorable happenstance. She exhibits in Austria, Spain, Serbia, Italy, Croatia, BIH, Finland and UK and her works has been shown at festivals in USA, Sweden, England, Austria, Serbia, France, Portugal, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Greece, South Korea and Russia. She lives and work in Austria, Serbia, Spain and Poland.
4. Pim Dinghs, De nacht zweeft duizelde, 2014 [00:14:57]