This year’s residency collaboration between LAZNIA CCA and W788 is connected to ‘Sense perception’ theme and it is a part of a long-term interdisciplinary project curated by Nina Czegledy. Numerous artistic, research and educational activities, including exhibitions, discussions, presentations, artistic residencies and educational workshops focus on the study of multisensory perception of the environment. In 2019, a series of artistic residencies was initiated. Invited artists began working on projects related to the senses of: touch, smell, hearing, sight and taste. The finale of the project will take place in LAZNIA CCA in Autumn of 2021. Two other artists participating in this year’s residency edition in W788 are: Krystyna Jędrzejewska-Szmek and Krzysztof Topolski (Arszyn).
Pamela Leończyk’s notes on the residency in W788:
The project focused on creating an audio and multimedia installation, touching upon the issue of the climate crisis. During the residency, I have created a space representing the forests and meadows surrounding the Vistula river. The entire project was set in the virtual reality world, where the viewer and participant could move around. During my time in W788, I have realized a recording showing my "walk" through the recreated virtual spaces. Initially the experience had a meditative, intoxicating and light character, subsequently transforming this virtual walk more into the dystopian, lifeless desert.
My current interests are mostly realized in the community art and site-specific art. Therefore, a place where I was located at the time: Kozielec at the Vistula river, became the main material for creating a virtual reality. The drying river and its water pouring from virtual to a real space was the leitmotif of my work. Nature is an amazing source of inspiration and can act as a starting point for performative, as well as sound and visual research. During my stay in W788 I have therefore collected audio and visual material on the fields at the Vistula river. The current pandemic situation and the recent environmental disaster in Australia became the background for the proposed project. What I find interesting is the creation of dystopian spaces, where we all might end up, sooner or later. What will happen, if our only nature asylums will be the man-made ”leisure” and “regeneration” spaces ?
Perhaps, in a few decades, the only access to the sound and greenery of the forest would be possible in artificially created amusement parks with a paid admission. What if all the forests burn down? And in order to flee from the heat, coronavirus, wars and melting glaciers, we will have to hide in virtual realities in which we will create our own safe and non-flammable multimedia leisure spaces.