Mould
35mm film, 7min 21 sec, 2025
Mould is a choreographic film drawing from the life and artistic legacy of Danuta Kwapiszewska, a Polish dancer and sculptress (1922-1999) whose creative trajectory was fundamentally altered by a sudden change in her body’s motor capacities. When Kwapiszewska could no longer dance, she turned to sculpture – a medium through which her dancers continued to move, transfigured into three-dimensional form. Her declaration, „my sculptures dance for me,” becomes the thematic anchor for a meditation on artistic continuity, embodied practice, and the possibilities of creation across bodily transformation.
The work features two young women performing choreography derived from Kwapiszewska’s figurative sculptures. One performer is the first student with a disability to be ever enrolled to the Faculty of Dance Theatre at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Bytom, Poland, the other is a person with a hearing impairment. Through their presence, I reformulate the original question at the work’s core: in an increasingly inclusive cultural landscape, would Kwapiszewska have been able to sustain her performative practice despite the rupture in her physical capacity?
Shot on 35mm film in two master shots, it unfolds across consecutive film rolls, each choreographic sequence matching the duration of a single reel. The camera executes a circular movement around the performers along a six-meter diameter, anchoring the spatial and temporal logic of the piece. The film employs academic aspect ratio and features exclusively local sound – a choice made in recognition of the hearing-impaired performer’s contribution.
The structural division within the Mould mirrors the turning points of Kwapiszewska’s life. In the first section, a single performer moves through space, referencing the period of Kwapiszewska’s active dancing. Following the film splice – marking the transition from one reel to another – two women perform together, invoking the sculptural phase of Kwapiszewska’s artistic career. The second performer in the video is not a trained or professional dancer.
The piece was first presented using a 35mm film projector – a sculptural object in its own right. The machine becomes a meditation device, that contains and animates the still frames within the celluloid strip. In this sense, the apparatus reflects on the trajectory of Kwapiszewska’s own journey: movement emerges from stillness, animation arises from what appears static. The projector thus functions as a metaphorical correlate to Kwapiszewska’s experience, rendering visible the interplay between cessation and continuation, between the body at rest and the body in motion.
Born in Łódź – the same city as Danuta Kwapiszewska – I created this work precisely forty years after Kwapiszewska’s solo exhibition at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland.
The project was realized thanks to Young Poland scholarship program, granted by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It premiered at my solo exhibition at the Fort Institute of Photography, Warsaw, 2025 – video documentation.
Film available upon request.
35mm film, 7min 21 sec, 2025
Mould is a choreographic film drawing from the life and artistic legacy of Danuta Kwapiszewska, a Polish dancer and sculptress (1922-1999) whose creative trajectory was fundamentally altered by a sudden change in her body’s motor capacities. When Kwapiszewska could no longer dance, she turned to sculpture – a medium through which her dancers continued to move, transfigured into three-dimensional form. Her declaration, „my sculptures dance for me,” becomes the thematic anchor for a meditation on artistic continuity, embodied practice, and the possibilities of creation across bodily transformation.
The work features two young women performing choreography derived from Kwapiszewska’s figurative sculptures. One performer is the first student with a disability to be ever enrolled to the Faculty of Dance Theatre at the Academy of Theatre Arts in Bytom, Poland, the other is a person with a hearing impairment. Through their presence, I reformulate the original question at the work’s core: in an increasingly inclusive cultural landscape, would Kwapiszewska have been able to sustain her performative practice despite the rupture in her physical capacity?
Shot on 35mm film in two master shots, it unfolds across consecutive film rolls, each choreographic sequence matching the duration of a single reel. The camera executes a circular movement around the performers along a six-meter diameter, anchoring the spatial and temporal logic of the piece. The film employs academic aspect ratio and features exclusively local sound – a choice made in recognition of the hearing-impaired performer’s contribution.
The structural division within the Mould mirrors the turning points of Kwapiszewska’s life. In the first section, a single performer moves through space, referencing the period of Kwapiszewska’s active dancing. Following the film splice – marking the transition from one reel to another – two women perform together, invoking the sculptural phase of Kwapiszewska’s artistic career. The second performer in the video is not a trained or professional dancer.
The piece was first presented using a 35mm film projector – a sculptural object in its own right. The machine becomes a meditation device, that contains and animates the still frames within the celluloid strip. In this sense, the apparatus reflects on the trajectory of Kwapiszewska’s own journey: movement emerges from stillness, animation arises from what appears static. The projector thus functions as a metaphorical correlate to Kwapiszewska’s experience, rendering visible the interplay between cessation and continuation, between the body at rest and the body in motion.
Born in Łódź – the same city as Danuta Kwapiszewska – I created this work precisely forty years after Kwapiszewska’s solo exhibition at Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland.
The project was realized thanks to Young Poland scholarship program, granted by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. It premiered at my solo exhibition at the Fort Institute of Photography, Warsaw, 2025 – video documentation.
Film available upon request.
Nodes
digital video, 2min 17sec, 2023 (transferred onto 16mm film, 2024)
analog photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in acid-free metal, 3x45cm (diameter), 2024
thick linen textile with an orchid roots pattern, 350x280cm, 2024
Hi8 digital video, 15min 14sec, 2025
Nodes is based on research conducted on historical and contemporary relationships between humans and orchids. In Poland’s past, the dried roots of wild orchids, which are now protected species often found in nature reserves, were discreetly placed inside clothing to affect the wearer, so that the person would fall in love with the one who hid the roots. In Italy, powdered roots were mixed with goat’s milk in the belief that it enhanced sexual stimulation. Since my practice often touches upon the subject of control, I considered these magical rituals as violent acts.
Reflecting on the intimate performances of the past, I shifted my focus to the modern industrial production of orchids – another kind of these plants, imported from regions where they grow on tree branches and live as parasites in their native habitat. In creating the first video, I employed a robot, directly referencing the technological methods used to cultivate orchids nowadays. Drawing on anthropological and economic data, I developed a work that materializes the symbolic and normative aspects of human-plant interdependence shaped by cultural and market conditions.
In Nodes, orchids serve both as instruments of enchantment and commodities, mass-produced to generate as many uniform, standardized plants as possible to meet market criteria. This industrialized and technologized production process relies on female workers who shape each orchid to fit a fabricated ideal of beauty: they cut away rotting parts and insert a stick, an artificial outer skeleton, into the pot. Their intervention, performed at the end of the production line, is essential, transforming organic, living and vulnerable beings into sculpted forms that fulfill human aesthetic expectations.
Although the first video was recorded using a digital camera mounted on an arm-like robot, the footage was transferred to 16mm film. During an exhibition at the XX1 gallery in Warsaw, Poland, 2024, the film tape was circulated through the exhibition space, evoking the production line in commercial greenhouses. This video is without sound, as it was conceived to be shown on film with the rhythmic clatter of the projector, echoing the mechanical noise of production halls. I have also presented it digitally once, but I consider these screenings incomplete.
Another aspect of the human relationship with orchids that interested me was their cultivation and care in greenhouses. Therefore, I traveled to the palace and park complex in Łańcut, Poland, drawn by the castle’s historic orchid collection, established in the late 19th century by Prince Władysław Lubomirski, who decided to import exotic orchids and grow them for their aesthetic beauty.
The museum’s archive also houses an original copy of Reichenbachia: Orchids Illustrated and Described – a monumental publication by orchidologist Frederick Sander containing life-size illustrations and descriptions of nearly two hundred orchid species. These illustrations were painted in a naturalistic style, capturing realistic and sometimes imperfect details of the orchids rather than idealized forms, reflecting Victorian-era attention to botanical accuracy. The work was conceived as a tribute to the German orchidologist Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach.
When I visited Łańcut to see the orchid house, also there, the female workers were actually trimming diseased roots. I then took analog photographs of the cut roots and framed them in a steel frame, whose shape is reminiscent of forceps – the rigid and cold instrument into which the plant was inserted during the video recording.
At the beginning of 2025, I returned to the business where orchids are produced on a mass scale for commercial purposes. I brought a Hi8 camera with me, which records video on a tape that can be reused multiple times – thinking not only about the production line in the factory but also about the idea of repetition. The image captured with the Hi8, whose resolution is very low, stands in vivid contrast to the footage recorded in the sterile studio using a robot, which looks almost like a computer-generated render.
When I had an opportunity to present the whole Nodes project at Krupa Art Foundation, Wrocław, 2025, I decided to collaborate with a local botanical archive, which holds a collection of wild orchids – the very kinds once used in love rituals. Because these specimens are dried, they clearly referenced my starting point in the piece. I was interested in the fact that the archive collects and dries orchid specimens for scientific purposes, which differ from the uses in rituals, greenhouse cultivation, or commercial mass production. Moreover, in these dried examples, individual shapes clearly evoked reproductive organs.
Video documentation of the presentation at XX1 gallery, Warsaw, 2024
Project available upon request.
digital video, 2min 17sec, 2023 (transferred onto 16mm film, 2024)
analog photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in acid-free metal, 3x45cm (diameter), 2024
thick linen textile with an orchid roots pattern, 350x280cm, 2024
Hi8 digital video, 15min 14sec, 2025
Nodes is based on research conducted on historical and contemporary relationships between humans and orchids. In Poland’s past, the dried roots of wild orchids, which are now protected species often found in nature reserves, were discreetly placed inside clothing to affect the wearer, so that the person would fall in love with the one who hid the roots. In Italy, powdered roots were mixed with goat’s milk in the belief that it enhanced sexual stimulation. Since my practice often touches upon the subject of control, I considered these magical rituals as violent acts.
Reflecting on the intimate performances of the past, I shifted my focus to the modern industrial production of orchids – another kind of these plants, imported from regions where they grow on tree branches and live as parasites in their native habitat. In creating the first video, I employed a robot, directly referencing the technological methods used to cultivate orchids nowadays. Drawing on anthropological and economic data, I developed a work that materializes the symbolic and normative aspects of human-plant interdependence shaped by cultural and market conditions.
In Nodes, orchids serve both as instruments of enchantment and commodities, mass-produced to generate as many uniform, standardized plants as possible to meet market criteria. This industrialized and technologized production process relies on female workers who shape each orchid to fit a fabricated ideal of beauty: they cut away rotting parts and insert a stick, an artificial outer skeleton, into the pot. Their intervention, performed at the end of the production line, is essential, transforming organic, living and vulnerable beings into sculpted forms that fulfill human aesthetic expectations.
Although the first video was recorded using a digital camera mounted on an arm-like robot, the footage was transferred to 16mm film. During an exhibition at the XX1 gallery in Warsaw, Poland, 2024, the film tape was circulated through the exhibition space, evoking the production line in commercial greenhouses. This video is without sound, as it was conceived to be shown on film with the rhythmic clatter of the projector, echoing the mechanical noise of production halls. I have also presented it digitally once, but I consider these screenings incomplete.
Another aspect of the human relationship with orchids that interested me was their cultivation and care in greenhouses. Therefore, I traveled to the palace and park complex in Łańcut, Poland, drawn by the castle’s historic orchid collection, established in the late 19th century by Prince Władysław Lubomirski, who decided to import exotic orchids and grow them for their aesthetic beauty.
The museum’s archive also houses an original copy of Reichenbachia: Orchids Illustrated and Described – a monumental publication by orchidologist Frederick Sander containing life-size illustrations and descriptions of nearly two hundred orchid species. These illustrations were painted in a naturalistic style, capturing realistic and sometimes imperfect details of the orchids rather than idealized forms, reflecting Victorian-era attention to botanical accuracy. The work was conceived as a tribute to the German orchidologist Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach.
When I visited Łańcut to see the orchid house, also there, the female workers were actually trimming diseased roots. I then took analog photographs of the cut roots and framed them in a steel frame, whose shape is reminiscent of forceps – the rigid and cold instrument into which the plant was inserted during the video recording.
At the beginning of 2025, I returned to the business where orchids are produced on a mass scale for commercial purposes. I brought a Hi8 camera with me, which records video on a tape that can be reused multiple times – thinking not only about the production line in the factory but also about the idea of repetition. The image captured with the Hi8, whose resolution is very low, stands in vivid contrast to the footage recorded in the sterile studio using a robot, which looks almost like a computer-generated render.
When I had an opportunity to present the whole Nodes project at Krupa Art Foundation, Wrocław, 2025, I decided to collaborate with a local botanical archive, which holds a collection of wild orchids – the very kinds once used in love rituals. Because these specimens are dried, they clearly referenced my starting point in the piece. I was interested in the fact that the archive collects and dries orchid specimens for scientific purposes, which differ from the uses in rituals, greenhouse cultivation, or commercial mass production. Moreover, in these dried examples, individual shapes clearly evoked reproductive organs.
Video documentation of the presentation at XX1 gallery, Warsaw, 2024
Project available upon request.
no mental scars, no nursed grudges
3-channel digital video installation, 15min 39sec, 2022
no mental scars, no nursed grudges explores the mechanisms of control, influence and instruction in the interaction between the human body and technology. Two gymnasts and a antropomorphic robot perform a choreography, learned through different methods. The former create stunts in which the older athlete supports the younger one, who alternately relies on a tool to perform her acrobatics. Their movements, captured by a camera installed on the precision robotic arm, are captured in slow motion to reveal every detail, tension, or uncertainty. The bolt also takes a performative role by executing the pre-programmed sequence, highlighting the dichotomy between organic interpretation and machine execution.
Because for the shooting a robotic arm was used, all its movements needed to be preprogrammed. During the recording it was not possible to change its choreography – it could only be stopped, put back again on the first position, reprogrammed and played again. The set was limited by human body endurance.
Title of the work comes from Zygmunt Bauman’s From Pilgrim to Tourist – Or A Short History of Identity, 1996, from the passage The Player.
Premiered in the eastcontemporary gallery, Milan, 2022, during my first solo show in Italy. There I mounted 3 screens mounted around a column – in order to watch the whole work, the audience needed to circle the installation, which means engage in its perception in a performative way.
Excerpt from a curatorial text by Antonio Grulli:
During the days I was starting to write this text, I visited the Possagno Gypsotheca, where many of Canova’s plaster casts and sketches are kept, and I felt something akin to Agnieszka’s subjects and works. Indeed, I perceive a profound sense of ‘classic’ in her works. The atmospheres are suspended and detached, the subjects are harmonious and without any sense of guilt in their beauty; I find in her works the same notion of adolescence so beloved by Canova. With their artificial poses, the girls recall neoclassical plastic sculptures, in which the arms and limbs move as if guided by the metaphysical and not-of- this-world feeling.
The same use of the slow motion in one part of the recording accentuates this tension towards something that would potentially like to be eternal. The slowed-down images were in fact captured with a video camera mounted on a large robot, which becomes one of the two „directors” of the video, and which appears „dancing” alongside the two acrobats. Here is, where the cybernetic, robotic, and silicon element of this sculpture in movement meets with a classical aesthetics, contaminating itself with it: it is as if it were a sculptural classicism, more enhanced, apparently perfect, and far away from the disharmony of vulgar human sentiments. It is fluid, Apollonian, unalterable, shiny, and with a sexy surface, as attractive as only the inorganic can be, and as cold as the marble of Canova’s sculptures.
Agnieszka Mastalerz’s work manages in subtle and very elegant way to reveal the anxieties and frictions inherent to our collectivity and the way in which the individual inserts itself into the social dynamics aimed at his or her control and directing. In recent years there has been a lot of talk about how the robots are always more efficient, and about the day when they will come to look like us. I have an impression that these are not the robots that resemble us more and more, but that we are the ones who are increasingly looking like them. In the moment in which the humanity puts away the soul and the spiritual side of human being, it is inevitable to envy a digital entity, one that is infinitely faster than us in computing and with much better physical performance than ours. Perhaps, because of the exasperated use of technological prostheses and robotic supports in our everyday life and at work, we want to be like them and function like them as we are already convinced that they work better in a reassuring way and without disturbing surprises that humans are prone to. Furthermore, robots have an advantage and the enviable comfort of having no responsibility, they only follow protocols, no matter what happens. This is also why we entered the era of adoration of big data, our new gospel and horrid abyss in which the sense of the sublime of our time resides.
However, in the artist’s work there is an escape from all of this, a potential salvation, a redemptive crack. Indeed, there is always a sort of internal dichotomy to each work, in which a vital and organic element meets with and bumps into something artificial and inorganic, sometimes wanting to direct and control the chaotic part of the organic. And even the atmosphere, that classical and Apollonian construction of the image, always carries within itself a tiny hint of a possible ‘decomposition’.
(...) In almost all works of Agnieszka Mastalerz, there is an inkling of failure, something in a state of decay or corruption: it is the human that emerges in its purest essence as a deviation from a norm that would otherwise make everything alienating and inhuman.
The exhibition in eastcontemporary gallery, Milan, were the video was presented for the first time, 2022, was produced thanks to the support of the Consulate General of Poland in Milan, the Polish Institute in Rome, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Video excerpt, full video available upon request.
3-channel digital video installation, 15min 39sec, 2022
no mental scars, no nursed grudges explores the mechanisms of control, influence and instruction in the interaction between the human body and technology. Two gymnasts and a antropomorphic robot perform a choreography, learned through different methods. The former create stunts in which the older athlete supports the younger one, who alternately relies on a tool to perform her acrobatics. Their movements, captured by a camera installed on the precision robotic arm, are captured in slow motion to reveal every detail, tension, or uncertainty. The bolt also takes a performative role by executing the pre-programmed sequence, highlighting the dichotomy between organic interpretation and machine execution.
Because for the shooting a robotic arm was used, all its movements needed to be preprogrammed. During the recording it was not possible to change its choreography – it could only be stopped, put back again on the first position, reprogrammed and played again. The set was limited by human body endurance.
Title of the work comes from Zygmunt Bauman’s From Pilgrim to Tourist – Or A Short History of Identity, 1996, from the passage The Player.
Premiered in the eastcontemporary gallery, Milan, 2022, during my first solo show in Italy. There I mounted 3 screens mounted around a column – in order to watch the whole work, the audience needed to circle the installation, which means engage in its perception in a performative way.
Excerpt from a curatorial text by Antonio Grulli:
During the days I was starting to write this text, I visited the Possagno Gypsotheca, where many of Canova’s plaster casts and sketches are kept, and I felt something akin to Agnieszka’s subjects and works. Indeed, I perceive a profound sense of ‘classic’ in her works. The atmospheres are suspended and detached, the subjects are harmonious and without any sense of guilt in their beauty; I find in her works the same notion of adolescence so beloved by Canova. With their artificial poses, the girls recall neoclassical plastic sculptures, in which the arms and limbs move as if guided by the metaphysical and not-of- this-world feeling.
The same use of the slow motion in one part of the recording accentuates this tension towards something that would potentially like to be eternal. The slowed-down images were in fact captured with a video camera mounted on a large robot, which becomes one of the two „directors” of the video, and which appears „dancing” alongside the two acrobats. Here is, where the cybernetic, robotic, and silicon element of this sculpture in movement meets with a classical aesthetics, contaminating itself with it: it is as if it were a sculptural classicism, more enhanced, apparently perfect, and far away from the disharmony of vulgar human sentiments. It is fluid, Apollonian, unalterable, shiny, and with a sexy surface, as attractive as only the inorganic can be, and as cold as the marble of Canova’s sculptures.
Agnieszka Mastalerz’s work manages in subtle and very elegant way to reveal the anxieties and frictions inherent to our collectivity and the way in which the individual inserts itself into the social dynamics aimed at his or her control and directing. In recent years there has been a lot of talk about how the robots are always more efficient, and about the day when they will come to look like us. I have an impression that these are not the robots that resemble us more and more, but that we are the ones who are increasingly looking like them. In the moment in which the humanity puts away the soul and the spiritual side of human being, it is inevitable to envy a digital entity, one that is infinitely faster than us in computing and with much better physical performance than ours. Perhaps, because of the exasperated use of technological prostheses and robotic supports in our everyday life and at work, we want to be like them and function like them as we are already convinced that they work better in a reassuring way and without disturbing surprises that humans are prone to. Furthermore, robots have an advantage and the enviable comfort of having no responsibility, they only follow protocols, no matter what happens. This is also why we entered the era of adoration of big data, our new gospel and horrid abyss in which the sense of the sublime of our time resides.
However, in the artist’s work there is an escape from all of this, a potential salvation, a redemptive crack. Indeed, there is always a sort of internal dichotomy to each work, in which a vital and organic element meets with and bumps into something artificial and inorganic, sometimes wanting to direct and control the chaotic part of the organic. And even the atmosphere, that classical and Apollonian construction of the image, always carries within itself a tiny hint of a possible ‘decomposition’.
(...) In almost all works of Agnieszka Mastalerz, there is an inkling of failure, something in a state of decay or corruption: it is the human that emerges in its purest essence as a deviation from a norm that would otherwise make everything alienating and inhuman.
The exhibition in eastcontemporary gallery, Milan, were the video was presented for the first time, 2022, was produced thanks to the support of the Consulate General of Poland in Milan, the Polish Institute in Rome, and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Video excerpt, full video available upon request.
Supports
analog photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in welded steel, 50x50, 70x70, 100x100cm, 2020-
digital video, 10min, 2021
Since 2020, I have been aesthetically and conceptually analyzing structures used in horticulture to support plants. My photographic investigation began during the pandemic, when all green spaces in Warsaw were closed to the public. I found myself considering how I might spend time outside and within nature. I realized that botanical gardens likely remained operational – someone had to take care of them. Without a predetermined project in mind, I brought along an analog camera that I had not used in years, driven by a need for creative engagement.
While wandering through the garden, I noticed plant supports – sculpture-like, rigid, often steel objects that starkly contrast with the vulnerability of flora. Their purpose is to define how plants will grow and in which direction they should develop, yet they simultaneously restrict movement. I began observing these architectural constructions and documenting them through analog photography, in black and white to emphasize the composition of lines.
I continued this photographic series during my residencies, including Museum Susch in Switzerland (2021) and Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022). Photographing became part of a process that led me to reconsider these structures – wondering how I might extract them from their original context, reshape and rescale them to open them up to different meanings.
Project available upon request.
analog photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in welded steel, 50x50, 70x70, 100x100cm, 2020-
digital video, 10min, 2021
Since 2020, I have been aesthetically and conceptually analyzing structures used in horticulture to support plants. My photographic investigation began during the pandemic, when all green spaces in Warsaw were closed to the public. I found myself considering how I might spend time outside and within nature. I realized that botanical gardens likely remained operational – someone had to take care of them. Without a predetermined project in mind, I brought along an analog camera that I had not used in years, driven by a need for creative engagement.
While wandering through the garden, I noticed plant supports – sculpture-like, rigid, often steel objects that starkly contrast with the vulnerability of flora. Their purpose is to define how plants will grow and in which direction they should develop, yet they simultaneously restrict movement. I began observing these architectural constructions and documenting them through analog photography, in black and white to emphasize the composition of lines.
I continued this photographic series during my residencies, including Museum Susch in Switzerland (2021) and Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022). Photographing became part of a process that led me to reconsider these structures – wondering how I might extract them from their original context, reshape and rescale them to open them up to different meanings.
Project available upon request.
Supports
analog medium-format photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in welded steel, 50x50, 70x70, 100x100cm, 2020-
digital video, 10min, 2021
Since 2020, I have been aesthetically and conceptually analyzing structures used in horticulture to support plants. My photographic investigation began during the pandemic, when all green spaces in Warsaw were closed to the public. I found myself considering how I might spend time outside and within nature. I realized that botanical gardens likely remained operational – someone had to take care of them. Without a predetermined project in mind, I brought along an analog camera that I had not used in years, driven by a need for creative engagement.
While wandering through the garden, I noticed plant supports – sculpture-like, rigid, often steel objects that starkly contrast with the vulnerability of flora. Their purpose is to define how plants will grow and in which direction they should develop, yet they simultaneously restrict movement. I began observing these architectural constructions and documenting them through analog photography, in black and white to emphasize the composition of lines.
I continued this photographic series during my residencies, including Museum Susch in Switzerland (2021) and Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022). Photographing became part of a process that led me to reconsider these structures – wondering how I might extract them from their original context, reshape and rescale them to open them up to different meanings.
During my residency within the Artist Development Program at the European Investment Bank Institute in Luxembourg (2021), I welded three steel human-size structures based on my body measurements. I then collaborated with a female choreographer Elisabeth Schilling to develop a performance with these sculptures. I documented her improvisation that explored whether these structures help or hinder movement. The video was recorded inside Philharmonie Luxembourg, a cultural institution that simultaneously supports artistic practice and enforces its own structural rules. The coldness and systematic order of the space stood in opposition to the organicity of gardens.
The photographs in this series are framed in welded steel, and the material mirrors the steel structures photographed. Through this framing, the photographs acquire the character of objects themselves.
First edition of the video was acquired by the European Investment Bank Institute.
Video available upon request.
analog medium-format photographs, pigment ink print on archive paper framed in welded steel, 50x50, 70x70, 100x100cm, 2020-
digital video, 10min, 2021
Since 2020, I have been aesthetically and conceptually analyzing structures used in horticulture to support plants. My photographic investigation began during the pandemic, when all green spaces in Warsaw were closed to the public. I found myself considering how I might spend time outside and within nature. I realized that botanical gardens likely remained operational – someone had to take care of them. Without a predetermined project in mind, I brought along an analog camera that I had not used in years, driven by a need for creative engagement.
While wandering through the garden, I noticed plant supports – sculpture-like, rigid, often steel objects that starkly contrast with the vulnerability of flora. Their purpose is to define how plants will grow and in which direction they should develop, yet they simultaneously restrict movement. I began observing these architectural constructions and documenting them through analog photography, in black and white to emphasize the composition of lines.
I continued this photographic series during my residencies, including Museum Susch in Switzerland (2021) and Hospitalfield in Scotland (2022). Photographing became part of a process that led me to reconsider these structures – wondering how I might extract them from their original context, reshape and rescale them to open them up to different meanings.
During my residency within the Artist Development Program at the European Investment Bank Institute in Luxembourg (2021), I welded three steel human-size structures based on my body measurements. I then collaborated with a female choreographer Elisabeth Schilling to develop a performance with these sculptures. I documented her improvisation that explored whether these structures help or hinder movement. The video was recorded inside Philharmonie Luxembourg, a cultural institution that simultaneously supports artistic practice and enforces its own structural rules. The coldness and systematic order of the space stood in opposition to the organicity of gardens.
The photographs in this series are framed in welded steel, and the material mirrors the steel structures photographed. Through this framing, the photographs acquire the character of objects themselves.
First edition of the video was acquired by the European Investment Bank Institute.
Video available upon request.
Bloodstream
installation, thermal wire, 2019
Bloodstream refers to the floating movement made by employees within the Spectra building. In a significant communication route, we put a symbolic blue vein made out of thermal wire and connected it with a wall of the company premises. The shape of the installation resembled the topologist’s sine curve characteristic for the study of continua. By choosing the thin line and this particular colour we wanted to reflect on Edward Krasiński whose works are a part of Starak Family Foundation’s collection.
While going down the passageway, the perception of this organic system changed. It was possible to touch the cable and feel the energy that responded to ambient temperature.
Duo work with Michał Szaranowicz for the Starak Family Foundation, presented in the Spectra Art Space, Warsaw, 2019.
Photo: Michał Szaranowicz
installation, thermal wire, 2019
Bloodstream refers to the floating movement made by employees within the Spectra building. In a significant communication route, we put a symbolic blue vein made out of thermal wire and connected it with a wall of the company premises. The shape of the installation resembled the topologist’s sine curve characteristic for the study of continua. By choosing the thin line and this particular colour we wanted to reflect on Edward Krasiński whose works are a part of Starak Family Foundation’s collection.
While going down the passageway, the perception of this organic system changed. It was possible to touch the cable and feel the energy that responded to ambient temperature.
Duo work with Michał Szaranowicz for the Starak Family Foundation, presented in the Spectra Art Space, Warsaw, 2019.
Photo: Michał Szaranowicz
H (Reconstruction Of Position)
digital video, 8min 45sec, 2018
The work reconstructs positions visible in twenty archival photographs taken in 1945 in Neuengamme, Hamburg. These photograph-portraits document Jewish children forced to expose parts of their bodies – armpits and lymph nodes – for medical examination intended as Nazi medical experimentation. In each photograph, an adult hand is visible holding each child’s body to maintain control.
I discovered these archival images while studying in the Photoclass at HFBK Hamburg during the 2017/2018 academic year. The identities of all the children in the archival photographs are known except for one girl with Polish roots whose name began with the letter H.
In the work, there is no direct control over the girl’s posture. She did not know the choreography by heart and was mirroring the movements of an adult female choreographer perfroming behind the camera.
The video was filmed inside the former Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, a Jewish medical facility that operated from 1878 to 1942. This location is situated in what was once the Warsaw Ghetto, an area where I grew up.
The site where the Jewish children from Neuengamme were killed to conceal traces of medical experiments was officially named Janusz-Korczak-Schule in 1980. Korczak was a Polish educator, author, and child rights advocate who worked at the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, directing its orphanage. He remained with the children during their deportation in the Holocaust.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the Masovian Voivodeship, 2018.
First edition of the video was acquired by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
Video available upon request.
digital video, 8min 45sec, 2018
The work reconstructs positions visible in twenty archival photographs taken in 1945 in Neuengamme, Hamburg. These photograph-portraits document Jewish children forced to expose parts of their bodies – armpits and lymph nodes – for medical examination intended as Nazi medical experimentation. In each photograph, an adult hand is visible holding each child’s body to maintain control.
I discovered these archival images while studying in the Photoclass at HFBK Hamburg during the 2017/2018 academic year. The identities of all the children in the archival photographs are known except for one girl with Polish roots whose name began with the letter H.
In the work, there is no direct control over the girl’s posture. She did not know the choreography by heart and was mirroring the movements of an adult female choreographer perfroming behind the camera.
The video was filmed inside the former Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, a Jewish medical facility that operated from 1878 to 1942. This location is situated in what was once the Warsaw Ghetto, an area where I grew up.
The site where the Jewish children from Neuengamme were killed to conceal traces of medical experiments was officially named Janusz-Korczak-Schule in 1980. Korczak was a Polish educator, author, and child rights advocate who worked at the Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in Warsaw, directing its orphanage. He remained with the children during their deportation in the Holocaust.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the Masovian Voivodeship, 2018.
First edition of the video was acquired by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
Video available upon request.
Sluice
3-channel video installation, loop, 2018
steel tunnel with crushed oyster shells
In Warsaw, on the east bank of the Vistula river, an ambitious investment called Port Praski (Praga Harbor) is being realized. From 1885 to 2012, the area functioned as a harbor surrounded by modest tenement buildings, a slaughterhouse, and wild green spaces. The development promises to transform the place into a European-class district inspired by London City. Yet the investment cannot proceed without a critical infrastructure: a water lock, essential for regulating water levels and enabling construction.
This work emerged as Michał Szaranowicz’s and my diploma project in the Studio of Spatial Activities led by Mirosław Bałka. We sought to respond to the place where we lived. While walking regularly along the unregulated, wild eastern bank of the Vistula, we observed the construction of this titular sluice – a machine that transforms what passes through it by changing levels.
The installation comprises three video projections. The first presents an anthropomorphic sluice rendered as hands hidden within black rubber gloves – repeating the mechanical gesture of opening and closing.
The second channel shows a breathing greyhound, a dog associated simultaneously with nobility, class, and racing, potentially embodying Cerberus guarding the gate of the sluice.
The third projection documents an artificial plastic hedging – the method used to obscure balconies in the newly built residential towers we observed in Port Praski. The substitution seemed symptomatic: to enable new development, the wild greenery was cleared, only to be replaced by synthetic boxwood on the balconies of the emerging buildings.
Leading to the main projection – the gloved hands of somebody in charge – was a steel tunnel filled with crushed oyster shells, discarded remains from Port Royal, a high-end restaurant in Warsaw’s city center. For us, these shells symbolized both the demolished homes and the social status of those destined to inhabit the new buildings. They also represented destroyed nature itself.
We first presented the work in the basement of an old tenement building in Port Praski. Viewers had to descend – to change level – to encounter the installation, mirroring the sluice’s function.
Video documentation, full video available upon request.
Photo: Michał Szaranowicz
3-channel video installation, loop, 2018
steel tunnel with crushed oyster shells
In Warsaw, on the east bank of the Vistula river, an ambitious investment called Port Praski (Praga Harbor) is being realized. From 1885 to 2012, the area functioned as a harbor surrounded by modest tenement buildings, a slaughterhouse, and wild green spaces. The development promises to transform the place into a European-class district inspired by London City. Yet the investment cannot proceed without a critical infrastructure: a water lock, essential for regulating water levels and enabling construction.
This work emerged as Michał Szaranowicz’s and my diploma project in the Studio of Spatial Activities led by Mirosław Bałka. We sought to respond to the place where we lived. While walking regularly along the unregulated, wild eastern bank of the Vistula, we observed the construction of this titular sluice – a machine that transforms what passes through it by changing levels.
The installation comprises three video projections. The first presents an anthropomorphic sluice rendered as hands hidden within black rubber gloves – repeating the mechanical gesture of opening and closing.
The second channel shows a breathing greyhound, a dog associated simultaneously with nobility, class, and racing, potentially embodying Cerberus guarding the gate of the sluice.
The third projection documents an artificial plastic hedging – the method used to obscure balconies in the newly built residential towers we observed in Port Praski. The substitution seemed symptomatic: to enable new development, the wild greenery was cleared, only to be replaced by synthetic boxwood on the balconies of the emerging buildings.
Leading to the main projection – the gloved hands of somebody in charge – was a steel tunnel filled with crushed oyster shells, discarded remains from Port Royal, a high-end restaurant in Warsaw’s city center. For us, these shells symbolized both the demolished homes and the social status of those destined to inhabit the new buildings. They also represented destroyed nature itself.
We first presented the work in the basement of an old tenement building in Port Praski. Viewers had to descend – to change level – to encounter the installation, mirroring the sluice’s function.
Video documentation, full video available upon request.
Photo: Michał Szaranowicz
Primary Swarm
digital video, 9min 55sec, 2020
Primary Swarm emerged as a continuation of our diploma project Sluice, 2018, a collaborative work with Michał Szaranowicz. While Sluice addressed infrastructure and gentrification through abstraction and symbolic materials, Primary Swarm reintroduced the human dimension – bodies moving through space as both witnesses and participants in transformation.
The work takes its title and conceptual framework from the structure of a bee colony – it refers to the moment when a new queen bee emerges and workers begin to gather around her before departure. In our video, a group of uniformed performers move slowly through a tunnel towards a cocoon, their synchronized yet individual movements creating a collective body navigating into and around a dangerous machine.
The space itself functions as the organizing principle around which all movement occurs. The rounded, enclosed architecture dictates the performers’ gestures: slow-paced, careful, almost as if they had to learn to walk anew.
The final sequence documents the wild greenery of Port Praski in Warsaw – the exceptional vegetation that would soon be cleared to make way for the new residential development. This footage stands as a record of what the land held before gentrification transformed it into European-class housing. The swarm’s collective movement toward the machinery mirrors the process of urban development that displaces both nature and community. The final image of wild greenery may symbolize both the destination of the performers’ journey and an unfulfilled promise.
It was realized with support from a scholarship granted by The Society of Authors ZAiKS, 2020.
Video available upon request.
digital video, 9min 55sec, 2020
Primary Swarm emerged as a continuation of our diploma project Sluice, 2018, a collaborative work with Michał Szaranowicz. While Sluice addressed infrastructure and gentrification through abstraction and symbolic materials, Primary Swarm reintroduced the human dimension – bodies moving through space as both witnesses and participants in transformation.
The work takes its title and conceptual framework from the structure of a bee colony – it refers to the moment when a new queen bee emerges and workers begin to gather around her before departure. In our video, a group of uniformed performers move slowly through a tunnel towards a cocoon, their synchronized yet individual movements creating a collective body navigating into and around a dangerous machine.
The space itself functions as the organizing principle around which all movement occurs. The rounded, enclosed architecture dictates the performers’ gestures: slow-paced, careful, almost as if they had to learn to walk anew.
The final sequence documents the wild greenery of Port Praski in Warsaw – the exceptional vegetation that would soon be cleared to make way for the new residential development. This footage stands as a record of what the land held before gentrification transformed it into European-class housing. The swarm’s collective movement toward the machinery mirrors the process of urban development that displaces both nature and community. The final image of wild greenery may symbolize both the destination of the performers’ journey and an unfulfilled promise.
It was realized with support from a scholarship granted by The Society of Authors ZAiKS, 2020.
Video available upon request.
UZ
digital video based on ultrasound images, 13min 30sec, 2020
I was invited to contribute to the exhibition Symcha Trachter, 1894-1942. Light and Color, 2020 – a retrospective of classical works by the Polish Jewish painter Symcha Trachter, who perished in the Holocaust. The exhibition was organized by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and presented at the venue that itself survived the Second World War.
My task was to create a contemporary work that responds to Trachter’s last piece: an undocumented polychromy in the Judenrat meeting hall presenting Job, a fresco annihilated during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
To address this absence, I created a projection of ultrasound images of the walls of a conference room in a modern hotel at ul. Grzybowska in Warsaw. The hotel stands on the site where until 1943 stood the Building of the Jewish Community, demolished during the uprising. The room with the lost painting may have been on the first floor, just like the room in the contemporary building that I documented. I employed ultrasound imaging – a diagnostic tool commonly used in art conservation and archaeological research.
The projection, with its abstract patterns and immaterial quality, contrasted with the often figurative and framed paintings on display.
The title of my work, UZ, alludes to the biblical name of the Old Testament land where Job was from. It consists of two capital letters, referencing the ultrasound images I paired in each frame of the video work.
Later, in 2023, the work was presented at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum München in the group exhibition Materializing. Contemporary Art and the Shoah in Poland. Piotr Rypson, curator of the show, wrote: As part of the exhibition Materializing, UZ is being presented in direct juxtaposition with the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, the former Führerbau, a symbolic building for the Nazi party, as well as a view of the ruins of the Temples of Honor. The work addresses potential and barely perceptible traces that remain more or less visible to this day, a result of the temporal intertwining of history and the present.
First edition of the video was acquired by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
Video available upon request.
digital video based on ultrasound images, 13min 30sec, 2020
I was invited to contribute to the exhibition Symcha Trachter, 1894-1942. Light and Color, 2020 – a retrospective of classical works by the Polish Jewish painter Symcha Trachter, who perished in the Holocaust. The exhibition was organized by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and presented at the venue that itself survived the Second World War.
My task was to create a contemporary work that responds to Trachter’s last piece: an undocumented polychromy in the Judenrat meeting hall presenting Job, a fresco annihilated during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
To address this absence, I created a projection of ultrasound images of the walls of a conference room in a modern hotel at ul. Grzybowska in Warsaw. The hotel stands on the site where until 1943 stood the Building of the Jewish Community, demolished during the uprising. The room with the lost painting may have been on the first floor, just like the room in the contemporary building that I documented. I employed ultrasound imaging – a diagnostic tool commonly used in art conservation and archaeological research.
The projection, with its abstract patterns and immaterial quality, contrasted with the often figurative and framed paintings on display.
The title of my work, UZ, alludes to the biblical name of the Old Testament land where Job was from. It consists of two capital letters, referencing the ultrasound images I paired in each frame of the video work.
Later, in 2023, the work was presented at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum München in the group exhibition Materializing. Contemporary Art and the Shoah in Poland. Piotr Rypson, curator of the show, wrote: As part of the exhibition Materializing, UZ is being presented in direct juxtaposition with the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, the former Führerbau, a symbolic building for the Nazi party, as well as a view of the ruins of the Temples of Honor. The work addresses potential and barely perceptible traces that remain more or less visible to this day, a result of the temporal intertwining of history and the present.
First edition of the video was acquired by the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.
Video available upon request.
Trajectory of Bodies
performative action, 2018
Electronic readers have been installed in all buildings of the ERGO Group. The employees use them when entering or leaving the company premises. The system can identify an employee with his or her personal card and record the exact time spent at work.
I chose thoughts as something unpredictable: something that escapes monitoring and examination with the technical capabilities of ERGO Hestia as both the insurer and the employer. I focused on the relationship between the corporation and the individual. I was interested in control and privacy, risk management, and the limits of predictability. I wanted to move away from the digitization of data and image.
I asked the ERGO Hestia Group employees to write down any dream they remembered. The only requirement was that the report would be handwritten and anonymous. 2624 people were informed about the action.
The card registration system was switched off for one day and 40 boxes for the contributions were placed next to the telematics readers. I have received 232 responses.
The outcomes of the action were presented at the exhibition of the finalists of the 17. Hestia Artistic Journey Competition, in the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2018.
In the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
performative action, 2018
Electronic readers have been installed in all buildings of the ERGO Group. The employees use them when entering or leaving the company premises. The system can identify an employee with his or her personal card and record the exact time spent at work.
I chose thoughts as something unpredictable: something that escapes monitoring and examination with the technical capabilities of ERGO Hestia as both the insurer and the employer. I focused on the relationship between the corporation and the individual. I was interested in control and privacy, risk management, and the limits of predictability. I wanted to move away from the digitization of data and image.
I asked the ERGO Hestia Group employees to write down any dream they remembered. The only requirement was that the report would be handwritten and anonymous. 2624 people were informed about the action.
The card registration system was switched off for one day and 40 boxes for the contributions were placed next to the telematics readers. I have received 232 responses.
The outcomes of the action were presented at the exhibition of the finalists of the 17. Hestia Artistic Journey Competition, in the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2018.
In the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
Disciplinary Mechanisms
digital and analog large-format photographs, looped moving images, 2016
By analyzing the shape and material of hunting gear, the work examines the oppressiveness of environment geometrization and looks at the analogy between hunting and photography: between firearms and camera, appropriating through firing a shot and capturing within a frame, pulling the trigger and pushing the shutter release button, between the moment of entrapping and recording.
By comparing individual devices according to their size, shape, material, and the way they function, the series poses the question about the limits of interference in freedom.
Grand Prix at 12. Inspirations Festival in TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, 2017.
Project available upon request.
digital and analog large-format photographs, looped moving images, 2016
By analyzing the shape and material of hunting gear, the work examines the oppressiveness of environment geometrization and looks at the analogy between hunting and photography: between firearms and camera, appropriating through firing a shot and capturing within a frame, pulling the trigger and pushing the shutter release button, between the moment of entrapping and recording.
By comparing individual devices according to their size, shape, material, and the way they function, the series poses the question about the limits of interference in freedom.
Grand Prix at 12. Inspirations Festival in TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art, Szczecin, 2017.
Project available upon request.
Play Down
digital video, 2min 31sec, 2017
digital photograph, 100x150cm, 2017
A registration of stallion semen collection for the purpose of artificial insemination. The young stallion performs circular movements around a sculpture-like object, a so called dummy. When I first encountered this form, I recognized in its construction the distilled essence of equine anatomy. It is covered with leather, a material from nature, yet it serves an industrial purpose.
Before recording, a mare had occupied the space. Her presence structured the stallion’s response and the movements that would follow.
The procedure serves a protective function. Artificial insemination prevents the injuries that commonly occur during natural intercourse, protecting both animals from harm. Yet the practice reveals how human intervention shapes animal bodies and behaviors through structured settings. The collected semen is subsequently used in business.
I chose to record at a stud farm for its sterile, laboratory-like character. The stallion’s circular movements acquire a choreographic quality within this clinical setting.
I did not stage this procedure – it would have occurred regardless of my presence. I came to document an existing relationship – one that illuminates how animal bodies, human agency, and commercial systems become entangled. The camera renders visible what typically remains hidden in the infrastructure of agricultural and reproductive industries.
Courtesy of Wechta Stallion Station.
First edition of the video was acquired by Fondazione In Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari.
Video available upon request.
digital video, 2min 31sec, 2017
digital photograph, 100x150cm, 2017
A registration of stallion semen collection for the purpose of artificial insemination. The young stallion performs circular movements around a sculpture-like object, a so called dummy. When I first encountered this form, I recognized in its construction the distilled essence of equine anatomy. It is covered with leather, a material from nature, yet it serves an industrial purpose.
Before recording, a mare had occupied the space. Her presence structured the stallion’s response and the movements that would follow.
The procedure serves a protective function. Artificial insemination prevents the injuries that commonly occur during natural intercourse, protecting both animals from harm. Yet the practice reveals how human intervention shapes animal bodies and behaviors through structured settings. The collected semen is subsequently used in business.
I chose to record at a stud farm for its sterile, laboratory-like character. The stallion’s circular movements acquire a choreographic quality within this clinical setting.
I did not stage this procedure – it would have occurred regardless of my presence. I came to document an existing relationship – one that illuminates how animal bodies, human agency, and commercial systems become entangled. The camera renders visible what typically remains hidden in the infrastructure of agricultural and reproductive industries.
Courtesy of Wechta Stallion Station.
First edition of the video was acquired by Fondazione In Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari.
Video available upon request.
Untitled (Remote Control)
thermograms, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 30x40cm, 2017
Topographic series of thermograms featuring places in Warsaw, Poland, where political decisions are being or have been made. The way of depicting deflects relation between state and an individual, diverts direction of observation.
Thermography detects radiation in the long-infrared range and records temperature emitted by objects. Due to thermographic camera used in the project, construction of the significant, influential buildings, the inside of their organisms as well as their tissues, became visible.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the City of Warsaw, 2017.
In the the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
Exhibition of the finalists of the 16. Hestia Artistic Journey Competition (laureate), Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2017. Photo: Piotr Litwic.
thermograms, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 30x40cm, 2017
Topographic series of thermograms featuring places in Warsaw, Poland, where political decisions are being or have been made. The way of depicting deflects relation between state and an individual, diverts direction of observation.
Thermography detects radiation in the long-infrared range and records temperature emitted by objects. Due to thermographic camera used in the project, construction of the significant, influential buildings, the inside of their organisms as well as their tissues, became visible.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the City of Warsaw, 2017.
In the the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
Exhibition of the finalists of the 16. Hestia Artistic Journey Competition (laureate), Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2017. Photo: Piotr Litwic.
Untitled (Remote Control)
thermograms, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 30x40cm, 2017
Topographic series of thermograms featuring places in Warsaw, Poland, where political decisions are being or have been made. The way of depicting deflects relation between state and an individual, diverts direction of observation.
Thermography detects radiation in the long-infrared range and records temperature emitted by objects. Due to thermographic camera used in the project, construction of the significant, influential buildings, the inside of their organisms as well as their tissues, became visible.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the City of Warsaw, 2017.
In the the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
thermograms, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 30x40cm, 2017
Topographic series of thermograms featuring places in Warsaw, Poland, where political decisions are being or have been made. The way of depicting deflects relation between state and an individual, diverts direction of observation.
Thermography detects radiation in the long-infrared range and records temperature emitted by objects. Due to thermographic camera used in the project, construction of the significant, influential buildings, the inside of their organisms as well as their tissues, became visible.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the City of Warsaw, 2017.
In the the ERGO Hestia Group’s Collection.
white marianna
digital packshots, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 19x15cm, 2020
Series of 30 photographs depicting different fragments of so-called white marianna marble taken from closed quarries in Lower Silesia, Poland.
Project was realized for (Un)common Ground conference in the Raffles Europejski Hotel, Warsaw.
More on (un)commongroud.pl.
digital packshots, digital print on archive paper, 9 dibonds 19x15cm, 2020
Series of 30 photographs depicting different fragments of so-called white marianna marble taken from closed quarries in Lower Silesia, Poland.
Project was realized for (Un)common Ground conference in the Raffles Europejski Hotel, Warsaw.
More on (un)commongroud.pl.
Engadin (a wanderer)
digital video, 5min 27sec, 2021
At the time of recording this video, I was 30 years old. I was spending a few summer weeks in the Alpine valley of the Engadine, by the river Inn. The beginnings of the trip unfold in the company of my mother, who has offered to share the two-day journey from Warsaw with me. According to our plan, after a few days I took my mother to the airport in Zurich - together still, we crossed the Flüela Pass, open for the season, and I returned to Susch, where I temporarily stayed and worked, alone.
Music: Żaneta Rydzewska ("e-t-s #2")
Realized during the residency in Muzeum Susch, Switzerland, with support from Fuji Film Polska.
Video available upon request.
digital video, 5min 27sec, 2021
At the time of recording this video, I was 30 years old. I was spending a few summer weeks in the Alpine valley of the Engadine, by the river Inn. The beginnings of the trip unfold in the company of my mother, who has offered to share the two-day journey from Warsaw with me. According to our plan, after a few days I took my mother to the airport in Zurich - together still, we crossed the Flüela Pass, open for the season, and I returned to Susch, where I temporarily stayed and worked, alone.
Music: Żaneta Rydzewska ("e-t-s #2")
Realized during the residency in Muzeum Susch, Switzerland, with support from Fuji Film Polska.
Video available upon request.
Night Flight
digital video, 6min 15sec, 2019
The work explores methods of sharing and sustaining data, drawing inspiration from Gustawa Jarecka – a novelist and archivist. According to accounts, she translated Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight in a single night – a story about a pilot tasked with transporting mail by plane.
Jarecka lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, where from 1940 she worked as a telephonist and typist. She was also a member of the underground group Oneg Shabbat, responsible for documenting life and events unfolding around her. The records she helped compile became part of what is now known as the Ringelblum Archive – a vast body of materials buried in three caches during the war. After the war, two of these were recovered, containing approximately 6,000 documents. In 1999, the Ringelblum Archive was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
Saint-Exupéry's novel focuses on the pioneering night flights and the challenges faced in ensuring punctual mail delivery. It follows the pilot Fabien on the Patagonia run, depicting his final hours as his plane gets caught in a cyclone, runs out of fuel, and loses radio contact. The future of the night mail-run to Europe hangs in the balance. A central theme of the text is the conflict between prioritizing a long-term goal over an individual's life. Saint-Exupéry draws on his own experiences and those of his fellow pilots to portray their willingness to sacrifice everything for a cause they believe in.
The video depicts a young woman seated in a cockpit at night. She gazes into the distance and emits increasingly loud nonverbal sounds, as though calling out. During the recording, she wore an earbud through which she listened to a musical piece to which she was expected to respond vocally. On set, the woman improvised as she had never heard the piece before. The music was composed specifically for the video and was inspired by the sounds produced in contemporary server rooms.
While creating the video, I contemplated the transmission of information – once only done through voice (for example, by Xenophanes, a poet who traveled throughout the Greek-speaking world) and now data is archived in the server rooms. I pondered the dialogue between humans and machines, as well as the contrast between the personality and impersonality of sound sources.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the Greater Poland Voivodeship, 2019.
Video available upon request.
digital video, 6min 15sec, 2019
The work explores methods of sharing and sustaining data, drawing inspiration from Gustawa Jarecka – a novelist and archivist. According to accounts, she translated Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Night Flight in a single night – a story about a pilot tasked with transporting mail by plane.
Jarecka lived in the Warsaw Ghetto, where from 1940 she worked as a telephonist and typist. She was also a member of the underground group Oneg Shabbat, responsible for documenting life and events unfolding around her. The records she helped compile became part of what is now known as the Ringelblum Archive – a vast body of materials buried in three caches during the war. After the war, two of these were recovered, containing approximately 6,000 documents. In 1999, the Ringelblum Archive was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
Saint-Exupéry's novel focuses on the pioneering night flights and the challenges faced in ensuring punctual mail delivery. It follows the pilot Fabien on the Patagonia run, depicting his final hours as his plane gets caught in a cyclone, runs out of fuel, and loses radio contact. The future of the night mail-run to Europe hangs in the balance. A central theme of the text is the conflict between prioritizing a long-term goal over an individual's life. Saint-Exupéry draws on his own experiences and those of his fellow pilots to portray their willingness to sacrifice everything for a cause they believe in.
The video depicts a young woman seated in a cockpit at night. She gazes into the distance and emits increasingly loud nonverbal sounds, as though calling out. During the recording, she wore an earbud through which she listened to a musical piece to which she was expected to respond vocally. On set, the woman improvised as she had never heard the piece before. The music was composed specifically for the video and was inspired by the sounds produced in contemporary server rooms.
While creating the video, I contemplated the transmission of information – once only done through voice (for example, by Xenophanes, a poet who traveled throughout the Greek-speaking world) and now data is archived in the server rooms. I pondered the dialogue between humans and machines, as well as the contrast between the personality and impersonality of sound sources.
The project was realized with support from a scholarship granted by the Greater Poland Voivodeship, 2019.
Video available upon request.