Monika Karczmarczyk is an artist from Poland.
video, 2022
The video installation is the result of field research carried out in Budapest at the Geriatrics Cilinic and Nursing Science Center, involving the observation of the actions of medical personnel. The research made it possible to create, based on the methodology of artistic research, an interpretation of these actions in the form of a choreographic arrangement recorded by video.
The project was realised as part of an artistic residency at art quarter budapest, thanks to the receipt of a grant from the Visegrad Fund, and is part of the dissertation ‘Tanatoarchitecture. Exercises in mortality’.
Collaboration: Tamara Zsófia Vadas, Júlia Vavra
video, 2021
The video shows a digitally generated bandage floating in an undefined space. The movement of the bandage and its unfurling plane brings to the fore the shape of an invisible hand. The choreography of the moving coil is based on instructions on how to bandage a hand. A similar process is also performed with boxers prior to placing their hands inside boxing gloves. During the recording, a female voice reads a text that is a paraphrase of a quote from Derrida’s essay: “And for better and worse, we are left holding signifiers, detached, asking what they mean and where’s the body. The time of interpretation, in between time, before we know what it means, signaling something but what?”
Animation: Sebastian Sebulec
Sound: Julia Szostek
A performance with the participation of a group of 10 young men, who in real-time generate sound by using blankets made of a mixture of natural and synthetic fibers.
The point of departure for the project was the sound made by the prisoners of Siedlce Penitentiary while they were flapping their blankets, provoking me to reflect on the opposition between my own blanket – assuring me security and warmth – and a blanket in a group action, which is a kind of drill. The drill creates order as well as a community in which a multiplicity of individual bodies mutates into a single synchronized organism. The harmony of movement influences the intensity of the sound. The power of sound becomes a representation of the discipline in group action. In a collective sound comprised of flapping, the blanket becomes an organizing agent.
The sound composition is an interpretation of a specific room within the former warehouse containing bus parts, an element of industrial space characterized by discipline and physical effort. The architecture of this room – rhythmic and orderly – imposes dynamics and discipline on the movements trying to describe it. In the choreography, the sound describes the space, its character, as well as its properties.
video, 2017
The point of departure for the project was based on FBI instructional films from the sixties on how to use firearms.
The video work portrays the operating principles as well as instructions for using the Glock 17 model, 9×19 caliber. The presentation is performed by a former Special Services officer.
The fragments of the instructional video emphasize the subtlety of the relationship the body maintains with a manipulated object. The slow movements of the hand, which gently strokes the body of the weapon, showcasing individual points, contrasts with the knowledge we have of the object’s purpose. Dissonance is produced in this tenderness and certainty of movement towards the object, the tension between the choreography and the potentiality of firing/using the tool according to its application.
video, 2018
The project is based on the information found on the online forum: do broni.pl in the thread of Eagles of the Earth Łomżyńska, which aimed to “create a base of left eagles produced and sold by engravers from Lomza” and was made during a workshops in Łomża (Poland).
performance + live streaming, 2016
A site-specific project in collaboration with Laura Grudniewska, implemented in cooperation with the Museum of Wola in Warsaw.
The concept of climate in museums is particularly significant. The basic preventive action, providing protection of collections, is to control the microclimate parameters inside the building. The microclimate is, therefore, part of the museum’s structure. Klimawechsel (climate change) is the injection of Wola’s climate into the walls of the museum. Imperceptibly generated, the smell of the local specialty – fried chicken liver – is pumped into the ventilation system of the museum. The work circulates inside the building’s structure.
video, 2016
Mimicry – a protective behavior occurring in animals based on defenseless animals imitating animals capable of defense by taking on their shape, color, and behavior. In plants, the phenomenon is based on plants imitating their surrounding environment. The image of young women training in order to fit their bodies into a body ideal created by culture is part of the phenomenon of cultural mimicry. Women repeating a gesture, working on their appearance, and possessing an attitude with the principles of etiquette are all a kind of protection.