Agnieszka Polska

História

Video Artist and photographer. Born in 1985 in Lublin, Poland, Lives and works in Kraków and Berlin. Agnieszka Polska creates video works employing mainly found material, such as archive photography and illustrations, which she subjects to subtle interventions, whether animating them or working them into the existing image. In the process, the artist changes their primary context, simultaneously creating illusions of documentation. She investigates the impact of documentation on its future reception. Her visually powerful explorations of lost times or half-forgotten figures of the Polish avant-garde, turn to how the past is fictionalised and re-worked. Her animated videos evoke a sense of melancholia, and a longing for something that perhaps never was, but which she makes real at least on film. In an interview with Art Review, Polska said that, 'Slow, unnaturally calm movements are present in most of my videos. I mainly work with animated film so a meditative, contemplative quality is present also in the process of production, which is very important for me. Each project needs a lot of time and concentration (for viewer and maker)'.

Perfil

Agnieszka Polska

Filmes

The Longing Gaze
The Longing Gaze
Director
In this videowork Agnieszka Polska looks into experiences of closeness and distance in times of the pandemic
Hurrah, We Are Still Alive!
Hurrah, We Are Still Alive!
Screenplay
A group of actors centered around one charismatic director are getting ready to compete for work on a new film. They all want to get closer to him and wil do anything to make it work.
Hurrah, We Are Still Alive!
Hurrah, We Are Still Alive!
Director
A group of actors centered around one charismatic director are getting ready to compete for work on a new film. They all want to get closer to him and wil do anything to make it work.
What the Sun Has Seen
What the Sun Has Seen
Editor
Polska’s unsettling perspective on humanity takes the form of an animated child-faced sun with melancholy eyes. Digitally sourced images paint a frantic image of a crumbling world. From a distance, the sun jokes about environmental issues and comments on the tumultuous times in which the world finds itself.
What the Sun Has Seen
What the Sun Has Seen
Writer
Polska’s unsettling perspective on humanity takes the form of an animated child-faced sun with melancholy eyes. Digitally sourced images paint a frantic image of a crumbling world. From a distance, the sun jokes about environmental issues and comments on the tumultuous times in which the world finds itself.
What the Sun Has Seen
What the Sun Has Seen
Director
Polska’s unsettling perspective on humanity takes the form of an animated child-faced sun with melancholy eyes. Digitally sourced images paint a frantic image of a crumbling world. From a distance, the sun jokes about environmental issues and comments on the tumultuous times in which the world finds itself.
I Am the Mouth II
I Am the Mouth II
Director
I Am the Mouth II features a pair of disembodied lips that are half-submerged in water, whispering seductively about the mechanisms by which words, in the form of sound waves, make their way through various materials including the viewer’s own body. The steady tone of the voice emanating from the lips hypnotizes the listener, revealing the subliminal influence artists have on their audiences.
How the Work Is Done
How the Work Is Done
Director
In 1956 a group of students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow locked themselves inside the sculpture and ceramics workshop, transforming the venue of daily labour into a space of passive existence. In her quasi-documentary, Agnieszka Polska re-enacts the strike. Juxtaposing its inherent inaction, not far removed from an artistic performance, with animations showing the humdrum character of everyday creative work, the artist poses a question about the social effectiveness of the artists’ efforts. The film was awarded Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage in the 10th Geppert Competition (2011).
The happiest thought
The happiest thought
Director
More than 250 million years ago, at the transition of the Permian to the Triassic eras, the largest known mass extinction in the Earth’s history occurred and up to 90 percent of the planet’s life was annihilated. This disturbing natural phenomenon and its impact are at the centre of “The Happiest Thought”, a Full-Dome visual essay created to be screened in planetariums and domes. The work, which revives the Earth’s destroyed biosphere in a poetic way, is constructed as a hypnotically enchanting séance and narrated by US-American performance artist Geo Wyeth. The film’s point of departure is the “happiest thought” of the physicist Albert Einstein, what he later called the fundamental thought that inspired him to formulate his general theory of relativity in 1915, which understands space and time as dynamic entities.
My little planet
My little planet
Director
Film presents an allegorical story of a society, where time is being measured by the movements of daily-use objects rotating around the planet: the Marlboro butt, bottle cap and sticking plaster. In the humorous fashion, the narrator describes the conventionality and arbitrariness of norms implemented on society.
What the Sun Has Seen
What the Sun Has Seen
Director
Agnieszka Polska’s unsettling perspective on humanity takes the form of an animated child-faced sun with melancholy eyes. Digitally sourced images paint a frantic image of a crumbling world. From a distance, the sun jokes about environmental issues and comments on the tumultuous times in which the world finds itself. —IFFR