Dominika Kieruzel

My works

Dominika — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 20:38:40 +0000

This is the blog where I document some of my art projects, sometimes with pieces of text that can give you a lead to get a dipper insight into my thinking. You can just scroll down, or use one of the links below, they will lead you directly to particular works. I hope you enjoy.

Our New Language – this will link you directly with the blog concerning a new project that I work on with Quentin S. Crisp.

Ants (ICA, London, 2011)

End of Dreams (Chelsea College of Art and Design, London 2010)

never…nothing (Olsztyn, Poland, 2010)

Untitled (for dad)(Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, 2009)

Mother (Utrecht, Holland and Łódź, Poland, 2009)

Our New Language

Dominika — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:06:03 +0000

Please have a look at the development of a new project on which I collaborate with Quentin S. Crisp.

Ants

Dominika — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:46:33 +0000

The inspiration for this performance was my brief interest in dreams. In the performance I have decided to create a dream for myself. So life appeared in a symbolic form. This was a half an hour performance during which me and “the other” (in blue) were peeling each other’s clothes off. It was quite an intuitive project, although one that gave me a lot of direction and ideas that I develop since then.

The performance happened on the 5th of February 2011 in the ICA. Hollie McArthur, Liliana Santos, Oscar Oldershaw and Michelle Lewis have performed with me. Thank you:-)

And these are some thoughts from the time:

Number Four

4 + 1

We are one in relation to the other

Four parts of me.

Relations of inside to inside?

My two hands are part of my body. They are separate in some way though. They are in relation to each other, they can help or hurt each other.

In this way, the four parts of me are in relation to each other, I am part of them.

In this performance everyone, apart from the blue character are one person.

I am part of them, they are part of me.

Although they hardly notice each other, this is confrontation. We all physically are there.

Art can be like magic.

Dominika — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:12:43 +0000

This is the second part of the performance. It is loss, death, mourning, and gathering new powers.
This was a ritual, that was performed to give justice to the sadness.

More Photos

Performance poster

Dominika — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 22:06:18 +0000

Waking up in the city

Dominika — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:55:42 +0000

My research on waking up wasn’t very extensive. My final project in Chelsea was rather like a beginning of it. Something pushed me towards filming just when I woke up, and I realized that this is a very peculiar time, and a peculiar state. Honest? Pure? There is some clarity to it, and some freedom. It is as though I am not particular, I just exist an I just feel, there is no obsticles. The world is constituing itself again. Maybe I feel this way because I don’t remember my dreams, so waking up is like coming from nowhere into life.

Just now, when I did my performance in Olsztyn, I got an extremly strong feeling about it.

For two hours I was lying in bed in between the townhall and a busy road. It was rosting hot, I fell asleep. It felt very strong and somehow negative to wake up to a busy road. The surroundings have constituted the world, I almost felt panic, because this image was somehow telling me “this is everything that exist, this is life”.

I thought, this is why it is so good to wake up next to someone I love. The first moments of the morning are then filled with amazingly calm feeling of love and happiness…

It is weird, seems like we can forget our whole life while asleep, the process of remembering all the bad things seems to be quite annoying. Like, when the body remembers that it needs a cigarette.

I wonder what would happen if I’d go dipper into this childchood of a day. Imagine being born in the morning and die in the evening, a mini life. And again tomorrow… So many different lifes!

On the other hand there is the night sky in my village in Poland. It is super dark here, all the night lits go off at 11. I can see millions of stars, and a milky way. Milky way is crucial for this particular experience. If you see just a few bright stars, the sky is still flat, it is just like an image. When there are millions of stars, and a milky way, it begins to be a never-ending space. It gains depth. And then you can realize that you live in relation to something of a size and nature impossible to comprehend. It astounds me that I can have such a direct relation with it… Even if it is past, the light of the stars hits my eyes. It is something what was there and now is inside me.

We cannot get a bigger perspective than that. It is such a shame that in the cities we cannot see the stars. We lose a lot. Coming bact to my performance, I realized how claustrophobic and invasie the city can be. It claims that it is the whole world. Sitting under the sky full of stars makes me think how happy I am that such a small detail like my life can happen in this enormous space.

so…

The wisdom for today is

wisely manage your mornings

and

whatever happens, always have the nightsky on the back of your mind

(i.e. perspective!)

More Photos

Untitled (for dad)

Dominika — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 13:35:58 +0000

This is the project I did in my third year at Chelsea College of Art and Design with Oscar Oldershaw. It is a durational performance. I usually present the work in an order, so the viewer first reads the story and then watches the film. The story is my account of the course of the performance and of my experience of it. Please have a look.

End of Dreams

Dominika — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:58:16 +0000

I try to turn away from editing, don’t fear that I will lose the meaning if I say too much. Rather I try to cross the boundaries of expression, get to the other side, say everything and then try to find a mystery. I find that if one cherishes the mystery in a careful way, fearing to destroy it with words or images, than one cherishes just a preconceived idea of it. I believe in endless depth of a mystery of human being, human body and intimacy.

Most of the clips in “End of Dreams” were entirely non-edited, my own home made videos, usually taken in the mornings.I was interested in the intimacy of a waking up mind and body. For me it is a time when I am the most open and carefree in my expression, the time when I am most intimate and close to myself.

The morning thoughts were not tamed by fears or sense of morality that comes to me later in the day.

This side of myself I wanted to get to know and clasp it with my more conscious self, by the way of physical contact with the images.

I wanted to give the history to the body, unveil its presence in different moments in time, give it possibilities. Uncover its dimensions and give it new ones. At the same time I wanted to root the images in the concrete, give them a reference point. How is it possible that past thoughts and feelings are a part of the present body?

Mother

Dominika — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:14:31 +0000

This is the first long term project that I made. In a way it set my way of working, which became a kind of “research through action” way. I made it during my exchange in Holland in the second year of my studies. Here big thanks to Klaas Hoek, tutorial with whom has changed my way of thinking about making art.

Why “either… or”?

Why not “and”?

And so it became “and”. I showed the final documentation in form of video and book at the final exhibition of the second year HKU exchange students in Das Bilt gallery in Utrecht.

In this work the video is meant to “be there” while the viewer reads the story. The video is a raw material and a part of a certain stage in the performance, or a result of it. The book tells the story of my experience. Here they are: