degree piece
In search of lost artistic identity is a piece based on personal experience. The key questions that have become a starting point for this video performance refer to relations between the artist, the work of art and the recipient, and a search for the balance between dependence and independence of another one, a different one, a similar one. Touching on these points of particular importance for me and every artist – attachment to a work of art, getting lost in it or surrendering freedom to it – resulted in an installation consisting of three videos played in an arranged space with the participation of an actor.
performers: Michał Ferenc, Agata Przygodzka
Studies: Faculty of Graphic Arts (bachelor’s level 2013–2016) and Faculty of Media Art (master’s level 2016–2020) of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Film and TV Direction Department of the Leon Schiller National Film School in Łódź (uniform master’s level studies since 2018). Fields of artistic activity: video performance.
supervisor: Prof. Krzysztof Olszewski
More than an image?
The degree piece of Ms Agata Przygodzka was prepared with a very broad, even fundamental contribution from Dr Magdalena Janus without whom the degree piece would not have achieved such a high artistic level.
Since the beginning of its existence, the Studio of Intermedia Communication has tried to provide students with optimum conditions for artistic research in jointly selected areas. We constantly make efforts to go beyond the limits of the image and perceive it in many different ways and in various contexts. Real or symbolic, depending on the expectations and capabilities of the individual or group. In the case of Agata Przygodzka’s diploma project, the image is based mainly on performative imaging, and intermedia-type ontic relationships between the image and performance are indisputable. A very personal degree piece of fundamental importance for the author and us recipients (academic teachers and others). A very emotional statement about the role, place, expectations and requirements of an artistic school student. About us, for us, within – but also beyond and beside – the classic apprentice – master relationship. Between art and the media, i.e. in media art. Between the video image and the film image – everything towards and on the basis of the author’s personal experiences. In the act of mutual defining of the artist and her project, the artist and the author in the final part of the degree piece. In the dynamic process of implementation, between representation and artistic interpretation. On the basis of one’s own experiences and memory. This degree piece requires higher concentration and a different way of looking at, or rather experiencing the image, which is closer to the performative reception that naturally engages us more strongly in the narrative presented by the artist.
Agata Przygodzka refers her art – media art – to the moving image related to video and film. She codes her image a few times, inviting us to personally read many different meanings of her personal history.
One of the characteristic qualities of codes used by Agata is their tactility – touchability, the role of touch (the actor’s tactility), and the tactility of the screen. From the sense of touch as the basis of our communication and the tactility of the screen to the actor’s touch. In the identity fragmentation process in the post-modern time of the author’s haptic communication with us and with herself.
An authentic and beautiful – authentically beautiful – degree piece about relations, or maybe primarily about the author’s relation with herself during studies at an artistic school, on the threshold of entering a fertile and rich artistic adulthood, without the risk of stopping/getting lost in the shallows/desert, the desert of solitude.
Congratulations!