Changes and Challenges

The first section of this two-part garden showcases works by Polish artists responding to the festival’s main topic. Using different artistic approaches, they question such issues as digitalised corporeality, human/non-human relations, and the ecological consequences of digital storage. Karolina Żyniewicz in her performative workshop “Ethnography of flattened embodiment” invites us to explore the perception of a body in the digital world which becomes a 2D image, cropped and filtered in the artificial background. “Plant~Animals ~ Symbiosity of Creation” by Elvin Flamingo immerses us in the social movement of Symsagittifera roscoffensis, a unique, uncanny amalgamation of a plant and an animal, their interdependencies among them and us (humans). Justyna Górowska’s “The Blue Humanities Archive” examines the environmental cost of a network of databases exploring the subject of DNA Digital Storage. The artists touch on various aspects of contemporality, creating a multi-threaded, orchestrated narrative that reveals layers of our fragmented, numerical life.

The second project, dedicated to the decade-long LAZNIA CCA’s Art and Science program, presents a film followed by a discussion analysing changes in the relation between art and science. The audience audience is also invited to the discussion connected with the “Trees of Memory: Roots and Runners”project devoted to the tragedy of Babyn Yar. Speakers will look at contemporary practices of commemoration of tragic events and ways of working through the traumatic past by the means of art and technology.

Video

Karolina Żyniewicz, Ethnography Of Flattened Embodiment – documentation of workshop preparation; photo: Karolina Żyniewicz

Elvin Flamingo, Plant~Animals ~ Symbiosity of Creation, photo: Elvin Flamingo

Justyna Górowska, The Blue Humanities Archive, photo: Michał Korta

Photo of the exposition “Trees of Memory: Roots and Runners”, 2021, Center for Contemporary Art LAZNIA 2 Gdansk, Poland, Changes and Challenges, Credits: Bogna Kociumbas[AN1]

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The illness of the consciousness is corruption – smell and think.

Oswaldo Macia (CO/UK) – artist, Emilia Leszkowicz (PL) – scientist, Chris Bean (IE) – scientist

The Colombian artist Oswaldo Maciá and scientists Chris Bean (Head of Geophysics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) and Emilia Leszkowicz (electrophysiologist based at University of Gdansk) are the residents of the STUDIOTOPIA Art&Science Residency hosted by LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art in Gdansk. The aim of their common project is to raise questions connected with the ways of reaching viewers’ consciousness by use of through the senses of smell and hearing to raise the question about our place in the world.

The Blue Humanities Archive

Justyna Górowska (PL)

DNA is capable of storing digital data better than silicon in our computers. It fits millions of terabytes in a few grams suspension in the water, minimizing the ecological cost of the global network of digital databases. The binary code only needs to be decoded into the synthesized DNA strands.

Zoom on matter. Ethnography of flattened embodiment

Karolina Żyniewicz (PL)

The pandemic years 2020/2021 could be called the era of flattened bodies. We got used to experiencing each other framed by the rectangular windows of various communication platforms. Where is the body? Is it still important?

Plant~Animals ~ Symbiosity of Creation

Elvin Flamingo (PL)

The work of Elvin Flamingo invites us to the world of the unique plant-animals Symsagittifera roscoffensis. In nature, these organisms most often occur as migrating communities. For the project, the artist created two incubators capable of accommodating 67 separate habitats, 100 colonies of the superorganism described above.

Mapping the Memory by Means of Art

Krzysztof Wodiczko (PL) , Ryszard W. Kluszczyński (PL), Oksana Dovgopolova (UA), Moderator: Kateryna Filyuk (UA)

In the second half of the 20th century, after the atrocities of World War II, humanity faced the need to comprehend the indescribable. Figuring out how to live with the knowledge of terror and yet to remain human became a problem in and of itself.

The film and discussion dedicated to the decade of art and science program in LAZNIA CCA

Ryszard W. Kluszczyński, Christa Sommerer, Chris Salter, Nina Czegledy, Jadwiga Charzyńska. Moderator: Aleksandra Hirszfeld

The Art+Science Meeting program was launched by the LAZNIA CCA in 2010 as an art and research project, which has offered exhibitions, conferences, debates, performances and other events within its frameworks.

Credits

Garden Curators: Agnieszka Kulazińska, Aleksandra Księżopolska.
The presentation of Polish artists is part of the Studiotopia project supported by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.
Trees of Memory: Roots and Runners
Exhibition Curators: Oksana Dovgopolova and Kateryna Semenyuk.
Supported by Past / Future / Art in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute.
Discussion about a decade of art and science programme in CCA LAZNIA
Curator: Ryszard W. Kluszczyński