The performance If I Were a Stone, I Would Carry Myself develops Wiktoria’s multithreaded project Imprint-Sculptures by focusing on rebuilding the lost relationship between humans and nature through physical contact with something most primal, from which we are constantly moving away. So far, the project has taken the forms of installation, video and photography, in which the most prominent role has been that of sculpture, or more precisely – what lies between sculpture and the body of the viewer.
Performative objects are tools for getting physically closer to nature through communion and touch by strengthening mental and spiritual bonds. Drawing on somatic healing methods, Nawrocka and Jakubowski will revive stone in order to delve deep into history, archaeology, acts of touch and sound. They will create a ritual choreography in tribute to nature, carrying the body into a sensory mythical story in which the performers use a stone key to open a portal to a utopian reality of multispecies love.
The works were inspired by the aesthetics of erotic fashion, BDSM, and the context of eco-sexual practices. Thanks to the contact between skin and stone and the firm attachment of the sculptures to the body, the work “becomes” anew with each successive contact. The healing properties of stone bring solace in a time of increasing overstimulation, when the body is alerting us to internal discomfort and tension. Stone as an amulet offers protection by transferring energy to strategic points, such as the lower abdomen, solar plexus and loins.
Wiktoria has graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She is currently completing her second master’s degree at Beaux-Arts de Paris, in the studio of Tatiana Trouvé. She lives and works in Paris, where she is a member of the Poush atelier and Aubervilliers. Since 2019 her practice has focused on restoring the relationship between humans and the environment. Her performative installations, objects, traces and ephemeral engravings are manifestations of a physical experience of our perception, revealing the memory of bodies and touch, and outlining a renewed and intimate relationship with nature in our consciousness. The works draw on the open and unlimited idea of sculpture, in which the boundary between object and body is indeterminate. The sculptures are both the material and the body that encompasses them, as well as the space between them.
Bartosz Jakubowski is an artist, performer and queer activist. He is interested in daydreaming, speculative history, and utopia as a survival strategy. His multi-sensory activities are based on working with archives and smells, as well as movement practice rooted in contact improvisation, Ilan Lev method and BMC. He is a member of the Queer Academy of Movement, co-founder of the X-Philes collective and the Score Me Queer radio program.
Jagna Nawrocka explores choreographic strategies used in working with camera and word, fabric, sculpture and performance. As a body-researcher, she is interested in speculative (post)artistic projects, focusing on somatic imagination and the production of collective knowledge through the exchange of sensory experiences. She is a member of the Queer Academy of Movement and initiator of the SCORE ME QUEER project; she conducts participatory performative research, Longing to be Long, and co-creates the Lios Labs residency program – an international research platform dedicated to the entanglements of art and ecology.