entanglement

17.1.2023 2 Like 0 kommenttia

Agata Ruchlewicz Dzianach asks at which point, as humans, we have forgotten that we are part of nature. For this purpose, she will create a haptic archive where the textures of the human skin and the fragments of the natural environment are juxtaposed and mixed losing their origins. Ruchlewicz Dzianach is one of the artists-in-residence of Research Pavilion #5.

The artistic research project

In the context of the contemporary problem of attention deficit and the multiplicity of stimuli, daily rush, and continuous lack of time, we lost a real definition of nature somewhere. Our everyday perception of landscape is often reduced to aesthetics. The experience of the environment is distorted by simplification and stereotypes caused by ocularcentrism privileging vision over the other senses. Nowadays nature is perceived as a commodity, treated in a consumptive way according to human’s selfish manner and desire, judged according to the well-established definition of “beauty”.

The aim is to experiment with a perception based only on the primary haptic contact. In my project, the reduction of cognition to the sense of touch is made in the hope of developing new tenderness and redefining current relationships in the human and non-human world.

Casts catch the moments. I want my project to be a pause. It is meant to be an experiment of juxtaposing different textures from the casts of human skin with elements of the natural environment with the aim of putting them together equally, without divisions and prejudices. Will we recognize human and non-human beings only by touching their textures recorded in casts? Do we need this knowledge? Do we need to know who is hiding in the texture of the casting to activate our sensitivity in relation to it? How do we build relationships based on care?

Artist-researcher profile

Agata Ruchlewicz Dzianach is an independent artist, architect, researcher, and an academic teacher. She has graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (PL). Since 2020 she has worked as a lecturer at her alma mater. Ruchlewicz Dzianach is the owner of a design studio Pracownia ARD (2013). In her artistic research work, she investigates the relationship between humans and the urban space, focusing on the subjective and emotional perception of the environment. She works on her doctoral dissertation related to the beyond-visual perception of neglected spaces in the cities. She is co-founder of GrubyPunkt Urban Lab (2011) whose main initiative is SubjectiveMap – an art participatory project focused on intangible urban layers giving a voice to people that are often excluded from the everyday discussion about urban space (e.g. young people, seniors, immigrants, or blind and visually impaired people). She has realized many participatory projects in Poland, Germany, Lithuania, Spain, and Portugal.

Her projects have been presented at various festivals and exhibitions, among others: CityTelling Festival (Kaunas, LT), Digital Cultures Imagined Futures Festival – section Best of Poland (Warsaw, Poland), 8th International Festival of Creativity, Innovation & Digital Culture ESPACIO ENTER (Tenerife, ES), Post Screen Festival – International Festival of Art, New Media and Cybercultures (Lisbon, PT), EME3 BOTTOM-UP Festival (São Paulo, BRA), Architecture as human nature exhibition (Berlin, DE) or the 7th EME3 International Architecture Festival (Barcelona, ES).

She is actively involved in research on architectural education and activities promoting gender equity in architecture. Ruchlewicz Dzianach is member of the international network Women in Architecture. She is co-author of the scientific book “Powszechna edukacja architektoniczna. Doświadczenia polskie i kształcenie incydentalne.” (“Universal architectural education. Polish experiences and incidental education.”).

Agata Ruchlewicz Dzianach‘s Research Pavilion residence will take place in Saari Residence from 16 May to 28 May 2023.