Agnieszka Kucharska (PL) is an audiovisual and performance artist based in Berlin. She holds a BA in Painting from the University of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, and an MA in Media Art and Painting from the Academy of Arts in Szczecin. Kucharska explores spoken word, collective singing, improvisation, and electronic music. She is part of OTUCHA Collective, BWŁKS Choir, and co-founder of the ephemeral project created together with Ola Zielińska, & THE ROMANTIC HORSE (2017-). Their work has been presented in various venues.
Her practice revolves around themes of voice, memory, and collective experience, often blurring the lines between the visual and sonic realms. Agnieszka has contributed to performances at different events and festivals in Berlin and beyond, such as KVOST, Gallery Molitor, Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Studio Mondial, and Spore Initiative. Through her work, she invites audiences into spaces where shared vocal expression becomes a tool for reflection and healing.
Agnieszka Kucharska
Bojące Wszystkich Krajów Łączymy Się - BWKŁS Choir
Gallery Molitor Berlin 2023
Studio Mondial, Gallery Weekend Festival Berlin 2023 gggglllloooossssaaaa - curated listening session at private space Berlin 2023
Wojciech Kosma with Agnieszka Bulacik, Bobo, Vilma Braun, Katharine Halls, Pablo Horn, Velizara Karaivanova, Agnieszka Kucharska, Wojciech Kosma, Marcioz, Yuki Nishimura, Ewa Sadowska, Marta Ruszkowska, Eli Vardzhiyska, Anastasiia Yezhyzhanska, Ola Zielińska.
The BWKŁS choir—an acronym playfully derived from Bojące wszystkich krajów łączmy się—comprises a group who sing in Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Hungarian, languages which are native to some members and entirely foreign to others. Reimagining the slogan of class struggle "Workers of the world, unite!", the choir’s refrain takes fear as a starting point, but moves through and beyond it with variations on the phrase that feel true to them: marzące (Polish for the dreamers), Вразливі (Ukranian for the vulnerable), Нежните (Bulgarian for the gentle) or Kiváncsiak (Hungarian for the curious) of all lands unite. It starts with words, but sung in unison, moves beyond them to create a visceral shared experience that forges a space for mutual and self-understanding.
Agnieszka Kucharska
WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT THAT SNOW FALLS
Sankt Elisabethkirche, Berlin 2022
unidram Festival Potsdam, Frankfurt Lab 2023
Performative Video-Choir-Sound-Installation by Matthias Schönijahn
with Agnieszka Bułacik, Ewa Brokos, Claudia Eckstein, Mina Djordjević, Katharina Fischer, Agnieszka Kucharska, Natalia Latecka, Julia Legezynska, Joana Katarzyna Pietras, Ola Zielińska. Choir direction: Paulina Miu Kühling
What do female voices from eastern Ukraine reveal beyond words? The installation developed in 2021 searches for acoustic traces and the power of collective singing as a principle of survival. The voices, sounds and images from the Luhansk villages of Bilolutzk, Osinove and Horodyshche echo in the St. Elisabeth Church in Berlin. In this space, also torn apart by war, the chants are accompanied by the live performance of Berlin-based amateur singers explor- ing their own heritage and unique vocal expression. WHO’D HAVE THOUGHT THAT SNOW FALLS explores the voice as a testament to joy and fragility, to human experience across generations and borders. Visitors are invited to pause in the immersive setting or take on different (listening) perspectives.
Snow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCu7mJu_2kk
Vocal intervention for the closing of the exhibition by Anna Jarosz, curated by Zeren Oruc Living Corridor Gallery, Berlin, 2023
‘Boszki: On passages, feasts, and ancestral connections’ is a project inspired by the edges of material and spiritual worlds in Slavic mythology. Boszki is an exhibition, performance, and experience that will be honoring the tradition of Dziady, a celebration that according to ancient Slavic cultures allowed living beings to reconnect with the wandering souls and spirits. We are looking into the Dziady, an important cultural celebration in Eastern European folk traditions, as a way to understand today’s communities. The idea for the exhibition and performance comes from the need for the exploration of the ritual and its role in the forming of tradition. The concept is based on the togetherness that is o"en used in folk tradition as a medium for communicating with spirits. Dziady is a starting point to speak about togetherness & community, femininity & oppression, folk traditions & their relevance today, intergenerational bonds, and our relationship to death and grief.
. Performers: Julia Legieżyńska, Agnieszka Kucharska, Dorota Michalak, Ola Zielińska
Video dokumentation: https://youtu.be/35w53NqMgX8?si=ljSavW0Qvrjg6HN_
Agnieszka Kucharska
Vocal intervention for Sensing the River - a walk organized by Symbiotic Lab and Sport Initiative Berlin, 2024
Around 40 people gathered at the banks of the Spree for a shared experience of sensing the river. Along the way we got an input by Christoph Wenzel from BundBerlin, listened to the river by drawing visual recording of its sounds, exchanging our own river stories, sang along with the river songs performed by Otucha Collective and learned about the SpreeVision Osthafen from Jan Colomer and Jakob Kukula from Spree.Berlin. The walk was initiated by Symbiotic Lab and Spore Initiative in the context of their exhibition WasserspiegelWater Bodies and was recorded by Cashmere Radio.
Performers: Julia Legieżyńska, Agnieszka Kucharska, Dorota Michalak, Magda Jaroszewicz, Kata Kwiatkowska, Liene Silde
Vocal Intervention in frame of OderHive - project by Frau von da / Claudia van Hasselt and Nicolas Wiese. Angermünde/Stolpe, 2024
FrauVonDa moves away from the definition of the Oder as a border and views the river as a connecting body of water - towards a river community of three nations and a uniquely diverse habitat for animals and plants.
The OderHive project is being developed in close cooperation with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin (IGB) and in further collaboration with the Husö Marine Biological Station (Åland). With OderHive, FrauVonDa// is following the IGB's invitation to artistically accompany research on the Oder after the 2022 poisoning disaster and participation in the European sturgeon reintroduction project.
The OderHive is conceived as a modular project in exchange with various Oder residents/residents, scientists, environmental activists and cooperating artists. With extensive multidisciplinary research focusing on biological facts, oral history, everyday life and resistance, insights into non-human life and the utopia of a borderless 'response_ability' community.
Artistic direction: Claudia van Hasselt and Nicolas Wiese.
Composition: Wojtek Blecharz.
With: Daniel Eichholz, Roland Fidezius, Łukasz Jastrubczak / centrum centrum Szczecin, Schneider TM, Katja Kettner, Otucha Collective: Ola Zielinska, Julia Legeżyńska, Agnieszka Kucharska, Dorota Michalak.
Researchers: Christian Wolter, Gabriela Costea, Sonja Jähnig, Jörn Gessner and others tba (IGB Berlin), Hanna Schudy (philosopher / environmental ethicist, Wroclaw), a.o.
Agnieszka Kucharska
performance and sound design for DZIECI SATURNA / CHILDREN OF SATURN dir. Agata Baumgart & Aleksandra Matlingiewicz & the romantic horse (Agnieszka Kucharska & Ola Zielińska) Scena Robocza - Theatrical Residency Centre Poznań, 2021-2022
Children of Saturn is a documentary about the deepening mental crisis among young people. An interview-based attempt to understand what pushes teenagers into the abyss from which it seems the only salvation is to abandon life.
sound documentation of & the romantic horse: https://soundcloud.com/user-927457164
POETRY PERFORMANCE for Świetlica - exhibition by Cristina
Ferreira-Szwarc
KVOST - Kunstverein Ost 2022
Performers: Agnieszka „Agnes” Kucharska and Ola „Alexis” Zielińska Concert: Kirstine Elisa Kjeldsen
curator: Wera Bet
The common room is a special place. It is out of place and out of time. It is a space caught in between ages and nations, between reality and fiction, between the ordinary and the extraordinary.
Inside you are greeted by your hosts, the Bird and the Butterfly. The two carry out experiments in world building and destruction by manipulating their bodies, the space and the props: a wooden stage, school chairs, long work tables... an endless rehearsal on how to live together, how to live with one’s heritage, what roles to play out, where to go from here?
These characters speak in fragments cut out from many voices and glued together. They echo something bigger than themselves and yet, are so fragile. The room is filled with piercing sounds that fluctuate in a limbo between ambiance and discomfort. This is a room which, once you leave, you cannot come back to.
Agnieszka Kucharska
EMBRACE. TRIAL 1 & 2
Audio-visual installation and live act
Kana Theatrical Centre, Szczecin 2018
Duration: 45”
During the short residency at Kana Theatre in Szczecin, artists investigate the theatre as both public and private space, tracing choreographies of its workers and visitors and studying the different positions of bodies imposed by such space.
The installation is made of audio and video diary of artists who are playing the roles of actresses, looking for the comfort while adapting to the space expectations. They create scenography out of the found objects: parts of the space, props, tool and artworks. The voice over in the video is interrupted by live add comments
We break into the library. We find translations of Ginsberg’s works. Everything is right, we are lying in the beds of Europe, again, the world at our feet, and yet “love is not per- fect”, we “imagine the future” and weep*.
You walk around the stage in flip-flops, as if the air around you had another density you want to embrace her – and you embrace yourself instead the alarm goes on again
* Allen Ginsberg, “Europe! Europe!”
person A is looking ____________ person B loves person A duosolo with O.Zielińska SKALA gallery, Poznań, PL, 2018
In one of the scenes from “Paris, Texas” from Wim Wenders, we see a neon sign over a motel contouring four galloping horses. The main protagonist passes it by, transversing Texas in search of his wife, who left him without a word. This moment, perhaps insignificant to the rest of the storyline, continuously returns, while preparing for the show [...].
The way in which Agnieszka Kucharska and Ola Zielińska collaborate is based upon the very mechanism of story telling. The story arises when two people are in dialogue and somebody listens. For both artists, the main carrier of the story is the image, or rather a sequence of images. Both work in a completely different manners: Kucharska examines meanings, producing subsequent images - reflections and further sequences. Zielińska is interested in the concept itself [...]. A panoramic image cannot be contained with a single glance. It must be viewed in fragments, like a movie sequence. The resulting image is blurred - and in that moment we are watching a completely different film.
