PARAperformance artists duo
PORTFOLIO
Dominika Katarzyna Borkowska & Kamila ElĹźbieta Wolszczak 2019
photo. W. Skibicki
PARAperformance is an artistic duo created by Dominika Katarzyna Borkowska and Kamila Elżbieta Wolszczak who collaborates with artists from different fields of art. They met in July 2014 while travelling with blablacar. This unforeseen meeting and journey to the same destination meant the beginning of an artistic collaboration. Dominika is inspired by theater and choreography and Kamila focusses on visual arts. In their live actions they confront each other with surprising elements. They create a contest with the image of a circle, a selection of various objects and the interaction of the two contesting women. The actions are a fusion with "freeze-frames", living images and the interaction with the audience. Returning motives in their work are united identities, sisterhood, rivalry, fixed color palette and the symbolism of white, blue and red. “PARAperformance creates a temporary new world using the surrounding, objects and audience where at the same time two characters clash and unite,” says a participant.
contact: e-mail: paraperfo@gmail.com fb: paraperformancepara instagram: paraperformance
ABOUT ARTISTS Dominika Katarzyna Borkowska Born in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Holds BFA degree in Philisophy from the Pontifical University of John Paul II and graduated from the Faculty of Stage Choreography in Kraków. MFA degree in Fine Arts/ Art Mediation in Wroclaw. Performance artist with choreography and theater background. In her artistic work, she seeks to incoporate various fields of art and search for areas where art rarely happens or appears. She creates her body language through motion, color, and objects of distinctive texture. She concentrates on the process and development and combines the concepts of intimacy, relationships, contact, energy, rythm, space. Art workds and projects realized at: Warsaw International Performance Art Weekend (Warsaw PL), Social performance exhibition, gallery RE, MOCAK (Kraków, PL) Festival of Ephemeral Art Contexts (Sokołowsko PL), Interaction Festival (Piotrków Trybunalski PL) Bipolar International Meetings of Performers (Sopot PL) Performance Crossing Fear (Prague CZ), Performance ZABIH (Lwów UKR) www.dkborkowska.com https://vimeo.com/borkowska Kam ila Elżbieta W olszczak de Loo Born in Chełm, Poland. Holds BFA degree in Painting from Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin and MFA degree in Fine Arts Education/Art Mediation in Wroclaw with the specialization: curator of exhibitions and interventions in public space. Performance artist with visual art background, art mediator and grassroots artistic projects initiator. The main object returning in the art works is transparent tape. The performance works, installations, paintings and drawings are about recording surroundings with focus on the relation between the person recording and the surrounding space. Art works and projects realized at: Witte Rook (Breda NL), Goleb (Amsterdam NL), Kunstacademie Friesland (Leeuwarden NL), AIL (Vienna AT), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art (Warsaw PL), LUHOvaný Vincent ( Luhačovice CZ), KunstHaus (Wiesbaden DE), WIPAW Duży Pokój (Warsaw PL), Baltic Gallery of Contemporary Art (Ustka PL), Miami New Media Festival, (Miami USA), Media Art Biennale (Wrocław PL), Muza space for art (Jaffa Tel Aviv ISR), Galeria H2O (Barcelona ES) www.kamilawolszczak.wordpress.com www.vimeo.com/kamilaelzbieta
DESCRIPTION OF SELECTED WORKS The Ring #5 performance art Tyski Festival of Performance, Silesia, PL 2019 The theme of the festival was infinity. Our performance refers to the exploration of our planet and at the same time asked each other questions, what would survive? Friendship, Sisterhood, Art, memory? We ask: Are we able to wake up or repeat our mistakes in "infinity"? We shout now: "Right here, right now" quoting Fatboy Slim with a speech by Greta Thunberg. Performers are using the voice, live sound, ID details, masks of each other, coal and the ball with black map.
photo. M.Pytlarz
The Ring #4 performance art Cross Attic, Prague, CZ 2019 The performance has been a part of the đ??‹ / đ??Ž / đ??• / đ??„ / Love of Various Environments festival at Cross Attic, 2-11.2019 in Prague (CZ). The performance took a place in 2nd of November at the attic of the platform for an independent art that creates space for different approaches to performing arts in order to establish an artistic and interdisciplinary dialogue. The core of the performance is based on a game, fight, relationship and sisterhood between women. Kamila & Dominika used the words based on ID details, statement of Greta Thunberg, love songs and various body/objects relations. They build up the new context layers and mixed with specific elements as a wooden rocking horse, beach ball with world print, as symbols of childhood and colonization. There is a interactive part of the circle formed by Silesian coal which refers to climate changes and ignorance.
photo. L. Ciepliński
The Ring #3 performance art InfoPunkt, Wrocław, PL 2019 That is the live process of transformation of relationships, concepts related to femininity, sisterhood, identity. Starting with a meeting by the white canvas, a symbolic ritual of changing marital status, which is a real live experience of one of the artists. However, it is the viewers who read their own narratives, we only provide impulses and images from our common female history. For us, working out the formula of The Ring itself is a process in which both artists, women, friends and strong individuals - often have to collide with each other in order to meet in a dialogue. We work with the glows, strawberry, stones, masks, ID details, hydrangea and carnations flowers.
photo. T. de Loo
The Ring #2 performance art Centre of Contemporary Art in Torun PL - Schiphol Airport Amsterdam NL 2018 This performance refers directly to a battlefield, ritual circle and symbolism of the ring, which because of the infinite shape without begin and ending is the symbol of eternity. During this action the artists look for the eternity of art, friendship, and sisterhood. In the context of the international festival Terytoria the performance artists decide to expand the field of their activities to foreign territory, the phenomenon of telepathy, the subject of emigration, double identity. Because of organizational reasons the artists could not be physically together in Torun. Kamila was at the airport in Amsterdam and Dominika in Toruń. They connected by video phone and the audience could watch the live streaming from Kamila on Facebook and the live action of Dominika in the public space of Torun. The artists could not see each other.
The Ring #1 performance art LUB/LAB in Warsaw PL 2018 This performance refers directly to a battlefield, ritual circle and symbolism of the ring, which because of the infinite shape without begin and ending is the symbol of eternity. During this action the artists look for the eternity of art, friendship, and sisterhood. The space created during this performance refers to the philosophy of Gadamer, who was looking for a new validation for art. He defined it with the concept of a game. The game is understood as a phenomenon of communication, which involves coparticipation. A game that brings cognition allows you to be in a common space of understanding. A game or not a game? What are we playing? Why are we playing? Live / Live art / Game/ Paraperformance VS What's the rate / Art world / Glory / Fame and elation
M outh-to-m outh resuscitation series of photography National Museum in Wroclaw PL 2017 The action refers to the Polish proverb "kiss the door handle". Share the concerns of young artists with the institutions of culture and art, discrimination in employment based on sex and age, and touches the issue of lack of recognition of live art in the art world.
Childbirth delegated performance Brzuch - Centrum Trawienia Wizji in Wrocław PL 2017 At the closure of the "Center for digesting visions: Stomach", the performance was based on a suggestion of Mr. Zbigniew P. to answer the question: how can you pass the doormat? Kamila used language, story-telling, and Dominika responded with her body and rhythm.
Orszulki long duration performance WYKWIT art gallery, Wrocław PL 2017 Live art at WYKWIT art gallery on Kochanowski Street in Wrocław. Simultaneously Borkowska and Wolszczak performed in the attic and basement of the ancient Villa. The artists were located in different places in the big villa. Borkowska was dressed in black and was in contact with the audience. Wolszczak was dressed in white and moving through the building and connected with Borkowska and the audience with sound and video. ‘Orszulka’ is the first name of the dead daughter of a known Polish poet J. Kochanowski. The poem was dedicated to her. “Persistence is the continuous progress of the past that bites into the future and swells, going forward.” Henri Bergson
Paraperform ance W ELCOM E intervention BWA Awangarda Gallery in Wrocław PL 2017 Paraperformance was part of the opening of the fifth International Biennale ‘5. Out of Sth’ at BWA Awangarda in Wrocław. They gave to people their breath in transparent balloons and invited the guests like hostesses to Key to Performance ‘Occupation, exercise A and B’.
Commissioned work performance commissioned by Michał Mejnartowicz Fine Arts in Wrocław PL 2017 The action consisted of drink half a liter of vodka in silence at the specific time and place. The whole action was recorded on camera.
Fat Thursday action in public space Stara Pączkarnia in Wrocław PL 2017 This action took place on the national celebration day of Carnaval “Fat Thursday” in front of tens of people queing for a donut bakery.
Pepsi Cola performance art Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław PL 2016 A performance with subjectively chosen materials, spread out on a white blanket on the floor, reminding of a painting canvas: empty plastic bottles, hi-heeled shoes, cloths, tape with the word "Promotion", rubber gloves, lipstick, a plastic hanger, balloons and a jar with a drink, which the audience also drank in cups. All objects had the colours white and contrasting reds and blues, evoking associations with aesthetics based on the careful and reserved selection. The action reminded of a struggle with imagination, a physical attempt to fit into banal, but elegant items of everyday use. Borkowska and Wolszczak, like two cartes blanches, tried to find in the presence of collected objects, their own objects and experience their physical properties and collect a common experience
W IPAW live art with group of artists Pracownia DuĹźy PokĂłj in Warsaw PL 2016 A collective performance in cooperation with a group of artists participating in the performance festival. Over 30 people have been put into collective action where the classical division between the performer and the viewer was rejected and the primacy of the object for processuality was rejected too. Performers became an impulse to an activity that could continue without their participation
Tam ar performance in the public space FM festival, Wroclaw PL 2015 TAMAR. The Bible mentions it 36 times. She is a symbol of dignity, life, peace, fertility, justice and beauty. For Greeks, it was a symbol of light. Artists were on two sides of a beater adorned with palm branches. They were slowly moving to each other at your own pace. In different energy. Their eyes were covered with a beater frame.
Dialing performance Gallery Cella, Opava CZ 2014 „I'm meeting with You”. I'm entering into an intimate relationship with it. And the relationship means that I am the chosen one and I also choose, it is passivity and activity at the same time”. The words of philosopher Martin Buber became an inspiration for the origin of performance DIALING od Polish artists and curators Kamila E. Wolszczak and Dominika K. Borkowska. During performance it is generally interesting to observe how an artist approach an event, wheter more theatrically and dramatically or more visually in the meaning of effective aesthetics or simply conceptually. There are numerous approaches and usually they are mingling. The recent union of authors of DIALING performance brought a very intensive cooperation, both theoretical and practical. (…) Therefore their views of performance are coming out of two different angles. Their searching of a common is in the DIALING performance primarily a searching of possible configurations of I-You. The process of selection (passive and active) and attempt to search for real relationship instead of apparent contract is coming out of to the forefront. The performance started in Hovorny by some communication in the space divided by the partition. The performers were progressively slowly moving by expressive motions and silently towards the gallery. Dressed up in the black and red and using only the simple objects – red dotted shopping plastic bags – they as well created the scenography for the whole event. Their communication was based on the mutual interconnection and influence of each other which made here and there calm or very affected scenes in the area of the city centre where the performers entered in to the contact with passing and watching people and by this they forced them to create their own interpretation of their pursuance.” curator: Jakub Frank
PARAperform ance LAB The mission of duo PARAperformance in their work connected with different creative areas and expressions is to blur the borders between the artistic categories e.g. visual art, theatre and dance. Above all stands the human being with its creative attitude as creator and audience. This is why the two artists want to create a dialogue with the audience and present performance as a medium in which everything is possible, without unnecessary categorizing and judging. This started the cycle of fusions with audience titled 'Key to performance' in which we perform together with the participants and balance between experimental workshops and creating a new artistic type of live art. Sometimes the new and slightly experimental actions are being discriminated in the world of visual arts and in many artistic environments, that's why duo PARAperformance focuses on these new forms of live art and works with the audience to increase our self-awareness in the areas of live art and mixing different ways of expression. Key to performance is an open platform for people which are not daily into art, which would like to know different creative views and want to get rid of the stereotype art classifications and qualification to perform.
Key to Perform ance engagement performance eight parts completed 2016-2018 �Key to Performance� is an open platform for those who do not make art on a daily basis and want to learn creative approaches, and get rid of stereotypes about art. The PARAperformance collective is for new forms of live actions and works with the public to raise the awareness of live art and different languages of expression. Artistic duo PARAperformance understands fusion as exchange and improvisation, and the action will be an opportunity for the participants to explore and apply these terms. During the action, the viewers will be invited to co-create and look into the matter within a specific space. Making the viewers active and part of the performance is a well-known strategy of PARAperformance. The action begins with the instruction given by IVONA, one of the most popular speech synthesizers.
3 views on performance Jasmin Schaitl/ Dominika Katarzyna Borkowska/ Kamila Elşbieta Wolszczak IP STUDIO in Wrocław PL 2018 This unique workshop setting offers the possibility to gain an insight into various different working methods within the performative realm. The three artists working in the fields of performance, performance art, movement/dance, choreography, visual art, conceptual art; will share their individual approach towards performance in an intensive workshop laboratory. Everyone interested in experimenting and working with body and performance, or is looking for extending own awareness, as well as deepening their knowledge about memory and materiality, to create performative experiments, is welcome to join. Jasmin Schaitl lines in bodies awareness within performativity Jasmin's workshop focuses on body awareness, space awareness and the creation of visible and invisible relations between our physical body and its surrounding. Participants will work with the immateriality of time, and the material thread (lines), as major tools to create, intervene and collaborate in the space. Dominika K. Borkowska Body as the sum of our experiences Dominika's workshop will focus on the body as a medium of recording, exploring the information contained in the body, the materiality of memory. Participants will work with photography, texture and fragrance. Kamila E. Wolszczak The workshop focuses on transforming objects by the movements and tempo of the body. The main material to work with are sticky tapes and their sticky surface and sounds are ways to record the present.
portfolio photos: W. Skibicki, P. Lewandowski, T. de Loo, Z.Reznik, M. Frank, A. Bełz-Rajtak, A. Cyklistka, L. Ciepliński, M. Pytlarz