SLEEP
2023
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-
- Sleep, photo: Kasia Szumska
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
OPIS
I have decided to ‘sleep through’ my 60th birthday. In the dream I fall into, I want to tell myself the story of the last 30 years filled with creativity. The dream is also a text; I will try to remember it and then write it down and pass it on – to myself and to my guests. The film registration of this event will allow me to watch the reaction of the audience, of friends who mean a lot to me, and of casual viewers with whom I always keep in touch, in the good and bad moments of my life. I don’t know what lies ahead for me. Will the awakening be a memory of a nightmare, or will it be transformative? Uncertainty has always been, and still is, the driving force behind my actions, and sleep is the kind of ‘activity’ whose effects are sometimes only found out years later.
I want you to have fun, I will be with you as the body that has fallen silent. Do not fear, I will return.
This dream into which I will fall is also a symbol of my situation, of my disillusionment with the environment in which art finds itself today, of my doubt in the futility of the spectacle which, endlessly reproduced, plunges Polish galleries and museums into the marasm of repetitive exhibition rituals: producing, hanging and dismantling works. At a time when the world is plagued by war, famine and exclusion.
I want to experience this as a state of hibernation, of release and respite from chasing mirages of success and spectres of inevitable failure. This is how I want to celebrate my 60th birthday. Tell me later what you saw.
Someone once said that in a dream we are all dreamers. Maybe I will recognise one of them as myself?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
-
- Sen, photo: Kasia Szumska
-
- Sen, photo: Izabela Sitarska
-
- Sen, photo: Izabela Sitarska
-
- Sen, photo: Izabela Sitarska
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FATIGUE: IN ADDITION I HAVE KNEE PROBLEMS
Karolina Plinta
Dwutygodnik, 04.2023
KAROLINA PLINTA: You’ve decided to celebrate your 60th birthday with a party at Powszechny Theatre, all of which you completely slept through. You’ve explained later, that falling asleep symbolizes your situation and shows your passivity in relation to the modern world. Where does this abnegation come from?
KATARZYNA KOZYRA: I’ve stopped wanting to participate in anything recently. Depression and discouragement got to me. Let’s just say it was a “discourage”, because depression may be too big of a word. I’ve felt reluctant to celebrate, to be a part of. “Sleep” was mostly about the fact that I don’t want to participate in all of this.
In what exactly?
Katarzyna: What I have participated in before and what I let myself get entangled into. I mean social gatherings, the art world, the market – there was a moment, in which I accepted it, I brushed it off. I did it in good faith. I cared about my exhibitions and works, I made sure they looked their best, to appease the public… But now, it’s the other way around, I feel like what I did earlier, no longer suits me. It’s fake, vain, substitutory, untrue and unnecessary.
Where does this shift come from?
Katarzyna: I used to think, I was putting effort in for the sake of my own works, now I have the impression that, because I got absorbed by all of this, it is no longer about my works, but about hanging around. Show must go on, despite the war in Ukraine, Syria, climate change, floods, drought… In other words, fucked up shit, while the the world of art mulls it over, in Centre Pompidou or MoMA business as usual. I feel fed up with being an artist, and frustrated, because I am condemned to being one. I am unable to do anything else, I cannot do anything. I couldn’t become a secretary or a dentist’s assistant, for example. I am not fit for that. In addition I have knee-problems, so I couldn’t even work washing up dishes. All blue-collar work is out of the question.
Katarzyna Kozyra’s Foundation does quite useful things, so maybe it’s not all so bad.
Katarzyna: OK, that does make some sense. Although there was a time, when I thought all of it was forced and uphill.
Since you’ve had enough of the art world, why did you throw the birthday party? Wouldn’t it be better to hide at home under the covers?
Katarzyna: Sleep was a compromise. I didn’t want to be present, so I had to demonstrate it in a way, in which my friends and foes wouldn’t feel offended, like I’ve flipped them off. Sleep was a great summary of my recent thoughts. Sleep is also an action, whose effects we feel much later, even unknowingly. I depended on it, so that my subconscious could work and maybe could transform something within me. It whispered something to me. Finally, sleep is a metaphor of travel, from which you return and start something over.
It was actually a hypnotic dream, you got hypnotized by Tomasz Polaszczyk. Who is he?
Katarzyna: At first, I planned to go under full anesthesia, but it turned out to be impossible. On the topic of Polaszczyk I can’t say much, because I don’t know him, his involvement was Pamela’s idea. I had only talked to him via Skype beforehand.
PAMELA BACHAR: Tomasz Polaszczyk is a mystic and hypnotist, he specializes in natural medicine and has come up with his own method of hypnosis. I suggested it to Kasia, as a safer alternative to anesthesia. Mr. Tomek was intrigued by our proposal and he came.
Katarzyna: Unfortunately, my mom overheard that skype call and was terrified.
Pamela: Because so far, Mr. Tomek had hypnotized his patients for a maximum of 40 minutes, and here he was supposed to do it for 3 hours, so it was an experiment for him as well. There were also a few challenges. Kasia doesn’t know about this, but during her party people wanted to interact with her and we had to shoo them away, because it would throw her off balance and could cause a shock.
Katarzyna: Apparently, during hypnosis bodily functions slow down significantly. The music played during the party had to be set to one wavelength, in order not to wake me. But! Before the seance he felt my knee, which had been really fucking bothering me for a month, I couldn’t even walk – and he felt it, realigned it and after I woke up, I could even work in the garden for two weeks. Additionally, he did something to my head, that is what he claimed at least, because when I woke up, my mood improved significantly.
And what exactly does he do during hypnosis? Does he utter any secret formulas, spells…?
Katarzyna: He counts and tells you what is going to happen.
Pamela: Mr. Tomek said that Kasia was very easy to hypnotize.
Did you enjoy hypnosis?
Katarzyna: I enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know anything and only later others had to tell me what had actually happened. That I don’t take responsibility for anything, because I am not there, only after the fact, I can watch it. It is also an interesting experience, going through something that has already happened, without my participation. During hypnosis I was under the impression that I am in a hall filled with voices, but everything is unclear. Even if it occurs to you to stand up, you are so heavy that it seems impossible. And that’s nice, although I don’t know if that was what it was like for the whole 3 hours. After I woke up, I was swollen like hell, that day and even the next one. Before waking me up, the room was cleared of people and it was funny to see a whole lot of heads observing me from behind a glass door. Mom was beaming, because I was alright. I would like to continue my collaboration with Mr. Tomek, maybe we could fix some other project up. (…)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________