Michal Brzezinski

About me:

http://video-art.pl

Michał Brzeziński, born in 1975, An artist, video theoretician, curator in Contemporary Art Center Łaźnia in Gdansk. Graduate of film studies at the Media and Audiovisual Culture Department at the University of Łodź. MA thesis entitled Subject, Body, Identity. A Contribution to Cybercultural Anthropology completed in 2003. Specialist on the visual media, such as TV, DVD and the Internet. An organizer of video training workshops and author of a TV programme devoted to video. His work combines the tradition of video art and experimental cinema and is a reflection on the phenomenon of identity in the world of the new media. In order to define video art and describe its functioning in society, he introduces the notions of VIRUS-VIDEO or VIDEO-IDENTITY. To him, video is the only appropriate language of the new media. His work was presented in Józef Robakowski's Programme "Polish Found Footage 1957-2004", at Rzeźnia Miejska while the II Art Fair in Poznań. Additionally, Brzeziński's exhibitions were displayed at Lublin Art Gallery, Space-twoentwo Gallery in London and as a part of Galeria Wymiany collection: "New Video Energies" at the Art Centre of Poznań and "DVD - new video energies" at the Manhattan Gallery in Łódź. Moreover, he took part in Krzysztof Jurecki's lectures entitled "Supplement to the history of Polish experimental cinema and Polish video art (1983-2006)" held in the Centre for Contemporary Arts "Łaźnia" in Gdańsk, at the "Kont" Art Gallery in Lublin, the "Wozownia" Art Gallery in Toruń, the Centre for Contemporary Arts "Zamek Ujazdowski" in Warsaw. A one-man exhibition of his work Peer Gynt took place at A. Rubinstein's Concert Hall in Łódź. Other solo exhibitions were held at the Arsenal Art Gallery in Białystok, the "Bunkier Sztuki" Art Gallery in Cracow and Art Museum in Łódź. As curator he participated in two shows at the Biennial of Łódź in 2006, in BAT YAM MUSEUM OF ART, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, czy podczas Łódź Biennale 2006.. His artistic output has been described and commented on in Exit and Obieg magazine. In Art Eon, Krzysztof Jurecki called him the most outstanding video theoretician. According to Polish Video Art Catalogue, published by the Inner Spaces Art Gallery in 2006, Brzeziński is one of the most representative Polish video artists. The exhibitioner of Minister of Culture and the National Heritage on 2008.



"Mnemosyne". This film is not typical for Michał Brzeziński's artistic works. Painterly, plastic, it moves in the circle of veiled signs and ambiguous symbols. The image is elusive, avoids easy interpretation. The title recalls the mythological goddess of memory, daughter of Uranus and Gaea, mother of the nine Muses.

"Mnemosyne" is an attempt to get to subconsciousness, to memory. The artist puts a question if it is possible to move outside the realm of signs, and if video can get into the sphere of subconsciousness and images generated by it without manipulating what is real, at the same time having an effect on the viewer by the means of pure language of the medium - image and sound. Brzeziński's video is an attempt to render a state experienced in meditation, where a man reaches beyond his individual existence. There are no divisions - spirit, memory, matter blend in one. What makes "Mnemosyne" different from other contemplative works is that this film is not the image of a meditating artist, but the image for meditation. It equally affects the artist and the recipient of art.

Michał Brzeziński is a unique artist on the contemporary video scene. He does not move in the circle of fashionable issues, does not take part in popular discourses. He is a graduate of culture studies at the University of Łódź; thus a theoretician. For him, theory is extremely important. Through the medium of film he engages in a direct dialogue with a viewer and sets to redefine the video language of the digital age.

Metaartistic issues are just one of the many fields of Brzeziński's artistic activity. By the means of electronic media he tries to reconstruct the "I" of the disintegrating subject. Here he does not stop at a fragment, but consistently examines the sources of contemporary identities. He moves from the screen to the body, then to the mind and eye; he searches cultural, religious and social contexts and reaches beyond them. He is concerned with the spirituality of a contemporary man and its position in the cacophony of images.

"Mnemosyne" is an attempt to get into the sphere of pure memory, the domain of the goddess Mnemosyne. The space appears here as a revived memory, animated thanks to the specificity of the used medium.

Agnieszka Kulazinska

The video work "Mnemosyne" has been extended by adding the series of prints, in relation to which the video constitutes the essential yet elusive content; a real artistic value in the space of the gallery. The context of the prints introduces us to the issue of the relation between the ephemeral quality of the beauty of the video and the plastic arts. The already existing collection consists of 12 prints constituting industrial decorations for modern interiors. The works have been made on PVC. DV PAL shots have been transformed by the means of vector graphics in DTP and projected onto PVC. Such conversion is entirely cybernetic and mechanical, more typical of advertising than of art. The works show the transformed image of the sarcophagus, not mentioned in guidebooks, I saw in one of the museums in Rome. I was fascinated by the dynamic form of the bas-relief. It has been animated owing to de-mummificating power of digital video (a medium in plastic arts, which defies the concept of film ontology as defined by André Bazin). Digital film becomes here an almost subjective factor, able to evoke a dialogue between matter, time and mind. It is a subjective carrier for reflection on culture. The prints are a trace of this idea, a second freezing of life in a form of shots pulled from a continuum.

Michał Brzeziński



Rise

Rise can be seen as an extrapolation of the quotidian inherently engendered with a relational and political identity which lies beneath the subterfuge of banality. These strata of ambiguity dissolve through the lens as routine is transformed to a scene of heroism. The general condition of the heroic is the product of an event, the occurrence of which is a result of a series of actions incorporating the perception of risk. The event itself is a product of chance and the reactions which unfold with that same sense of the arbitrary. The sensation of temporality in the event is central to the recognition of the event's significance and a proportionality can be exacted in most cases as a one to one ratio of the increase of time (distance from the event) and the attribution of importance. The passage of time plays an important role in the video which demonstrates this 'heroic equivalence'. As the elongation of the frames which contributes a heightened sense of drama and exposes nationalistic symbols as a shear conflagration of form.

Only post facto is the event deemed heroic and subsequently creates a new narrative where the application of a cultural, ethnic and territorial reading come into play, usually incorporating the nation-state. One can see patriotism as an extension of this heroic condition as a symptom as well as a protective instinct for the preservation of the nation-state. The continual narrative of the nation-state necessitates heroism as a symbol of sacrifice to confound the larger loss of liberty identified by Rousseau when one is beholden to an authority.

Jason Waite