KATARZYNA (KASIA) SLOBODA




Since 2009 I am involved in curating and researching practices of contemporary art, choreography and improvisation in the context of exhibition making and participatory projects. I have edited several publications on dance, choreography and contemporary art.   

I have a Ph.D in dance studies (thesis: Embodied attention in contemporary dance practices in the perspective of critical dance studies / Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw // supervisor: prof. Krystyna Duniec). I was teaching classes at at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Łódź (curatorial practices, dance/choreography/performance).

Currently I’m an Assistant Professor in curatorial studies at the Art Academy in Szczecin. Between 2009 and 2022 I had been a part of curatorial team at the Modern Art Deparment in Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz.

I am a member of AICA - International Association of Art Critics, as well as Board Member of Forum Association of Dance Art Societies and Common Space collective. Between 2019 and 2022 I was a member of CIMAM - International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art. Together with Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Ola Knychalska, Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga and Kasia Właszczyk developed How to touch movement? Social choreographies, performance and queer feminisms as world-making kem school programme.   

I am a recipient of Grażyna Kulczyk fellowship in the field of contemporary choreography and Młoda Polska scholarship (2018). In 2018 I was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Dance Studies / Roehampton University, London.








︎ Email: katarzyna.sloboda@gmail.com

texts and publications ︎ academia.edu

︎ Linkedin


Katarzyna (Kasia) Sloboda - curator, researcher /
contemporary art, choreography, dance, performance



new texts: on interdependent curating (Glissando magazine) + on new work by Agata Siniarska (dwutygodnik.com) + Ekologia zmęczenia witin the realm of Nature of us project

 







Ucieleśniona uważność w wybranych praktykach tańca współczesnego

W publikacji Ucieleśniona uważność w wybranych praktykach tańca współczesnego Katarzyna Słoboda bada praktyki takich artystek, jak Lisa Nelson, Rosalind Crisp, Maria Zimpel, Anna Nowicka i Maria Stokłosa. Ucieleśniona uważność to zwrot ku prymarnej modalności tańca jako osadzonej w ciele wielozmysłowej świadomości i obecności, pozwalając umiejscowić percepcję i recepcję tańca w ciele. 

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REDAKCJA: Joanna Targoń

SKŁAD I ŁAMANIE: Iwona Puzio
PROJEKT OKŁADKI I STRON TYTUŁOWYCH: Gracjana Czerniewska oraz Arkadiusz Rabiński

Na obwolucie wykorzystano fotografię Dorothei Tuch(Anna Nowicka, Eye Sea, 2019, HAU Hebbel am Ufer w Berlinie,od lewej: Katarzyna Wolińska, Mor Demer, Anna Nowicka).

Publikacja została współwydana przez Narodowy Instytut Muzyki i Tańca w ramach programu wydawniczego 2023, finansowana ze środków Ministra Kultury i Dziedzictwa Narodowego.




THE GREAT BOOK OF SCORES is a collection of recipes for elixirs that can stimulate you to weave visions together and embody fantasies of a queer future. It was created by two collectives with different dynamics and histories: QUEER MOVEMENT ACADEMY and COMMON SPACE. For the past five months, individuals from these collective bodies in a variety of configurations and psychophysical states have danced, written, drawn, sung, listened, laughed and cried together, tirelessly overcoming piles of emails, piled up excel tables, and an untold number of online and offline meetings to share with you recipes for creating temporary, embodied communities and multi-sensory experiences.

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QUEER MOVEMENT ACADEMY and COMMON SPACE collectives

Conception and production: Magda Czech, Alicja Czyczel, Bartosz Jakubowski, Jagna Nawrocka, Aleksandra (Alek) Sarna, Magdalena Siemaszko, Katarzyna Słoboda, Paulina Woźniczka

Deisgn and layout: Aleksandra (Alek) Sarna

 
Photos: Bartosz Jakubowski, Teresa Więcko, Marta Kaczmarek








Common Space

Common Space is a non-for-profit, seminar/workshop-based collective. Initiated in May 2020, it has been set up as fortnightly meetings delivered in a non-hierarchical, online shared space. The method of our work is based on reading and moderated discussion around texts written by practitioners and researchers of the body movement. Its crucial parts are bespoke choreographic practices proposed by the group’s members and informed by working with imagination, drawing, attention, and word. The activity of the group is documented in the form of collective notes.

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independent, on and offline collective since 2020



logo: Magda Wolnicka & visuals: Dana Chmielewska


Narracje 14. Orunia. Tender Points


The tender points are places that demand attention. Those that reveal their energy, relationships and multi-layered stories when you take the time to look at them closely. The proposed curatorial concept for the Narracje Festival is to find existing and create new tender points on the map of the Orunia district of Gdańsk. These will delineate spaces and routes for moving together, establishing contacts and relationships with art, people and the environment. Both the places where the artistic interventions will be located and the experience of the route between them are crucial to the concept of the festival. 


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Orunia, Gdańsk
17-18 November 2023

artists
Kateryna Badianova, Alicja Czyczel, Magdalena Franczak, Barbara Gryka, Martyna Jastrzębska, Daniel Kotowski, Marta Krześlak, Inga Levi i Ija Kiwa, Grażyna M. Olszewska, Cezary Poniatowski, Marta Romankiv, Jadwiga Sawicka, Ula Zerek, Liliana Zeic  

curators
Jakub Gawkowski, Katarzyna Słoboda

production
Joanna Weltrowska and the team of IKM and GGM

cooperation
Anna Łazar / Wolne Słowo Gdańsk Miasto Literatury

graphic design: Maciej Bychowski

Time out of Joint

Time out of joint is time that has fallen out of the well-known framework, negating norms and linear thinking. It is the dimension where the relationships between the past, future, and present, as well as what is private or shared, intertwine. The exhibition offers a reflection on the passing of time and the ways of experiencing it, both in a personal and social dimension.

You can find more photos here.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
June 3 - September 18, 2022

artists
Ania Bąk, Hannah Black, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Alicja Czyczel, Ewa Dziarnowska, Eiko & Koma, Magdalena Franczak, Marta Krześlak, Haroon Mirza, Maja ∀. Ngom, Agnieszka Polska, Kuba Stępień

curator
Katarzyna Słoboda

coordination
Łukasz Broda, Monika Wesołowska

graphic design: Dominika Federowicz


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Prototypes 06: Alicja Bielawska. At the Intersection of Lines

Alicja Bielawska suggests we should treat works of art as models on which or thanks to which we can exercise our ability to sense the world around us. Artworks then may become guidelines leading us through reality, uncovering its hidden layers and aspects. The exhibition “At the Intersection of Lines” is the sixth in the “Prototypes” series, in which the artists tend to give new meanings and contexts to the works in the collection of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.

You can find more photos here.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
April 1 - June 4, 2022

artist
Alicja Bielawska, Johanna Billing, Thea Djordjadze, Emilia Małgorzata Dłużniewska, Simone Forti, Maria Jarema, Koji Kamoji, Katarzyna Kobro, Keith Sonnier, Kajetan Sosnowski, Henryk Stażewski, Franciszka Themerson, Stefan Themerson, Teresa Tyszkiewicz

curator
Katarzyna Słoboda

coordination
Łukasz Broda


fot. Anna Zagrodzka


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Prototypes 04: Agata Siniarska. (Land)Slip


(Land)Slip, an exhibition by Agata Siniarska, the fourth event organised as part of the Prototypes project based on the collection of Muzeum Sztuki, examine material aspects of creating works of art and their further fate that often escape our visual perception, as well as the twofold role thereof: as an archive of processes involved in memory and forgetting and as the ability to preserve and destroy structures of the existing world.

You can find more photos here.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
February 2 - April 11, 2021

artist
Agata Siniarska

curator
Katarzyna Słoboda

coordination
Przemysław Purtak

sonic landscape
Justyna Stasiowska

fot. Anna Zagrodzka


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Composing the Space. Sculptures in the Avant-garde



The exhibition and publication, drawing as it does on sculptural experiments of the avant-garde, endeavors to explore the connection between sculpture, space, corporality, and movement.

You can find more photos here.



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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
October 4, 2019- February 2, 2020
+ publication

curators/editors
Małgorzata Jędrzejczyk, Katarzyna Słoboda

coordination
Przemysław Purtak

architecture
Karolina Fandrejewska, Maciej Bychowski

fot. Anna Zagrodzka


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Moved Bodies. Choreographies of Modernity


The exhibition revolved around questions concerning the corporeal and kinaesthetic experience of modernity, with Katarzyna Kobro’s artworks and theories—which will be shown in the context of choreographic practices of her contemporaries—as the starting point.

The exhibition layout was arranged in cooperation with an opera and dramatic theatre stage designer, Karolina Fandrejewska. Instead turning to architecture, she proposes the scenography creatively appropriated from the archive material, which serves as an inspiration for performances by artists, such as Maria Zimpel and Noa Shadur among others. 

The exhibition was accompanied by the international research conference "How does the body think? Corporeal and movement-based practices of modernism" with the participation of renowned dance scholars such as Susan Maning, Mark Franko, and Felicia McCarren, among others.

You can find more photos here.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
November 18, 2016 - March 5, 2017
+ publication

Artists: Akarova, Giannina Censi, Rosalia Chladek, Émil-Jaques Dalcroze, Sonia Delaunay, Jane Dudley, Isadora Duncan, Noa Eshkol, Loïe Fuller, Martha Graham, Kurt Jooss, Katarzyna Kobro, Rudolf Laban, Wsiewołod Meyerhold, The New Dance Group, Gret Palucca, Valentine de Saint-Point, Oskar Schlemmer, Edith Segal, Noa Shadur, Vera Skoronel, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Helen Tamiris, Jean Weidt, Mary Wigman, Maria Zimpel among others

curator/editor
Katarzyna Słoboda

scenographer
Karolina Fandrejewska

coordination
Monika Wesołowska

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Frames of Reference. Choreography in the Museum


The exhibition Frames of Reference. Choreography in the Museum focused on choreographic practices and the modes of presentation of performative actions in collaboration with a group of Polish choreographers. The artists were invited to temporarily use the first floor of Museum Sztuki on Więckowskiego Street as a space for rehearsals and research.

The actions of the artists and their traces presented the possibility to re-think the meaning of movement, attention and multi sensual perception in our constantly actualised relations with and to the environment. What drives our attention? What part do emotions, affects and imagination play in our perception? How does the object of our gaze influence our actions? How are our bodies composing with the dynamics of movement of other elements in our reality? What is our frame of reference?

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
April 5- May 8, 2016

Artists: Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, Przemek Kamiński, Ramona Nagabczyńska, Anna Nowicka, Magdalena Ptasznik, Agata Siniarska, Iza Szostak, Kasia Wolińska, Marta Ziółek

curators
Katarzyna Słoboda, Mateusz Szymanówka

on the photo:
Ramona Nagabczyńska
Alex Baczyński-Jenkins

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You come, we'll show you what we do. On dance improvisation


The title is borrowing its name from the first US West Coast  tour of contact improvisation  in 1973. The title is also an invitation to actively participate in the exhibition, the concept of which assumes constant change whereas its program is filled with the events of various formats, encouraging one to move around in the unpatterned and unpredictable way. It will be encouraged by the interactive architecture of the exhibition, consisting of the devices for improvisation, designed by  BudCud.

The exhibition in ms² shows the documentations of the performances from the 1970's until 1990's – films important for the development of thought on improvisation, understood both as studio and stage practice. The exhibition also included the variety of performative events – workshops, presentations, performances/lectures – whose participants will challenge the spaces of the museum.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
June 7  – October 20 2013

artists: Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Grand Union, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, Ray Chung,  Natalia Iwaniec,  Dawid Lorenc, Marcin Masecki, Yaniv Mintzer, Lisa Nelson, Iwona Olszowska, Jacek Owczarek / Pracownia Fizyczna, Jan Peszek, Ilona Trybuła, David Zambrano, Aleksandra Borys / Marysia Zimpel among others.

curators/editors
Sonia Nieśpiałowska-Owczarek, Katarzyna Słoboda

coordination
Sonia Nieśpiałowska-Owczarek

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Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker. Madame B - Explorations in Emotional Capitalism


Madame B project created by Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker is a work about the link between capitalism and romance. By creating deliberate anachronism and intertextuality, the works explore the bond between capitalism and emotions, and the commercial aspects of romantic love. In so doing, they show how these relationships persist fully 150 years after Gustave Flauberte's Madame Bovary was released; how Flaubert was in many ways a post-modernist and feminist.

You can find more photos here.


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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
December 6 2013 – February 9 2014

Artists
Mieke Bal & Michelle Williams Gamaker

Curator
Katarzyna Słoboda

Coordination
Przemysław Purtak

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Urban Ecologies

Urban Ecologies, the programme of Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, explores the environment of a contemporary institution of culture embedded in the reality of a concrete city: Łódź in this case. Urban Ecologies reflect the self-awareness of an institution which fulfills its goals through continuous updating of the idea that is its building block, i.e., the avant-garde idea of art viewed as a laboratory, a testing ground for alternative ways of operating in the real world. They are prototypes of spatial and social solutions that turn our attention to locations considered abandoned or neglected. By being open to the co-engagement of the inhabitants of Łódź, they develop ethical bonds with the city.

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city of Łódź / different locations
Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
2011-2013

Participants
BudCud, Hakobo,les gens d'Uterpan, Kasia Krakowiak, Łukasz Ogórek & Daniel Koniusz, Marcin Polak, Pracownia Fizyczna, Alicja Rogalska & Martin Clarke, Krzysztof Skoczylas, Lodz citizens and many many more

Curators
Aleksandra Jach, Katarzyna Słoboda

Coordination
Martyna Gajda (2011), Monika Wesołowska (2012), Beata Bocian/Monika Wesołowska (2013)



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Eyes Looking For a Head to Inhabit

The title Eyes Looking For a Head to Inhabit is a metaphor referring to taking over physical and mental spaces by the avant-garde. It speaks of outlining new directions of thinking, about attempts of rooting them in society. It evokes the disagreement with the status quo and the sense of mission to create new art. Celebrating the eightieth anniversary of the collection’s inauguration we attempt to enter a dialogue with the selected avant-garde traditions by means of contemporary art. According to the demands of those avant-garde traditions, art should be a laboratory where artists construct prototypes of new social devices, solutions to build a better-functioning and progressive world. The exhibition, focused around selected moments of “intensity”, presents ways in which avant-garde ideas were transformed, transgressed or radically questioned.

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Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź
September 30 - December 11, 2011

Curators
Aleksandra Jach, Katarzyna Słoboda, Joanna Sokołowska, Magdalena Ziółkowska

Exhibition layout Krzysztof Skoczylas

Coordination
Monika Wesołowska

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