KATARZYNA (KASIA) SLOBODA
Since 2009, I have been 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 hold a PhD in Dance Studies from the Institute of Art at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. My dissertation, Embodied Attention in Contemporary Dance Practices in the Perspective of Critical Dance Studies, was supervised by Prof. Krystyna Duniec. I have taught courses at the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the University of Łódź, focusing on curatorial practices and the intersections of dance, choreography, and performance.
Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in Curatorial Studies at the Art Academy in Szczecin. Between 2009 and 2022, I was part of the curatorial team of the Modern Art Department at Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź.
I am a member of AICA – International Association of Art Critics and the Common Space initiative. Between 2021 and 2025, I served as a Board Member of the Forum Association of Dance Art Societies, and 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, I co-developed How to Touch Movement? Social Choreographies, Performance and Queer Feminisms as World-Making, a Kem School programme.
I am a recipient of the Grażyna Kulczyk Fellowship in the field of contemporary choreography and the Młoda Polska scholarship (2018). In 2018, I was a visiting researcher at the Centre for Dance Research at Roehampton University, London. In 2026, I graduated from the intensive course in experimental choreography organized by Centre in Motion / Burdąg Foundation.
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.
Emma, a talented and ambitious young woman, seeks an escape from her father's farm to a life of glamour, passion, and freedom. She spots what seems an outlet in the form of Charles, a local country doctor, but the move turns sour as the tedium of everyday life with a dull man sets in. She seeks passion and embarks on affairs, while her attention to the allure of
money and consumerism, spending lavish amounts on extravagant products. When her ruinous debt leads to her possessions being auctioned off, Emma attempts to recoup money or secure loans from businessmen, former friends and lovers. She fails, and in desperation takes her own life.
The Madame B exhibition offers a radical reimagining of Flaubert's political stance for the present global culture. The pieces explore different visual modes, demonstrating how they have the power to create an immersive experience in which political dilemmas can be considered with reason, affect, the senses and the body alike. The economic and amorous adventures that lead to Emma's demise are largely triggered by the audio-visual stimuli that surround her. Fragmented into the 19 screens of this exhibition, visitors can confront the fact that the life of a woman of 150 years ago can as well happen today.
You can find more photos here.
http://madamebproject.com/
Cast:
Marja Skaffari: Emma
Thomas Germaine: Charles, Rodolphe, Léon
Mathieu Montanier: Homais
Helinä Hukkataival: Charles' Mother
Matts Stenlund: priest
Astrid Törneroos: Berthe
William Stenius: Justin
Crew:
Christopher Wessels: cinematography
Sara Pinheiro: sonologist (sound recording and design)
Milja Korpela: hair and make-up artist
Remco Hekker: colour grading
B camera: Michelle Williams Gamaker
Script: Mieke Bal, based on Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Script additions: Neal Markage, Michelle Williams Gamaker
MIEKE BAL (Heemstede, 1946), a cultural theorist and critic, has been Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor. She is the author of over thirty books. As a video artist, she makes experimental documentaries on migration and recently has begun exploring fiction. The project A Long History of Madness, with Michelle Williams Gamaker, has yielded a 120’ feature film and a series of video installation pieces. These have been exhibited nine times in one year, among other places in the Aboa Vetus – Ars Nova Museum in Turku, and in the Freud Museum London. Occasionally she acts as an independent curator.
www.miekebal.org
MICHELLE WILLIAMS GAMAKER (UK, 1979) is a video and performance artist. Her work varies from single frame portraits to more complex renderings of reality via documentary, fiction films and video installations. She has exhibited internationally since 2001; and Madame B (2013) is her latest work with long-term collaborator Mieke Bal. Williams Gamaker completed her Ph.D in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in 2012. Her upcoming solo work is a new installation, Black Matter Earth, a post-romantic re-imagining of the female characterisations of the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: Black Narcissus (1947), A Matter of Life and Death (1946) and Gone to Earth (1950). She lives and works between London and Amsterdam.
www.michellewilliamsgamaker.com