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.
The exhibition posed a question about the bodily and movement experience of modernity, taking Katarzyna Kobro's sculptural practice and theory as its starting point. The subject was taken up in an interdisciplinary manner, in the context of dance, choreographic and theatrical practices.
The first half of the twentieth century was a period of revolutionary ferment, from which a new man of the age of modernism emerged. The pioneers of modernist dance, such as Loïe Fuller or Isadora Duncan, broke away from the rigour of balletic settings, introducing freedom of expression into dance. At the beginning of the 20th century, curiosity about the body and its movement translated into the study of its anatomical conditions and experiments with it. The question was asked how human movement could be made more rational, so that the effort put into a given activity was commensurate with the effect. At the same time, there was a break with the cultural and social patterns of movement in which the female body had been forced at the beginning of the 20th century. The consequence of these actions was, on the one hand, an emancipated body which became a tool for expressing social attitudes and rebellion. On the other hand, it was exploited, its fully rationalised movement translated into physical labour, and its effect was to be maximum profit.
The aim of the exhibition was to confront Katarzyna Kobro's sculptures with the choreographic and dance practices of the first half of the 20th century, which built the context for her work. Like the dancers and choreographers of modernist dance, the sculptor asked in her theoretical texts about movement and its relations in space. Working with the matter of sculpture, she took up the subject of the rationalisation and functionalisation of movement in everyday life.
The main narrative of the exhibition presented dance and choreographic experiments through archival films and photographs. However, the exhibition was not only archival in nature. The exhibition project was distinguished by the fact that it was arranged in collaboration with the set designer working for opera and drama theatres, Karolina Fandrejewska. Instead of architecture, a scenography creatively drawing on archival material is proposed, which has served as an inspiration for the performance activities of such artists as Tomasz Bazan, Marysia Zimpel, Noa Eshkol Chamber Dance Group, Noa Shadur.
As part of the exhibition, in collaboration with the Department of Drama and Theatre of the Faculty of Philology of Łódź University, a conference How does the body think? Body-Movement Practices of the Modern Era, which took place on 3-4 December 2016 at ms², 19 Ogrodowa St.
You can find more photos here.