Katarzyna Debska

Expiry Date

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Exhibition from December 01st - December 15th, 2023

 

Sound/compositions for the videos: 

Jerzy Mączyński, Weronika Bielecka,

Olga Kozieł + more

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Can you imagine a world without plants? Let's move for a moment into the near future. As a result of progressive crimes against nature, in 2040 plants practically became extinct- they have disappeared as a result of systemic negligence, ecocide ceases to be just a symbolic concept. How would we live if we only co-existed with non-physical plant substitutes? Humankind has contributed to the extinction of hundreds of plant and animal species, destroying entire ecosystems. The endurance of plants, even of the succulents that store water in their bodies and are equipped with thorns, was not able to adapt to the new conditions in which excessive, saturated consumption and global overproduction, caused the deformation and destruction of their natural environment. The constant obsession with growth has led us into a state of emptiness. What do you feel walking on a barren ground? Will the plant hologram experience replace a real experience? In her work, Katarzyna Dębska creates an eerie vision about the future of plants. Only in theory for now.

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Agata Ostrowska

 

The videos and photographs shown in the exhibition are part of a project observing the behaviour of plants in the context of current overproduction and high consumption of natural resources, questioning the subjectivity of plants through photography, 3d digital scans, models and female voices. During my few weeks in Athens in 2017 and in 2021 (residency at EIGHT critical institute for arts and politics), I started taking photos and short phone videos of dry plants abandoned on the streets and in front of the buildings. Later on, photographing mainly the nightlife of the plants in different cities, this other side of what can be easily seen in daylight, I wondered how it would feel like to be trapped behind the fence, under the concrete, deprived of the light needed to self-develop. Plants that are bound to certain conditions because someone decided to do so, showed me at the same time their incredible determination and strength - and also became a parable for an inevitable symbiosis of the coexistence of many species.

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KatarzynaDebska

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Katarzyna Debska - is an a/v artist and vj with a background in set design, currently based between Warsaw and Berlin. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Central Saint Martins in London and Artes Liberales at Warsaw University. In her practice she seeks to find a connection between moving image, digital reality and physical space, interested in the social and individual experience within the reality of progressive digitalisation and changes in the definition of participation, systems of control and a concept of image consumption. In her recent projects she focuses on the problem of the natural environment degradation through social and economic conditions.

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She took part in projects and shown her works i.a. in: Poland, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Greece and participated in residencies i.a. in Greece, Spain, Mexico. Lately her videos appeared a.o. during Crashclub x Warsaw Gallery Weekend, Fringe Warszawa, recent summer made live visuals at Dekmantel Festival in Amsterdam and at Avant Art Festival in Wrocław, earlier she took part in a CTM Festival residency in Berlin, last month her video clip had its premiere at dutch label Yeyeh.

 

She is co-running and co-curating a project space SAUNA in Warsaw, and hosts a broadcast under the same name in Radio Kapitał.