States of Focus: Karolina Breguła

Karolina Breguła will host the November Meeting of States of Concentration. Each of the meetings in this series focuses on one topic, and after the screening of the films there is a conversation with invited artists, led by the curator of the States of Focus. After the screening of the artist's films - “Square” and “Strange Rain” - there will be a discussion about bushes, skeletons and stones, that is, the strangeness of the Anthropocene.

Timothy Morton, author of “Dark Ecology”, among others, calls strange objects whose representations do not coincide with their real image. He points out that the Anthropocene is inhabited by many ambiguous entities that surprise us. In films and discussions, we will look at phenomena that escape human cognition.

Skwer (2018, directed by Karolina Breguła, ca. 45—50 min.)

The quiet life of the community of a small town is unexpectedly disrupted by a mysterious object hidden in the bushes in the city square. It is said to be an old, forgotten sculpture — a remnant of a bygone political order. One day, the sculpture begins to communicate with passers-by. At first she hums quietly, and her beautiful voice becomes a source of pleasure and fascination. Soon, however, he begins to sing louder and louder. Gradually, the words of her song become clearer: “I would like to ask you a question.” The townspeople know all too well that questions can be uncomfortable. Instead of facing difficult issues, they decide to stop listening to the sculpture. But she doesn't stop singing. What was initially a source of entertainment and joy quickly begins to cause complaints, misunderstandings and anger. The resistance of the community gradually turns into organized aggression.

Strange Rain (2025, directed by Karolina Breguła, 21 min 35 sec.)

Dressed in a fox sheepskin coat, with a bag of the global net hanging over her shoulder and a patch used to check the water level, the protagonist of “Strange Rain” walks through the wetlands, making endless inferences about melting glaciers, extinction of species, acid rain and dramatically rising temperatures. The character seems to function in a system devoid of hierarchy, effects and causes, beginnings and ends, which Timothy Morton calls “being in a loop.” Related to everything that lives around her, the woman practices the cohabitation, coevolution and embodied interspecies solidarity described by Donna Haraway.

KAROLINA BREGUŁA (born 1979) — visual artist, author of installations and social projects. In her practice, she tells stories about buildings, urban spaces and the communities that use them, which become the subject of her anthropological and sociological observations. Her work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Taipei, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum in Japan, the Jewish Museum in New York and the Zachęta — National Gallery of Art, as well as at international art festivals such as the Venice Biennale and the Singapore Biennale. She is the winner of many awards, including the Sights Award, the EMAF Festival Award, and the Golden Claw at the Gdynia Film Festival. He lives in Szczecin, where he teaches at the Academy of Arts. For the last ten years, he has been doing his artistic work mainly in Taiwanese Tainan. Cooperates with the gallery lokal_30.

STATES OF FOCUS — a series of post-film events curated by Andrzej Marc. Each of the meetings consists of a short lecture, a film screening and a conversation with invited artists. This year, each event also has a specific theme, thematized in the film and addressed in the discussion.

The states of focus focus on the work of stitching together, merging and saving a reality intersected and torn by various, concomitant crises. The answer to the experience of a crumbling, fragmented world is no longer grand, escapist, utopian projects, but rather everyday, local, perhaps even makeshift practices of minor repairs and attempts at regeneration.

In the autumn season we will focus on:

body horror and looksmaxxing — States of focus: Marianna Rodziewicz, 16.09, 7 p.m.;

new magic and modern totems — States of concentration: Aleksandra Liput, 21.10, 7 p.m.

and bushes, skeletons and stones, that is, on the strangeness of the Anthropocene — States of concentration: Karolina Breguła, 18.11, 7 p.m.