Stickiness
2021 - 2023
Man, cut off from nature for a long time, begins to fear it. The environment seems like something dangerous. He has no idea how to deal with it except by trying to completely control and subjugate nature. Man abhors undeveloped forms with indefinite edges. Substances that are neither liquid nor solid are repulsive. In my project, I focus on the notion of repulsion as the opposite emotion of desire - rejection. Something attracts us first, we want to touch it and then reject it. Some time ago I started growing a tea fungus also known as SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeasts). The fungus grows during fermentation and takes the shape of the vessel it is in. I multiply it by selecting larger and larger vessels. In this way,
I tame my repulsion towards this type of primordial form that contemporary culture has instilled in me.The experience of repulsion depends on contact with the body, experienced as an unpleasant intensity. Close contact with this form, i.e. caring for it, touching it, on the one hand makes me fearful, on the other fascinates me.
This cold substance with the unpleasant smell of vinegar on contact with the body reaches the same temperature as the body. It takes shape and begins to imitate
a second skin. It is the taming of repulsion, the taming of living, primordial matter.
I tame my repulsion towards this type of primordial form that contemporary culture has instilled in me.The experience of repulsion depends on contact with the body, experienced as an unpleasant intensity. Close contact with this form, i.e. caring for it, touching it, on the one hand makes me fearful, on the other fascinates me.
This cold substance with the unpleasant smell of vinegar on contact with the body reaches the same temperature as the body. It takes shape and begins to imitate
a second skin. It is the taming of repulsion, the taming of living, primordial matter.
The project consists of three parts - chapters. Each is a different form of taming repulsion. Their titles are taken from an alchemical treatise on transmutation, the transformation of one body into another - with completely different properties.
The body must transform into a form it does not have
director of photography: Tomasz Kawecki
camera operator: Tomasz Antkowiak
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The body must transform into a form it does not have
director of photography: Tomasz Kawecki
camera operator: Tomasz Antkowiak
info
×
1. The body must transform into a form it does not have
In the video presented, my body slowly assimilates the properties of the fungus, becoming one with it. With such close contact, the substance begins to resemble parts of my own skin. SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeasts), a tea fungus, merges with my body and takes over my shape.
Director of photography: Tomasz Kawecki
Camera operator: Tomasz Antkowiak
Sound design: Aleksandra Przybysz
The film was produced in collaboration with Galeria Studio
2. A body melted at the temperature of the stomach
This partof the work consists of a sequence of seven photographs in which I eat SCOBY I have grown. This is the ultimate form of contact, an act of total fusion and assimilation of the qualities of the substance. For ancient peoples, eating certain organs in was a symbolic form of worship and meant the absorption of a person’s strength and energy.
To eat the SCOBY is to overcome the feeling of revulsion that accompanied the project, to shift to the other pole in the correlation of rejection and attraction. Repulsion is transformed into a kind of pleasure – the pleasure of eating. The term consumption (from the Latin consumptio) meaning „eating,” „consuming” directs us to another area – the field of sexuality. Consuming food with the mouth is sometimes a metaphor for the sexual act, kissing a ritualized gesture of feeding.
3.The body withers to the hue of its warmth
The third part of the work is a sheet made entirely of SCOBY, its appearance disturbingly resembling human skin.
