Artistic Research | u-ciele-śnienie

Over a decade ago, I shifted from traditional dance studios to outdoor spaces, integrating movement with the more-than-human world. My artistic practice now focuses on exploring the body as an extension of the environment, emphasizing their inseparable agency and reciprocity. Through embodied research, I investigate eco-feminist ideas, hydrocene theory, and the interconnectedness of natural and human systems. I position the natural world as an equal participant, where amber, for example, is a narrative partner in uncovering environmental histories. By bridging choreography, legal theory, and ecological science, I aim to highlight the transformative power of interdisciplinary practices in the field of art and science. I hope to reveal perspectives on the shared agency of human and non-human worlds, offering methods to navigate time, space, and ecological relationships, while addressing the urgent need for environmental consciousness and change.

In my artistic practice I tend to create within long processes, in a circular way of exploring the potentiality of ideas. The frame of Future of Sensorial Choreography of my research began somewhere between my year long residency at a.pass program and monthly stay on Finish island Ores. It did get combined with acceleration of my spine injury which drastically limited my capacity to move and locomote for a period of two years. All those events created an inspiring environment, where my imagination on how one can work with choreography and body, got challenged. It was a way to learn how to deeply listen to my body and follow its leadership. I began working toward inner sensing of my physicality. It lead me to new for me way of approaching the capacity of my physicality and there for opened another aspect for embodied imagination. Since then my fascination with the sensorial aspect of human physicality came upfront. Already at that time in my artistic work I understood the human body as a part of the environment that is in constant negotiation with more-than-human and celestial bodies. Here I like to bring the ecofeminism and concepts of relation of human physicality and Earth in context of economics and ecology by Vandana Shiva. Her philosophical line of thought contextualises the problematics of this juxtaposition. I find her writings supportive and great analyses of the dangers included in this way of understanding physicality. From my artistic practice perspective I recognize Earth, Celestial Bodies and human body relation as a continuous movement exchange – a universal choreography. However, the current aspect of my interest is focused not so much on the outer forms of this exchange manifestation, but rather the sensorial potential of this interrelation.

In my research methodologies I mostly work with movement research and improvisation, based in practical anatomy and Authentic Movement Practice. Important role in my understanding and approach to working with my own body plays Body Mind Centering Technique, which offers methods on working with past potentialities of the body. It is a technique that accompanied my development as a dancer in a great way, and in which recently a began to classes with founder of it Bonnie Beinbridge Cohen. I am a movement practitioner. I mix it with the Qi Gong approach to anatomy and energy aspects of the body. This particular approach offers me a guidance to interconnecting my fascination of Nights Sky and its union with human body. I work a lot with embodied imagination as a way of producing material, practising unexpected ways of moving and allowing the environment to move my dance. I find that here is where the concepts of Vandana Shiva explain how I perceive the co-responsibility of the inter-species physicality.

At the same time I keep exploring ways to document the processes of my work making that would be coherent and would offer sensation rather than representation of work.

In my artistic research I recognize circular patterns in how my projects come about. It feels that last years were about decoding far-past dances grafted into embodied memory. From this process of intuitive re-connecting with places, movements, symbols, a series of solos came about. It was a way to reconnect with my ancestral land, in another way than national history, but through the forgotten cosmology of Slavs. At that time it felt essential to work with pure movement.

However now it feels that a new circle within my artistic work has begun, and the format within which I previously worked needs to shift. I have a desire to create within more of an interdisciplinary manner. Allowing myself to use all kinds of skills that I gathered through years of my education and professional experience. Within this new take in my research I plan to explore wilder potentials of improvisation as a choreography, allowing the alert state of the body to lead and determine the form. But also I am interested in finding ways of blurring the concept of choreography into more of a sensorial exchange, sensorial environment, immersive installation and participatory gathering. I am fascinated by the idea how multiplication of sense within human concept could create space for creating shared experiences and exchange. I have previously worked with other forms and materials. This time I wish to allow for morphing of visual aspects with movement and sounds, where from the choreography of time and sensorial relation and physical manifestation of „an object” is created. I wish to keep the idea of „a object” as open as possible, and via research to discover what this creation could be.

DECEMBER 2024