Global Feminisms - Katarzyna kozyra

Thank you, thank you, thank you. So, I live in Warsaw. I was born in Warsaw, but I lived a little bit in Berlin and also in Trento. I started sculpture, but meanwhile, I started to do also performances, videos, video installations. This is my first work of art. I graduated with this sculpture in 1993, and this is called "The Pyramid of Animals". The idea derived from a fairytale of the Brothers Grimm called "The Bremen Town Musicians". In this fairytale, there is a moment where these four creatures step, one on top of the others. This image I used for my diploma work. The idea was that I wanted to create a monument made from animals, for all animals. So, it means that I had to choose four animals from living animals, and to arrange the procedure to put them to death, also to arrange the skinning and then the stuffing. Why I did this? Because I was asking myself, and also other people, if we now still are conscious of the deaths of the animals we are consuming. Of course the work was considered very controversial, and it was attacked very much by the press and by the animal lovers, and also by people who just took the chance to speak in public. I also videotaped the death of the horse and the death of the rooster. The next work was "Blood Ties". These photographs are showing the naked bodies of me and my sister on the Red Crescent -- the red crescent -- and the Red Cross. In this work I was calling the Kosova War that was being fought at the time. And the Red Crescent and the Red Cross are symbols of humanitarian aid institutions, but derived from religious symbols. The representatives of the two religions were fighting each other, and this was the input to put me and my sister, because we are sisters. The work is called "Blood of Ties", "Ties of Blood" in this context. The next work is called "Olympia" and it refers to Manet's painting. At the time I was ill. I was fighting the Hodgkin's disease. It consists of three photographs and a video. For me, personally, the video when I was getting my chemotherapy, my chemo injection, was the most important part of this photograph and video installation, because it helped me to - how to tell it? To create a distance from my illness. What I liked about this work the most was that I got a lot of feedback from ordinary people that understood and appreciated it. The next work I created was baths, women's baths. When I was the first time in Budapest, I went to a women's bath and was totally fascinated by the women's baths, all the women bathing. And I also was fascinated by how the women behaved. For the first time of all, I really saw old naked women. So, for a small time, I thought for a short time I had the ideas that maybe I could rent the bath and arrange a shooting. But then, immediately I understood that I cannot have both things. The women act and behave naturally. I understood that it couldn't work, so I decided to shoot a video with a hidden camera, and I went with a camera in a plastic bucket with a hole. I shot many, I don't know, 20 hours of footage. And later, I selected the most beautiful pictures. I liked the idea of showing women and their bodies in a way that is different from what I was used to from art history, and also movies, and also TV commercials. The next installation I did was men's baths, and I disguised myself as a man in order to make a video in a men's bathhouse. I wondered if I would be recognized as a woman in my perfect disguise, because I had the beard, I had the fake *** and hairs on my chest. And I was not recognized as a woman. But later, and when I was watching the footage, I really couldn't believe that it was enough to put the beard and the fake ***, and just be somewhere I really wasn't supposed to be. So, when I started, when I had, I thought it would be too much. This is how I was disguised. The next work I created was "Rite of Spring". I saw on the television fragments of reconstructed pieces of the ballet "The Rite of Spring" of Stravinsky. The choreographer for "The Rite of Spring" was genius ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. I was so fascinated by the movements I was watching, and also by the study of reconstruction itself, that I decided to do my own interpretation of the dance of the chosen victim. The chosen victim in the original choreography was chosen to dance until his exhaustion in this, in order to...the earth. As the movement seemed very two-dimensional for me, I immediately got the idea that I could use people like puppets being moved by strings. Moved by strings. And an important idea of this project was also that I could use really very old people and pretend that they are performing very elaborated choreographies that even for younger people and younger professional ballet dancers that's nearly impossible to do. This is how the installation looked later, so there were thousands and thousands of shots that were then put together in the movement. But really, the people were lying and they were not moving by the force of their masses, but by a trick animation, by trick. The next work I did was "Punishment and Crime". I named it after Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". In order to accomplish this aim, I penetrated a group of people interested, and found World War II weapons and explosive materials. I was allowed to attend the rifle range and watch experiments with different weapons and found self-made explosives. Also, the faces of the young members of the group are hidden behind masks of models and pinups, and wear wigs. Everything that surrounded the men in the video -- exploding cars, buildings' shattering fragments that occasionally hits the camera. The atmosphere filled with adrenaline and testosterone was authentic. So, the last work I have some pictures of is "In Art Dreams Come True". It is a project consisting of a series of performances, audience-engaging happenings and videos, which I was pursuing over three-and-a-half years. And in that series, I acted as the director, the chief performer, and as raw material in the hands of my master guides Gloria *** and the Maestro. Is it already 15 minutes? We have about two more minutes left. Two more minutes? Yeah. So, this is a juggling between Maestro, who is giving me singing lessons, because I was faking the singing lessons or because I was fascinated by him, by his somehow artificial appearance because he's a real opera singer. And I had the impression that he was not able to distinguish stage life from -- how do you call it? From private life. And Gloria *** was my idol of, I don't know, perfect femininity, and I have chosen her to teach me how to dress up, how to, I don't know, wear makeup and all those things. So, those are the people where I was like a puppet in their hands and they were forming me for those three-and-a-half years. So, some appearances of this, "In Art Dreams Come True" were sung in concert where I was singing the night, because I didn't want to sing here. I was singing an aria. It was a performance called "Different Incarnation". I am in this cast inside, and I was singing the aria of Olympia from... It's "The Tales of Hoffman". "The Tales of Hoffman". And it was a shock for people who didn't know me, because they were invited to join the performance, and knew that I would be the subject of the performance. When they see me, they couldn't believe another incarnation. In this project, I was also incarnating also a cheerleader. And the last of the series of "In Art Dreams Come True" was "Castrato" where my two mentors who were educating me to being a real woman are castrating me on stage. And this is the end of the project. And the end of my speech.