Karolina Breguła

b. 1979, Katowice

artist working mainly in video and photography, as well as installation and public art. Graduated from PWSFTviT in Łódź (where she obtained her PhD in 2016). She also studied at GFU Folkuniversitetet in Stockholm and European Academy of Photography in Warsaw. Her practice explores the ontological status of the work of art and the language used to describe it, but also the socio-political issues in the times of economical instability and social unrest. The intersection of these issues marks the central question of the art's ability to change the world. Breguła often employs a participatory approach in order to engage the audience. Her films are included in both contemporary art exhibitions and film festivals. In 2013 she was awarded second prize Views Deutsche Bank Award, and her film Fire-Followers was screened at the Romanian Pavilion during 55th Venice Biennale. The artist is currently living and working between Taiwan and Poland, where she teaches Critical Film at the Academy of Arts in Szczecin.

廣場 Square

2018, HD video, 73′

You won't get a chance to see the main characer in the film. It's a statue, hidden in a dense bush in the middle of a square. Local inhabitants don't remember if there actually is a statue in the square, and what exactly it commemorates—until one day, a soft voice speaks from the shrubs. The song of the sculpture, pleasant at the beginning, starts to raise anxiety when the lyrics become audible: "I'd like to ask you a question". When an invitation to the conversation becomes too insistent to further ignore it, the anxiety turns into collective aggression. The small community doesn't want to get confrontet with the past—the questions that scares everyone won't get a change to be asked.
Karolina Breguła mixes styles and disturbs narrative order; staged scenes from Taiwanese Tainan are intertwined with a documentary-style footage recorded at an Asian market in Warsaw. In these shots, the artists herself appears – to confess her own helplessness in face of the challenge she sets for herself. Square is a universal story of the mechanics of collective memory (or lack thereof). Every community, no matter the geological location, has to face the fear of the past and take responsability for history.

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