Poznańska investigates the connections between the human body and the body of the forest, the landscape. During her research residency, she will continue to explore the poetic and political complexities of this topic by researching the means to reveal more dimensions of this relationship. She will attend the exhibition Jak lesy myslí/V houštině vztahů in May at OGV in Jihlava.

On 19 April, Poznańska will give a concert at Petrohradská kolektiv in Prague and she will participate other sound events organized in Prague and Brno.

Artist Statement

I am intrigued by the processes of transformation, hence in my previous works I have grown crystals, documented the life of a fruit fly and made sound from concrete plates. More recently, I have become fascinated by the intrinsic and mutual relation between the body and the landscape, their strengths and vulnerabilities, which I have begun to explore in the video installation My Body Is The Forest, The Forest Is My Body.

I think there is no difference between humans and nature, and that both should be perceived as one without claiming their separate territories and without unnecessary destruction brought about by humans.

In the end, to see the landscape as our archive and memory, protecting us from oblivion, transmitting the continuity of time. Similar to a body: an imprint of our achievements, failures, and memories, which insulate us from forgetting through its record of passing time (across generations).

In my work I pursue this thinking and combine it with poetic imagery placed between the realm of every day life experience and imagination, in order to trigger a perceptual involvement of the visitor and begin a dialogue.

Martyna Poznańska (1984) is a cross-disciplinary artist based in Berlin. She studied Spanish literature and linguistics at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (PL), voice at the Laboratory of Olga Szwajgier (PL) and Sound Art at The University of the Arts London. In 2016 she obtained an M.A. in Sound Studies from the Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts). Poznańska has exhibited her works at the Akademie der Künste Berlin (DE), the Spor Festival (DK), Deutsche Oper Berlin (DE), The Place, London (UK), Cafe OTO, London (UK). She has worked with Hans Peter Kuhn (Installation — Übergang, Martin-Gropius-Bau Museum, Berlin), and Peter Cusack, among others. In 2013 she was the recipient of a grant from the Polish Ministry of Culture for the project Listening East.

The artist in residency program is supported by grant of Ministry of Culture.