"One view, different perceptions"
Students of the HighSchool of Visual Arts from Katowice, working under the supervision of their teacher Michał Łukowicz, received a grant in the 3rd edition of the "Wena" Program competition for their innovative project combining various artistic techniques into a joint exhibition published on a website. The exhibition is a multimedia group work entitled "One view - different perceptions", in which each student works on an artistic project of their choice, inspired by one of Katowice's residents.
The assumption is to create around 10 works, which will be placed on the slaskiblok.pl website and presented during the final stage of the project. Young artists will bring to the audience the stories of Silesians living in one block of flats in Katowice. The grant includes workshops that prepare participants to create the most valuable artistic realizations.
In the first month of the project, a workshop on social exclusion took place, led by actress, director and theater pedagogue Agnieszka Bresler. The artist shared with the students her experience of working for the Jubilo Foundation, which conducts theater activities for people at risk of social exclusion (with emphasis on young people with developmental disorders, adults with experience of mental illness, Roma minority, the homeless, prisoners and refugees) and the Association for People with Disabilities "Ostoja".
"The idea for the educational-artistic project is strongly connected with the place where we live and the people who surround us. Silesia is full of blocks of flats. We came up with the idea to use our skills, various artistic techniques, and aesthetics to go on a multimedia journey around one of such blocks, learning about the stories of the people who surround us. We do not want to create" a review of world problems", but a multi-colored statement, which will reflect the multi-colorfulness of surrounding reality by means of different artistic media: film, comics, animation, graphics, and words. Once the individual "works" are created, we will create a website that will allow you to "explore" the block and get to know the works prepared by us. Initially, we were thinking about an interactive wall of the block, where the user would be able to move on to individual characters by clicking on the appropriate window."
Michal Lukowicz - teacher leading the project.
In mid-October, the Students took a two-day trip to Łódź. On the first day, they had a chance to take part in workshops "Flowers or squares" conducted by Agnieszka Wojciechowska-Sej in the Museum of Art in Łódź, where they got to know many inspiring works of avant-garde art. Moreover, young artists could see in ms2 (a branch of the Museum of Art) a very interesting exhibition "Atlas of Modernity. Exercises" which is a curator's selection of the most interesting phenomena in contemporary art.
On the next day, the participants visited the Museum of Cinematography in Łódź, located in the former residence of Łódź’s manufacturer Karol Scheibler. In addition to extraordinary relics of film technology, exhibits from iconic films of Polish cinema ("Ashes and Diamonds" by Andrzej Wajda, "The Saragossa Manuscript" by Wojciech Jerzy Has) and stunning sets of the most popular Polish animated cartoons. The students listened to several lectures about the history of cinematography and Łódź. Unfortunately, they could not visit the Łódź Film School due to pandemic restrictions.
In November the Students took part in the directing workshops introducing them to the secrets of documentary filmmaking. The Visual Arts School Complex was visited by two award-winning directors of the young generation - Dominika Łapka and Tomasz Jurkiewicz. During the workshops, the young artists also prepared their concepts of short film documentaries, which will be used during the project.
As part of the project, the students of the Arts School in Katowice also took part in comics workshops led by Edyta Bystroń, a renowned author, one of whose recent works has been nominated for the award for the best Polish comic book of the year during the 31st International Festival of Comics and Games in Łódź in 2020. The topic of the workshop was the comic book as an artistic medium. Young artists learned how to use this form to tell intense and engaging stories.
The year ended with workshops with Hanna Puszczewicz, a therapist and trainer of psychosocial skills workshops and psychological training of the Polish Psychological Association. As part of these classes, the Pupils prepared for a series of interviews which they will conduct with the inhabitants of Silesian housing estates from January 2022 and which will serve as an inspiration for the artistic works created as part of the project.
"Recipients of the project will be able to experience a wonderful, multi-dimensional adventure through the various stories of the residents of "our" block, become sensitive to social problems, experience the feeling that they are not alone in the universe, and the people around them, no matter who they are, have a lot to offer them. By experiencing the world through the eyes of others, through different media, we will enrich the recipients of our work with the awareness that reality is not black and white, but a great multi-colored mosaic".
Michał Łukowicz.
The project will be completed with the publication of albums of the presentation of projects and promotion of the initiative in social media and local cultural centers.
Michał Łukowicz - Polish language and philosophy teacher, but also a playwright and director. He also runs a drama club, where students can safely develop their passions and experiment artistically. Currently, a doctoral student of literary studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice.
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