Projects — Jan

Personal Stone. Rytka

Personal meeting with one of Poland’s most peculiar post-conceptual artist, Zygmunt Rytka. Documentary interpretation of photographic and videographic ouvre of “Zyga”.

In cooperation with Piotr Weychert

Presentations:

Sokołowsko Laboratory of Culture, 2018
Profile Foundation Gallery, 2018

This creative documentary traces evolution of postconceptual photography and video in Poland, by telling the story of Zygmunt Rytka. The artist, already wounded by mortal illness that effects his body and speech, struggles to express the meaning of his art. Throughout the film, supported by his friends in remembering Polish art history of the seventhies and eighthies, Rytka performs micro-performances for the camera, to go beyond the verbal sens of his art. Neoavangarde milieu with its specific manners and lifestyle, didn’t recognize for years that this self-tought photographer and documentarist, always carring a camera and shooting, is in a process of creating an ouvre of his own, transcending documentation and going further then conceptualism. By going into inner logic of Rytka’s work and pointing his incredible intuition this documentary provides a question about “the mainstream”, “the important artists” or “the classics”. Rytka, an outsider in the heart of the artistic scene, a invisible man with the camera, slowly became one of the most creative photographers of postmodern ninthies and a innovator who open the aesthetics into the unknown.

Zygmunt Rytka, Divisions of Time, gelatine prints

The Way of the Performer

Multimedia documentary redefining the art of Zbigniew Warpechowski, pioneer of world performance art. The project is Jan’s

Presentations:

National Gallery Zachęta, 2014

Focused on performance art, this project is about Zbigniew Warpechowski, the first Polish performancers and one of the pioneers of this form of art in the world. "The Way of the Performer" is a documentary project, both a presentation of performance art created by one of the most important artists of the genre, and an example of how to make an art archive, accessible, moving and understandable for a wider audience. For the hermetic aspect of art does not lay in its elitist character. Performance art, sometimes difficult to understand, can be stripped bare of heavy language of theory, and open the audience to direct experience. 23 documentations of live actions - Map of the Artist's Oeuvre - Conversations with Warpechowski - Interviews with artists about him (jazz trumpet master Tomasz Stańko, performance art enfant terrible Oskar Dawicki, videart classic Józef Robakowski, performence art pioneers Adina Bar-On, Alaister MacLennan, Boris Nieslony, Ewa Zarzycka, artist and activist Zuzanna Janin, film director Grzegorz Królikiewicz) - Over 3 hours of rare video footage.

Now a renowned performer Ewa Zarzycka, inspired by autenticity of Warpechowski’s art started her own artistic practice.

Grzegorz Królikiewicz, film director of “Through and Through” (1973), sees the art his friend the artist as continuation of a tradition of Polish romanticism and an existential decision in terms of true value of art

Józef Robakowski, videoart classic and filmmaker, talks about Zbygniew and the nuances of his expressive breakethough

The Movement is Infinite

Guerilla documentary about plasticine.

Presentations:

TVP Kultura Polish Television Channel, 2009

Hired to make a making off, Jan created a different way to tell the story of animated film. With a cameraman who never filmed any professional film before, he edited a sentimental documentary about sentimental animation based on a sentimental German childrens book. A portrait of a animation artist (Izabela Plucinska) and her team working in a studio in Berlin, totally devoted to make art in plasticine. Living together and working together, the team became a family to whoch Izabela was a mother-director. It is a story of a full process of animated film making together with its connection between technical and philosophical side.

Fish and Stone

Tribute to anthropological photography of Zofia Rydet.

In cooperation with cinematographer Mateusz Skalski

Presentations:

TVP Kultura Polish Television Channel, 2010
Bellmer Society, Katowice 2010

Director’s cut of a documentary “The End of the World” made together with cinematographer Mateusz Skalski. It shows a strange land of the country where there are hundred of houses in the village but only four are inhabited. The old people are living here alone, all the young have left. A film about the people waiting all days for a visit of a mobile shop, a car with fresh bread and noodles. In a solitary and sad circumstances these people of unexplained charisma and authenticity, who rarely have contact with the outside world and a camera, spend time on simple actions that become a sens of itself. On the border of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine, there are place and people of a forgotten beauty.

Art of Action / The Differences

World greatest performers reveal the secrets of their intentions and motivations. Tensions and conflicts of the people who dedicated their life to the ephemeral art of direct action.

Presentations:

Center of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Individual artist presentation, 2009
Bezalel Art Academy, Jerusalem, Performance Art and Film, 2009

Meetings of artists of action from all around the world flourish with new international projects and create new contexts. The group of performance art classics, most experienced or first performers in their home countries may even be named. Adina Bar-On, Zbigniew Warpechowski, Boris Nieslony, Nigel Rolfe, AlastairMacLennan, Jan Swidzinski – to mention only the names of our main characters in the film. The Art of Action in a story about them, not about a history of performance art in general, but about human need of expression and communication.