Natalia Osuch, Dominik Rudasz [Poland]

Bar-do

location: concrete reservoirs, shipyard

Interactive audio-visual installation screened on three reservoirs hidden in the deserted parts of the Gdansk Shipyard.

BAR-DO is a Buddhist expression that discribes a „transitional state”. It’s a state of existence intermediate between death and a new life. Being in this state a ghost hallucinates – a well prepared, conscious ghost will not get deceived by illusions and manage to free itself while for others hallucinations may appear as a trap that will lead them to an incarnation to a creature of a lower level.
The BAR-DO state discribes well the current situation of Gdansk Shipyard: suspension between death and another incarnation. Transitional state between huge, well prospering company in former times, a structuralised, partially liquidated one today and the Young City, a new district of Gdansk that should be born here soon. It also discribes a situation of Solidarity: between a real social movement before and its current – museal and iconic, but far from reality – form of existance.

The projection screened in the reservoirs will present amorphous ghosts haunting a primary ocean. Ghosts looking for their future incarnation will appear in an abstract, not defined form. Water will symbolize a primar substance, creation, transgression, katharsis.
The video referes to the current situation of the Shipyard, its suspension between realities, history and an uncertain future.

Natalia Osuch
Author of visualizations to theatrical spectacles. She is a photographer, graphic designer, illustrator and video maker. Also a joga instructor. Graduate from Institut d’Arts Visuels in Orlean and a school of Tibetan paiting in Thanka (Nepal). In her video works she focuses on the liquid states of aggregation, exploring phenomenons hidden under the water.

Dominik Rudasz
Graduate in philosophy and art’s history, currently during his PhD in cultural studies. He explores – theoretically and practically – subvertising, contrculture activism and socially engaged art. He often uses technics of recycling and uprecycling, both in the context of ecology and socially engaged actions. In the past a co-funder and participant of the shipyard-based OBIN.ORG free media workshop. Currently a resident of a DOM (Lower Open City) project in Gdansk.