Dorota Walentynowicz

Dorota Walentynowicz / Gerard Lebik
site-specific installations, 2014

During two evenings of NARRACJE, the space of a former shop in 8 Do Studzienki Street will witness a presentation of two installations, which – each of them in a different way – show the feedback between the sphere of sound and the sphere of image.
The archetype of the sage is represented in this project through a technological aspect. A sage is a contemporary type of artist who constructs his own working tools, does not rely on a given (existing) technology but creates his or her own apparatus of artistic expression. The artists who participate in the exhibition combine in an unconventional way various audiovisual media: Dorota Walentynowicz uses a simple optical device, camera obscura, coupled with a moving mirror, while Gerard Lebik taps into magnetic technology (VHS). Both works were created on the basis of analogue processes: electric voltages and the physical movement of sound and light waves.
In turn, ghost is an invisible thread of feedback which cuts across specific elements involved in the production of projects – an invisible electromagnetic wave, which materialises at the subsequent stages of installation.
The location of the works is not a matter of coincidence. The place – a burgher house which is set to be demolished very soon – will dematerialise to yield space to a new, broad avenue. That the action takes place here is to highlight the fact that both the artists and the creators of this year’s Narrations are not indifferent to the fate of such beautiful architecture and are struck by the lack of reflection betrayed by such municipal activities.
Let’s meet in this place for the last time and enjoy the spirit of the district which is disappearing in front of our very eyes.

Dorota Walentynowicz: Trembling
site-specific installation, 2014

The installation Trembling refers to the concept of the sinusoidal camera – it is a metaphor taken from a lecture by the German media theorist Friedrich Kittler*. In her installation, Walentynowicz makes this concept materialise in the form of a sound installation integrated with a pinhole camera.
The membrane of a speaker is turned to the inside of a pinhole camera. An amplified, low tone sound wave is delivered to the speaker; the negative is located on the extension of the membrane, which vibrates during exposure. Thus, the negative acquires a material volume. The frequency of sound (below the threshold of audibility, ca 12 Hz) is directly correlated with the frequency of the shutter installed inside the camera.
This installation refers also to Richard Feynman’s theory concerning the temporal-spatial continuum, i.e. the notion of time as the fourth dimension of space, which can also be traversed in two directions. During long exposure, light paints the space on a vibrating negative – what emerges is “architecture as frozen music” (quote by J. W. Goethe).

* “/Und der Sinus wird weiterschwingen / Über Musik und Mathematik“ Kunsthochschule für Medien, Cologne 2011

Dorota Walentynowicz (b. 1977), lives and works in Gdańsk, Poznań.
In her artistic practice she deals with photography, which she combines with other media: sound, performance, video, installation. Involved in constructing the parameters of reflection on photography, problematising this medium in the context of relations between the subject and the object. Interested in the processes of recording / multiplying the image and their impact on the ways of seeing (industrialisation and mechanisation of perception). The characteristic feature of Walentynowicz’s work is the constant process of dialectical feedback between theory and practice.
Dorota Walentynowicz graduated from the University of Gdańsk (2001), University of Arts in Poznań (2005), and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague (2007). Awarded the Scholarship of Kunsthalle Krems (2013), Scholarship of the Museums Quartier in Veinna (2010), Scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland (2014 and 2010), Huygens Scholarship Netherlands (2006).
Dorota Walentynowicz’s installations and photographs have been presented at, among others, WRO Biennale in Wrocław, Festival Transmediale in Berlin, V2_Institute in Rotterdam, Kunstlerhaus in Vienna, Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, Centre for Contemporary Art Łaźnia (Gdańsk), Museum of Photography (Amsterdam), Arsenał Municipal Gallery (Poznań), Stroom Foundation (The Hague), Bunkier Sztuki Gallery (Cracow), Gdańsk City Gallery (Gdańsk), State Art Gallery (Sopot), Camp Gallery (Athens), Lisa Ruyter Gallery (Vienna), Kunstverein (Salzburg).