ORIGINS
www.theorigins.site
commissioned by gallery lokal_30 in Warsaw, 2020



The exhibition addresses the history of Polish Constructivism, including the forgotten oeuvre of Henryk Wiciński and his theatrical projects that never came about. The starting point is the visionary design of a Constructivist stage, but also the costumes that reduce abstraction to “sensual structures of the sight”, designed for the spectacle Triangle and Circle at the experimental Cricot Theatre. For the avant-garde revolutionary, the stage design was meant to work like an abstract painting – and organic machine built with simple geometric shapes and abstracted patches of light. The actor formed part of that machinery, a marionette whose body collapsed in aggressive matter, leading the viewer’s gaze to the interior. What Wiciński sought was the liberation of emotions, psychosomatic feeling and looped sense of subjectivity. The presented collages are based on scans of faces of invited project participants – their skin of various shades and pigmentation, which became the material of an abstract composition, not only a historical Frankenstein, but also a collective body. In other words, it is a body whose Constructivist form allows it to function like a single skin and become a medium of social polyphony, while preserving at the same time the individuality of the bodies that build it. A chosen abstraction can be superimposed on the face in the form of a digital mask, which makes it impossible to recognise ethnicity, and therefore allows for manipulating the algorithm. The body superimposed on another body thus becomes a subversive gap in the virtual system to which we are all condemned. To a greater extent today than it is usually the case.

Curator: Anna Batko

If you want to blur your ethnicity and the cheat the computer algorithm reproducing prejudices, put the mask on. Open this ︎link on a mobile device to see the effect.

 

More at the NEWSWEEK:
https://www.newsweek.pl/kultura/recenzja-justyna-gorowska-origins-lokal_30-wwwtheoriginssite/1cqrplq

More at the culture.pl:
https://culture.pl/pl/artykul/radykalna-awangarda-z-instagrama-origins-justyny-gorowskiej

Nymph Tears
commissioned by Nationl Gallery Zachęta in Warsaw and PuntWG in Amsterdam, 2021

Water is the substance around which all life goes on on earth, in the era of late capitalism, contaminated with microplastic fibers. Written in human rights as an inalienable right, it has become a bottled product, privatized and monopolized by corporations. During the performance at Noc Kupały @WetMewild, she emerged from the moist vapors of the Slavic myth, becoming a contaminated body of water.

Part of the project is the designed by WetMeWild AR “Nymph Tears” application avaiable under the link: shorturl.at/izYZ9

The performance was realized during the "Wave of Sound" organized by the Wolskie Centrum Kultury on June 21, 2021. Costume @MartynaKołtun, camera @AkeZorn, choreographic support @KrzysztofJerzak.

Hydrosex manifesto
perform in Performance Space NYC  in New York , 2023

Inspired by the ecosexual weddings by Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, cyber_nymphos art research duo, Justyna Górowska and Ewelina Jarosz, married the brine shrimp on the 14th of September, 2021. The ceremony “Cyber Wedding to the Brine Shrimp” became a part of their film for Hydrocene. In 2023, during the conference “Deep Sea Babies. Navigating Between Utopias and Dystopias for the Blue Planet” in Poland, they connected their Californian friends and collaborators’ ideas on environmental art with theories and practices on environmental humanities developed by The Posthumanities Hub, an extra multi-university platform directed by Cecilia Åsberg at Linköping University in Sweden. As a result, they launched a hydrosexual movement in art, accompanied by a manifesto!

Two years after the wedding, the cyber_nymphos returned to Annie, Beth, and their friends to participate in their extravagant symposium, "Exploring the Earth as Lover: Ecosex and the City." They aim to provide you with an immersive experience of the digital perceptions of the Baltic Sea region, which they bring to the event in a transcultural queer_feminist_eco-tech fantasy! Through their bodies of water, they  channel a hydrosex manifesto into a dream of a low-trophic AR digital imaginary.

Full text of Hydrosex Manifesto available here: https://bluehumanitiesarchive.com/?s=hydrosexual

Part of the project is the designed by WetMeWild AR “Hydrosex manifesto” application avaiable under the link: http://bitly.pl/l1wna.

Cyber wedding to the brine shrimp in cooperation with Ewelina Jarosz, Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens commissioned by Polish Cultural Institute New York, 2021


Inspired by the ecosexual weddings by Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, cyber-nympho artist-brides, Ewelina Jarosz and Justyna Górowska married the brine shrimp on the 14th of September 2021. The interspecies ceremony can be witnessed by the public in the multispecies documentary video “Cyber wedding to the brine shrimp”, enhanced with augmented reality technology. The vows to the brine shrimp of the Great Salt Lake were made on the Rozel Point peninsula near the “Spiral Jetty” (1970), a land artwork by Robert Smithson. The digital ecosexual ceremony was the first more-than-human wedding event in the world using Augmented Reality to create the brine shrimp brides/grooms out of digital air. Every person using an Android smartphone was able to enjoy being in digital nature and explore the posthuman community in augmented reality thanks to Artemia App. This special art project is our response to the shrinking Great Salt Lake, which dropped this year to its lowest levels in recorded history. The catastrophic condition of Utah’s so-called natural wonder is attributed to the ongoing extreme drought and the reduced snowpack, a part of global climate change processes. The brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) is one of the oldest and most precious inhabitants of The Great Salt Lake. These tiny crustaceans, with precarious bodies and extra strong eggs, are a pillar of the local ecosystem and a crucial link in a food chain that feeds fish and millions of migratory birds. You may also know them as “sea monkeys,” a magic instant life product that has been sold mostly to children in America since 1957.
“Ecosexuals declare: Save the brine shrimp! Free the sea monkeys! We fell in love with brine shrimp because they are a fascinating element of the depleting biodiversity of The Great Salt Lake, although due to their survival capabilities they will most likely outlive humans. Take a peek into the life of these beautiful creatures and you will fall in love with them and want to marry them too!”

Conceptual director: Ewelina Jarosz Artistic director and AR specialist Justyna Górowska Director of the performance: Joy Brooke Fairfield Ecosexual performance consultants: Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens Cinematographer: James McAllister Sound recording: Chris Lippard.


To download the ARTEMIA app, please click this LINK  and direct your phone camera on the spiral above

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Brzeginki/Water nymphs
The Arsenal Municipal Gallery in Poznań, 2020

The protagonists of the exhibition at the Arsenal Municipal Gallery in Poznań are the eponymous Slavic goddesses. The exhibition, reconstructing their "natural environment," is a free reinterpretation of the myth surrounding water nymphs. The project drew its direct inspiration from the gallery's stone floor, which conceals fossils of corals, ammonites, and shells, as well as the face urns from the Archaeological Museum situated adjacent to the gallery.

The exhibition showcases 3D printed urns. These were crafted based on 360-degree photographs of museum objects. Additionally, it features a 3D reconstruction of the now-extinct Ice Age relic, the freshwater prawn (Branchinecta paludosa). In this manner, the pre-Christian history of Poland's prehistory is invoked tangibly.

A significant component of the exhibition is the AR application developed on the Unity platform, using the Vuforia plug-in. This app, compatible with both iPhone and Android devices, enables visitors to scan markers situated on the exhibition's pedestals. Upon scanning these targets, animated 3D scans of the titular water nymphs and the reconstruction of the extinct freshwater shrimp are displayed on the smartphone screen.

Want to try out the water nymph AR mask? Click here.


The opening of the exhibition was accompanied by a musical performance during which the water nymph WetMeWild appeared.

In cooperation with: Marta Navrot, Curator: Ania Batko, Photography: Tomasz Koszewnik, Paweł Wyląg.