Have you ever been to a place that you never left... Dialogue with L. Performance, The Nunnery 2009
The Project Dialogue with L.B.A. consists of three dialogues between the artist Agnieszka Kolek and three women over a period of 18 months. The participating women have all worked with the artist previously on a number of drawings with different results.
The three dialogues explore the nature of human relationships in the artist's studio and beyond. Each one was started with an open-ended idea of what would be the nature of the exchange. This approach has resulted in three different themes that over a period of time have begun to connect.
Dialogue with L. focuses on the "Imaginary City" where for the artist it is Paris - and for L. it is Incheon, South Korea. The themes and ideas that occurred in the dialogue: the phantasy of an imaginary place, the subconscious mechanism of dealing with traumatic experiences, the investigation of its components, the trust and the boundaries between the artist and L.
Dialogue with B. "..." focuses on the process of exchange between two women. It touches the dream of being the other, how the exchange between supposedly different individuals works. It leaves it open to question how far the other can lead someone else's life.
2min 11sec, audio recording
The last one, Dialogue with A. attempts to look closely at "Love". It questions our hidden phantasy of perfect love, the intrictae nature of attraction, the period of mourning, the process of breaking through. It asks whether we have any power over it at all. This dialogue more than the others questions the role of an artist, the role of the other in an individual's life. How close can you get? How much can you understand and should you continue to ask to understand?
15min 23 sec, audio recording
The last part forms an appendix and shows the artist tracing her own life story from the point at which things could have been drastically altered. The autobiographical project How to become an artist touches on personal narratives that are passed on, told, retold, worked on and slowly become a literary form in their own right. They help to organize the world, to explain and normalize elements that are painful and hard to bear. How much is our world view shaped by these early narratives? Can we trust them? Are we able to see beyond them?
