Artist Talk - Digitale Kunst: Dorota Walentynowicz Event

The secret lives of cameras

Dorota Walentynowicz in her talk presents her long-term practice of working with hand-made photographic cameras and explains the evolution of her thinking about the photographic apparatus. She explains her use of the primitive apparatus of camera obscura as a means of experimentation in challenging the technical advantages of the medium.
The talk revolves around the topics of the blind spots and the optical unconscious of the photographic seeing, but also raises the issues of the materiality of the photographic medium in the digital era. The modern theory of communication is coupled with investigations into the history of science and technology. Walentynowicz links her practice with the topic of performativity, which albeit not immediately evident, nevertheless constitutes an important context for reading her work, as it carries a reflection on the performative aspect of the contemporary social reality. This in turn raises the issue of control which is inherent in the imaging process, as well as that of the power relationships inscribed in the triad apparatus-object-subject. Finally she will explain how her reading of visual culture passes through the lens of feminism, in her attempts to deconstruct photography as a superficial manner of representation.

Dorota Walentynowicz is a graduate of the Photography Department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and of the Art-Science Interfaculty at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, Netherlands. Her installations and photographs have been exhibited internationally at venues such as Museum Folkwang in Essen, WRO Biennale in Wrocław, Transmediale Festival in Berlin, V2 Institute in Rotterdam, Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, Łaźnia Center for Contemporary Art in Gdańsk, State Art Gallery in Sopot, Museum of Photography in Amsterdam, Stroom Foundation in The Hague, Galerie Stadtpark in Krems, Kunstverein in Salzburg. Dorota Walentynowicz is a member of Vienna based artists’ collective and a curatorial collective Pisze / Mowi / Robi (Warsaw/ Berlin).

Dorota Walentynowicz’s artistic practice consist of transdisciplinary but coherent set of research, curatorial and production strategies. It is characterised by the continuous process of dialectic feedback between technology and nature, theory and practice, logic and intuitive cognition. Her point of departure remains the medium of photography, which she combines with installation, new-media and performance.