Women Cinemakers meets
Anna Wańtuch Lives and works in Kraków, Poland
I regard myself mostly as a dance artist. In the same time I feel that I got huge need to go beyond borders of any artistic field. I like collaborating with artists from different disciplines and to use tools that I need for my expression, not limited by any dance steps or specific dance technique. Taking into account my previous works, we may consider MOT/HER KC as my film debut, but for me it is a continuation of my performative way of speaking just using video as a tool. I think it was not accidental cause that project consists main points of my interests. Those are: notion of body, act of questioning identity, interplay with presence ( meaning both: act of presentation of myself and aspects of time as being here and now actively for someone). Although MOT/HER KC is first project in which I „unmoved” myself by posing for the camera (which is also still), I regard it as a full of movement. That project enriched my exploration of different kinds of movement. It made it possible to experiment with other meanings of move: move of thoughts, feelings, move of fluids inside my body, transformation of my body, fluctuation of time and situations occurring around me. The constant change makes it impossible to catch who am I, what is now, where are my borders, where is my place, and how to define myself, my environment. I am trying different tools, different art disciplines, different conventions, point of views, different definitions and roles played in everyday life but there is still lack of answers. It can make me angry, sad, I can feel lost but it can also be source for laugh, auto irony, self distance. The world appears as full of scraps which are sometimes matching and joining into bigger things but sometimes are interesting in its messy mismatch. I am touched by concept of „closeness”. In my projects I try to check what does it mean to be close: close to ourself, to audience, to body, to skin, to other people. It makes relation with viewer more intimate and honest. Sometimes I use very private experiences but try to say it the most open way so people can relate it to their own thoughts and stories. I appreciate when project let the audience interact with the work so delicately I try to provoke them to take some actions or to create situation when they start to ask themselves some questions.
An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant womencinemaker@berlin.com Hello Anna and welcome to : before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to
our readers to visit we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural background direct the trajectory of your artistic research?