Filmoteka Muzeum

In terms of their structure, Joanna Malinowska’s project In Search of The Miraculous, Continued... bears resemblance to Krzysztof Kieślowski’s movies. It comprises three films emanating a similar metaphysical-poetic spirit, although they rely on rational avant-garde methodologies. All of them pivot around the analysis of the same phenomenon in its different variations and contexts. They are devoted to two pianists: Glenn Gould and Piotr Anderszewski, and composer John Cage, for whom they appear as somewhat of a tribute.

In the work devoted to Piotr Anderszewski, Malinowska confronts the pop aesthetics with the Fluxus-flavoured interest in chance. The artist prepared somewhat of a trap for the star pianist. When Anderszewski was leaving a rehearsal at Carnegie Hall, he was jostled by a classic NYC lady in fur, who “accidentally” dropped oranges on the ground. Unaware of being filmed, Anderszewski helped her to collect them. The entire encounter was presented as somewhat of a paparazzi coverage.

Joanna Malinowska’a projects seem to act as a perverse attempt at relating to the traditions of the history of contemporary art and music, as well as to the romantic undertakings of the avant-garde creators, opposing the processes of modernisation. Revisiting the methodologies of surrealism, Fluxus and conceptual art of the 1960s, Malinowska retains them as agents of reality change or taking art above its defined field, but they also become a means to introduce the poetic aspect into the work, an attempt at subordinating it to reality, if only for a moment. The proposed uncanny juxtapositions, encounters and recontextualisations are meant to function as attempts at a poetic transfiguration of reality.

Quoted from: Joanna Malinowska In Search of the Miraculous, Continued..., exhibition materials, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw 2006.