Filmoteka Muzeum

In Migration, Zbigniew Olkiewicz relies on the film stock to reinterpret the surrounding reality; the artist stages an experiment extended in time and space. The camera records the events at his flat (meetings with friends, conversations, innocent performative activities, a person playing the guitar or using a sewing machine) as well as selected situations from daily life unfolding in the surroundings (police traffic controls, impromptu conversation between neighbours, the play of lights in the flats of the neighbouring blocks).

The film’s narrative follows the principle of an ethnographic collage of intimate scenes in the artist’s private space and in the public sphere, constantly monitored by the devices of social control. It reveals the panoptical character of the city whose space becomes a territory of incessant disciplining and punishing. The dynamic editing of individual takesblurs the border between the hidden and the displayed. Olkiewicz’s voyeuristic practices relate both to the world around him and to the artist’s happy-go-lucky friends.

The manner of depicting urban space by the artist combines realism with fantasy. Shown in close-ups, the blurry light points that appear on blocks of flats bring to mine astral bodies suspended in space. The view from the window with an inscription There is nothing here anymore renders unreal the surrounding buildings that form a dystopian set design to the soundtrack of a song by Brygada Kryzys under the telling title Stop Dreaming.

(FS)

Year: 1982
Duration: 31'06
Language: Polish
Source:

© Zbigniew Olkiewicz

Acquisition: deposit
Ownership form: deposit