Farma
2020-2024
FARMA is a post-human world where mankind is no more, but the lives of farm animals continue in a once-given rhythm. The cows continue to produce milk, fully dependent on the synthetic milkmaid tubes. The blind fish swim in circles against the perpetual, man made current. Wheat maintained its territory, with no one to rule over.
Are these gardens of Eden? Or the Apocalypse?
This project is a collaboration with Aga Beaupré. From 2020 to 2024, we worked together on creating a film and a series of images for a publication based on a fictonal text written by Aga Beaupré.
Humanity, seduced by the domesticated animals, has steadily managed to decrease the number of wildlife to only four percent of earth’s biomass. sixty-two percent are the species we prevent from becoming extinct, while making them incapable of living on their own.
The unlikely scenarios of the post-human ecosystems of farma, are an attempt to imagine the worldwide catastrophe, through the eyes of other species by limiting the narration to the remote and constrained perspective of the farm animals, we are exploring familiar notions, from a foreign point of view. The project consists of two closely intertwined parts: written publication with images ‘genesis/ apocalypse’ and a film installation ‘eden, eden, eden’.
FARMA Artwork Details
all photographs from the publication, 2024
24 x 36 cm
Edition of 50
Publication
Edition of 50
24 x 35 cm
2024
The text functions as a part of a double document – accompanied by a series of photographs, it becomes an inventory of the abandoned but prevailing habitat. The images which make up the other half of the publication, could be considered an alien perspective – the eye which sees them, does not raise organic tissue above the synthetic one. It does not choose living matter over the inanimate. It ceases to notice difference between living and the dead/ fiction and reality.
Its smooth and slippery
It smells of wet creatures. Imagine the surface I stand on.
Their whistles echoed across the fields.
Exhibition
Agritourism
curated by Natalia Grabowska at Gunia Nowik Gallery
Aga Beaupré, Ramona Güntert, Margaret Raspé, Scott Young, Ada Zielinska
The development of agriculture provided the surplus of food needed for humans to form and inhabit cities. Through the cultivation (exploitation) of and use (abuse) of natural resources, commodities were produced to sustain lives, needs and wants in large agglomerations. This process and cycle of growing and extracting from land in rural areas enabled the development of culture as it is commonly defined today–the human intellectual inventions, achievements and expressions in arts, humanities, music, literature, law and others. Intertwined from their very beginning, nature and culture order the world around us and choreograph our daily actions.
This exhibition brings together works that speak about our relationship with nature, culture and objects. Exploring the correlation between them and the human need to preserve, control, heal and destroy, the works in the show point towards different ways in which we order the environment around us–both natural and man-made–and highlight the fluidity of these terms. Through works in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, video, photography and sound installations by artists from across generations, the exhibition presents the complex mechanical, extractive, artificial, organic and tender ways in which people interact, connect and construct the environment.
Natalia Grabowska
FARMA Artwork Details
I deep sea, 2024, glossy c print mounted on aluminium honeycomb, 30 x 40 x 1.5 cm
Installation Farma, from liquid to solid and I deep sea, 2024, glossy c print mounted on aluminium honeycomb, 30 x 40 x 1.5 cm
Exhibition view Agritourism, 2024, Ada Zielinska and Margartet Raspé with C - cosmos, 2024 on the right
Installation Farma, 2024, glossy c print mounted on aluminium honeycomb, in front screens of eden eden eden, 30 x 40 x 1.5 cm
C - cosmos, 2024, exhibition view, Giclee Baryta mounted on aluminum honeycomb, 20 x 28cm
C - cosmos, 2024, Giclee Baryta mounted on aluminum honeycomb, 20 x 28cm with Margaret Raspé honey comb speakers in front
all exhibition views by Katarzyna Legendz at Gunia Nowik Gallery, Warsaw
Exhibtion text
Examining practices of farming domesticated species, Aga Beaupré and Ramona Güntert have collaborated on Farma–a project that manifests in a video work, a series of photographs, sculptures and a publication.
Beaupré has written a short story about the human apocalypse experienced by dairy cattle, on which the three-channel video work eden, eden, eden,2024, presented here, is based. After the demise of mankind, the animals continue to exist in a rhythm introduced to them by humans–cattle plugged into the milking machines, blind fish swimming in a small tank in circles against the perpetual current.
Güntert photographed farmed animals in the habitat into which they are forced by humans. The images of natural and man-made environments focus on their resemblances and similarities. The organic shapes of salt sculptures were made by cows, who are given salt licks to consume in order to maintain a normal appetite and body weight.”
Natalia Grabowska
July 2024
Hyperspace
2023
Seven is a layered poster, inviting others to contribute to the platform in their own space and time. Each stage is inspired by the alchemical process transforming ideas into material. Calcination - Dissolution - Separation - Conjunction - Fermentation - Distillation - Coagulation
Alchemy is a process that uses outside influence or energies such as light, heat, water or chemical reactions to transform a material. This could be from solid to liquid or the other way around. A way of connecting to the outside using natural sources. It is an invitation for you to participate in Hyperspace.
HYPERSPACE is curated by the collaborative curatorial platform Irruptive Chora in partnership with Shape Arts, Resonance FM and Eqivalentbehaviour. The artists and contributors include Tanya Moulson, Natalia Janula, Lea Collet, Sara Rodrigues, Ada Hao, Rachel McRae, Ramona Güntert, Maja A. Ngom, Pietro Bardini, Sotiris Gonis, Erik Lintunen, Ania Mokrzycka, and Agata Kik.
Addressing accessibility of and within arts, HYPERSPACE searches for new, more inclusive ways of connecting, making and sharing work in the post-pandemic reality. HYPERSPACE recognises the need for sustained support networks and facilitates a more active engagement for under-represented and disabled creatives and audiences. HYPERSPACE employs a hybrid approach and creates an accessible structure for ongoing interaction between artists and audiences, bridging their gap.
Emerging artists are supported through 11 peer group sessions led by creative practitioners and disability consultants to overcome issues of disconnectedness and uncertainty experienced since the pandemic, engage in collective research and make new works.
The collectively constructed new online platform is launched in its most basic shape, inviting the audiences to engage with creative processes from their very conception. Gradually accumulating content, the constantly changing virtual reality is being constructed and conceived by artist Erik Lintunen.
Irruptive Chora
Chapters
2020
Chapters is a collaborative curatorial program that aims to create connections between artists and external organisations. For each Chapter, two artists are invited to engage in a dialogue of their choice during the build-up of a show exploring different exhibition models. Chapters engage with both online and offline events and exhibitions.
Chapters is a collaborative curatorial program by Emma Bäcklund and Trine Stephensen that aims to create connections between artists and external organisations. For the first Chapter I was in dialogue with Sam Williams between September - November 2020. At the end we showcased our work at Sankt Studio in Berlin.
In collaboration with Artists & Allies Online Launch
7 pm (GMT)
28th November 2020
Physical installation was lived streamed on IGTV chapters from the Sankt Studio with Artists & Allies.
Image left: Ramona Güntert/Image right: Sam Williams
Rehearsing the Real
2019
Collaboration between Emma Bäcklund, Joshua Leon, Steff Jamieson, Ramona Güntert, Erola Arcalís.
2 x live collaborative essays developed and performed at Peckham 24. In the hexagonal temporal structure we set up a library with borrowed chairs. It was a place to show process, image making and how visitors become part of the performance.
Larry Achiampong, Hitesh Ambasna, Erola Arcalís, Emma Bäcklund, Thom Bridge, Ramona Güntert, Sarah Howe, Steff Jamieson, Joshua Leon, Sarah Pickering
Rehearsing the Real presents a collection of contemporary artworks that seek to unravel and rewind across media including photography, film, performance and text. These acts of unfolding will come in the form of undoing narratives, histories and visual languages. A central element of the exhibition is a live collaborative work that will manifest throughout the duration of the exhibition and will bring together artists Arcalís, Bäcklund, Güntert, Jamieson and Leon within one creative space.
curated by Tom Lovelace
Rehearsing the Real Artwork Details
Image 1 & 2: Installation view Peckham 24 with artwork by Emma Bäcklund, Joshua Leon, Steff Jamieson, Ramona Güntert, Erola Arcalís
small prints 4x5 positive and bigger prints, glued using poster paste which changed during the duration of the exhitbion