Oxford Brookes University (UK)
ART & SCIENCE Vs. CONFLICT IN THE GLOBAL PRESENT
11.02.2016
REGISTER BEFORE
07 / 02 / 2016
IAN WOJTOWICZ Independent Artist
Ian Wojtowicz is an artist and researcher working in new media. His projects have exhibited internationally and have been nominated for Genie, Emmy and Webby Awards. He graduated from MIT in 2011 with a Masters in Art, Culture and Technology where he received an MIT Fellowship Award. His work has been twice featured in Wired Magazine, he holds a patent in mobile software, and he was the Founding Editor of one of the first cultural magazines published online. Ian has taught at Emily Carr University and has presented work at ISEA, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, University of Pittsburgh, and The New School, California College of the Arts, MIT and Harvard.
with the goal of eventually restructuring the narratives into a single cohesive Ilowing thread. This restructuring process follows Pierre Janet's methodology for post traumatic therapy, although in this case applied to large communities instead of a single individual.
The aim of the project is to contribute to the ongoing post-conIlict healing between Polish and Jewish communities following WWII and Communist rule.
Photo: Project "B'Seder"
Título secundario
"B'Seder: Contested histories of Polish-Jewish relations"
It is a research-based art project that uses the ancient technique of the memory palace (using digital photographic montage techniques) to produce cultural transformations through storytelling performances. The story is about Poland and its Jewish pasts and futures. Historian Eva Hoffman wrote: "the history of the Polish-Jewish relationship is...the embattled terrain of several collective memories, each with its claim to moral legitimacy, and each charged with Iierce...vehement feelings." These contested histories are the source of much tension between Poles and Jews still to this day.
Unlike the German-Jewish relationship, where “the moral rights and wrongs were starkly clear,” Poland’s past (and thus present) is far more complex.
B'Seder is an artwork that mediates a social process for these two communities. The project uses photographic imagery to record and recall conIlicting historical narratives in the form of a visual mnemonic system,
