When The Night Comes

source: vimeo

We live in times when technology and culture interact with each other more than ever. Our contemporary, information-intensive environment shifts our perception of time and influences the way we navigate spaces, both physical and virtual. Often unnecessary noise takes away our focus and affects our ability to see. Consequently, as Robert Irwin once pointed out, we miss out “on this visual Disneyland happening all around” us, all the time.
And the Whole World Stops is a series of short films and a visual exploration of our daily environment that we often assume predictable and mundane. It is a glance into the landscapes that we consider familiar only because we cast a membrane of knowingness over them. But what happens when we slow down and take a look around us? You might be surprised…
Eventually, a Great Blue Heron has become a metaphor in my work for mindful stillness and a symbol for surviving, adapting and thriving in an environment that is undergoing a constant change.
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source: wioletakaminska

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, contemplation can be defined as “the action of thinking about a thing continuously; attentive consideration, study.”

I believe that reflection and contemplation have the power to help us gain better insights into our lives, and to reevaluate our past actions and decisions. Consequently, it can impact upon and benefit our future choices and hopefully help us regain balance in our lives.

In early January, 2014, I came across a study published by a group of Stanford psychologists reporting that when we experience awe, our perception of time is altered. This awe factor has the power to captivate our attention, which brings us into the present moment, influences our decision- making and makes life more fulfilling. According to the study, a feeling of awe is often induced by nature and music.

In AND THE WHOLE WORLD STOPS I create a space where motion and stillness reside together. Where image and sound take the viewer by surprise and instigate that much needed feeling of awe to give them an opportunity to indulge in a moment of contemplation and reflection. To help the viewer tune in and adjust their eye, each film contains a stable or relatively stationary subject that serves as a point of reference. This way the viewer will avoid disorientation and confusion that could be possibly caused by the multiplicity of unexpected visual stimuli.

WHEN THE NIGHT COMES is the second video landscape from the series And the Whole World Stops.
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source: wioletakaminska

In her process-based approach to image making, Wioleta Kaminska’s focus is on the visual exploration of our perception of time and space, the conflicting forces that shape land and humans and on how we find ourselves caught between nature and technology, contemplation and complexity. In her work, Wioleta utilizes a wide range of media, design methods and artistic approaches. Her interest and background in linguistics, design and interior architecture naturally influence her digital storytelling. From colliding worlds — simultaneously dirge and paean to open space and collapsing systems, to the ambiguity of perception of time and how it affects the way we view the landscapes that make up the world around us.

Her video installations have been shown at the California Academy of Sciences, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Fort Mason Center, International Contest of Contemporary Art in Lugano, Switzerland and the Fairmont San Francisco Hotel. Recently her video landscape FOG, from the series And the Whole World Stops, has been screened at Wro Media Art Biennale 2015 in Wroclaw, Poland. It has also been included in Editors’ Choice for Celeste Prize 2015, published in Photomediations Machine and Anti-Utopias. Currently Kaminska is an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts (film/video/new media).

Wioleta’s professional background also includes working as a design researcher on a project for a Fortune 100 client, graphic designing, teaching motion design classes to design and art students, strategy consulting, project management, writing a column for SF Nature Education Newsletter, teaching English as a Second Language, curricula design, and preparing students for Cambridge ESOL exams with British Council.