Dorian Batycka (Canada/Poland)
Dorian Batycka
(b. 1985, Hamilton) is an art critic, curator, performer and frequent contributor to numerous publications including Hyperallergic, Selections, Frieze Blog and Nero. His interests are investigating intersectional issues stemming from relational aesthetics, social movements and geopolitics. As a curator, he has been involved in numerous international exhibitions and projects at venues such as: the NSK Pavilion at 57th Venice Biennale, Kim? Center for Contemporary Art, Riga; Royal College of Art, London; Bait Muzna for Art Film, Muscat; and the Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale.
During his residency at U–jazdowski he will be working on a new project Encounters In-Situ. This project will take as a starting point live bodies, physical interaction, person to person mediation and transcendence to the art work as a physical object. The work involves a principal performer immersed in the Gotong Royong exhibition space for the entire duration of the show. The performer will engage in laying bare the mechanics of collective creative work in the form of live writing of critical texts and essays projected onto a wall, live research and interviews, audio and sound recording (songs and interviews), dance and movement studies, docenting, and creating horizontality between other works and micro-organisms within the exhibition, the public and selected invited guests.
Batycka’s second project, which was prepared for Gotong Royong exhibition together with Scott Horlacher, is Kineticoin. Creating a new registered crypto-currency without a national affiliation, bypassing banking systems and convertible to bitcoin, the best known internet currency operating since 2008–2009, is a way to insert something of incalculable value—participation in culture—into circulation. Time will become the denomination of Kineticoin, the role gold plays for monetary currencies. Engaging in matters of immeasurable value and presence (bodily movement) in art space will generate income. Every visitor to the exhibition will be able to use the pilot version of this programme, register a digital wallet and take part in creating the installation; every time the motion sensors detect him or her, Internet coins of real value will appear in their wallet as evidence of their work.
Dorian Batycka and his collaborators are preparing a workshop for children in the family refugee centre in the Targówek district of Warsaw.
