Karolina Breguła
Leaving
Formally alluding to the Lumière brothers’ film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895), Breguła’s Leaving is dedicated to the employees of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art. The “remake” was shot at the northern, official entrance to the building. The footage shows the following people leaving one after another: the head of the trade union, staff members of the documentation, production, accounting and promotion departments, curators, coordinators, assistants and cleaners. The director is the last to leave the castle, closing the door behind him. Leaving is a commentary on the conflict between the then director and the staff of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, as a result of which many employees lost their jobs or resigned. The film is entirely staged, recording a special type of performance and standing out as one of few works that raise and problematise the issue of work in a cultural institution, and of “art workers” in general.
Karolina Breguła
(b. 1979) a multimedia artist, filmmaker, and academic. She holds an MA in Photography from the Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź, where in 2016 she earned her PhD at the Department of Cinematography and Television Production. She currently runs the Social Film Workshop at the Faculty of Media Art at the Academy of Art in Szczecin, where she is an assistant professor