Karolina Breguła: Square

Monuments and public space reflect the collective memory of the community. When a sculpture hidden in the bushes that grow in a square begins to make its presence felt, the town dwellers face a confrontation with the past. Individual experiences may vary, yet the fear of the repressed turns out to be common.

Square by Karolina Breguła is a feature-length film story. At the exhibition at Królikarnia, the work adopts the form of nine synchronised video projections that form a non-linear composition.

Square is story about a small town community. Unexpectedly, a mysterious object hidden in the bushes that grow in a square begins to communicate with the passers-by. Humming silently at first, it then begins to sing louder and louder. The sound is said to come from an old sculpture. It might indeed stand there, all forgotten, as a remnant of the bygone order. Initially, its voice is a source of pleasure, but after a while it begins to get on the town dwellers’ nerves. The lyrics of the song gradually become clearer: “I’d like to ask you a question.” Questions, as we all know, may be uncomfortable. The community’s opposition gradually transmogrifies into organised aggression.

The project was mostly shot in Taiwan, the actors speak Mandarin and Taiwanese. Yet, Square is not a portrait of the life lived by the people of the Taiwanese city of Tainan, but a universal philosophical parable created by Breguła and devoted to community and fear of disclosing its painful and troublesome secrets.

The project may function as a feature-length theatrical production, yet at the exhibition at the Museum of Sculpture it adopts the form of a temporally synchronised spatial installation. Presented on nine separate screens, the scenes are to be viewed in a chronological order, although at times all the episodes become harmonised both at the formal and narrative level. As for the soundtrack, whose particularly interesting feature is music by the Japanese singer and composer Manami Kakudo, the moments of synchronisation bring to life a spatial choral piece audible simultaneously in all five gallery halls.

The poster was created by Jhen-fa Yan, the famous 65 year old Taiwanese master of painted film posters.

Square trailer

The film was produced by Fotoaura Institute of Photography, Tainan, Taiwan.
The main partner of the project is the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
The project was created within a year-long scholarship of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

Museum chief curator: Agnieszka Tarasiuk

Karolina Breguła (b. 1979) is a Polish contemporary artist working at the crossroads of art and film, active in the fields of installation, happening, video and photography.

Breguła first gained broad visibility with a photographic series displayed on hoardings Let Them See Us (2003). After that socially engaged project, the artist concentrated on video works (awarded in the Deutsche Bank Views 2013, and 19th Sesc Videobrasil 2015). Her works from the recent years can be situated within the “cine-art” tendency, including: Fire-Followers (2013), The Offence (2013)—addressing the question of control in art; Office for Monument Construction (2016)—devoted to a confrontation with losing one’s home and attempts to redefine one’s identity in a new place; The Tower (2016)—addressing the Modernist legacy in Europe.

Her works have been shown at exhibitions at: National Museum in Warsaw, U-jazdowski Castle in Warsaw; Kalmar Art Museum, Sweden; Łaźnia Centre for Contemporary Art, Gdańsk; DB Kunsthalle, Berlin; Jewish Museum, New York; Alternative Space Loop, Seoul; Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, a.o., and at screenings and festivals, such as Gdynia Film Festival; FILMPOLSKA Film Festival, Berlin; Kyiv International Short Film Festival 2016; Artists’ Film Biennial, ICA, London. The artist represented Romania at the 55th Venice Biennale.