Iza Szostak

I applied for the residency out of a need to look at myself from a distance. I dream of working towards change. My daily childcare responsibilities bring a routine, a pyramid of obligations built on a sense of responsibility for the health and safety of my little ones. I wonder how this can be balanced – being there for my children, but also for myself. I decided that this kind of programme would give me time to reinvent what I stand for and what interests me at this stage of my life and how it relates to the caregiving phase of my life. It’s not about the classic fight for myself, because I have no problem delegating childcare to other people. Instead, I’m trying to connect with other adults. I want to distance myself and discover where and how I can continue to fulfil my potential. I have considered using this time to work out the concept for my new choreographic performance, which is planned for late 2025 in Prague, or just to give myself time to map out my thoughts.

I am a choreographer, dancer and performer. In my artistic work I apply the principles of new materialism, which allows me to perceive matter as an active and causal force and to structure my choreographic works on a created system of communication between body and object. I use processed images from visual arts and film, anthropological research, my private video archive and my own biography as building blocks. In my performances I explore hybrid forms: the body appears as a costume and medium—a carrier of emotional states. For me, choreography is an instrument to create a new order. I graduated from the Ballet School in Warsaw and the Codarts-Rotterdam Dance Academy in the Netherlands. I studied at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology in Warsaw. I also completed an internship with the Belgian company Troubleyn/Jan Fabre. I am a scholarship holder of the Polish Ministry of Culture, the Dutch Corrie Hartong Fonds, the international project for young choreographers SPAZIO, the Alternative Dance Academy Programme, the Grażyna Kulczyk 2021 Creative Scholarship and the Visegrad Fund. I am the author of many performances including RE//MIX-Merce Cunningham, Body. Child. Object, Europe. Investigation, Coparic Ballet, National Affairs, PRIV, le journal secret, skaj is the limit. I live in Warsaw. For many years I have worked closely with the audiovisual artist Kuba Słomkowski, my partner. I co-founded the Warsaw choreographic collective Centrum w Ruchu. I am mum to Rozalia and Ignacy.

Iza’s residency is summarised in a journal in the form of a short zine. Each Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) residency has a unique dimension, and the participants’ accounts of their experiences reflect this diversity. 

I applied for the residency for several reasons. Firstly, I was curious to see if I could step back and observe myself from a distance by mirroring other people, talking to them, sharing thoughts, doing exercises and meeting them. Recently a lot of my time has been spent with children, so I was keen to meet adults I did not know. I wanted to meet people involved in an artistic or research process who were either interested in it or tired of it and, like me, wondering: what’s next?

I wanted to talk things through or decompress under someone’s guidance and identify my priorities and goals.

I also wanted to deal with the emotional baggage that had been weighing me down all year because of my family situation and my work on change.

I wanted to start conceptual work on a performance.

Have I been able to do all this? I do not think so, not yet at least.

I am constantly thinking about how I can continue using my potential without only being involved in artistic productions.

I am also analysing how I can switch off the feeling that I have to or should do something because I am responsible, because I have committed myself to a project and so on.

Or where do I get my energy from when I give so much of it to my children?

Something is changing in me and I am not sure where it is going.

But…

Right now I have high hopes for the social media management course that starts in a few days.

I feel that exploring such tools will lead me to a different way of thinking about myself in non-artistic work, focused on message and reception. Either it is simple and it works, or it makes no sense—there is nothing in between.

This summer I started managing the rental of a tourist cottage on a piece of land where I spend holidays with my family. I also created channels to communicate with potential guests of the cottage on Instagram and Facebook, so I have material to work with.

What will come next?

I do not know yet.