HYPERREALITY & ANTHROPOLOGY | Ethnographic Film Screening & Conversation with Katya Lachowicz

FRIDAY DECEMBER 7TH

5 - 7 PM /// DFSR

UCL ANTHROPOLOGY

Filmmaker and Anthropologist Katya Lachowicz will present her 2013 film ‘The Others,’ in addition to a new work in development filmed in London’s subterranean infrastructure. The screening will be followed by a conversation between Lachowicz and UCL MAL curator Wade Wallerstein.

The Others (2013) is a three-channel experimental documentary that explores the underlying emotions of modern Polish identity politics, caught up in the polarised narratives of nationalism and religion. Dipping in and out of bombastic political commemorations and the elusive remains of multiculturalism, it both observes the construct of a national Polish identity while simultaneously constructing itself.

In her fieldwork, Lachowicz studied various hierarchies and interdependancies existing within the act of narrating the Polish nation: language, Latinisation, colonial processes, literature, cultural translation, as well as physical geography. The Others attempts to both document and complicate these processes by taking footage shot in Poland and expanding or displacing it across three screens. Subtitles linger, screens switch on and off, and visuals change and move, as the three screen constructions works toward a self-reflexive documentary that critically positions itself in the interplay between the production and representation of fact and fiction.

Over the past year, Lachowicz has spent time in London’s underground spaces, working with construction crews and miners who are building the subterranean infrastructure that keeps London running smoothly. This new project in-progress, screened at UCL MAL for the first time, represents an equal collaboration with sound designer Clelia Patrono. Together, Lachowicz’ visuals and Patrono’s sound design seek to take the viewer beneath the surface of London’s least accessible yet most vital spaces.

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Katya Lachowicz is a visual artist / translator / filmmaker who works with themes such as the politics of representation and the interplay between fact and fiction. As well as being a current MSc Social and Cultural Anthropology candidate at UCL, Lachowicz received an MA in Media Arts from Academy of Visual Arts, HGB, Leipzig in 2013. In the past, Lachowicz’s work has been shown at Rewiry Centre for Culture, Lublin, Poland; SEIF 2015, Zagreb, Croatia; the Ethnographic Institute, Sofia, Bulgaria; Space Duplex, Geneva, Switzerland; and Universal Cube, Baumwollespinneri Gallery, Leipzig, Germany.