Summertale

Date: 2008
Length: 19:59 min.
Format:  16:9
Specification: Colour, Sound

The idyll is too perfect – a summer garden and a country house occupied by female dwarves with blond braids, who wear traditional costumes. They apply themselves to house- and garden work. One night, three huge mushrooms spring up and a man in red rococo-like clothes climbs out from one of them. From the others emerge a red-haired beauty in heels and a creature in overalls whose gender remains undefined. The guests are treated well and the sexless creature is given some girl’s clothes to wear. But the hospitality soon turns into displeasure when the dwarves hear the man’s singing and see his untidy room. They poison him, but the girl brings him back to life. The red-haired beauty is also observed with suspicion, and when one of the dwarves discovers splashes of urine and shaving equipment on the floor of the bathroom, they are not so sure anymore of her femininity: what woman doesn’t sit down to pee? She and the man are then captured and brutally slaughtered. Order is restored, but the girl is inconsolable. Standing on the balcony, she throws seeds on the ground, and new mushrooms spring up, while the dwarves disappear.  “Summertale” is the last part of Kozyra’s series “In Art Dreams come true”, in which some characters appear repeatedly in various genres. Fairytales, costumes and sex changes, with their inherent questions of identity and stereotyping are typical of Kozyra’s works, even if not all of them end up in tragedy.

EW

Interview:

► 1. Your video has been chosen among over 1700 festival entries to participate in Videonale 13. How central is the video medium to your overall artistic production? Is it complimentary to other media you use or do you work exclusively with video?

For me video is a tool not a medium.

► 2. Is there a particular theme, concept or problem your art addresses the most?

The most general for me and my works is my personal involvement.

► 3. What artists do you relate to or find significant for your own art-making?

Depends....in my last project - opera singers.

► 4. Do you think the video medium can address social or political issues better than other art media?

This depends on the artist not on the medium or a tool.

► 5. Art can be seen as a mirror that registers and reflects life or as a tool that transforms it. Which of the two positions is close to your own art-making philosophy?

I don't fit any of those formats as I always try not to make it so easy.

► 6. How do you understand success in an art-making career?

To manage to create and to function on my own rule

► 7. What is the most difficult and the most rewarding thing about making art / being an artist?

Making art itself

► 8. What are your upcoming projects?

I'm working on a feature movie about myself. The title of my last big solo exhibition at Zacheta gallery in Warsaw was Casting . I was looking for myself among the public.

► 9. What do you do when you don't make art?

I'm watching movies and going to the swimming pool.