Agata Siniarska

Agata Siniarska describes herself as a ‘fictional character with many talents and criminal past’. In her choreographies, she concentrates on bodily movement as well as the thought behind it; her projects encompass both idea and motion.

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Agata Siniarska, photo: Pauline Payen, courtesy of the artist

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Siniarska consistently balances between reality and fiction. The artist claims that she is addicted to fictional stories, and thus, declares that she collaborated with Jean Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni. She is especially interested in modes of creating a so-called ‘liquid identity’.

Siniarska’s projects can be labelled as feminist and emancipatory. She is part of Female Trouble, the collective work ‘revolves around topics such as identity, bodily autonomy, feminism, pleasure, affirmations, and love’. VULVA CLUB is another feminist project that she collaborated on with Roni Katz and Xenia Taniko Dwertmann. The project was designed as a platform against patriarchal norms by Berlin-based artists.

The enigmatic, hard-to-decipher synopses of Siniarska’s projects (as well as her autobiographical notes) are quite similar to her choreographies, which are hard to pin down and categorise. Her projects leave space for the audience, so they can participate in the intellectual and emotional activity too. It can be said that they are a promise fulfilled in practice.

AGATA DANST TERESA is Siniarska’s solo project from 2010, in which she interpreted Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker’s choreography Rosas Danst Rosas. It was created in the 80s and was originally performed by 4 dancers. From April 2011 till March 2012 the artist ran a blog called The Weather Report. It included an announcement of her death. Project Death 24 Frames per Second or Do it to Me Like in a Real Movie was produced in 2013 by the Art Stations Foundation. The project was split into chapters, and featured slow-motion choreography, multi-level group dynamics, solo work, performances, and a lecture.

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‘YOU ARE SAFE’ , Agata Siniarska, photo: Maurycy Stankiewicz, courtesy of the artist

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In 2018 Siniarska presented the performance You Are Safe in Nowy Theatre, which was described by its creator (Mateusz Szymanówka was the performance’s dramaturgist) as a:

choreography of human body movement, bacteria, viruses, global warming, political imagination, and theories.

Siniarska performs alongside Katarzyna Wolińska and Maque Pereyra, building a sensual ‘body landscape’. You Are Safe is part of the POSZERZENIE POLA project curated by Joanna Leśnierowska. Her interest lay not in ecosystems as places but rather considering them as an integrated process, where the human species are the main characters. This project resulted in a book, In the Beginning Was a Copy, which was released in 2017. The book was described as a ‘user’s manual for bacteria and their superpowers’. Siniarska describes the human body as a dynamic being in which bacteria takes up residence. She says that:

purity is only a concept that has nothing in common with humanity. Being a human is to live with bacteria and microbes.

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‘The Soft Act of Killing’, Agata Siniarska, photo: courtesy of the artist

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Siniarska’s projects are rooted in ecology and eco-feminism. She has also researched links between the degradation of nature and the exploitation of women. In 2017 in Studio Theatre, the artist presented her solo work Ślepowidzenie (Blindsight, trans. MD), she added that:

air, temperature, bacteria, aliens, and other species’ were responsible for creating the performance.

Additionally, the concept of the world as a web of connections between people and other species is also present in The Soft Act of Killing a ‘minimalistic performance for 50,000 dead cells and 10 billion bacteria’. The concept presented in You are Safe was in line with the artist’s interests, as she previously researched connection between bodily experiences and art practice.

Siniarska also gives performative lectures, such as Every Woman Is a Drag Queen, which she presented in 2013 at the ATGENDER in Gothenburg in Sweden and SOME/HOW in Berlin in 2017.

Siniarska’s performance about Polish choreographer Pola Nireńska had its premiere in April 2019 in Hellerau, Dresden. The performance is a collaboration between Siniarska, Katarzyna Wolińska, and Karolina Grzywnowicz.

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