Częstochowa, March 13, 2019

 

Dr. Janusz Pacuda

Jan Długosz University

 

Letter of Reference

 

Perceived Reality Transposed

 

The interdisciplinary project of Jowita Sitek melds the experience of two separate disciplines: Art and Psychology. The point where the two domains join is the performative aspect of creating the sensation of a participant’s absolute presence in a current moment – being here and now. The intermedial artistic composition is a medium for realizing a goal in which the result is cognition, as well as the potential of internal change within the participant of the event. The objective of executing an act of performative activity was to design an autonomous closed space – an installation – to be a place for realizing the project Perceived Reality Transposed. The construction has a universal character enabling performances in the space of art galleries as well as other public places, depending on the needs defined by the creator.

 

The functional design of the space bears noting as it not only presents the exhibition, but also helps the viewer experience the performative act. The perception of the installation is that of a voyage of alienation. The participant is led to the spherical cabin in which the visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile spectacle takes place through the entrance zone – a narrow, murky passage curving around, leading to the interior. Invited by discrete sounds, the participant proceeds into the depths of the dark narrow passage. The passage’s width guarantees progress in solitude. Each forward step distances contact with the public place, its noises and light in which, just moments ago, the participant was. As the sensory stimuli disappear, the mind becomes calm causing a state of wanting – expectation and readiness for something new, some unknown condition. The concept of transition takes advantage of the road archetype – the unconscious paradigm – allowing those who search, to immerse themselves in a situation where sensory communication is limited. This is the situation of being ‘in-between’. Penetrating the passage, the participant undergoes a subtle modification of reality perception, a transition zone of exceptional value for realizing the project whose purpose is to allow the impressions of perception tied to Art, enabled opening the mind anew, an awakening if you will, through focusing on the passage of the present without commenting thoughts.

 

Designing the performative installation is a skill on ‘installing’ a future viewer in a personal state of existentialism of being alone with oneself. The central element of the installation is not large, earmarked for one person, a closed oval space of walls created by screens. Here, the participants, if they so decide, initiate the events and undergo the treatment of visual projections, as well as other stimuli for the other senses.

 

This spectacle is a type of open work in the form where the author included devices defining the organization of discursive and non-discursive factors contrasting subjects like space, light, visualizations, sounds, aromas, or effects provoking tactile sensations. For the perceiver undertaking the autonomous decision of directing attention to the device artifacts is not noticeable. Viewers personally ‘open’ the work immersing themselves in a relative game of stimuli, mentally participating inside the event. Perception is an act of temporal engagement of the preceptor – it’s an experience. The receiver does not notice the mechanism initiating the devices which induce a deliberate state of immersion. This state is the participant’s own reflection of engagement, not a message from the author.

 

Jowita Sitek’s project, Perceived Reality Transposed, is a singular artistic challenge in light of the author’s anticipations that the consequences of perceiving a work will be an advantageous effect of change in the psyche of the participant. The undertaking is also construed as scientific research which effect will be fully observable as the work continues for a longer period. The author has extensive experience in artistic creativity and possesses the knowledge that Art is a social act fulfilling itself during its perception and not necessarily only from the artist’s gesture.

 

Janusz Pacuda

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