Dobrosława Król NEOWARSAW, 2021
animation, 3D print printed by Łukasz Kosela
For viewers 18 years of age or older
Dobrosława Król’s installation NeoWarsaw explores the subjective perception of urban space. The artist presents a personal way of experiencing urban fabric, of discovering and interpreting the content dormant within its layers. Based on the actual and existing city, the Warsaw mock-up has been synthesised and modelled in 3D, the resulting space travelled by an avatar – the artist’s alter ego. Virtual realisation is accompanied by a 3D-printed model of Warsaw.
Król was inspired by the manga Akira (by Katsuhiro Ōtomo) and the anime film based on the same, the story of Tokyo destroyed during World War III and rebuilt as Neo Tokyo. Ultimately, the utopian vision fails, deposits of old traumas becoming a foundation for new ones accumulating.
The literary vision of rebuilding the metropolis becomes a pretext for the author’s deliberations focusing on Warsaw as a city formed of strata upon strata of traumas, demolished multiple times and subjected to radical changes to organised space; concealing corpses and testimonies to historical turbulence – and continually affecting residents and visitors alike. The artist embarks upon another task of “rebuilding” Warsaw, synthesising it and conferring upon it the nature of space disquietingly eclectic, wherein prepared components of a real city coexist with its radically processed and distorted virtual images.
In her actions, Król draws on theoretical ponderings of Warsaw’s historical and social space, interpreted in terms of a city “post-traumatic” (the term coined by Andrzej Leder) or “non-existent” (see B. Engelking, J. Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: a Guide to a Non-existent City, 2001).
