Monika Masłoń

Monika’s work is manifested mainly through realisations based on audiovisual material. Currently pursuing her PhD studies at Leon Schiller Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Łódź (at the Faculty of Direction of Photography and TV Production), she is also a member of videopunkt group. Her works have been displayed in festivals such as danubeVIDEOARTfestival 2013 (Austria), Łódź of Four Cultures 2012-GENERATIONS, Warsaw Festival of Art Photography (2011, 2009), Focus Łódź Biennale 2010, as well as exhibitions in the Museum of Arts in Łódź, National Gallery of Arts in Warsaw, Manhattan Gallery in Łódź, EL Gallery in Elbląg.

For her residency project, Monika developed her series Comfort of Long-Distance Perceiving:

“Places in public space of the town, where we are able to look up to the horizon line are exceptional in a landscape. In these places we experience special kind of pleasure named a comfort of long-distance perceiving.” – Janusz Skalski

Janusz Skalski, the Polish landscape theorist, speaks of the pleasure of the distant view. My distant view is the one of the Vistula River in Warsaw, which I cross daily. I can then look at the distant space. Such an exceptional situation does not happen often in large cities, where we live in the midst of dense and high buildings. For me, the sea and space have always been associated with holidays, when I am taken out of the built-up landscape.

Being in Singapore for this six-week residency, where the city-state is surrounded by water, has heightened my awareness for the distant view. My project is based on the uniqueness of the marine landscape, which gives us the sense of the immensity of space in front of us.

In this series, all the videos presented are strung together in a common theme. The people in the frames are different, but are connected by the same activity – long-distance perceiving. The horizon is always at the same level of the frames and eye level of the viewer. The videos can almost be perceived as still images, where only small movements distinguish one from another. In this way the viewer achieves the impression of infinity of time and space in the same image.