Architecture is a woman. Under this slogan (abbreviated AJK), Mary Szydlowska, a Krakow-based choreographer and performer based in Brussels, is creating a project that explores the relationship between the body and buildings, everyday movement and the experience of the urban landscape by focusing on Krakow's 20th-century buildings designed by female architects.
Is it possible to enter into a dialogue with architecture and herstory through one's own body? - asks the project's creator. - What can the body borrow from the herstory of architecture for its own practice of daily movement?
The choreographer and performer deals with the relationship between the body and buildings on a daily basis
photo: Katarzyna Ładczuk
Herstory, which is a narrative that emphasizes and takes into account the role of women in history described from a feminist perspective, although as a concept it has existed for many years, in Poland it is only beginning to be recognized. However, there are a growing number of initiatives that care about the memory of women's achievements and accomplishments, including the Museum of HERstory of Art, which is being established in Cracow, or the projects BAL Architects and Architektoniczka, which are strictly related to architecture. What inspired Mary Szydlowska to take up this topic?
The idea for AJK came my way when I read about the duo of Irish architects Yvonne Farell and Shelley McNamara, who only in 2020 became the first female duo in history to receive the prestigious Pritzker Prize. In 2018, as directors of the Venice Architecture Biennale, they emphasized: ' We are interested in going beyond the visual aspect of architecture, giving meaning to its role played in the choreography of everyday life,' Szydlowska explains.
Inspired by this statement, the artist conducted a choreographic research in Krakow - in dialogue with architects and architects, as well as residents and residents of Krakow, she tried to get to know as many buildings designed by women as possible, experiencing the architecture of projects by Marta Ingarden, Krystyna Zgud-Strachocka, Danuta Mieszkowska, Krystyna Tolłoczko-Różyska, Nina Korecka and Maria Chronowska, among others.
Pekao bank building designed by Nina Korecka at 1 Kapelanka Street in Krakow, Poland.
© Mary Szydłowska
I am interested in how work that is somatic and focused on the embodied experience of the urban environment can transform the everyday relationship with urban space. I understand choreography here as a strategy to provoke an encounter between the herstorical contexts of the city and the feeling of the city. I am close to understanding and transforming space through the senses and by means of a receptive body that uses factual and fictional information to develop and express its own movement," explains the performer.
After preparing a map of the objects designed by the women, Szydlowska selected several of them and created, as she says, scorings - movement scores - for embodied action with the buildings and their surroundings. The culmination of this process was last weekend's sensory walk by the Pekao Bank building designed by Nina Korecka at 1 Kapelanka Street, where participants could take part in exercises for experiencing architecture.
The artist has planned a choreographic workshop Concrete, cracks, space for November 6 (the free workshop will take place from 11 am to 3 pm, registration is required at: maryszydlowska@gmail.com; it is advisable to take comfortable, athletic clothes), and on November 12 and 13 a presentation summarizing the entire project - MEETING WITH THE WOMAN/BUILDING, which will take place in the Malopolska Garden of Art at 5 pm.
The project is carried out within the framework of the Creative Scholarship of the City of Krakow 2021, with the support of the Juliusz Słowacki Theater in Krakow.
