Magda Fabianczyk works \ contact \ bio

Not black and white book / Nie biało-czarna książka

Publication, series of workshops, 2013 - 2014

Developed in collaboration with artist Pola Nowak-Tyszowiecka and residents of the Wrońska Street estate and their neighbouring Chechnyan refugees in Lublin, Poland

Where I was not / Tam, gdzie mnie nie było

Installation, debates and workshops, 2013 - 2014

Developed through working with Roma community in Bobrek district of Bytom, Poland

Commissioned by Imago Mundi Foundation for  Kronika Centre for the Contemporary Art

‘We were trying to make sense...’

Publication and exhibition, 2012 and 2013

Developed in collaboration with artist Sophie Hoyle and exploring collaborative practices from the perspective of participating artists and non-artists.

Retell, rewrite, reclaim

Video installation with sound, 2013

Based on collaboration with young woman to explore the identity of her Cally, the residential area of Caledonian Road in London, UK.  Commissioned for Cally Calls  (AIR partnership project)

More than me. Less than you

Nomadic sound piece and video installation, 2012

Developed from conversations with artists encountered in Karachi at  VASL, Karachi, Pakistan

Ersatzmonument

Mixed media installation, 2012

Developed in collaboration with artists Sebastian Acker and Elisabeth Rosenthal at the  C. Rockefeller Centre for the Contemporary Art, Dresden, Germany.

Bubble

Video, 2012

Developed during International Artists Residency at VASL, Karachi, Pakistan

Walkway Press

Series of workshop and events accompanied by blog diary and video documentation, 2009-2012

Based on working with the residents of the Leopold Estate in East London, UK

Edible Interventions

Series of food-based performances, 2010-2012

London, Uk

Arrival / Departure / Return

Publication, 2011

Developed with Tilly Fowler (as Transition Collective) from interviews conducted with people living, working and passing through Folkestone, UK

Blocks

Customised playing cards set, 2011

Premise - There is no end to the story about the artists from America and India

Film, 2009-2010

Developed with Transition Collective as collaboration with Patachitra artists in West Bengal, India.

Transformation

Exhibition, 2010

Organised with Transition Collective and Patachitra Artists in Kolkata, India.

Critical Juncture

Exhibition, symposium and residency programme, 2014-2015

Organised with Neelima Jeychandran as part of Kochi - Muziris Biennale, Mattanchery, India

My practice oscillates between art and activism. I invite communities, groups and individuals to take part in collaborative processes, during which participants share and negotiate their personal views and make decisions collectively. Carefully constructed situations are then translated into videos, publications, performances or installations and shared with wider audiences. Such collaborative, dialogical and multilayered processes can lead towards imagining alternative (to those we perform everyday) ways of co-existing and realising individual potential. I am interested in creating real possibilities for transgression and social transcending through art, by challenging existing social hierarchies and creating the possibility of direct communication between those who would not otherwise meet. I was trained as a narrative mediator, graduated from Art and Politics at Goldsmiths University and Fine Art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. The methodology of narrative mediation, cognitive processes as well aspolitical and social theory shape my practice’s conceptual framework and inform direct engagements with participants.


Some of my projects result in long-term working relationships with the participants, such as with the Roma community in Poland, or London based activists, such as the Festival of Choice, the Women of the World festival, the Dziewuchy Dziewuchom group and others. Other projects, such as We Hybrids - devised in collaboration with Ioli Tzanetaki -  involve one-day performative workshops, preceded by extensive research in theory and group locale.


The main outcome of my work is always aimed at shifting existing social dynamics, by bringing attention to the way individual action affects the collective outcome. During Not Black and White Book, the initially hostile towards each other, Polish and Chechnyan communities explored their cultural differences and living conditions, which resulted in solidarity across the groups. The three-year-long project at culturally and socially diverse Leopold Estate in East London provoked numerous tenants- led initiatives, such as collective cooking, children’s theatre and a performance by the, visiting from India, Baul Fakiri musicians. Activities informed by the needs of the tenants brought the community closer together, despite initial fears and presumptions. In 2017 and 2018, I led two pedagogical processes at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, where students of art were paired with students of construction, exploring conditions around gender, class and ability through collaborative art-making processes.


I find that art has the potential to initiate processes through which we become aware of and accept alternative or conflicting narratives to those we had created ourselves. By becoming aware of one’s own perceptual limitations, we begin to open towards the narratives produced by others. As artists, we can assist in exercising people’s (and our own) ability to communicate with others occupying socially or ideologically unfamiliar environments. By bringing attention to what shapes the framework of the society and by working towards identifying individual agency within that process, we can stimulate change.  In that sense, I see my role as an artist as that of an ‘uninvited guest’, who consistently works against the status-quo, provoking debates and stimulating imagination. Conflicts that may arise from such process, should not be seen as a threat, but as a symptom of a healthy social and political order, where they can be managed via collective story building, rather than silencing consensus.

Transit 2009

Exhibition, 2009

Organised with Transit at Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Kolkata, India.

Polish-Swedish Construction Workers

site-specific mix media, 2008

Created in collaboration with artists Stanislaw Boniecki and Karl Larsson in the Skulptur Parken in Angelsberg, Sweden.

Five Nation Film at Alchemy Festival

Film screening and printed interviews, 2015

Developed in partnership with Southbank Centre in London, Drik (Bangladesh), Women and Media Collective (Sri Lanka), VASL Artists’ Collective (Pakistan) and Tentative Collective (Pakistan)

Different weathers of my body

Video installation, 2014

Developed through conversations and off-site trips with people suffering the effects of substance abuse. A Million Minutes commission in partnership with ISIS Project CRI community recovery service in London Islington. Presented at John Jones Project Space

Onipa Ye De / Human Being is Sweet

Residency at Eye Contemporary Art Ghana, exhibition at Alliance Française Kumasi and workshop at Nubuku Foundation in Accra, 2014

Works were developed in collaboration with local craftsmen and through meetings with Ghanaian artists in Kumasi and Accra.  

Write a Line

Collective song writing and singing, 2017

Developed in a collaboration with Rebecca Kenny and Margarita Rebolledo Hernandez

We Hybrids

From an individual to a collective, performative workshops, 2016 - ongoing

Collaboration with Ioli Tzanetaki

Knocks & Shocks

Teaching through collaboration, 2017

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Boring Machine

Teaching through mediation, 2018

Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

What is this space for?

Round table debate, 2018

Museum of Romani Culture in Brno

Democratic Soup

Edible Interventions, 2010- ongoing

with They Are Here and Antiuniversity Now

Homo Narrans

Mixed media installation exploring a process of mediation, 2016

Commissioned by Bunkier Sztuki for The Text And Its Performance exhibition

The Object of Desire

Currently happening Camden Alive commission in Somers Town in London. In collaboration with Benjamin Perrot and City Mined

Staying Afloat

Debate on a self-made raft, in collaboration with Meekshuma Nayeck

Gasworks/Arts Council England supported residency at pARTage , 2019

Polonez à la Romanes

Mediation between Polish classical music and Roma tradition

CSW Kronika, 2018

Rzeczy Niestworzone / Unbelievable Things

Gallery is a game

CSW Kronika, 2019

Monument to Democracy

Gasworks/Arts Council England supported residency at pARTage , 2019

Rzeczy Niestworzone / Unbelievable Things

Gallery is a game

CSW Kronika, 2019