Katsiaryna Banar

A balcony, unlike a terrace or loggia, is cellular and isolated. Standing on a balcony, one has the privilege of greater privacy, elevation, and breadth of view. Continuum Elevation explores power relations inherent to verticality — the shift in perspective that divides the ones above from the ones below. The video installation traces the notion of verticality in today’s world — a time characterised by “seeing all”, with scant knowledge and interest in those on the ground.

One unavoidable fact of the balcony is that it will always be higher on display, thus creating a hierarchy between the observer and the observed scene. This hierarchy is the representation of power.

Even though a balcony might seem as an element of former power, the verticality was never about the height, but the matter of difference. What does it mean to be above or below in today’s world, in time obsessed with seeing all, combined, however, with an almost complete absence of knowledge about, and media coverage of, those on the ground?

Continuum Elevation Thesis

Sound Design: Leonardo Scarin
Supervision Writing: Füsun Türetken
Photo: Roel Backaert

The Hague, Netherlands

#givitatitle

The “#givitatitle” is a multidisciplinary installation made by students of the Royal Academy of Art in collaboration with TodaysArt Festival in the context of 100 years anniversary of establishing a journal called “De Stijl”. The installation consists of three transparent display panels activated by projecting constantly fluctuating flow of information that creates a juxtaposition narrative to the keynote speaker. Materials are synchronized according to the present narrative in order to visualize overwhelming diversity by inclusion, not exclusion.

The artists say beauty of our world is that it is complex, diverse and chaotic. Truth and false are abstract concepts that vary regarding to the context to which they are applied. It is necessary to operate by knowing the context in order to understand and be willing to accept realities. How does one stay open for dialog and different interpretations? This work is developed with the purpose of reminding people that reality is constructed and choices are predetermined, hence the illusion of freedom.

In collaboration with Chris Kore, Roslana Yotova and Maja Pop Trajkova

TodaysArt Festival 2017
The Hague, Netherlands

Words;Crime

By means of language comparison and analysis we compare these documents, Charter 8, utopia vision for China, and the Chinese Constitution which is similar in its intention, but since it is not implemented, its ideals are never able to be realised, what follows from the Criminal Verdict of Liu Xiaobo.

In this book you will find a special section with segments dedicated to the outcome of all the comparisons we drew. In this case segments are the selected parts of original documents, which are being constructed in such a way that gives an overview of the comparison of three documents and show the similarities and differences of those.

“China has many laws but no rule of law. It has a constitution but no constitutional government”. Where are the borders between the Constitution and the Constitutional Government? By analyzing and synthesizing content originated from these documents we are trying to build a coherent narrative for the conviction of Liu Xiaobo.

In collaboration with Kin Mun Chong and Wietske Nutma

An appearance in a project by Henk Groenendijk, Elisabeth Klement, and Matthias Kreutzer. TEST PRESS is a display of student publications from the archive of designer, collector, and teacher Henk Groenendijk. These publications have been produced by students of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie over a period of 20 years.

Kate Banar & Orin Bristow participated in the curation of publications from the archive for the exhibition TEST PRESS 'Le Palais de la Maçonnerie Typographique' at Le Bel Ordinaire, in Pau (FR). This selection was later followed by the Talk at Enter Enter, Amsterdam.

This selection is done in collaboration with Orin Bristow

TEST PRESS

Conflicts are global, they do not longer belong to precise spot drawn by geographical borders. Consequences, same way as paint spreads around,go far beyond outlined boundaries.

Abstract Design techniques for static information are well understood, their descriptions and discourse thorough and well-evolved. But these techniques fail when dynamic information is considered.

Developing immediate impressions from the first instant a user looks at a piece, or within a short time span, is extremely useful. The systems become useful tools for tracking instantaneous trends in dynamic information sources. invisualizations of such data sources can exist in the background, as an ambient component of one’s environment, and still be effective.

Every place has its own complexity and uniqueness. In this project I don’t want to unify the world in a generic way, but I still want to support my idea of absence of borders and beauty of unity, which I described in the first chapter “Beyond Outlined Borders”. The main idea is to create landscape based on existing geographies. I was looking for the way to merge different areas in a way they maintain their uniqueness, but can co-exist in symbiotic relation with surroundings.

In my work I used code which transform random landscapes to one, unified shape. Transition occurs in time and it generates unrecognizable and utopian geography.

Humans are unable to distinguish color in conditions of either high brightness or darkness. In conditions of insufficient light, perception is achromatic and ultimately, black. As my topic I chose forgotten conflicts. In a black, empty book viewer sees projected pieces of information.

Once the projection is gone there is only a publication without the content. It creates a symbol of transience. We are shifting towards the world, in which content is not as important as the connection to it. Discoverability, given the excessive amount of information sources, seems crucial.

Initial idea was to create a series of drawings, which has to be seen from different perspectives and depending on the angle you are looking at, you see different proportion of the color. First stage of looking as if canvas was a flat surface placed on the wall, in that case there is no expectation to have something on the other side. There are two types of canvases with reversed proportion of the color, in this case it is navy blue and red, each of them represents the way of looking, a certain choice of seeing things.

The next step would be to look from the other side and find out there is a different proportion of both of the colors and there is no one point of view, but the combination of things, because everything has its other side. It contributes to the general idea of seeing the bigger picture. There is no true or false, you need to know the context in order to understand and accept things; to stay open for the dialog, as for different interpretations.

Up to this day the statistics show a growing number of crimes, increasing percentage of recidiinvism and needful expansions of prisons.I want to have a closer look at something, which currently submits high hopes and hopefully not only for narrow specialized audience, but also for society as a whole.

I am talking about technologies and my main point of focus is virtual reality. The idea is to bring changes not within the same system, but to see how those two areas can collaborate; prison can gain benefit from technological development which has been done up to now, which is significant and many people believe will change our future or maybe even today.

In virtual environment I had intention to bring these two absolutely different worlds in one enclosed space where they have to coexist.Please take Oculus and start your session.

All temporal things, whether material or mental, are compounded objects in a continuous change of condition, subject to decline and destruction. Therefore, the continuity is becoming the only constans in ever fluctuating change.

This series expresses an attempt to capture the moment of change by contrasting the monumentality of a sculpture and the liquidy of a fluid.

Selected interactive works

Spatial installation dedicated to the documentary "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom?"

What happens when the TV screen leaves home and moves back into the city? The public domain of the 21st century is no longer defined simply by material structures such as streets and plazas. But nor is it defined solely by the virtual space of electronic media. Rather the public domain now emerges in the complex interaction of material and immaterial spaces. These hybrid spaces may be called ‘media cities’. - The Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Space by Scott McQuire

Lets suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and you would naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. That would be within the infinite multiplicity of choices you would have. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death.

You can feel yourself, not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke, but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. - Alan Watt

Selected works

Pocket Book

A series of publications dedicated to the movie of Andrei Tarkovsky "Solaris"

Question of collision with the future, with an unknown in space - as it seems to the author of the novel and, accordingly, the irector shares his opinion in the lm - is that this sollision will be in any case unexpected, in a such a way that it is imppossible prepare for it. The only thing you can do - is to try to take a critical look at the methods of our knowledge: through combating stereotypes of thinking, with the logical blocks stereotypes that we often replace the minutes of thinking. A collision with something unknown necessarily require a rigid moral discipline. That is why our hero’s father says that everything is very fragile - meaning more inertia of human thinking, the way of human behavior facing the unknown: yet unknown.

In collaboration with Trang Ha

Photography q.1 is not only a reprodutive imaging technology, it is a dominant cultural technique through which reality is constituted and understood.

Given the central role of q.3 photography to almost all aspects of contemporary life, the programmed character of the photographic apparatus shapes the experience of looking at and interpreting photographs as well as most of the cultural contexts in which we do so.

Selected posters

Series of silkscreen posters dedicated to Electro - Library Manifesto.

Silkscreen poster series dedicated to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Andreas Gursky, 1997

Monoprint poster