Józef Robakowski

A young married couple and their everyday hardships. Unemployed Wojtek decides to sell grilled chicken from a street stall. His wife Agata is a film student making a documentary on her husband.

Trying to describe oneself is a movie about representation. How it is possible, through film, to describe oneself and describe others. With the camera as mirror and third eye. At first, a collage-like combination of letter-writing, investigation and journey, something between documentary and feature film. Finally, a portrait of Boris Lehman from 1989 to 1995, part II of BABEL.

A fictional telephone conversation between the filmmaker and his mother on her birthday. A performative reflection on the relationship between public and private spheres in which the maker turns his back to the camera, simultaneously shielding himself, and engages the viewer in the (im)possibility of bridging the gap between the man and his mother. Capturing the intimate conversation seems to be a way of keeping a personal memory alive while it merges with the viewer’s memory.

A highly expressive cry from the author of the manifesto, uttered while his head emerges from the water: "I should like to tell you all that art is energy!"

A film sketch for a portrait of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz by multimedia artist Jozef Robakowski.

A film sketch for a portrait of Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz by multimedia artist Jozef Robakowski.

The film is an experimental documentary form, made using the stop-motion method. It is a single shot in total plan, showing an aerial view of the Balucki Market in Lodz. The realization method involved recording two frames every five seconds without changing the camera setting. From 'The Workshop of the Film Form'.

Video: Józef Robakowski, music: Laibach Werkstatt, production: Exchange Gallery.

Rectangles pulsate to an electronic sound loop.

Experimental short film by Józef Robakowski & Ryszard Meissner.

A performance staged during the WRO 96 festival, entitled Monitor Polski. The artist presented a device in which his body was a conductor through which electricity flowed, with the voltage gradually increased at the artist's request and with the participation of the audience. Interest in the phenomenon of energy and reflection on artistic creation had already appeared in Robakowski's earlier works, such as O palcach (About Fingers, 1982) and Moje Videomasochizmy (My Videomasochisms, 1989).

The film is dedicated to the memory of American surrealist Paul Sharits. Sharits sent Robakowski a film score with a proposal to use it in a film production, but the outbreak of martial law prevented the idea from being realised. The film was not made until 2004. The film was created as a result of a very rigorous, constructivist formal procedure, subordinating specific visual values to the melodic line of the musical piece. During the screening, as the notes of the composition are played, corresponding colours appear on the screen, eight colours that correspond to the notes of Fryderyk Chopin's Mazurka Op. 68 No. 4. The vibration of the changing colours and the radiance of the light create a coherent whole with the composer's nostalgic piece. The colourful fields pulsating to the rhythm of the music evoke, on the one hand, the American's structural cinema and, on the other, show the almost vital energy of colour.

In Impulsators, Robakowski rejects the narrative film form and the representational function in the spirit of his radical manifestations against the illusory character of traditional film in the 1970s, such as e.g. Test, Test II. Like Impulsators, those non-camera films came into being as a result of perforation of film stock, which thus lets through in a desired way the light from the projector, which is in turn “fixed” on the retina and produces after-images. The movement of the film stock generates lively flicker targeted directly at the viewer’s body, above their imagination. Immersed in the trance rhythm, the impulsator becomes a new psychophysical force.

A short showing Robakowski peeling and eating an apple, which itself produces the sound.

A sort of mini-biography of Robakowski.

An experimental film by Józef Robakowski.

This film belongs to a group of works that constitute manifestations of Robakowski’s engaged attitude towards social reality. Here, his interests focus on the rhythm of the city, the dynamics of passing cars, recorded with a fast-panning camera set at a single point. The video recording is accompanied by Robakowski’s voice, commenting off-screen, with constantly varying intonation and speed of uttering words, on what is happening in the street. The energy of the urban landscape is contrasted with the calmness of the space in which the camera is placed, which introduces a tension that reflects the author’s emotional state.

Experimental short film by Józef Robakowski.

Here, the line serves the purpose of manifesting the artists marked pursuit in the 1970s to “brighten various structures of discipline”.

A swing imposes its rhythm, independent of the commentator; it forms the rhythmic score for the filmmaker's singing.

White circles appear and disappear on a black surface.

Abstract, geometric forms, became the basis for the most outstanding works of the avant-garde sculptor Katarzyna Kobro. With her 'Spatial Compositions', she created her own artistic language, with which she aroused a lot of criticism, which was based on the traditional assumption that a sculpture should be a compact, modelled mass. However, the task of "Composition" was to shape forms that were to come into being. Kobro, however, still wanted to change the space surrounding people with her own art.

"...We came to the conclusion that the event recorded on the film does not have to be logically interpreted or named, because its meaning or even nonsense is justified by the fact that this phenomenon took place in a state of war."

The equation of organically generated soundtrack with the video image.

Robakowski directs the camera to zoom back and forth.

A film with Robakowski's characteristic single-shot structure, filmed from the perspective of a character who struggles to walk along a forest path, constantly complaining of nagging pain in his leg.

A resulted from Robakowski's re-editing the video Łódź Kaliska (1986) which he had shot together with Witold Krymarys. It was footage from an arranged situation: an unrestrained party shared by members of the eponymous group and artists associated with the Pitch-In Culture group. Robakowski and Krymarys filmed their walk through the city, which ended with a party at The Loft, an important informal meeting place on the map of avant-garde Łódź. Actions carried out in the streets, in the Balaton Bar and at The Loft were intended to form the visual element for a music video that was to accompany a popular song celebrating the working-class Łódź. A year later, Robakowski reinterpreted the video: he re-edited the recorded material, slowed it down, changed the colours, and chose Witold Lutosławski’s Symphony No. 3 as background music.

The violent text resonates with the harsh energy of the music videos—for instance Powietrza (More Air), 1986, in which the band frantically cries for oxygen in then politically oppressive Poland. Robakowski’s recurrent appearance in his own videos could easily be seen as narcissistic, but his collaboration with Mowska demonstrates where his allegiances lie—with the rebellious spirits.