Horacy Muszyński – And I Love You so Much, and I Like You so Much
   

Academy of Art in Szczecin
Faculty of Painting and New Media
Supervisors: Hubert Czerepok, Ph.D. DSc, Teresa Otulak, M.A., Zbigniew Taszycki, Ph.D. DSc, and Agnieszka Grodzińska, Ph.D.

Horacy Muszyński – And I Love You so Much, and I Like You so Much
   

Academy of Art in Szczecin
Faculty of Painting and New Media
Supervisors: Hubert Czerepok, Ph.D. DSc, Teresa Otulak, M.A., Zbigniew Taszycki, Ph.D. DSc, and Agnieszka Grodzińska, Ph.D.

Info

And I Love You so Much, and I Like You so Much is a 360-degree camera film which records the last months of life of Michał Marcinkowski, the artist’s grandfather. Love, watchfulness, and duration lie at the core of the piece. The VR technology comes with its limitations (the film can only be watched individually) and with its upsides – the viewer is drawn inside the image, often in bizarre relations to space. The 360-degree technology and VR goggles made it possible to film scenes from the perspectives of sauerkraut, medications, or specks of dirt on the carpet. Besides being cognitively intriguing to the viewer, this also thoughtfully embodies one of the insights formulated by the protagonist: we a billionth part of a speck of dust. Immersed in the image, the viewer follows the action from the viewpoints of multiple different actors of reality. We are a speck of dust, sauerkraut, a medication, and a spirit hovering over the gravely ill man. Additionally, as the center of the narrative is often located beyond the horizon of the gaze, viewers are positioned as characters bending over and looking down, as if in sadness. The plotline itself is not arranged chronologically. The film starts with the footage made a few hours before the protagonist’s death, while the last frames show him working in the kitchen, some months earlier. By no means random, this kind of editing illustrates hope that we always hold out till the end. By means of the film, the situation is reversed. Instead of dying, the protagonist is healed.

Horacy Muszyński (1994) – at the moment a participant of the De Ateliers program in Amsterdam. Winner of the 2nd Award at Project Room 2019, the 2017 Hestia Artistic Journey, and the 2nd Award at the Young Wolves 16 festival. His films have been shown at a number of venues, including the 68th Cannes Film Festival (2015), Film Polska Berlin (2016), the Szczecin European Film Festival (2016), the Cracow Film Festival (2017) and the Survival Art Festival (2019). Muszyński works at the intersection of filmmaking and art. He introduces performance into his films; for example, actors who starred as family members in Dolly were expected to sustain family relationships off set as well. In ID, he hired an actor who replaced Horacy in real life. He also derives inspiration from the niche film production of the latter part of the 20th century. This contributed to his Kishonia, a horror film about mutant dill pickles, the Polish version of which is read by the well-known voice-over actor Tomasz Knapik. Muszyński is a firm believer in the urgency of stripping artistic circles of elitism and making art accessible and comprehensible to all audiences.