EVERYTHING HUMAN IS ALIEN TO ME

“At first we could not believe it. We were terrified. (…) Years we talked about Carly as if she wasn’t there.” – said Arthur Fleishmann about his daughter suffering from autism, when a ten-year-old, for the first time in her life, made comprehensible contact with the outside world. Her father’s suprise resulted from discovering the possibility of communication, that seemed impossible to him first.

Theoretical basis of the work is the concept of dissonance by social psychologist Leon Festinger. It’s an unpleasant state of psychological tension that appears when at the same time there are two cognitive elements incompatible with each other. When we see, hear or feel something that doesn’t fit to anything we know. In the video I realize perceptual dissonance between the image I remember from my memory and the one being experienced for the first time. Dissonance loops, unpleasant tension increases, and its value is the greater the closer we are to the expected “point of relief” – an impossible connection of both surfaces. The consequence of the transformation, which is conducted unconsciously by our self is strengthening our ties with the object. Bill Viola wrote about “penetrating the internal states and the connection with the animal consciousness that we all have”. Image – strangely, but elementarily and first, becomes close, and the lack of solution gives us a chance to experience an intermediately borrowed intuition.

Dobrosława Nowak (PL), born 1987, a graduate of photography at the University of Arts in Poznań and psychology at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Grantholder of the University of Catania (Italy). She works with photography and film. Her works have been shown internationally, among others at Lucania Film Festival (Italy), Biennale WRO (Poland), Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid.