Critical Writing Index

Perception as Transcendence: Interview with Pawel Wojtasik

by Scott MacDonald

Film Quarterly, Winter 2011, v. 65, no. 2, pp. 52-58

An interview with an avant-garde filmmaker and video artist who combines a Buddhist sensibility (emphasizing detached contemplation of the world) with sometimes shocking or disgusting subject matter (a sewage plant, autopsy). Pawel Wojtasik is a cine-alchemist whose quest is to turn the disgusting, the horrifying, the taboo into gold, using perception as a means to transcendence.

ITEM 2011.071 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Dark Sun Squeeze (2003) – Pawel Wojtasik

Pigs (2006-10) – Pawel Wojtasik

Nine Gates (2011) – Pawel Wojtasik

Geography of the Body (1943) – Willard Maas

Fly (1970) – Yoko Ono

The Aquarium (2006) – Pawel Wojtasik

Below Sea Level (2009) – Pawel Wojtasik

At the Still Point (2010) – Pawel Wojtasik

Crush (2010) – Pawel Wojtasik

Naked (2005-07) – Pawel Wojtasik

Forest of Bliss (1986) – Pawel Wojtasik

Michael Roemer

Nothing but a Man (1964) – Robert Young