In the art world, everything works in a softer, more relationship-based and less procedural way. Someone sends an email in the evening, someone calls, someone sends a text; things happen along the way, things grow out of conversations. Here, I expected a reality that would be structured and somewhat impenetrable. I wondered whether it might be difficult simply to walk in, start talking, be the new person in a place that already has its own relationships and its own order.
It wasn’t fear in the literal sense, more of a slight tension that appears when you enter an unfamiliar world and don’t yet know its temperature. It very quickly turned out that this fear was completely irrational.
What does a company look like through an artist’s eyes? Not as an organisation or a set of processes, but as a living organism with its own rhythm and language. This was the everyday reality Barbara Gryka observed during her residency at Medisept, carried out as part of the “Culture at Work” project.
In conversation with Ralph Talmont, she talks about meeting people who work every day in laboratories, offices and production facilities; about the importance of attentive listening; and about searching for what lies beneath a place’s official image.
As she stresses, she is always more interested in the life inside a company than in its structure itself – the relationships and experiences that paint the organisation’s true picture. The residency also became an opportunity for the artist to reflect on the nature of work: its rhythm, repetition, the need for stability and the significance of everyday relationships.
It is a story about discovering that the worlds of art and professional work are far closer than they might seem.
We invite you to read the second conversation in our series summarising the artistic residencies carried out as part of the “Culture at Work” project. The interview was conducted and edited by Ralph Talmont.
READ THE FULL CONVERSATION WITH BARBARA GRYKA (SCROLL FOR THE ENGLISH VERSION)
Translated by: Aleksandra Górecka
Proofread by: Gabriela Niewadzi
