about Second illusion

Andrzej Jachimczyk

Andrzej Jachimczyk, Ph.D. is the Catherine Malabou Fellow at the European Graduate School, the Department of Media Philosophy, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, and an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at the University of North Carolina Pembroke.

His search interests lie in the area of the Hegelian concept of plasticity as the process of creation and annihilation – metamorphosis from substance to subject through its capacity to receive and to give form to its own content.

Recently, he has reformulated the concept of plasticity into an exploration of the nature of thinking and the ontology of mind, attempting to approach this problem through the nontraditional, representational perspective of film as philosophy.

He is the author of a book, Reading Hegel After Nietzsche, published by the Atropos Press in March 2013. A short film Artworkers is his first attempt at film essay. 

ola maslik

Ola's latest work as a production designer  "The Skeleton Twins" directed by Craig Johnson, starring Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader won Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival and it's coming to the theaters in October 2014.
Her work was also featured in multiple films during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.  The first, “May in the Summer” Written and directed by Cherien Dabis, premiered in the US Dramatic Competition.  The other, “Ass Backwards" directed by Chris Nelson, was selected to play in the Sundance Premieres category.
Previously, Ola's work was featured in Ryan O'Nan's “Brooklyn Brother Beat The Best", which had its premiere in 2012 at the Toronto Film Festival.
Ola has recently wrapped on the Untitled Marc Lawrence/Hugh Grant Comedy, starring Hugh Grant, Marissa Tomei, Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons, written and directed by Marc Lawrence produced by Castle Rock Entertainment.
Ola has been designing sets for theater, television and narrative features for the past 10 years.  She is originally from Poland, where she received her MFA in Graphic Design from the Academy of Fine Arts.  After working with puppet design, she moved into the theater and film.  In 2006 she received an additional MFA from Yale School of Drama, where her work was awarded the Donald and Zorca Oenslager Fellowship and the Elder Scholarship for International Design Students.
Ola lives with her husband in New York City.

film

ARTWORKERS

The Ex Teresa Arte Actual is a museum for the performance and installation arts in Mexico City. The museum is housed in a former church of Santa Teresa la Antigua, which in turn stands on yet another sanctuary, the ruins of the Templo Mayor of the Aztec city Tenochtitlan. The Ex Teresa, in its goals as an art institution, continues the tradition of its predecessors, providing a sublime means of reaching beyond the construct of reality by way of art shows. As a very prolific art space – a transfiguration machine in the mysterious and relentless attempts to uncover the spirit of the world – in order to accomplish its annual task of numerous exhibitions, the Ex Teresa employs many art professionals, including its essential employees, the art workers.

The film Artworkers explores the process of art making. It focuses on creative teamwork and artistic responsibility by defying the myth of the lone artist as a single creator. It emphasizes the Sisyphean process of art creation instead of contemplating its final product, the work of art.

The art industry regards the art workers as a noncreative, mindless assembly-line workforce, excluded from the process of artistic creativity. As a result of this attitude, the art workers cannot claim any authorship concerning their contribution to the production of art.

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filmmakers

writing

Reading Hegel After Nietzsche

A traditional view of Hegel is that his philosophy is a philosophy of closure and finality, purporting to achieve a final synthesis via dialectical sublation (Aufhebung). In this view, Hegel’s teleology is seen as the contradiction to Nietzsche’s openness and becoming. This work shows to the contrary. It explores the concept of plasticity, concept of intertwining opposites in a process of simultaneous creation and destruction and demonstrates that Hegel is a philosopher of incessant becoming, openness, potentiality and expectation. It calls for an a-dualistic thinking in approaching Hegel, thinking that deals with opposites as neither rigidly opposed nor united but as plastic.

Not only does this book deal with the notion of a new beginning, but it is a new beginning in itself, that is, the beginning of a conversation between two philosophers who are too frequently considered incompatible: Hegel and Nietzsche. Through a fascinating reading of both authors, which insists on their plasticity, contradiction and art appear to dwell in the same house, system and affirmation appear to have common features, and the will to power appears in its dialectical form. A major achievement. — Catherine Malabou