Julia Sokolnicka

‘If there is a movement, I’m a part of it’

How can we recognize your work? ,,I’m working with parallel realities using the classical film tools such as editing, sound and image manipulation, but also through putting images on the top of each other or cutting them out. My works are often based on some kind of perceptual juxtaposition or collage.”

How do you start a new project? ,,I am currently working on a film about Amsterdam’s bike lanes that part of my Social Choreographies research where I deconstruct gestures that lead to communication or confrontation in the public space. I’m interested in what people think when they do what they do and what their reasons are.” 

What kind of artist inspires you? ,,I find my friends the most interesting artists usually for some reason. If there is a movement, I’m a part of it. My favorite movement is treating art not as a showbusiness or speculative market based on stardom, but as a unique set of skills crucial to describing reality between separate bubbles with separate tools and categories.”

What is the reason you joined Vensterbank? ,,I love the space and there are very rarely shows where video is a main art form. I am excited about having audience from the nearby trainstation and I hope that happens!”


What does the city Leiden mean to you? ,,I love to go to artstudios and spaces in Leiden. I think art here has it’s own tempo and respect towards craft. Leiden is helpful to artists and they can afford giving time to their craft. That’s why I find it on very high level and allowing a lot of experiment.”

Your work is exhibited in a former all you can eat-restaurant. What would you order if it was still there? ,,Something from the vegetarian menu.”

Julia Sokolnicka, born in Warsaw in 1983, is an experimental and documentary filmmaker, writer and researcher. Her practice moves between social philosophy, video and performance. Julia lives and works in Amsterdam. 

She studied Philosophy at Warsaw University and Film Directing in Wajda School and Katowice NFTS. In 2016 she graduated at Nederlandse Filmacademie in Amsterdam with an Artistic Research in Film degree. In her current projects she’s working with social choreographies, notion of Realness and simultaneous narratives. 

Side Roads , documentary PL/NL, 17min, 2016′
Best documentary film – “Side Roads”, Los Angeles International Culture Film Festival
Best documentary film – “Side Roads”, Mumbai International Film Festival
In The Head, experimental documentary PL, 5min,  2009′
“In the Head” Off Camera Film Festival – Best Short film Allegro Film Competition 2009

Her short documentary film “Side Roads” has received a number of international awards and a distribution in most prestigious, Polish cultural channels such as TVP Kultura and Ninateka.
Her current projects “Digital Nomads” and “Social Choreographies” focus on community bonding and identity of the global youth. Both projects address the utopias of solidarity and problems of multicultural societies and combine performance art and cinema through formal experiments and theoretical exploration. 

You Must Apologize is an attempt to look into what kind of emotional education one could get without anyone around “teaching the good manners”.

 In my ongoing research “Social Choreographies” I constantly ask questions about confrontations and examples of bad behavior that someone has been exposed to. I learned over and over again that the language of expectations differs drastically and only few are ready to approach the other without fear, or surprising themselves with violent interactions. I keep o asking where can one train themselves emotionally 

 Most of all as a visual artist I am fascinated by the aesthetics and design of the social systems, mostly represented by urban arrangements but also historically implemented into the language of public references – television, design and architecture.

 In my work I also try to ask questions about universalism, always exceeding the comfort of the first language and the comfort of the behaviors of the body in front of the camera. In my work I’m obsessed with a notion of authentic narratives, implying that the pact between the artist, audience and characters could be an authentic bond exceeding the awkwardness of the spectacle.