Moth, recycled leather, steel, aluminum, synthetic textile, rubber, found items, 2020

Ula Lucińska and Michał Knychaus better known as Inside Job duo, are sharing a sensitive feeling for the interfaces between past myths and still today existing human emotions and societal needs. “In this sense our art could be read as a kind of speculation about the post-apocalyptic future”, the polish artists say. Working together for five years they are creating installations between reality and fiction and discovering surreal landscapes to let the atmosphere connect and effect with their art.

The Dull Flame of Desire, steel, aluminum, oil paint, spray paint, epoxy resin, textiles, rubber, found items, 2020

Your art plays aesthetically with symbolism of superstitions and mythologies and puts them into context with current topics such as climate change or capitalism. How do these things fit together?

This question is exactly at the core of our current interests. How all those superstitious hauntings might emerge in the shadows of a technologically driven world. We feel like the "unknown" is paradoxically - despite the constant progress of science and technology - very close.

Fantasy and mythologies operate with the weird imagination of monsters, bizarre plants or strange artifacts in a way that crushes normative boundaries. They introduce “monstrosity” and this term seems to be necessary for understanding possible futures.

One can see it as a counter-force to the power of capital, but it’s also possible to see capitalism itself as an example of a quasi-mythical hyper monster - like the Buddhist demon Mahakala, that turns every obstacle into a fuel that keeps it stronger and stronger. It evokes the sense of living the apocalypse, making our times truly a new dark age.

A symbol that recurs in your works are metallic tribals, what do they mean?

The collection of shapes we use draws its inspirations from historical blades - especially the ones called eccentric flints found in Mesoamerica. Those were crafted in such a way, that all sides were sharp and were hurting both: the victim and the perpetrator. Most of them come from cultures that no longer exist, like material witnesses of lost worlds.

Our shapes have also tribal and subcultural provenance. Tribals are a perfect cultural mashup of what is imagined as past, present, and future. They are both kitsch and iconic.

The Dull Flame of Desire, steel, aluminum, textiles, rubber, found items, 2020

Your creatures are gloomy mouthpieces for the socially critical topics you talk about. Are there certain mythologies or fictive underworlds (like the game trilogy gothic) you are referring to?

We do not refer to any particular myths or motifs directly, instead we fancy strange theories about the possible cosmic contact that appeared in the very distant past - no matter if we believe in it or not. All those "hidden" traces within ancient and even preliterate culture or history till today: medieval apocalyptic cults, paganism, occult and psychedelic culture, secret associations and forbidden knowledge. We are spotting for all such cracks in reality.

One drop at a time, video still, 1920x1080, 02:28, 2020

Get down, get down little Henry Lee and stay all night with me, laser cut aluminum, steel, digital print on silk, soil, electricity cables, led lights, 2019, photo: Tomasz Koszewnik

Ectoplasmats, oak wood, pvc, silk, linen, laser cut aluminum, steel, 2019, photo: Tomasz Koszewnik

Space plays an important role in many of your works. How do you find places, such as the Meteorite Nature Reserve for your latest work? Or do the places find you?

The meteorite park was not our first off-site intervention. A year before, together with artist friend Maya Hottarek, we documented our pieces in one of the ice caves in the Jura mountains. The ice-stalagmites are disappearing there rapidly due to climate change.

In Morasko Park there was a meteor shower about 5000 years ago and now it’s the largest cluster of craters in Europe. They are filled with water, and the area is covered with a rare forest of oaks and hornbeams.

Both of those places are bearing strong traces of the cataclysms and there is something appealing in them probably for these reasons. It’s very interesting to see how our works are gaining new qualities when their surroundings change.

Your creatures always seem to carry something threatening inside. Do you personally believe in a soon collapse of society as we know and if so, what would you consider a possible cause?

We don’t believe in one sudden moment of rupture. But we keep our fingers crossed for the collapse of harmful patterns like populism, patriarchy, fanaticism...

Interests in the non-linear sense of perceiving time have brought to our attention the discursive power of a catastrophe - the constantly returning fatality of time. It seems very intriguing, insofar as it is a kind of imaginary caesura - based on the mythology and spread over what is yet to come. This paradox could be disturbing but also quite inspiring.

Are you scared of it?

Very scared! (haha)