The discrepancy between a bleak, dreary provincial town and an imaginative woman in her prime who longs for adventure bursts forth as a stirringly animated cri de coeur. Maria Dakszewicz’s protagonist immerses herself so deeply in a Bollywood film that in her imagination she becomes the main character of the colourful and divinely joyous love story. This makes her return to the empty, cold “reality bar” all the more painful – with its annoying neighbours, depressing weather and the mocking slogans for self-improvement on advertising boards and in women’s magazines.
A high-proof cocktail of tragicomedy, garnished with enormous power, humour, love, physicality and melancholy. The last brushstroke is the equivalent of the unattainable, shimmering figure of the Bollywood sultan in the Bar Croquette reality – which also brings a kind of contentment, albeit of a quite different nature … With this film, Dakszewicz creates a distinctive, original and wild aesthetic: The clay figure, still warm from fingerprints, blends seamlessly into ink drawings –incongruous at first glance and yet as harmoniously fused as dreamt sensuality with an Indian sultan in the grey Polish province.

Is it not unlimited freedom, the most radical form of self-realisation, to exist in every conceivable setting as a flying mythical creature, a sad mouse or a furry figure with an extended naked spine as a tail? In her film, Monika Masłoń moves through different spaces as an avatar, exploring the subject of touching and being touched on VR platforms. Anything our phantasy can imagine can be created from pixels here. The limits of existence can be extended infinitely by a click. But what about human – or avatarian – closeness? Can an emotional signal like shaking hands be simulated in this VR world, despite the complete absence of physical bodies? When I see my avatar being touched, can my body memory suggest that I feel this tactile event even though there is no other physical body?
Masłoń examines these questions with a delicate sense of humour and in exchanges with other avatars. But then we enter a VR space that feels more intimate: She has taken us on a personal date. How does the impossibility of physical touch in a long-distance relationship differ from that in VR? Can a VR date create more physical presence and still the longing for the beloved person better than other forms of communication?