The Status
of Eastness
[work-in-progress]
by Arti Siudem
About the project:
video · 19:53 · UK, Poland · Polish & English
The Status of Eastness is a short video essay film made as my final BA visual anthropology dissertation. I turned my gaze towards my home country of Poland to critically unpack the prevalent Westphilic ideology that I grew up in. My starting point was the collective feeling of inferiority that myself and my Gen-Z peers internalised as a result of being conditioned to think of ourselves as a second category European country. My work explores how everything can be stratified when there is an idea of a “universal order” set in stone, even if that order may have been made up in the first place - yet that somehow became a reference point.
Featured in:
Goldsmiths Visual Anthropology MA seminar series. 2025. Talk and film screening at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In The Space Between Words. 2025. Group exhibition by Rethinking Eastern Europe collective. Copeland Gallery, Peckham, London (UK)
Desktop Documentary and Digital Autoethnography. 21.04.2025. Workshop and film screening at Atlas Cinema, London (UK)
NOTE FROM THE ARTIST: I have shown this film publicly a few times but it is still very much a work-in-progress. I intend to keep developing this project: I am interested in how the feeling of Polish inferiority morphs into something new as Poland goes through a contemporary renaissance and has become an attractive destination for migrants from around the world. I want to explore how, currently, Poles are in turn developing a superiority complex - coming from being a part of “the Western civilisation” and being white - thus embracing linear ideas around progress and embodying the Western colonial mindset. Please contact me if you are interested in seeing the full film clip or would like to collaborate.
TRAILER:
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