Film o Kostuchu [Grimbones]

In the animated piece by Piotr Bosacki titled Grimbones, the means of expression have been reduced to the maximum. The course of the visual narrative, built with some nails and a rubber band on a yellow board, is told in a calm and peaceful voice of the artist’s niece. The main character of the fairy tale is Kostuch. When in his basic form, he looks like a cross. All the transformations which he undergoes are dictated by the imagination of the artist.

The seemingly inconspicuous but fascinating hero, just as the subsequent sequences of the film, is governed by a well thought-out method. Bosacki is interested in the functioning of the internally cohesive systems which programme the course of the animation. The artist analyses how they work and considers their possible configurations or the possible mistakes in the functioning of the different mechanisms. Bosacki’s works are shrouded in the mystery of the rules of the game unknown to the viewer. His interests are from the field of natural and mathematical sciences – his animations focus on motifs from the domain of biology, physics, chemistry, but also geometry – which is the basis of this film.

Geometry seems to be of supreme value. It is the principle of everything living. The abstract character of its notional apparatus, which is applied in all areas of life, eliminates the binary division present in the world. The oppositions of the body to the psyche, materiality against spirituality, or the animate sphere against the inanimate one, are no longer valid. In the commentary going with Bosacki’s film, geometry is intertwined with philosophizing interjections. They provide an anthropocentric touch to the cool narrative, which is perhaps made a touch more familiar by the child’s voice. The sound of the hammering of nails is interrupted by comments about intermediate stages, about a heaven in the shape of a human being, about difficult ontological issues, or about dark matter – a notion borrowed from cosmology which, in the context of the narrative, may be applied to all unidentified areas of reality and human perception. The solemnity of geometry and the humanistic view of the world are invalidated by the “serious” sense of humour, which is the common denominator of all of Bosacki’s works.

Izabela Kopania