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About

 

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I’m Sylwia Orczykowska, a transdisciplinary designer, researcher, philosopher, and dancer. My practice unfolds at the intersection of art, science, communication, and embodied movement. I’m based in Zurich, Switzerland.


Grounded in environmental philosophy, linguistic inquiry, and art–science research, my work brings conceptual, sensory, tacit, and lived forms of knowledge into relation. Working across verbal and non-verbal languages, I am particularly interested in perception, experience, and the interplay of human and nonhuman perspectives. Bringing a reflective approach into my practice, I explore how questions, context, and different perspectives shape what becomes visible.

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Meandering through the grassy fields of Rieter Park and listening to sonified bio-data. Modern Biology. Zurich, May 2026.

My professional background in advertising and communication gave me a nuanced understanding of drawing attention, sense-making, and constructing cultural narratives. Over time, my focus shifted from persuasion toward inspiration, from capturing attention toward nudging one’s own capacity to respond.

 

This shift became one of the foundations of Art Now, a transdisciplinary research lab for artistic, curatorial, and experiential formats exploring how human perception, beliefs, and habits influence the ways of participating in the living world. My work moves between natural and urban environments, exploring how bodies, places, and meanings become entangled. Through sensory perception, cognitive inquiry, movement, touch, and place-specific interventions, I investigate relations and dynamics that often remain unnoticed.


I also actively engage with Systemic Design Labs at ETH Zurich and the partnering MonViso Institute, contributing to art-science integration and multispecies communication through co-teaching, mentoring, curating, and the development of experiential formats at the intersection of artistic practice, ecological research, and embodied learning. Within this academic context, I work with professionals to navigate between different modes of inquiry, help them refine their questions, recognise underlying worldviews, and develop forms in which various ways of knowing can meaningfully meet.

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My lifelong passion for modern, contemporary, and Broadway jazz, together with contact improvisation, has grounded my experience of bodily presence, expression, and movement as a way of knowing. The ongoing dance practice evolved into “Choreographies of attention”, an embodied inquiry framework tracing perception, relationality, and the emergence of meaning through the body.


What began years ago as a casual yoga practice has become a vital part of my morning routine, supporting body–mind integration and deepening my sense of being and becoming.

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