DEEP LISTENING WEEK
Anna Zaradny

  • DEEP LISTENING WEEK

    Anna Zaradny, THE SWEETEST SOUND OF CIRCULATING FIRMAMENT, sound installation, (2011-2016) RONDO DENOTING CIRCLE, exhibition Bunkier Sztuki Gallery of Contemporary Art, 2016 photo by Grzegorz Mart

The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites guests to participate in a weeklong sonic intervention on the MSN Home Office blog.

The current pandemic and social distancing brought with them a fundamental reconfiguration of sensory perception. As a result of reduced urban activity, the sound intensity and sonic pollution within the agglomeration have been reduced. Whispers and gusts of wind have become clearer; the sounds of fauna and flora are more noticeable. Along with the transfer of various spheres of consumption and activity to online platforms, we are gradually acquiring new auditory habits and hearing abilities. The awareness of the passage of time and the reception of stimuli is also changing.

Within the field of culture and the evenly tempered minor major system, the avant-garde, experimental genres of music typically remain on the periphery of perception and consumption. And yet, the language and aesthetic richness of abstract sonic experiences provide us with many planes to perceive for our sense of hearing to experience complex reality.

As part of the weeklong intervention on the MSN Home Office blog, the artist and composer Anna Zaradny invites us all to experience DEEP LISTENING in order to intensify the perception of sound transmission, communication of emotions and to describe the internal and external world at their most essential and sensual.

A wide spectrum of examples of art music, sound art, contemporary composition and musical avant-garde of the 20th century, for which the source was often a reflection on the sensual and existential perception of time and space, will serve as the source of these sonic events. How does the experience of temporality change and break down when the present seems deceptively long/short and the future distant/near?

We invite you to measure – and immerse yourself in – time by listening to the compositions selected by Anna Zaradny over the course of seven days. The pieces will be complemented by a commentary on the presented compositions. Over consecutive evenings, we will reveal on the MSN Home Office blog seven sonic chapters of different geographical and historical provenance, for which the common thread is the desire to tear music away from playing a subservient role in consumer entertainment, as well as the elitism of the classical tradition.

In times of digital dematerialisation and overstimulation, deep listening is an invitation to awaken all our sensual and bodily sensitivity to sound. As the music philosopher Anna Chęćka-Gotkowicz writes, “experiencing coherence between one's own existence and the flow of sonic structures leads to an instinctive understanding: music m a k e s s e n s e t o m e when I perceive it as a reflection of the organization of time within myself.”

When:
18-22 May, 21:30

We encourage you to listen to and contemplate the compositions on headphones in isolation from other activities and external stimuli.

In subsequent announcements for each day of the week we will reveal the composition list and tips to help you enjoy a comfortable experience.

https://ello.co/msnhomeoffice

Anna Zaradny

is a visual and sound artist, composer, instrumentalist, co-founder of label and festival Musica Genera (the last edition was hosted a.o. by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in 2009). The creativity of Anna Zaradny is expressed through sound and visual art. As a composer and instrumentalist she works in a wide spectrum of genres: from acoustic improvised music with a contemporary minimalist language to the complex structures of experimental electronic music compositions. As a visual artist, Zaradny creates in various media including installations, objects, photography and video. The artist uses abstraction, micro sound and architectonic elements, lights and space. Her pieces are marked by the ambiguity and the relationship between medium and ideas.

The artist presented her works in institutions such as: Kasia Michalski Gallery Warsaw; Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Galeria Arsenał, Białystok; Galeria Starter, Warsaw; Bunkier Sztuki, Cracow; CCA Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw; Zachęta National Gallery, Warsaw; 5th Biennale de Lubumbashi, RD Kongo; Shedhalle, Zürich, SILLBERKUPPE, Berlin; Kunst Werke, Berlin, and played concerts on festivals such as: Sonic Protest Paris; Borderline Athens; El Nicho Aural Festival, Mexico City; Unsound Festival, New York; EMFP Super-Deluxe Tokyo; What is music? Sydney, Melbourne; All Ears Oslo.

The discography of Anna Zaradny includes solo recordings and collaborative projects with a.o.: Burkhard Stangl, Christian Fennesz, Robert Piotrowicz, Jerome Noetinger, Tony Buck, Kasper Toeplitz.

She is also author of music for theatre plays and multimedia projects presented at: Teatr Narodowy, Nowy Teatr, Teatr Studio, Teatr Dramatyczny, Warsaw, Narodowy Stary Teatr Cracow and performative works, including Paulina Ołowska i Anna Zaradny „Le group panique with the flesh of the world” - performance, audiovisual concert as an hommage to Alina Szapocznikow, commissioned by WIELS in Brussels, 2012. She was a consultant and music researcher in the Escape Act project for Alexandra Bachzetsis 2018.

Anna Zaradny received a scholarship MuseumsQuartier Vienna 2005, and was award nominee to art prize Deutsche Bank Spojrzenia, 2011. She is also a laureate of SHAPE / platform for innovative music and audiovisual art from Europe 2017 and resident of LA MUSE EN CIRCUIT Centre National De Creation Musicale z Kasper T. Toeplitz (2016), France; Elektronmusikstudion EMS Stockholm 2016; Contemporary Music Research Centre, KSYME Athens 2018 / 2019.

Her sound installation eM U Zet E U eM (2009) belongs to the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw.
 

Dear All, regardless whether our lives have slowed down or accelerated, we invite you to join us on a journey. Let the recent experience of isolation become an excuse.

Please surrender to these instructions in order to enhance the experience and to achieve the best from the encounter with sound.

1. First, you need the Internet. Open as many tabs in your browser as compositions for each day. Please don’t play other compositions apart from those enlisted in the particular order.

2. Selected compositions vary in terms of the sound quality, therefore adjust the volume individually to each track. You may take breaks between the compositions or listen to the same track several times in the proposed order.

3. Please assume a comfortable position - you may sit or lie down. You may read the accompanying texts before listening, afterwards or not at all.

4. Put on your headphones to separate yourself from other sounds and to remain in touch with the composition only.

5. Dim down your lights or close your eyes. Let it help you to concentrate on the composition and on all experiences occurring in connection to the broadcasted sound, even if the quality of it is far from perfect and your own breath audible and in tune with the composition

6. Calm down your breathing, breath consciously from your diaphragm. Avoid reading, speaking, watching, thinking about your everyday life. Stay alert and listen.

7. Calm down, just breath, close your eyes, try to listen to everything that you can hear. Listen consciously, open yourself to a sound spectrum of the composition and its surroundings.

This is not a relaxation seance, although it may induce you in such a state.

See also: