During her year-long residency at the Avant-Garde Institute, Anna Zaradny established a unique relationship with this place, resulting in a special musical composition for alto saxophone, as well as, the architecture and furnishings of the former studio of Henryk Stażewski and Edward Krasiński. The work, entitled D i P a P / P i L a P — IA / 25.04.21 / 14/19 UTC+1 performed live by the artist in a form of an online streaming and is intended as a profound intervention in space, taking a form of multidimensional sound events and performative gestures.
Composed, directed, performed: Anna Zaradny
Camera: Michał Matejko
Lights: Jan Szubiak
Graphics / makeup art: Iza Miecznikowska
Sound masters: Paweł Parzuchowski / Piotr Malicki
“I’m sitting in a room different than the one you find yourself in right now”, that is the starting point for artistic interventions, directed at exposure of spatial properties of a given place in form of technological mediation. Within the framework of her residency at the Institute of Avantgarde, Anna Zaradny has taken on herself to create a full-dimensional site-specific work, although implemented in form of streaming. An online broadcast will in this case serve not as a documentary tool but as the actual tissue of the work. It should provide the illusion of directness: a sphere of an intime bond with the space actualized by sound; the sound is treated as a temporary acoustic phenomenon, in the act of reception clearly personal, while simultaneously holding potential to create a community.
Sound and Pause versus Space / Point and Line versus Plane — IA / 25.04.21 / 16/21 UTC+1 is a unique musical composition for an alto saxophone as well as the architecture and elements of interior design of the former study of Henryk Stażewski and Edward Krasiński — a place strongly marked with the presence of the artist, even transformed into a kind of environment, an autonomous work of art, which is entangled by a tight net of symbolic structures. Apart from numerous traces of Krasiński’s attendance, difficult to divide into creative activity and everyday hustle, one can find a number of interventions there, made by guests, just to mention vertical stripes sticked onto window panes by Daniel Buren. Thus, Zaradny enters a form of “lived-through space”, as Walter Benjamin would call it, characterized not only by some kind of substantiveness, specific physical properties and infrastructure, but mainly emotionally charged by memories of old owners and narratives of one of spiritual centers of the Polish avantgarde art. Her piece is a kind of deep intervention into the surroundings, taking the form of multi-dimensional sound events and performative gestures. As in many other of her acts, Anna Zaradny puts emphasis on specifically understood choreography: she creates a score which determines the route composed of a series of activities which make the space concrete. In establishing a physical relationship with architectural elements and objects filling the Institute of Avantgarde (also those most inconspicuous ones), she positions them on a map made present. This way, the artist takes over the narrative and the affective structure of Krasiński’s study, creating ambiguity and thus, she “furtively introduces the multitude of own references and quotes”. She adds further layers, crating a thick contextual network: theories of Wassily Kandinsky, presented in the famous treaty of 1926, have a dialogue with unobvious paraphrasing of Alvin Lucier, whereas motives from Rite of spring by Igor Stravinsky and De natura sonorum by Bernard Parmegiani shed new light on the labyrinth drawn by Koji Kamoji.
The dynamic nature of the work, composed of occurrences and interactions taking place not only in the specific space but also in precisely determined time frames, seems to be a reference to the tradition started by John Cage, and then successfully developed by Fluxus. Zaradny explores this model of musicality, which is de-centrically oriented, and strives to cross her own boundaries: the time element serves as the main determinant of the music matter, departing from the obligatoriness of sound and validating the postulate of happening. The traditional form of a concerto is subject to a fundamental revision, not only because we are dealing with a piece for an instrument and the surroundings, presented to the public in a digitally mediatized manner, but mainly due to accentuation of its “micro-theatrics”, as at one point well characterized by Brandon LaBelle, who wrote about situations “combining fiction, dramaturgy and social interaction, which animate the given site from many perspectives”. The composition is made of two complementary parts, clearly distinguished in terms of scenography: the first one in daylight, and the second one after the fall of darkness. As a result, the main object of the experiment, that is the study of Edward Krasiński, should gain a significantly different impact, just like a sensitive resonator, gradually revealing subsequent layers of meaning.
Paweł Szroniak
References: Alvin Lucier, Douglas Simon, Chambers, Middletown 1980; Brandon LaBelle, Room Tone, Berlin 2015; Michel de Certeau, Wynaleźć codzienność. Sztuki działania [The Practice of Everyday Life], trans. Katarzyna Thiel-Jańczuk, Kraków 2008; Walter Benjamin, Podróże wyobraźni [Travels of the Imagination], trans. Bogdan Baran, Warszawa 2021.