Paweł

Audio travelogue 

(for field recordings and voice)

19/10: Miasto Literatury, Gdańsk

20/11: Komuna Warszawa 

21/11: Audio Art, Kraków 

22/11: Biuro Dźwięku Katowice 

25/11: To Pikap, Thessaloniki 

26/11: Nekubi, Kavala 

27/11: Stellage, Athens 

30/11: Desibel, Istanbul 

„Paweł” is an audio travelogue, a half-phantasmagoric, half-mocumentary depiction of rivers, canals and sewage, whether en route towards water reservoirs, or upstream, towards their often inaccessible sources. The piece consists of eight scenes, or rather eight encountered landscapes. Together they form a not very logical and not very conclusive story about water dams and locks, abundance and floods, dry lakes and stony riverbeds, as well as everything they hide and reveal. It is also about the rhythm in which they perform this work. Actually it is mostly about that rhythm.

„Paweł” is based on field recordings made with homemade geophones, hydrophones and contact microphones. This choice means that the landscapes in „Paweł” are not soundscapes, nor do they resemble spaces as we usually hear them. Little comes here in the perspective of human ears, yet these recordings are absurdly real - the editing is minimal, there are barely any effects, practically no overimposed drama. What really makes „Paweł” are juxtapositions of different takes of a given landscape at a given time - simultaneous, although arbitrary, seemingly overscaled, perhaps disproportionate.

The field recordings in „Paweł” are accompanied by a voice reading the text - something between travel notes, outline of a lecture on social history and a curatorial narration explaining the nature of the sounds heard. Facts, anecdotes, myths and everyday observations definitely reveal something here, but they probably hide even more, especially since there are so many quotes - or rather crypto-quotes. The only exception is a lengthy fragment of Robert Ashley's libretto entitled „The Mystery of the River”, a rarely performed part of the opera „Atalanta (Acts of God)”.

Massive thanks to Nicolas Malevitsis and Volkan Terzioğlu

Concerts in Greece and Turkey supported by Adam Mickiewicz Insitute