On Saturday, September 30, as part of this year’s Signal/Noise series, which the Nobiscum Foundation is implementing thanks to funding from the budget of the Mazovian Voivodeship, I would like to invite you to a sound walk around the former Jewish district of Płock. The …
On Sunday, August 20, at 2 pm, I will lead a sound walk as part of the Jewish Culture Festival in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. Meeting place: Monument to the Railwaymen at the Railway Station, 1 Maja 4 Street Registration is required for the event: warsztaty@festiwalkulturyzydowskiej.pl. The …
“Czas Kultury” website has published the second interview, in which we talk with Filip Szałasek about my fieldrecording projects. The link to read (in Polish only) can be found below.
My audio collage “Jedenaście pięter” [“Eleven Floors”] based on 7 field recordings made in a large-panel block of flats and its immediate vicinity using a microphone and geophone, was appreciated as one of three awarded works in an open call organized by the Mazovia Institute …
Resonance / תהודה / Rezonans is a live project which, apart from ambient and drone textures, uses found sounds sampled from old tapes containing fragments of music and spoken word related to the broadly understood Hebrew-language culture. I will play the project live on November …
As a follow-up to the recent charity concert for Ukraine organized by the Culture and Art Center in Płock and the Nobiscum Foundation, I am publishing a recording of my ambient-drone performance, and all the funds collected will of course go to further humanitarian aid for Ukraine organized by the Polish Center for International Aid (PCPM). Of course, I encourage you to support PCPM directly (without Bandcamp and PayPal fees) and download the recording for free. Remember to also support your local aid activities and Ukrainian artists!
On March 25, at 7.00 p.m., a charity concert for Ukraine takes place at the Płock Culture and Art Center, where I will have the pleasure to play together with friends from the bands kIRk and Schröttersburg. The organizers of the event are the Płock …
My track entitled Житомир can be found on a compilation released by Green Fairy Records the aim of which is to collect funds to support UNICEF Ukraine 🇺🇦 Check out the whole compilation including many great artists from all around the world and support free …
Growing up in a city, of which the river is an inseparable part, it
is hard to imagine functioning in a place where there is no such river –
no banks, bridges, or the presence of aquatic birds… The Vistula used
to have great importance in terms of communication, trade, human life –
however, there are no preserved significant audio records of this.
Today, on the Vistula, we listen mainly to silence, the sound of water,
the voices of birds and car traffic drones present in many places. We
meet fishermen and canoeists every now and then. There are only a few
operational cruise ships.
The sound map of the Vistula in the Mazovia region documents how the
Vistula itself and the places located by the river sound today. It is a
subjective documentation and such is the image that emerges from it. It
can be a starting point for your own sound tours of the Vistula, and
this form of specific “tourism”, requiring concentration, drastic
limitation of our impact on the surrounding environment, as if in
opposition to the omnipresent culture of the selfie, can give a lot of
satisfaction, even if we do not use a microphone and we make no
recordings.
Today, the Vistula River indeed sings with noise, but not only the
noise generated by flowing water. It is impossible to escape the sounds
of land and air traffic. These, although part of the current Vistula
soundscape, are happening somewhat apart of the river itself – they are
not the result of human interest in the Vistula, or the direct use of
its resources. A motorboat, ferry or cruise boat that passes from time
to time (the presence of the latter can still be noticed in Warsaw,
Wyszogród and Płock) is only an audial shadow of the times when the
Vistula was used quite commonly. The soundscape of those years can,
however, be at best a field for the imagination and the memory of the
non-existent. The Vistula A.D. 2021 recordings, being the content of
this project, will remain. When and how will they be used? The
possibilities, as always in the case of field recordings, come in
various forms.
The first sound map of the Vistula in the Mazovia region, created as
part of the project “Singing with noise”, there will be ca. 160 minutes
of recordings made in 40 locations on the Mazovian section of the river.
The map will be published as a double CD, which will be available free
of charge in December 2021 in selected places in Mazovia.
The project “Singing with noise. The sound map of the Vistula
in the Mazovia region” is implemented by the Nobiscum Foundation thanks
to funding from the Self-Government of the Mazovian Voivodeship.
Field recordings: Piotr Dąbrowski
Photo and video documentation: Gabriela Nowak-Dąbrowska
Below you can find a video (oh, the irony!) trailer of the project. The Vistula soundscape recordings will be here soon!
An interview has just been published on the Anxious Magazine website in which I talk a bit about music, field recordings, releases, ideas and plans. I would like to thank Artur Mieczkowski for our conversation and invite everyone to visit the link below for some …