Zachęta Project Room

artists: Tomasz Koszewnik, Jan Szewczyk
cooperation on behalf of the MPZ: Julia Harasimowicz

The Returning from Białowieża exhibition at the Zachęta Project Room will present the context of the Białowieża, open-air Returning to Białowieża project. It will also be an opportunity to meet the project’s key figures, including Joanna Kossak, Tomasz Samojlik, Paweł Winiarski, and Lech Wilczek.

During the vernissage will take place live set of Martyna Poznańska. The present live set is a mix of field recordings gathered in the Bialowieski Forest by Peter Cusack and Martyna Poznańska. The recordings were made between July - October 2016 and belong to the ongoing artistic research project ‘Bialowieza Synapses’, which focuses on the everyday sonic environment of the Bialowieski Forest; tiny, unnoticeable, ephemeral sounds are being amplified to reenact a soundwalking experience in this unique place and bring it to the bodies of the listeners.

At the beginning of October 2015, on the initiative of artists Tomasz Koszewnik and Jan Szewczyk, an open-air event was held in the village of Termiski in the Białowieża Forest, attended by students of the Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies Programme at the University of Arts in Poznań. However, inspired by the tradition of open-air events in Białowieża in the 1960s and ’70s, the Returning to Białowieża project took the form of an art-cum-research reconnaissance. The Jan Józef Lipski Open Univeristy of Teremiski played a pivotal role in the project, offering the artists selfless hospitality. A unique blend of the specific climate and tradition as well as a spacious library and the people creating this institution helped build the intellectual environment for the activities related to the project. Apart from individual experiences, there were meetings with scientists, environmentalists, foresters, artists and outsiders living in the Białowieża forest, all of which were essential to understanding the context. A theme not so frequent in Polish art, the open-air event also became an opportunity to redefine the ideas stimulating creative inspiration derived by artists from meetings with nature. The individual work of post-graduate students was summarised by a post-open-air event exhibition at the Galeria Arsenał in Białystok, and a publication that will be released in the first half of 2017.

Martyna Poznańska — a cross-disciplinary artist based in Berlin. Her artistic research focuses on listening and hearing as a transformative act within the urban sonic environment. Through her installations and live performances she investigates the transience of the affect between different modes of perception, where the listener’s experience becomes the focal point. Her practice involves field recording, writing, video and photography.