Listening to the Resonance of Modernism – Walking from Scores: A Two-Part Seminar with Elena Biserna

🔈 Friday, 18 September 2026, 6:00 PM
🔈 LECTURE – Żyjnia, BWA Wrocław, Świdnicka 2–4, Wrocław
🔈 Free admission

🔈 Saturday, 19 September 2026, 4:00 PM
🔈 PERFORMATIVE PARTICIPATORY SOUND WALK – Lesław Węgrzynowski Park / Kraftpost

🔈Registration: https://forms.gle/N8mVdags9wiLYJLr5

🔈 Participation in both events is free of charge.
🔈 Places are limited and advance registration is required.

🔈🔉🔊 LECTURE

Elena Biserna invites us to trace the history of sound walks by exploring the relationships between walking, listening, and sound-making from the 1960s to the present day.

Since the 1960s, walking has enabled artists and musicians to move beyond the formal settings of concert halls and institutional exhibition spaces, engaging instead with changing public environments, natural landscapes, and the social and political sphere. Walking redefines the roles of composer, performer, audience, and even music itself, while opening up new modes of perception and action.

This lecture offers an introduction to the relationships between walking, listening, and sound-making—from the first sound walks and walking performances of the 1960s to today’s remarkably diverse movement-based artistic practices. It explores the rich legacy of interdisciplinary experimentation and a broad field of artistic and research practices that resonate with urgent contemporary questions surrounding critical spatial thinking and spatial practices.

🔈🔉🔊 PERFORMATIVE PARTICIPATORY SOUND WALK

Walking from Scores is a collection of approximately one hundred textual and graphic scores created by artists, collectives, and composers, dedicated to walking, listening, and making sound within urban environments. The project investigates the relationships between aesthetics and everyday life, the dynamics of sound and listening in urban spaces, and the (permeable) boundaries between artist and audience.

The title is a variation on Working from Scores, an essay originally published in 1990 in which Ken Friedman introduced the concept of “musicality” into the visual arts, challenging notions of authenticity, intention, and meaning, while interpreting the artwork as a set of instructions capable of generating multiple, equally valid performances.

Taking this openness as its point of departure, the project is based on reproducing, disseminating, and reactivating the collection, assuming new forms in response to the geography of each event and through dialogue with its local context.

During the walk in Wrocław, Elena Biserna will invite participants to perform a selection of listening scores and sound actions, collaboratively shaping the sonic landscape of the streets surrounding the former Kraftpost building.

Selected scores and instructions by: Peter Ablinger, Milan Adamčiak, G. Douglas Barrett, Elena Biserna, Blank Noise, George Brecht, Cornelius Cardew, Stephen Chase, Giuseppe Chiari, Seth Cluett, Philip Corner, Viv Corringham, Bill Dietz, Amy Dignam, David Dunn, Haytham El-Wardany, Esther Ferrer, Simone Forti, Francesco Gagliardi, Jérôme Giller, Oliver Ginger, Anna and Lawrence Halprin, David Helbich, Dick Higgins, Christopher Hobbs, Jérôme Joy, katrinem, Debbie Kent, Bengt af Klintberg, James Klopfleisch, Milan Knížák, Alison Knowles, Takehisa Kosugi, Jiří Kovanda, Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, Bob Lens, Ligia Lewis, Alvin Lucier, Walter Marchetti, Larry Miller, iLAND / Jennifer Monson, Max Neuhaus, Alisa Oleva, Pauline Oliveros, Yoko Ono, Open City (Andrew Brown, Katie Doubleday & Simone Kenyon) with Emma Cocker, Nam June Paik, Michael Parsons, Ben Patterson, Cesare Pietroiusti, Mathias Poisson, Anna Raimondo, Phoebe Riley Law, Jez Riley French, Paul Sharits, Mieko Shiomi, Mark So, Standards, Nicolas Tardy, Davide Tidoni, Ultra-red, Isolde Venrooy, Carole Weber, Manfred Werder, Franziska Windisch, Ben Vautier, and La Monte Young.

Elena Biserna

a researcher and curator based in Marseille, France. She writes, talks,
facilitates workshops or collective projects, curates events and sometimes performs. Her
interests are focused on listening and on contextual, time-based art practices in relationship
with urban dynamics, socio-cultural processes, the public and political sphere. She currently
serves as artistic director of LABgamerz and Lips festival, in Aix-en-Provence.
Her writings have appeared in several international publications (Les Presses du Réel,
Mimesis, Le Mot et le Reste, Errant Bodies, Amsterdam University Press, Cambridge Scholar,
Castelvecchi, Bloomsbury, Routledge, postmedia, Electa, Silver Press, Viaindustriae, etc.) and
journals. She has recently edited two books: Walking from Scores (Dijon: Les Presses du réel,
2022) and Going Out. Walking, Listening, Soundmaking (Brussels: umland, 2022). She co-
edits the podcast wi watt'heure of Revue & Corrigée with Carole Rieussec.
As a curator and/or author, she has collaborated with or presented her projects in different
venues/organisations. Among others: Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg,
ar/ge kunst (Bolzano), Padiglione Italia, Venice Biennale; B’sarya for Arts (Alexandria), nGbK
and Errant Sound (Berlin), LUFF (Lausanne), Tavros and Onassis Fondation
(Athens), SODAS2123 (Vilnius), La muse en circuit and Sonic Protest (Paris), Festival
Plataforma (Santiago de Compostela); Oscillation festival, CIVA and Q-O2 (Brussels); Festival
Parallèle, Manifesta 13 and La Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille); 3bisf-centre d’arts
contemporains, Locus Sonus, Fondation Vasarely (Aix-en-Provence); Cona, to)pot festival
and City of Women festival (Ljubljana); soundpocket (Hong Kong); Festival RAAA (Brescia);
Amigdala e Periferico festival (Modena); PAC – Padiglione Arte Contemporanea and
Standards (Milan); Interferenze Festival (Naples), NUB and Museo del Novecento e del
Contemporaneo di Palazzo Fabroni (Pistoia); Radio India (Rome); Sant'Andrea degli
Amplificatori, Xing, Radio Città Fujiko (Bologna); Saout Radio; p-node.

🔈🔉🔊 Canti Spazializzati

Running since 2018, this workshop-concert series is dedicated to the theories and practices of experimental music, focusing on concepts of spatializing sound compositions created for multi-channel sound systems. The project combines the presentation of new musical works with opportunities for artists to develop the spatial aspects of their compositions and creates a platform for collaboration between young musicians, composers, and sound artists.

Team:
Daniel Brożek (curator)
Agnieszka Jakuszak (production)
Agata Szakiel (PR)

Visual identity: Kama Sokolnicka

Organizer: FEPS Foundation for European Studies
Partner: BWA Wrocław – Contemporary Art Galleries

The series is funded by the Municipality of Wrocław and the Minister of Culture and National Heritage from the Culture Promotion Fund – a dedicated state fund – within the framework of the “Music” programme, implemented by the National Institute of Music and Dance.