Ryszard Lubieniecki / Mateusz Śmigasiewicz – The Second Coming (2022)
performative sound walk / XR sound walk
The portative organ, a mysterious instrument known almost exclusively from medieval iconography, has neither its successors nor its immediate predecessors in the history of music. In 14th- and 15th-century paintings, it not infrequently played a central role: angels, allegories of music or demonic creatures played it, and according to some, it enabled communication with birds. In the following century, it disappeared in unknown circumstances. But did it ever realistically exist? According to an ancient prophecy, there will be a Second Coming in the indefinite future.
A cosmic monolith will descend to Earth to reveal a forgotten artefact to mankind. At several designated points on the globe, local communities have gathered for centuries to await this event. The closest of these was probably the Wrocław Drain Fields, whose vast, empty spaces allow for the free flow of air, creating and shaping the sound of the portative organ at the same time.
Form of presentation:
The sound walk prepared by the duo Lubieniecki / Śmigasiewicz around the Wrocław Drain Fields is presented in two parts – a spatial sound experience on the augmented reality platform Echoes (requires a smartphone) and a performance in the form of a sound walk at dusk in the Drain Fields.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Ryszard Lubieniecki
Composer, musicologist, instrumentalist, improviser. He studied composition and accordion at the Academy of Music in Bydgoszcz. In 2023, he completed his doctoral thesis under the supervision of Professor Remigiusz Pośpiech at the Institute of Musicology in Wrocław (where he currently works as an assistant professor), on memory and its traces in late medieval musical and theoretical sources from the Central European region. In addition to the accordion, he also plays medieval keyboard instruments (portative organ and clavicymbalum). Co-founder of the contemporary music trio Layers and the medieval music ensemble Vox Imaginaria, as well as more ephemeral improvised music groups, including Izquierdo/Lubieniecki, Widzicie, Lubieniecki/Rupniewski and Disquiet.
https://soundcloud.com/ryszard-lubieniecki
Mateusz Śmigasiewicz
(1989) Sound artist, composer, musician. Graduate of the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw in the composition and multimedia class of Prof. Zygmunt Krauze. Participated in composition courses under the guidance of many prominent artists, such as Simon Steen-Andersen, Phillipp Manoury, Johannes Kreidler, Mark Andre, Agata Zubel, Stefan Prins, Marco Stroppa, Marta Ptaszynska, Maurizio Sotelo, and Ondřej Adámek. He is creatively active in many fields, composing chamber music, symphonic music, electroacoustic music, and illustrative music for theater and film. He is interested in disrupting found consonances, thickening textures, stretching time, expanding space – also by creating in close collaboration with the performer. He works intuitively, although processuality is close to his heart. He loves to arrange situations where the rules of communication are not entirely clear. Music takes the floor when the word exhausts meaning, building a premonition of what cannot be described in language.
ABOUT THE EVENT:
The soundwalk and music performance took place on the 7th of May 2022 in the area of Wrocław Drain Fields.
THE TEAM:
Curator : Daniel Brożek
Production: Marta Konieczna, Jan Chrzan
Organiser: Fundacja PozyTYwka
Partner: Dizajn BWA Wrocław
Series co-financed by the City of Wrocław.
