Adam Gołębiewski
IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES II
site-specific sound installation / 2017
colonnade in Brzeźno’s Haffner Park
In the In Front of Their Eyes II sound installation, Adam Gołębiewski continues his creative explorations of sound, focusing on the relationship between its organic, acoustic origin and technological mediation. The artist keeps moving on the fringes of socially sanctioned sound aesthetics and practices, either questioning, expanding or reducing commonly used instrumental techniques. In his installation, Gołębiewski reaches for the most basic life function, which additionally has the power of initiating the sound signal: breathing. Placing it in relation to material culture, the artist hangs six steel ‘speakers’ in the voids of Brzeźno Park’s colonnade. The resulting composition is a sum of six constantly changing breaths deposited in an object. Subsequent layers of meaning contained in the installation result from the collision of water and air – the sea and wind, so reminiscent of the soundwave – which, particularly in autumn, create a natural, eerie background for this peculiar structure. In Front of Their Eyes II combines a primeval yearning for sound, the life-giving breath, and a unique form of presentation, which brings to mind ancient amphitheatres.
Adam Gołębiewski (b. 1984)
is a drummer, composer, improviser, musicologist and sociologist, currently also an interdisciplinary PhD student at the University of the Arts in Poznań. He is interested in the language of experimental and contemporary music, free improvisation, free jazz and sound art compositions. He is the author of sound, site-specific and audio-performative installations, which combine sound and space with their social contexts. Gołębiewski has participated in interdisciplinary actions with performers and top experimental musicians from Poland and abroad.