5. Michalina Bigaj and Magdalena Lazar (PL), Liquid Sound, 2021
performance
Water carries sounds: swooshes, splashes, swashes. Pit, pat. Splish, splosh. Plop. Rivers, seas, even puddles all have their own, unique audiosphere – and their instrument is water.
Magda Lazar and Michalina Bigaj’s composition is created using bowls and gongs joined together with a metal structure. Water plays a key role in this non-linear piece. The artists use it to bring to life tones and sounds. Flowing down the duo’s fingertips, this meditative work stretches across two evenings, inviting us to listen to a sonic waterscape. In its panorama, we may hear rattling pipes, gurgling taps, the pitter-patter of rain, the echo of waves, murmuring streams and roaring storms.
Paradoxically, the inspiration behind this ‘water music’ was the ritual of burning amber – a healing method used for curing and purification. And although the artists were originally drawn to the element of fire, it was eventually contrasted with soothing water, from which Magda and Michalina will extract their broad scales and deep compositions.
Michalina Bigaj (born 1991) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where she currently works as a lecturer at the Faculty of Sculpture. Her art explores the space between the natural environment and civilization – or, in other words, between the natural and the human. Bigaj’s installations trick the senses and examine the intentions behind human interference with nature, offering a deceptive imitation of the majestic plant and animal world. The artist is co-responsible for running the experimental BWA ZBK gallery. She lives in Kraków.
Magdalena Lazar (born 1986) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. She works with installations, video, photography and 3D animation to create immaculately clean spaces in which an unknown narrator tells a story that goes beyond the human perspective. The biological and the natural are intertwined with the artificial, catapulting us into a futuristic world that modifies the meaning of the aforementioned categories. Lazar often works as a curator, among others in the BWA ZBK gallery that she co-runs with Michalina Bigaj. She lives in Kraków.
