For 13 years of its activity, the In Situ Foundation organized over a hundred of artistic projects in Poland and abroad. The key recurring events organized in Poland at the International Cultural Laboratory in Sokołowsko are: Contexts – Sokołowsko Festival of Ephemeral Art, the Sokołowsko Hommage à Kieślowski Film Festival and the Sanatorium of Sound Festival, which separate branch is the artistic residency programme. The organizers' intention is creating in this picturesque 19th century Lower Silesian recreational village a space for artistic projects, various interdisciplinary creative activities, research, meetings, confronting of opinions, exchanging of thoughts and experiences, popularizing innovative artistic explorations and supporting different forms of artistic projects. The unique, historical building of former dr. Brehmer's Sanatorium and the infrastructure of surrounding it park make Sokołowsko a perfect place for launching artistic residencies programmes.
“A-i-R Sanatorium of Sound Sokołowsko” launched in march 2016, is a residency project for composers, improvisers and sound artists intended as a platform for contemporary music and widely understood sound art. One of the objectives of the programme is supporting new, creative curatorial practices referring to the subject of sound and music, but also searching for meaning of blending art and technology. The artists invited to this so-called “Polish Davos” are the representatives of the most esteemed group of sound artists, innovative contemporary composers and musicians of the most important sound art centers in the world. The idea of a year-long artistic residencies in Sokołowsko and its vicinity was started with eight musicians creating on the junction of music and performance who got invited to Lower Silesia.
Artists:
First resident, who came to Sokołowsko in March, was Martin Howse. In his artistic explorations he studies the connection of the ground (geophysical phenomena) with software and the human psyche (psychogeophysics). While in Sanatorium, he was examining the geosphere of the village and nearest area, using scientific research. He was also searching for and recording sounds useful for future installations. His residency was complemented by a special lecture in Wrocław with the musician's introduction.
Martin Howse is occupied with an artistic investigation of the links between the earth (geophysical phenomena), software and the human psyche (psychogeophysics), proposing a return to animism within a critical misuse of scientific technology. Through the construction of experimental situations (within the process-driven performance, laboratories, walks, and workshops), material art works and texts, Martin Howse explores the rich links between substance or materials and execution or protocol, excavating issues of visibility and of hiding within the world. From 1998 to 2005 he was director of ap, a software performance group working with electronic waste, and pioneering an early approach to digital glitch. In 2005 his environmental computational work, entitled ap0201 installed within the Mojave desert received first prize within the Art & Artificial Life competition VIDA 8.0. From 2007 to 2009 he hosted a regular workshop, micro-residency and salon series in Berlin. Recently he has worked and collaborated on acclaimed projects and practices such as The Crystal World, Psychogeophysics, Earthboot and Sketches towards an Earth Computer. For the last ten years, he has initiated numerous open-laboratory style projects and performed, published, lectured and exhibited diversely. He is equally the creator of the skin-driven audio divination noise module, aka. The Dark Interpreter, and the ERD modular series.
In April Mario de Vega came for residency to Sokołowsko. He was working together with Marcelina Wellmer on the subject of “Phrase Disorder”. The duo concentrated on the acoustic phenomena of the village. The artists were using recording techniques based on the reverse engineering method and engaged in modifying materials found on site to obtain components for a series of sculptures and audio-video performances. The whole process and the final result was photographically documented and digitized in order to create moving images complement by narration.
Mario de Vega works with site-specific installations, sound, sculpture, documentation of ephemeral interventions, actions and publications in diverse formats, exploring the value of failure, vulnerability and simulation. His work has been exhibited throughout Mexico, USA, Canda, South Africa, India, Russia, Japan and around Europe. He works and lives in Berlin and Mexico City.
Marcelina Wellmer works with video, installation and painting, exploring symbiotic relations between humans and interfaces of information exchange and media, crossing the border from analog to digital and vice versa. Wellmer reuses lost and recovered data files and IT hardware, exploring erroneous process of encoding and decoding. Her work has been exhibited around Europe, Australia, Canada, USA and Japan. She works and lives in Berlin.
Another creative in Sokołowsko was Alessandro Bosetti – an Italian composer. During his residency he was working on developing radio opera “The Notebooks”. A starting point of the project were notes of an outstanding Czech composer Leoš Janáček found in Brno City Archives. Researching in Brno, Bosetti chose several dozens of Janáček's notes, and decided to use them as musical score. In Sokołowsko the artist was also working on a new sound version of the opera and it's visual equivalent based on Janáček's writings. The final result was an audio-visual work about Czech composer's notes, presented during Sanatorium of Sound Festival 2016.
Alessandro Bosetti is a composer, performer and sound artist. Most of his work relates to the issue of musicality of the spoken language and sound aspects of verbal communication, especially misunderstandings and problems of translation. A significant part of his works are compositions for voice and electronics blurring the differences between them. He composed for such important institutions as the GRM in Paris, Roulette and The Stone in New York City, Cafe OTO in London, WDR Studio-akustische-Kunst in Cologne and Deutschland Radio Kultur in Berlin and the other in Europe, Asia and the United States. Honored with such awards as Phonurgia Nova (2012) for his composition “636” IDAF (2013) for “Mirror Mask” Ars Acustica (2015) for “The Notebooks”. Cooperates with, among others, Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams (The Necks ), Jennifer Walshe. As a composer, is also working with bands like Kammerenseble Die Neue Musik and Maulwerker in Berlin or Stuttgart Neue Vokalsolisten.
Stephen Cornford, an English sound artist, during his residency (May 2016) was working on his project titled “Migration” and creating a sound installation consisting of 97 cassette recorders. Mechanics and audio electronics of this appliances got subtly altered – it's simple movements, voltages and operating noises were connected into visual and phonetic form, resembling the sound of massive migration of birds or insects. The installation was opened during Sanatorium of Sound Festival 2016.
Stephen Cornford is an audio-visual artist working between installation and performance. His practice is concerned with reconfiguring consumer electronics as expressive and reflective devices. He studied at The Slade School of Fine Art and Dartington College of Arts and is currently a PhD candidate at Winchester School of Art with Jussi Parikka and Ian Dawson. Stephen has had solo exhibitions in Tokyo, Berlin, Brighton, Bergen, Ljubljana & London and his work has been included in group exhibtions at the ZKM Center for Art & Media, Karlsruhe; ICC, Tokyo; Haus der Electronische Kunst, Basel; Sigma Foundation, Venice and at Bienalles in Lódź and Poznań. He is co-director the Audiograft Festival in Oxford and the Consumer Waste record label and is a founder member of Bristol Experimental and Expanded Film. His audio work has been published by Rumpsti Pumsti, VLZprodukt, Senufo Editions, MoTA, Winds Measure, 3leaves, Vitrine, Mantile and Accidie and he has collaborated with Ben Gwilliam, Patrick Farmer, Daniel Bennett and Samuel Rodgers among others.
In June another resident came to Sokołowsko – Valerio Tricoli – who was working on preparations for his quasi-opera “Valerio Tricoli plays Pierre Schaeffer Diaries” about the very beginnings of this genre. Based on the diaries and audio recordings of its creator, Pierre Schaeffer, the piece tells an unorthodox story of one of the most important musical genres of the 20th century. To compose the piece, Tricoli collaborated with Daniel Muzyczuk and curator Michał Libera on the libretto based on Schaeffer's diaries, he also collected field recordings and explored the monumental architecture of Sokołowsko's shelter. Later he prepared a performance and used the collected recordings in it. In August the space of sanatorium was used as a natural scenography for staging the opera.
Valerio Tricoli is an Italian musician and a sound sculptor who creates music from various sounds, working with analogue electronic instruments and tapes. His setup varies, depending on performance space, but the result is always a fascinating mixture of musique concrete and electroacoustics, as captured on his tense and exhaustive album “Miseri Lares”, released by PAN.
Olivia Block, a resident who came to Sokołowsko in August, intended to create a piece connected with the decaying building of former sanatorium. The artists designed a installation using the sounds of breathing layering and overlapping and becoming one with the real sound of the space. The installation was created using eight-channel speaker system, hidden by big curtains made of surgical cotton gauze. Waving, they'd catch the wind – simulating it's movement as an “energy flow”.
Olivia Block is a media artist who creates sound recordings, audio-visual installations, performances, sound design for cinema, and scores for orchestra and chamber music concerts. Over the last twenty years, Block has pioneered the utilization of audio field recordings and found materials in the realms of music and sound art. She combines field recordings, chamber instruments and electronic textures, resulting in mysterious and vivid electroacoustic sound pieces including Pure Gaze, Mobius Fuse, Karren, and others. Block creates multimedia installations and performances utilizing found sounds from micro cassette tapes, field recordings, video, and curated 35mm slides. Block’s work reflects her interests in site specificity, ethnographic sound, architectural sound, and found/archival materials from the 1950’s-1990’s. Her work with expanded cinema and film artists has led to interests related to cinema sound, and visual phenomena like shadows and reflections.
Another resident, Michael Pisaro, focused on a composition continuing his artistic concept. During Sanatorium of Sound Festival 2016 he had a chance and possibility to work with other invited artists and to interpret sketches for his new composition, that he's been preparing in the beginning of his residency.
Pisaro is a composer and guitarist, a member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble and founder and director of the Experimental Music Workshop, Calarts.His work is frequently performed in the U.S. and in Europe, in music festivals and in many smaller venues.It has been selected twice by the ISCM jury for performance at World Music Days festivals (Copenhagen,1996; Manchester, 1998) and has also been part of festivals in Hong Kong (ICMC, 1998), Vienna (Wien Modern,1997), Aspen (1991), London (Cutting Edge, 2007), Glasgow (INSTAL 2009), Huddersfield (2009), Chicago (New Music Chicago, 1990, 1991) and elsewhere.He has had extended composer residencies in Germany (Künstlerhof Schreyahn, Dortmund University), Switzerland (Forumclaque/Baden), Israel (Miskenot Sha’ananmim), Greece (EarTalk) and in the U.S. (Birch Creek Music Festival, Wisconsin).
The purpose of Keith Rowe's residency was to continue working on “Dry Mountain” project, initiated last year together with Gerard Lebik. Back then the musicians recorded their improvisations, then they chose a few minutes long fragment and created a musical score for it. During his residency Rowe was developing the composition and collaborating with musicians playing the score. The instrumentalists invited to interpret the composed piece were: Johnny Chang, Mike Majkowski, Bryan Eubanks, Xavier Lopez, Jonas Kocher, Gaudenz Bardutt, Emilio Gordoa and visual artists Bożenna Biskupska, Radek Szlaga, Alicja Bielawska and Daniel Koniusz, who then created another graphic scores realizable in various instrumental configurations.
Keith Rowe is an English free improvisation tabletop guitarist and painter. Rowe is a founding member of both the influential AMM in the mid-1960s (though in 2004 he quit that group for the second time) and M.I.M.E.O. Having trained as a visual artist, Rowe’s paintings have been featured on most of his own albums. After years of obscurity, Rowe has achieved a level of relative notoriety, and since the late 1990s has kept up a busy recording and touring schedule. He is seen as a godfather of EAI (electroacoustic improvisation), with many of his recent recordings having been released by Erstwhile Records. Rowe began his career playing jazz in the early 1960s—notably with Mike Westbrook and Lou Gare. His early influences were guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian and Barney Kessel.[1] Eventually, however, Rowe grew tired of what he considered the form’s limitations. Rowe began experimenting, slowly and gradually. An important step was a New Year’s resolution to stop tuning his guitar—much to Westbrook’s displeasure. Rowe gradually expanded into free jazz and free improvisation, eventually abandoning conventional guitar technique.