Gdzie są o-czy me ?
8 canal audio installation, 40 min,
Maiseh, 31. Jewish Culture Festival Krakow (Pl) 2022
In the front garden of St Catherine’s Church in Krakow, 8 loudspeakers hang freely from the trees, moving slightly with the wind. You can hear a choir singing in Polish and Ukrainian. Each loudspeaker is assigned a single voice of the choir. The visitor virtually wanders through the choir and between the singers.
In the “Book of Polish Jews”, Shmuel Yosef Agnon writes that after the death of his legendary lover, Esterka, King Casimir the Great kept her eyes and let her spirit wander restlessly around the earth.
“have you seen my eyes” describes Esterka searching for her eyes. She speaks directly to the listener “have you seen my eyes ?” and tells him in 6 scenarios how it feels to be a restless spirit, and what she actually sees, robbed of her eyes.
Over the duration of the piece and the course of the story, 3 elementary forms of composition alternate again and again:
- vocal part, a motif that takes up the motet (polyphonic vocal music from the 13th century onwards). 2. the interaction of the singers with the reverberation in the recording room (Wysoka Synagogue in Krakow). And 3. the reading of the 6 scenarios.
Music and text: Christoph Rothmeier
with the voices of: Ruzyndla Choir: Wiktoria Sędzimir, Weronika Sędzimir, Małgorzata Międlarz, Przemysław Ćwik, Dawid Rozmus, Rita Rain, Oleksandr Mazii and Kateryna Sakhanda
Photos: Michael Ramus
A language version in English can also be played via QR code and smartphone loudspeaker.