Constant and Infinite, Evenly Progressing in All Directions Echoes of Gerard Lebik’s Practice

Site-specific intervention, installation / collective work

To honour the memory of Gerard Lebik, who passed away in November last year, we wish to mark his presence within the landscape of Sokołowsko—not through a monumental gesture, but through a constellation of ephemeral practices that invite a more nuanced mode of listening and attune participants to the particular qualities of a place that the co-founder of Sanatorium of Sound explored with such care over the past decade.

We invited Keith Rowe, Lucio Capece and Zorka Wollny to create listening exercises in the form of short text scores intended for individual performance. These scores are designed to help participants listen as attentively as Gerard did—to cultivate a similar sensitivity to the specific qualities of acoustic space. The first three scores will be installed at selected locations throughout the village as small sculptural elements designed by Kama Sokolnicka, forming the beginning of a growing constellation that will continue to develop over the coming years. The entire project is conceived as a reference to Walce poszły w świat (The Waltzes Went Out into the World), the generative composition Lebik created in 2020.

The project is complemented by an installation dedicated to Gerard Lebik’s recorded work. Bringing together a carefully selected group of recordings—from works released under the pseudonym Zopan to his final compositions—it traces the development of his artistic practice, the breadth of his interests and, perhaps most importantly, the formal approaches to which he continually returned and which he continued to refine throughout his career. Together, these recordings reveal the distinctive artistic language that came to define his work.

Acknowledgments: Qba Janicki, Michał Trela

Curators: Paweł Szroniak, Zuzanna Fogtt

Research collaboration: Piotr Ceglarek

 

Paweł Szroniak is a curator and literary scholar. He is a commissioning editor at Ossolineum Publishing House. Since 2013, he has organised Rozkurz, an original concert series dedicated to experimental music. His main fields of interest include the history of avant-garde movements, conceptual tendencies in music and art, and the literary practices of late modernism. He has collaborated with numerous cultural and art institutions, including the Wrocław Contemporary Museum, BWA Wrocław, Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery in Kraków, the Wrocław House of Literature, the Centre for Culture and Art in Wrocław, Entropia Gallery, and Wrocław Culture Zone. His texts have been published in Glissando, Twórczość, Szum, and Ruch Muzyczny.

Zuzanna Fogtt is President of In Situ Contenporary Art Foundation.