Landscape with disease — Justyna Stasiowska

The title of Justyna Stasiowska's installation should be taken literally. Despite her use of sound, the artist does not present soundscapes. If anything, these are artificial landscapes, which she herself likes to refer to by the English term fakescapes. In the case of Landscape with Illness, recordings from around Ujazdowski Castle are first reconstructed using sound design tools. Then the artist methodically removes further sounds from them, deepening their unreality. The surgical precision of this method refers to the medical history of the Ujazdowski Castle, which functioned as a hospital for years. As a guide in the subsequent stages of reducing artificial soundscapes, the artist chose a catalog of names of lung noises of patients suffering from tuberculosis, found in the documents of the Ujazdowski Hospital.
Stasiowska's installation takes the form of a three-volume speculative sound encyclopedia. Referring to the thought of Beatriz Colomina, a historian and theorist of architecture dealing with, among others, the relationship between architecture, hygiene and health, the artist considers gestures such as isolation, separation or dissection as fragments of a single hygienic discourse, manifested in a contemporary approach to sound, architecture and health. This perspective means that the surroundings and history of Ujazdowski Castle can serve as an example revealing the general properties of modern hygienic logic - the soundscape is treated today as sick bodies. Both are claiming to be cured. Such a function is often performed by architecture and spatial planning.

Combining three fields in her installation, the artist takes a clear position in the contemporary discussion of acoustic ecology. He argues that understanding the sound environment requires not so much to separate it and focus on it, but, on the contrary, to perceive something more in it: a landscape with a whole series of proper references, in this case with disease at the center.
In Stasiowska's installation, you can hear the voice of Ani Nowak.

Justyna Stasiowska is a composer, sound artist, researcher and theorist. As she herself claims, she practices theory with the help of sound. Practicing sound design in theatre, choreography, visual arts or music, he consistently explores the connections of sound with history, medicine and architecture. She performed live at festivals and series of sound events such as Sanatorium of Sound, Phonon, Canti Spazializzati, Control Room, and co-created compositions and installations presented at the Sophiensaale and HAU in Berlin, Staatstheater in Hannover, at the 23rd Triennale in Milan, London Design Biennale, Ljubljana Design Biennale, La Clasa Encenciencio Madrid, Tokyo Gendai, National Museum in Warsaw, Old Theatre in Krakow, Museum of Art in Łódź. Among the people with whom Stasiowska regularly collaborates are Paweł Sakowicz, Ania Nowak, Marcin Rusak, Aga Beaupre.