Vernissage “Neukölln. Olive oil. Sonic Portrait | Sonic Portrait”

How many sounds do you hear every day, even though you don't actually listen to them? Do you know what your neighborhood sounds like? From 8 to 22 October in the Ethnography Department of the National Museum in Gdańsk you can experience a project inspired by the sound character of Berlin's Neukölln district and Gdańsk Oliwa.

Neukölln. Olive oil. Sonic Portrait is a Polish version of an artistic project that premiered at Errant Sound & Miss Read in Berlin. Its creators — Marcin Dymiter and Bea Targosz — used field recordings collected in the Neukölln district of Berlin and Oliwa in Gdańsk.

Their sound installation is a story about the locality, the immediate environment, which becomes the first context of our experience of the world. It is from what is outside the window, on the street, in the park or in the yard, that we begin to know reality. Listening carefully can make a well-known place suddenly sound different. Artists show that sound is more than just a background. It can tell a lot about space, its inhabitants and the changes taking place in it. It tells about architecture, movement, times of day and year, the presence of people, animals and plants. It creates the audiosphere — the sound environment in which we live.

“Thanks to field recordings and sound walks, we get to know the terrain, its specificity, we study issues related to collective memory, but also to building relationships and increasing awareness related to the place. By making recordings in the districts of Berlin Neukölln and Gdańsk Oliwa, we bring the specificity of the place closer, but also apply a private filter to understanding, feeling and listening to the city,” says Marcin Dymiter.

“Another element of the work is the analysis and transformation of field recordings to configure tones (pitches, sines, bits), as well as sampling the collected material in real time and in a randomized order to create a kind of sonic map — responses to ambient sounds” — adds Bea Targosz.

The installation will be accompanied by performative activities. On Sunday 11 October at 15.00 Bea Targosz will lead a sound walk Reducing Listening, which will begin in the Olive Park under the headquarters of the Ethnography Department, and then the participants will move towards the Tri-City Landscape Park. By focusing attention on the sonic characteristics emerging around sounds, they will reflect on how we experience and listen to the sound environment of the city on a daily basis. Admission is free.

On Sunday 18 October at 12.00 in the Department of Ethnography, Marcin Dymiter will invite to a soundscape set, i.e. a sound “reading” of the city and its architecture and a polemic with the idea of entertaining live sets played in public space. Referring to the cultural formulation of the dj set and the sound system, the soundscape set evokes the category of sounds “absent” in space. Each soundscape set is unique, specially prepared and substantively related to the environment, architecture and given situation. Admission to the event is included in the price of a ticket to the museum. The number of places is limited.

The installation is part of the program of the international symposium Beyond Listening 3: Resounding the Rights of Nature organized by CENSE and the Baltic Centre of Culture.