Listening East 1

“Listening East” is the title of two thinking, being and becoming together sessions hosted by a cross-disciplinary artist Martyna Poznańska together with Agnieszka Bulacik, Paulina Miu and Matthias Schönijahn, to explore Eastern imaginaries by means of listening, embodiment exercises, and storytelling.

“Listening East” becomes a space where Eastern borders can be momentarily dropped, challenged and rethought through relational practices which bring into focus the invisibilized West/East European divide that to date segregates communities across the European continent. These sessions take a rather poetic direction, reflecting subjective perceptions of places the participants have visited to think along, sing along, listen along and be along the East.

The title lends itself to Poznańska’s release of a series of field recordings the artist made to investigate the perception and transformation of Eastern Europe, as experienced by generations after the Cold War. Poznańska grew up in Białystok, Poland near the Belarussian border, but during her upbringing, she felt always compelled to go West. A space of promise. A space of the future and stability.

The result of this curiosity was the album “Listening East”, which was recorded over the course of six months in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania: a series of field recordings that include convivial bar conversations to failed phone conversations, to echoing church bells. The goal of the project was to “domesticate” these sonic areas by bringing out the diversity and uniqueness in these acoustic worlds. This work looks into sounds and feelings such as foreignness, unattractiveness, remoteness, danger and mistrust – feelings often associated by post-cold-war generations with these Eastern realities.

With

Martyna Poznańska
Agnieszka Bułacik
Paulina Miu
Matthias Schönijahn