Hanna Hartman – Message from the Lighthouse (for percussion and tape)

Sam Salem – The Raft Breaks (for violin, elektronics, tape and video)

About Linda Jankowska and her thoughts on music and on the pieces she performs during the festival

” Sometimes I wonder what the human expression and communication would be like if we were only given one million words to say throughout life. Would we evolve to be telepathic? Would we be much better at modulating energy with pure intention? Working with sound is to me the closest I can get to this alternative course of human evolution. Sounds surround us at all times therefore music is everywhere, let it be when you open a window or heat up oil in the pan. Every sound has an expressive potential but are we attuned enough to realise it through careful listening? Paying attention to the world in ways other than human chatter is not only a way of living and a respite from the information overload, but also a gateway to participating in an alternative narrative.

The music I chose to present in Kalv focuses on the concept of sound as a carrier of knowledge and listening as a form of communication. Hanna Hartman’s Message from the Lighthouse, as Jonny Axelsson from whom the piece was written said, is ‘archaic in a way’. The fundamental sounds of stones and metal help one relax into the performance. At once one is the performer and the listener, one delivers and at the same time one is simply there participating in the act of listening with the audience.

Pierluigi Billone’s Equilibrio.Cerchio is rich in internal changes to the fibre and grain of sound all throughout its nearly 40-minute duration. The piece not only proposes a different kind of violin virtuosity but also pays tribute to the ceremonial, meditative and collective chant practices found in Tibetan Buddhism sound culture.

Sam Salem’s The Raft Breaks is a psychogeographic exploration of the soundworld of my childhood. To collect materials for the piece we travelled together to my hometown Poznan and walked around listening to places which are meaningful to me. Now whenever I practice, I am teleported both in time and space, as I can detect the origins of the work’s elements.

Carola Bauckholt’s Doppelbelichtung creates a possibility for imagining what interspecies communication could sound like. The sound of the violin can be easily confused with bird song.

Hanna Hartman’s BUG playfully narrates a conversation between a bug and a human through our fundamental, yet slightly underused tool of cognition – the sense of touch. By moving washers and plastic pics across two corrugated plastic boards Hartman envisions another possibility of communication that could be available to us if we chose to listen differently. Dmitry Efremov’s new work is still a mystery to me as I am writing these words, but one that I am intrigued to unravel together with the audience. ” 

The Raft Breaks – “In 2017, I travelled to Poznan with Linda Jankowska in order to gather materials for The Raft Breaks. After Iain Sinclair, we participated in our own act of “ambulatory divination”, with Linda’s life forming the basis of our map, our trajectories arcing through her memory. We recorded actions and ambiences. The final work is situated in its own territory. It is private, psychogeographic and mythological. A violin emerges from a plastic foot-pump. A forest creaks. A dialog between the living and dead envelops us. but, apologetically, the bubble bursts. A storm erases: we are surprised by its beauty even in the midst of overwhelming violence.”
– Sam Salem

Linda Jankowska is invited as a part of the project Drones and performing arts in Kalv, a project which is supported by Swedish Performing Arts Agency and the region Västra Götaland.

Photo © Linda Jankowska

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