Concerts, publications, resources

When institutions are temporarily closed for visitors, when both the team and the guests practice social distancing, we want to offer you other methods of participation. This Saturday, April 4, at 9pm (CET) we will broadcast the concert of Robert Piotrowicz on our Facebook profile. The event will inaugurate the next stage of our online activity. The artist will perform compositions from his latest album Euzebio.

“The body of Euzebio was found all covered in mud. Small devices attached to his limbs were soaked in water but still produced some sounds—neither of speech, nor of the humming spong. Suddenly, when some toad or a redstart slurped, he got up suddenly, and everything started again.”
–Mircea Eliade, Euzebio, The Man Who Did Not Exist, Yet Still Shook The Forest 

Euzebio, whom Robert Piotrowicz describes in new pieces, is a mythological instrument designer. The caption suggests that he is a character from the literary attempts of the researcher of religious structures Mircea Eliade. This attribution associates him with the practice of treating mythology as a basic structure allowing the formation of societies. Euzebio becomes the successor of Orpheus, David and other mythological heroes equipped with the instrument. However, this mythology is fundamentally individualistic. The constructions are unique and individual. The cover photo suggests that to build the instruments you need to rebuild your body. So Euzebio is a monster composed of objects dreamed by synthesizers. Sometimes, surprisingly repetitive machines are replaced by moments of focus, in which the synthesizer makes sounds similar to the “When Snakeboy Is Dying” suite based largely on acoustic instruments. There are more such “false friends” here. Euzebio’s body sounds like different instruments depending on which side we look at it, and what process the given composition evokes. These are five sound structures that must be created and juxtaposed in order to build an individual mythology and dance rituals that the apocryphal hero dreamed of by Eliade has to offer.

Robert Piotrowicz is a composer, improviser and author of radio plays.

Here’s the link to his website: robertpiotrowicz.bandcamp.com

Robert Piotrowicz’s album Euzebio was released at the beginning of this year by Bôłt Records, with whom Muzeum Sztuki often teams up to conduct joint research on East European sound art, including working with the legacy of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio.

Muzeum Sztuki is not only about exhibitions organised in our headquarters in Łódź but it is also an intensive public programme, involved in publishing and research activities. We engage in interdisciplinary research into twentieth and twenty-first century creativity at the joint of literature and art, as well as visual arts and contemporary music. This results in unusual meetings which eventually culminate in conferences, publications and online resources. They are not only the basis for further research but, above all, serve to better comprehension of contemporary culture’s networking and intersectionality. 

More information about our activities available online can be found on our social media and websites.