Words. Sounds. Objects.

Words. Sounds. Objects.
sound installation

European Solidarity Center in Gdańsk, Poland

track 001, 00:53-02:20
‘Sure, everyone is looking for their home. If their home is not available, I think they are trying to subconsciously find a substitute. Recently, I’ve talked to my wife about it and I said, “Maybe my home is Rostock? Maybe you are my home?” Not being able to go back is very difficult. Naturally, I know that the situation there is quite complicated and actually, now, I do not want to go there. That’s clear to me. But the fact that you cannot go home is different. If you do not want to go there, it’s okay. Okay, it’s not a problem. But when my family says you cannot come and stay, it’s a different feeling. This is an exclusion. Now, my home is my wife; where we live; Rostock. When we have too much stress, too many emotions, we’re going with my wife to the forest, or to the sea, where we can calm down. It’s easier for me to have a person I can always talk to about everything.’
(an excerpt from a recording)

Ossama Altessini, Sirian cello player

Asked to reminisce, the members of the EXPAT orchestra open doors to their homes in Syria and Egypt. Their stories spin round scents, flavours, and sounds engraved in their memories. The latter are reconstructed in the music played by the musicians. The artists agreed to lend one object each to the author of the work. The objects are part of the installation and bring back more memories. In their interviews the musicians tell stories of these seemingly unremarkable objects which turn to be carriers of narratives about their childhood and settling down. The stories told concern three sets of circumstances of their emigration and revolutions they entailed. Asked to share their reminiscences, the musicians recall their stories: the unbearable silence resounding through their lives after the ordeals of emigration, the personification of the concept of home in the situation when homecoming is impossible and the lighthearted homesickness when homecoming is possible.

The audience will hear an abstract amalgam of sounds which, after individual stories have been told, will enable to extract the artists’ private memories: a sound of tractor driving onto a field, a characteristic way the father of one of the musicians knocked on the door, a milkman’s cry heard every day in the street. Several times a day a sound of Syrian folk song one of the musicians’ grandmother used to sing resounds through the space of the European Solidarity Centre. The song tells a love story which can never have a happy ending.

The installation is a part of Solidarity of Arts Festival.

13.08.2017 – 2.08.2017
European Solidarity Center in Gdańsk, Poland