In our work, the close co-operation with the local environment is always the main focus. We invite musicians, actors, students and the artistic environment as a whole to collaborate with us on many levels. Performers are given roles to play according to their character and the skills they possess. There are special solos and little scenes to be played by many people at one time, but there is also the space for improvisation with only guidelines suggesting the type of action to be performed.
Workshops and open rehearsals are an important part of our practice. During the first meetings with the performers various ways of making sounds are suggested. We test the acoustic possibilites of the space and get to know each other better. We find that not only the skills but also the personalities of the participants contribute in a significant way to the piece itself.
Our compositions are purely acoustic. We usually don’t use any electronic equipment or speaker amplification. In our practice we explore sounds coming from everyday life – noises made by human body, objects, those created involountarly when making more or less casual activities such as chatting, walking, laughing, munching, sighing, rubbing things onto each other. What interests us most is how such actions, when made by a group of people change the quality of sound from obvious into indefinable. How timbre becomes a dominating factor. We also use a lot of various untypical instruments – objects usually used for purposes other then sound-making: hoes, high heeled shoes, boules, plastic pipes, beads…
Architecture and context has always been of prime importance to us and each piece is developed in refference to the particular space. That is why we always begin our stays from learning about the environment in which we will be working in – experiencing the space, gathering information, and trying out first ideas. However, most of the crucial decisions are made during the rehearsals, when we can listen to the particular juxtapositions of sounds and process them while easily at hand.
Zorka Wollny and Anna Szwajgier 2011