Saturday 20th of May 21h
The composer Sofie Birch and the experimental singer Antonina Nowacka are in charge of orchestrating the opening ritual of the parallel program Picasso: Untitled / With Music.
Picasso: Untitled / With Music exposes Picasso to a multiplicity of voices that overflow the exhibition hall and proposes a multidisciplinary re-reading of the artist and his work. This collaboration is a soundtrack proposal for the exhibition with Birch's ambient creations together with Nowacka's vocal melodies in a meditative sound show that opens a small portal to another world and reveals some mysteries from the threshold of reverie.
Danish sound artist Sofie Birch and Polish experimental singer Antonina Nowacka met for the first time at the 2021 Ephemera Festival, where they performed an impromptu performance as part of the all-night ambient concert Infinity O'Clock. The connection was immediate and profound, a meeting of kindred spirits, leading to a second collaboration at the Unsound Festival that same year. Later, the artists reunited in Copenhagen to record Languoria. Fusing the melodicism and delicacy of Birch's sonic practice and Nowacka's abstract and spiritual vocalizations, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while looking inward.
Sofie Birch is a sound artist and producer known for her ambient music works as well as soundtracks for animated films and art installations. Her works include Planetes which she released in 2019 on Siel's label, Repair Techniques which she released together with Johan Carøe on STROOM, and her latest acclaimed album Holotropica. She has a deep interest in the healing nature of sound and vibrations and works across disciplines with other artists to expand our understanding of the mind and body through art.
Experimental vocalist Antonina Nowacka released Lamunan in 2020, inspired by time spent singing alone in a cave on the island of Java. When she returned to Poland, she attempted to capture a similar mood in the Modlin Fortress, a cave-like structure near Warsaw. Drawing inspiration from ancient choral music, traditional Indonesian sounds and modern minimalism, Lamunan approaches the work of artists such as Grouper and Meredith Monk. His next trip was to Oaxaca in Mexico, where Nowacka recorded vocals in a remote church, with the background sound of motorcycles, trucks and local animals. The result was Vocal Sketches from Oaxaca.