MAJA OSOJNIK - Doorways

Doorways was born from a longing to escape the city and everyday life – and the problematically fast pace thereof, a pace of production that accelerates the erosion of attention. In seeking to arrive in a quiet place, to linger there with an observational unprejudiced eros, to become completely aware of being alive. In line with Pauline Oliveros’ practice of deep listening, Maja Osojnik’s album explores the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious nature of listening. It raises the question: How attentively do we perceive, recognise and internalise the ever-changing (aural) environment?

Both compositions, with their subtle changes in sound, can be seen as a collage, a pas de deux between nature and cyborg. Through shading, microscopic deviations, transitions, layering and alienation of original field recordings, the pieces draw attention to the essence of what is present, what exists, on site and invite the listener to engage in a kind of auditory gymnastics. It’s about active listening – what the artist Maja Osojnik calls cinema for the ears – an interactive game with one’s own self. The compositions invite the listener to hear them deeply; they function like a rotary dial, bringing extremely sensitive changes into focus. By constantly readjusting the focal point, they create new relationships between the electronically generated sounds, instruments and field recordings.

The first piece, Doorways #09, is a musical interpretation of a sound map of a specific location in the middle of a forest. The composition overwrites, stretches, alienates and acoustically camouflages the natural environment on site. The field sound recordings are manipulated, reduced, filtered and tonally altered. In a reversal of traditional musique concrète, the blocks of natural sounds are reimagined through the language of music and replaced by acoustic and synthetic musical instruments. The result is an electronic soundscape, a nourishing foundation of sound upon which the new layer, an instrumental work with Black Page Orchestra, unfolds.

Doorways #09 is the latest in a series of graphic scores that Maja Osojnik has created for various groups and ensembles over the years. The graphic composition gives clear and unambiguous instructions regarding the sound material but leaves room for temporality: the tempo at which one moves through the score, how long one lingers, is left open and up to the ensemble. In this way, the score inherently raises the question of how communication – both with oneself and with others – can unfold. It brings responsibility and the relationship between the individual and the collective into focus, not in division but in unity. Likewise, it raises the question of creative freedom, the relationship between interpretation and improvisation within the rigid framework that a graphic score necessarily entails.

Blende #01 explores change, transformation and the game of mimicry. While it doesn’t directly depict the myth of Daphne, it draws on similar motifs, particularly focusing on the curse symbolised by Eros’ two arrows: one representing eternal love, the other an inability to receive love. This polarity and the resulting paradox form the core of the piece, along with the pain that arises from it (The pain is not a scandal). Central to the composition is the moment of transformation, shapeshifting, metamorphosis – where the old must be released, yet the new remains elusive. In its abstraction and personal expression, the piece confronts the process of death, evoking the emotions that come with it: fear, pain, curiosity, desire and ecstasy.

“I slap death in the face, me an artist, in a final and wonderful gesture, I conquer the fear of death by listening to the process of dying.” — Byung-Chul Han

The piece thus looks into a surreal, hallucinatory dream world, zooming in to a microscopic entity and out to a dense, overgrown forest. At sunrise, oblique light shines in hundreds of directions, through the trees and the rising mist, and then refracts like a kaleidoscope in the dewdrops on the leaves. Everything breathes, grows, builds, embraces, envelops, flows and moves slowly between life and death in a state of constant circulation and metamorphosis, invisible to the eye. Always there, unconcealed but never exposed. Exposed I am. Standing there. Right in the midst of it. Come closer. Look inside. I open my mouth. Red. Doorway…