KONRAD SMOLEŃSKI (1977) is a visual artist, photographer and musician. His performances and installations have a strong audiovisual impact, researching the various possibilities in sounds and images, and endeavoring destruction and imperfection. He dedicated his work Mold, composed for the Ludwig Museum’s 2012 exhibition The Freedom of Sound. John Cage Behind the Iron Curtain, to the famous composer. The work thus refers to Cage's best-known piece, 4'33", in the center of which there is “silence,” or more precisely, the environmental noises (the coughs of the audience, the sound of the mechanics of the concert hall) that are heard during the performance of the piece. The silence of the Polish artist's sound installation is broken from time to time by the sounds of the body's hidden, uncontrollable manifestations, referring to lesions in the respiratory system (snorting, asthmatic wheezing, gasping for breath, croaking, heavy breathing, panting, rattling). The unceasing, irrepressible sounds remind us of the wear and tear of the body as well as contaminate the closed and sterile structure of the museum as a virus. K.D.
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