Notes on Metamorphosis - Przemiana

by Monika Weiss

2024

Metamorphosis - Przemiana is cast from iron, which is intentionally untreated. This permanent piece changes from month to month, and will continue to change from year to year, as the sculpture acquires brown stains, weather patina and as it gradually becomes adopted by the natural environment of the Sculpture Park at the Centre of Polish Sculpture in Orońsko.

The cold, architectural, column-like container is cast from heavy iron, contrasting with the fragile, overflowing inside, which is made of sound. In my work sound and water have related properties. They are both uncontainable, they don’t respect boundaries, they go through your body, they spill and stain. Iron connotes to me something strong, heavy, and resistant, like an armor. The title of the project relates to the metamorphosis from a living body of a woman into a living yet forever different body of a tree, akin to the Greek myth of Daphne. I thought of the idea of escape that is at the core of this myth. While Daphne’s own skin is not strong enough to defend her against the violence, ultimately she escapes, dying as a woman but also being reborn as a tree. In my piece her tree trunk undergoes further transformation into an architectural column. It ultimately becomes an armor and Daphne, a warrior.

I often work with cold materials for my sculptural objects, which are containers for something that is soft, that overflows and leaks out of them, such as a body immersed in water or paper, or the sound. In my art materials such as stone, concrete, fiberglass - or more recently, cast iron and steal - connote architecture as well as a boundary or a barrier. The iron column in Metamorphosis - Przemiana blends with the trees growing around it, yet it remains visibly different. The sculpture is forever standing, as if growing in the forest. Akin to a warrior, it remains strong and grounded, surrounded by the trees, which are creating a vault around it, a natural cathedral. The location was chosen very carefully to create a feeling of such vault-like space. I think of the sculpture as a column but also as a horos, the ancient Greek for “boundary marker”, marking the space around it, perhaps pointing towards an ancient time, or a time outside of the normal time. I want the audience to come to Metamorphosis as if on a solitary pilgrimage. In Daphne’s transformation myth there is an aspect of regeneration or reincarnation, but her metamorphosis triggers us to stop and meditate on the liminal space of death and rebirth into another form of life.

The sculpture emits sound twice a day, otherwise remaining silent. The sound composition is inspired by the moment of Daphne’s metamorphosis. When writing the music I imagined how would my skin sound if it turned into bark. Silence is as important in this piece as is the sound. The music has six movements. Total duration of the sound emission is 35 minutes. I composed the first four movements by recording my piano improvisations, to later layer and extend or expand each layer of the recording into new forms of sonic space, to a point that a listener no longer recognizes the piano. I hoped to achieve sonic intensity that is still musical but has no melody. Audience members feel waves of thick drone-like sound coming in and out of the column and through their body. For the last two movements I returned to more traditional vocal music and composed both movements for voices a capella. For movement five I recorded a number of vocalists, each separately singing my written music. Later I layered all the voices together to create new microtonal relationships. The last movement is composed for two sopranos. The singing feels clear but also ancient, beyond language, as there are no words. The voices sonically touch and mirror each other. This vocal duet is accompanied by sounds of drums, which were created by my using my bare hands to rhythmically hit the sculpture, which by itself is a resonant instrument. I used the recordings of my touching and drumming sessions as a form of counterpoint to the two female voices. Together, their voices and the sound of drums evoke an archaic space of ancient past, but also represent the possible future.

For the unveiling of the sculpture in July 2024 I performed by drumming on the surface of the column with mallets, creating a resonant field around the piece, and initiating its life in Oronsko Park. A sister project Metamorphosis (Sound Sculpture), composed of two columns made from cast steel, was commissioned the same year by the Laumeier Sculpture Park.