METAMORPHOSIS (NIRBHAYA)

sound composition

2021

sound composition in five movements for space or headphones:

Kataigis, 2 min. 49 sec.

Drzewo Życia, 2 min. 50 sec.

Fonî, 4 min. 58 sec.

Keîmai, 2 min. 28sec.

Metá, 11min. 46 sec.

Credits

composed by Monika Weiss

piano: Monika Weiss

vocalists: Amanda Casarez, Caleb Diaz, Levi Gentry, Andy Lewis, Claire McFarland, Tushar Menon, Jason Oberstein, Daniel Sosebee

sound engineer: Cole Makuch

sound mastered by Adam Hogan, Experimental Media Arts EMA, University of Arkansas

produced by Artist Tapes, 2021

produced by Infrequent Seams, 2022

Artist Statement

Metamorphosis (Nirbhaya) sound composition is composed of five movements and can be experienced on earphones or via speakers installed in a room, or as an ambisonic outdoor installation in a park. First four movements are based on my acoustic piano improvisations, which I later transformed into digitally manipulated layers of sound and mastered as an ambisonic sound environment. The fifth movement is composed for 8 voices which I also transformed digitally to create microtonal relationships, and later mastered into ambisonic sound. Part of a group of intermedia projects collectively titled Nirbhaya, Metamorphosis is devoted to victims of gendered violence. This piece is inspired by the story of Daphne, the mythological nymph who escaped rape by becoming a tree. The music evokes the moment in which Daphne’s skin hardens into a tree bark, her voice becomes whispering leaves. The escape from the violence is marked by her death but also by reincarnation into a new life form. 

- Monika Weiss

Press Reviews Excerpts

Among the many works of Polish feminist art on view at Brooklyn’s A.I.R. Gallery right now are two by artist and trained pianist Monika Weiss: the graphite drawing Nirbhaya II, from 2020, and the sound installation Metamorphosis (Nirbhaya), created last year. For the latter, you sit on a piano bench facing a blank wall as a sound composition in five movements emanates through noise-canceling headphones.It’s a disquieting experience. The composition is dedicated to victims of gendered violence and inspired by the Greek myth of Daphne, a nymph who escaped Apollo’s advances by transforming into a laurel tree. For one movement, eight vocalists were recorded individually. Their audio was then layered to evoke a chorus of ghosts whose voices rise and fall in lamentation […} Weiss’s piece is one among many in Sleepless in Warsaw, a survey of fifty years of feminist art in Poland.

- Tessa Solomon, A Bracing Survey of Polish Feminist Art in Brooklyn Makes a Call for Women’s Rights in ARTnews, 2022 (to read full review click here)

Currently on display as part of the Sleepless in Warsaw exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, the piece is the only sound work present in this historical and present day feminist exhibition of Polish and Ukrainian artists. The setup for Metamorphosis/Dafne (Nirbhaya) is simple and profound – a piano bench with headphones, facing a blank wall in the corner with a few subtle listening suggestions […] There’s something so physically soothing and regenerative about the sonic landscape, partially due to the consistent beating and balance of high and low pitch registers. I felt the recurring desire to shut my eyes, my shoulders dropping, and the beginning of a gentle rocking motion in my spine. The sounds are enveloping, well panned and the volume in the headphones is encompassing without being uncomfortably loud. This primal desire to go inward danced with the innate vulnerability of being physically cornered, eyes shut with my back to people in the gallery.

- Anna Heflin, If My Skin Turned To Bark - Monika Weiss’s Metamorphosis/Dafne (Nirbhaya) in Which Sinfonia/New Music, 2022 (to read full review click here)

Exhibitions

Sleepless in Warsaw, A.I.R. Gallery in New York, 2022, curated by Agnieszka Agnieszka Rayzacher

Streamfest 3, Infrequent Seams at Scholes Street Studio, New York, 2022, curated by James Ilgenfritz

Take My Eyes, lokal_30, Warsaw, 2022, curated by Agnieszka Agnieszka Rayzacher

Metamorphosis (Nirbhaya) sound composition is planned to accompany the forthcoming long-term public project Nirbhaya planned for Dag Hammarskjold Plaza near United Nations in New York. For more information click here.

Releases

Artist Tapes, 2021

Infrequent Seams, 2022

below: the artist working on Metamorphosis at EMA Experimental Media Arts lab directed by Adam Hogan