Inga Lāce: The Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź is one of the oldest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. Thus, in the history of the institution, one can potentially see traces of its survival and resilience through previous crises. The current global pandemic, however, is unprecedented in its scale and impact, at the same time exposing the inequality and vulnerabilities that exist in the health, education, and cultural sectors. How have you been rethinking the role of the museum within the art system and society throughout COVID-19? What has been your institution’s response?

Daniel Muzyczuk: The Muzeum Sztuki went through World War II under Nazi control and then through Stalinism. During these periods, the museum suffered huge losses in its collection, and the most progressive art was suppressed. It also underwent a transformation in the 1990s that proved economically challenging. It is important to see the history of the institution as one of both continuity and rupture. Some historical moments have been decisive in terms of its future and its ethos. The historical crises, in particular, have influenced the way we understand the museum’s mission and identity. In fact, the work of the “a.r.” group, which is the cornerstone of the collection, is to a certain degree, the fruit of the collapse of the art market in the late 1920s. This side effect of the Great Depression opened up the possibility of reshaping the idea of art and its practice as well as making more communal use of works that could not be sold anyway.

It is hard to predict how the present crisis will alter the way we think about the role of institutions in the long run, but some effects are already clear. When scheduled exhibitions and conferences were postponed, our team was forced to refocus. We had to consider the impact of the current state of affairs on our immediate environment. On a basic level, the effects of the epidemic, lockdown, and social distancing do not differentiate. Any project that requires in-person engagement has been postponed, as have all indoor presentations. Even Hollywood productions are being rescheduled till late 2021. Though some events can afford to be delayed, this is not always the case. The art community is vulnerable to the fluctuations of the global economy, and the crisis has left a lot of people without their source of livelihood.

We implemented a number of initiatives that have redirected funds to artists and researchers. Building online content has provided a way to commission new pieces. We also decided to buy more works by artists living in Poland. The profile of the collection is the international modern art of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Acquiring more work by living Polish artists is changing the balance of our holdings.

Education is the museum’s most pressing mission. Those programs involving participants of different ages have led us to find new tools and ways to make our collection more accessible. Our team wanted to restructure our offerings in order to provide a more mediated experience. The situation has demanded that we try new methods of outreach as well as test new formats that not only shift from the physical to the virtual, but also take advantage of the context of the virtual medium itself.

IL: Many institutions have strengthened their digital presence in reaction to the pandemic, but at the same time, remained acutely aware of how important physical encounters with art—and with one another—are to building strong communities. Also, the idea of “international,” which has been an essential part of the art scene, has been challenged by border closings and travel restrictions. How have you been rethinking the museum’s relationship with different communities—with audiences, artists, workers, and other partners—in relation to the digital context as well as to the idea of the international versus local?

DM: It is interesting to see how film festivals are making use of online distribution. I have not seen attendance numbers, but for me, as someone who does not have the time to participate in an intensive festival schedule, the move toward making films available for a designated period on a paid website has enabled me to actually watch more films. The difference between me and a large part of the festival crowd is that I am an amateur, and as such, do not rely on gathering and meeting with other professionals in the field. By moving online, festivals have become more accessible to and directed toward a nonprofessional audience.

The comparison to the field of visual art is valid only to a certain extent. While making film and video works available online and streaming online shows and talks provide good opportunities to produce new content, they cannot replace the physical experience of an exhibition. New means of spectatorship will be developed, but museums and galleries will still be needed, because art that offers a spatial, sensorial, and immediate experience will continue to be produced—and to warrant exhibition. 

Hence, the effect is twofold: on the one hand, net content offers the feeling of being connected, but as with seeing a show online, it is an ersatz for traveling and meeting up in person. This state of affairs enforces more grounded, ecological, and economical models of practice. Indeed, it is a paradox that allows us to be more global, while at the same time, to work within our immediate environment. Producing online content has enabled us to remain in touch with international artists, and to preserve our broader connections. However, it has also led us to work more within the local context and to collaborate more with Łódź-based artists than we have in previous years. In line with this, we have invited an artist-run space from Łódź, Galeria Czynna, to install an exhibition on the ground level of our building. This work is on view from the street through the windows—even while the museum is closed.

IL: Over the course of this conversation, massive protests against the court decision to ban most abortions have grown. What do you think is the role of a museum in terms of civic protest?

DM: Peter Weiss’s novel The Aesthetics of Resistance opens with an image of young socialists in 1937 discussing the fight against National Socialists while looking at the Pergamon frieze. There is no direct relation between the ancient work of art and current events, and yet the narration of the book is built on a familiar tension—how can art teach us resistance?

If we see art as an instrument of emancipation, then a museum becomes a site in which different views of social engagement can be reconfigured and studied in constellations. By necessity, museums should represent diversity and be spaces where differences can meet. Collecting, preserving, and exhibition-making of art of this century and the one before it could be understood as constant care for the memory of dissent, as an inventory of powerful images—such as Legality of Space by Ewa Partum or Consumer Art by Natalia LL . . . these works have already been used as symbols of protest. For example, Natalia LL’s famous 1973 video of a young woman eating a banana was removed from the institution’s permanent collection exhibition by the former director of the National Museum in Warsaw. This decision caused a wave of Polish artists and opposition politicians to post photographs of themselves eating bananas. The works from the past are proof that such struggle is not new, but they also invite a critical distance. Being able to decode visual communication is crucial in times of post-truth. Museums should foster this ability.

On another level, art registers social dissent, and thus building a collection becomes a way to shape collective memory and to express solidarity. Minority struggle is reflected in the resources of the public institution, which should, if necessary, release official statements if the rights of a specific group are under attack. After all, this support can be understood as part of the public mission.

IL: You have done extensive research on the alternative art and underground music scenes and communities in Eastern Europe. Their work manifests creativity under oppressive political regimes, and I wonder if there is something we can learn from it in this moment?

DM: We still don’t know how long the current situation is going to last—or if it will permanently influence how we share and experience art. Indeed, there are examples of past practices that might serve as the basis for what is to come—for example, private art pieces produced for a closed circuit of friends during martial law in Poland. Or mail art networks in which an artist would produce a piece for an audience of one—the addressee (and perhaps also the secret police officers checking the parcel). These practices necessitated different models of distribution because they were undertaken amid political oppression and censorship. The contemporary online culture works in a totally different way. Censorship of the web is not a problem in our hemisphere; however, social media platforms nonetheless create bubbles or groups that do not really intersect. The spread of art content is limited by this framework. In this kind of environment, we can use past models of engagement as references. We are clearly experiencing a form of separation, but it is radically different than it was before the Internet. We cannot travel abroad, yet we remain not so distant.

IL: You are writing a book about the birth of nationalist ideologies mixed with pseudo-religious thinking in Poland and Russia. How did you settle on this extremely timely subject, and what have you concluded in pursuing it?

DM: My book, which is almost finished, looks at a generation of artists who, in the mid-1980s, were responsible for iconoclastic acts of collective creativity undertaken within artist circles in St. Petersburg and Gdańsk. I trace their work over the course of political transformation of Polish and Russian societies. In the early 1990s, these artists became involved with television, which suddenly, when socialist ideology was removed from the public sphere, had a void in programming. Finally, by the mid-1990s, some of them had become active in either radical religious groups or right-wing politics. Their disillusionment with democracy and the transformation of the country led them to extend the scope of their practices beyond art into the social and political. I am tracing the genealogy of this “conservative revolutions” movement and its connections to contemporary politics. My book is an ideological history of the movement, which is rooted in the occult, magic, romanticism, and fascination with the dead body. There are three things that connect this topic to contemporaneity: Current politics in Poland and Russia are built upon that conservative moment and the discord resulting from how the transformation played out. Moreover, there have been clear consequences, such as the rise of [Aleksandr] Dugin as one of the most prominent ideologues of the new right. The methods used by these political groups are in part derived from those used by underground artist circles. There is one more element—the role of irony as first a useful tool of critique of socialist ideology, and then after the transformation, as a more conservative instrument of political relations. My analysis reconnects the political and aesthetic in an unexpected way.

IL: There is a lot of discussion—as well as projects—focused on the future. What is your utopian vision for the museum, the art scene, and the planet?

DM: The utopian ideal seems to be dead. Especially in Eastern Europe, the fall of communism, in combination with neoliberal propaganda, is responsible for the victory of pragmatic thought over a conscious designing of the common future. There is another shadow obscuring the view of what’s to come. How can one imagine any future given that human extinction feels more inevitable than it did in the days when societies lived in fear of nuclear annihilation?

An image made by Simone Forti makes visible how the future and past are interconnected. One side of a sheet of paper bears the word “past,” while the other bears the word “future.” The paper is folded so that both sides are partly visible. This is how we can glimpse the future in the past and see how museums could be useful.

We use the notion of a prototype to speak of this curious type of autonomy of art that Władysław Strzemiński and Katarzyna Kobro had in mind. They were against productivist tendencies. Tatlin’s idea of the direct involvement of artists in the factories rings false. Art should exist within an autonomous sphere, one that allows the artist to work free of bothers from the everyday world. The pieces he or she designs in such a laboratory might become a basis for other solutions, but the transfer is never direct. A museum thus houses an inventory of different instruments that might serve as prototypes for solutions to problems that have not yet appeared. This is not a grand utopian vision, but rather a down-to-earth type of thinking about implementation.

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W wywiadzie przeprowadzonym specjalnie dla post, Eugeniusz Rudnik – wieloletni inżynier dźwięku Eksperymentalnego Studia Polskiego Radia – opowiada o pierwszych latach polskiej muzyki elektroakustycznej, o swojej nieufności do partutyr oraz idei muzycznego i artystycznego postępu, a także o cienkiej linii dzielącej inżyniera dźwięku i kompozytora.

English version of the interview is available here.

Daniel Muzyczuk: Panuje opinia, że Eksperymentalne Studio Polskiego Radia było do pewnego stopnia wentylem bezpieczeństwa. Powstało dzięki “odwilży”¹ i obok festiwalu Warszawska Jesień² stanowiło oznakę otwarcia się władz Polskiej Rzeczpospolitej Ludowej na eksperymentalną muzykę. Czy uważasz, że jego powstanie było aktem politycznym i miało do spełnienia pewną polityczną rolę?

Eugeniusz Rudnik: Był to absolutnie niezwykły okres w polskiej kulturze. Ja już wtedy pracowałem w radiu od 1955 roku i przez moje ręce ta „odwilż” również przechodziła. Zaraz ci powiem, co mam na myśli. Ponad wszelką wątpliwość, gdy spojrzymy dziś na rolę Studia Eksperymentalnego w naszej kulturze, w historii naszej muzyki, w historii naszej radiofonii, była to rola niesłychanie ważna. Ja jestem dumny, nie jak megaloman czy narcyz, z tego, że szczęśliwy los zetknął mnie z kierownikiem Studia i jego założycielem, Józefem Patkowskim. Była to rola niesłychanie ważna. Myśmy byli swoistym oknem na świat. Jest to rzecz niezwykła, że w okresie, co to dużo mówić, ciężkiej komuny, łącznie ze stanem wojennym, Studio Eksperymentalne było wyjątkiem. Myśmy mieli bez przerwy dwustronne kontakty z całym światem. Na koncertach organizowanych w Ameryce Południowej, w Europie, w Australii, w Azji i w Japonii grano nasze utwory. Przychodziły zamówienia na zrealizowane w Studiu utwory. Myśmy nawet nie korzystali z pośrednictwa Biura Współpracy z Zagranicą, gdzie była cenzura. Panie, które tam pracowały, wysyłały przesyłkę do Japonii, bo to drogo kosztowało, ale nikt nie ośmielił się nas zapytać, co jest w środku. Ja teraz jako jedyny z niewielu ludzi w moim wieku, którzy zajmowali się wówczas tworzeniem sztuki, zadaję sobie bardzo dramatyczne pytania: Czy tworzenie sztuki było nobilitacją tego kadłubowego państwa? Czy ja winienem być z tego dumny? Czy mam się wstydzić, że jako realizator tych utworów legitymizowałem je na świecie, moimi dłońmi??

Ja sobie odpowiadam: owszem, tak. Obecność naszych utworów zrobionych w PRL-u, które technicznie i artystycznie konkurowały z dobrym skutkiem z utworami zrobionymi w Paryżu, Mediolanie czy Utrechcie, znaczyła, że Polska żyje. Takie samo pytanie może sobie zadać Wajda czy Kutz. Czy warto było tworzyć? Tak, warto i trzeba było tworzyć. Stworzyliśmy na szczęście dzieła trwałe, które z dobrym skutkiem funkcjonują dzisiaj w wolnym świecie, w wolnej Polsce.

Muzyczuk: Wróćmy do Józefa Patkowskiego. Ciekawi mnie ten moment, w którym w Patkowskim rodzi się idea Studia. On ją zaczyna przekuwać w rzeczywistość, chodzić od biura do biura, ale również zapewne podróżować i zbierać informacje na przykład z Paryża.

Rudnik: Józef Patkowski was a musicologist who had been a student, protégé, and—perhaps while still a student—an assistant of Zofia Lissa. She was the chair of musicology, and at that time single-handedly ruled Polish music. Patkowski—my boss, my friend—was a well-educated person. His father was a professor in Wilno, where, they say, he organized the physics department. At that time, after October 1956, Józef was one of the few Polish Radio employees who had been abroad. Włodzimierz Sokorski, who was a very unusual figure, had been designated as the head of Polish Radio. He appeared to be a person of imagination. It turned out that Józef Patkowski had a passport in hand, acquired with some difficulty. He traveled to Paris to take a look at the radio studio organized there in the 1940s by Pierre Schaeffer, nota bene, a sound engineer. Patkowski worked at Polish Radio as a consultant, advising Polish Radio Theater. To put it frankly, he was selecting music for radio plays. When he returned to Warsaw, he apprised Włodzimierz Sokorski of the need to organize a unit such as Schaeffer’s. Sokorski, who was a pure party functionary, although I have no doubt that he was a gentleman of exceeding intelligence, created the Experimental Studio and protected it for years from elimination, because we reported directly to the president. There was a phenomenon, particularly in Polish Radio, of following a certain pragmatics: division, department, office, section, division, editorial board. The Studio was the president’s sacred cow. Sokorski reported to him through the presidential secretary. Patkowski was appointed as the Studio’s director. A few days later I became the only employee of the Studio. A week after my transfer from the technical section to the Studio, I started to produce the first work commissioned by the Experimental Studio. This was Włodzimierz Kotoński’s Etude for One Cymbal Stroke.

Thus began my collaboration with Patkowski, and thanks to his intelligence and access to the world, the Studio started to function as a valuable, self-respecting outpost in the circle of European studios of electronic music. Our studio was distinguished by the fact that the composer worked with the sound engineer, and not alone. Labor costs in People’s Poland were always low (just like now, when compared to the rest of Europe), thus Poland was able to employ me full time, and later, my colleague Bohdan Mazurek as well. The composer had total luxury. He would go to the specialist, who could edit tape for him with scissors, push the buttons, and know why he was pushing those buttons. Some composers had bit of familiarity with the technology, and that was unfortunate, because they started to act smart and try to teach us which buttons to push. They were sharply put in their place. As a result, we made minor or major works—I called them “mmw” or “major minor works”³—that conformed to the high standards of the time and that were well crafted in the compositional sense. I worked without pause making incidental music, film music, music for radio plays, etc.

Muzyczuk: W tej koncepcji Patkowskiego w funkcjonowaniu Studia dużą rolę odegrał hybrydyczny model, który był zupełnie obcy na przykład działaniom Pierre’a Schaeffera. Ta hybrydyczność widoczna była w tym, że z jednej strony tworzono autonomiczne kompozycje, a z drugiej strony często masową produkcję dla radia, telewizji, filmu. Być może w tym założeniu tkwił spryt Patkowskiego, któremu nie udałoby się założyć ośrodka zorientowanego wyłącznie na muzykę autonomiczną…

Rudnik: Dla nas muzyka ilustracyjna dla teatru radiowego, teatrów dramatycznych, Teatru Telewizji, wystaw takich, siakich i owakich była tak samo ważna jak muzyka autonomiczna. Tym bardziej że w zachodnich studiach uważano muzykę ilustracyjną za coś gorszego. Józef Patkowski uznał, że są równoważne. Miał rację, bo czym się rożni komponowanie muzyki do Teatru Polskiego Radia od muzyki autonomicznej? Nasz udział w tworzeniu sztuki nieautonomicznej był percypowany przez miliony słuchaczy, a na specjalnych koncertach muzyki autonomicznej było to na początku naszej działalności 30-50 słuchaczy w małej sali w piwnicy Filharmonii Narodowej. Natomiast nie będę taił, że dzięki współpracy z reżyserami, którzy przychodzili do mnie na konsultacje i odbierali ode mnie muzykę, dowiedziałem się wiele o technologii i nauczyłem się komponowania Nie czekało się, że przyjdzie geniusz i wszyscy nabiorą powietrza w płuca, i stworzą arcydzieło. Słowo chałtura było u nas nieznane. Ja z taką samą atencją traktowałem debiutanta z Teatru Telewizji czy wybitnego reżysera filmowego, jak i wybitnego kompozytora. Następnym klientem u nas był, mało wtedy znany, Krzysztof Penderecki, z którym zrobiłem bardzo ważny utwór do dziś funkcjonujący na świecie, Psalmus 1961. À propos, Krzysztof Penderecki dziś czy wczoraj, czy 3 lata temu, w rozlicznych wywiadach czy tekstach napomykał ciągle, czy prawie ciągle, że wiele zawdzięcza Studiu, i że się wiele nauczył. Myśmy zrobili nie tylko ten utwór Psalmus 1961, ale kilkanaście, jeśli nie kilkadziesiąt, ilustracji do filmów krótkometrażowych, animowanych, dokumentów.

Lata sześćdziesiąte to był złoty wiek polskiego krótkiego metrażu. Jak się teraz czyta wydania płytowe filmów Daniela Szczechury czy filmów z Bielska, czy z Semafora w Łodzi, najwybitniejsze dzieła tychże reżyserów były robione moimi rękami w Studio. Najpierw jako realizatora dźwięku, a potem jako kompozytora. Mniej więcej 3 lata temu ukazał się wywiad z Krzysztofem Pendereckim Wybieram kamieniste drogi, w którym mówi on, co następuje:

„Słowo «rozwój» w odniesieniu do sztuki, do muzyki traktuję nieufnie, chorał gregoriański nie jest przecież bardziej prymitywny niż koncert czy sonata. Jest inny, ale nie gorszy. Awangarda miała styl. Była powiązana z odkryciami technicznymi, to jest przecież czas wielkiego wybuchu muzyki elektronicznej. Kiedy tylko otwarto Studio Eksperymentalne od razu tam byłem. Moją prawa ręką był tam Eugeniusz Rudnik, niby inżynier, a z wielką imaginacją twórczą potem sam zaczął komponować i gdyby nie mój czas w Studio, nie napisałbym Polymorphii. Np. Tren Pamięci Ofiar Hiroszimy w ogóle nie brzmi jak orkiestra smyczkowa, raczej jak muzyka elektroniczna ¬ to zasługa doświadczeń ze Studia Eksperymentalnego”.

Czy nie ma mnie prawa rozpierać duma, że Krzysztof Penderecki tak pisze? Często pisał, że Studio, Studio, Studio i nagle ni z tego, ni z owego, uznał za stosowne wymienić moje, skromne zresztą, nazwisko.

Muzyczuk: Zaproszenie przez Patkowskiego architektów Oskara i Zofii Hansenów do zaprojektowania wnętrza, wystroju i zaplanowania funkcjonalności Studia świadczyło o niezwykłych ambicjach stworzenia unikalnej przestrzeni dla eksperymentu. Ciekawi mnie, w jaki sposób przebiegała współpraca z Hansenami i jakie założenia przyświecały im i Patkowskiemu. A z drugiej strony, na ile Studio było funkcjonalne?

Rudnik: To, co teraz powiem, będzie obrazoburcze, ponieważ jest niejaki kult Oskara Hansena. Niektórym Studio kojarzy się bardziej z Hansenem niż na przykład z Patkowskim, że innych nazwisk nie wymienię przez skromność. Józef umiał wychodzić duże pieniądze na zaprojektowanie wnętrza Studia. Ja wynalazłem pomieszczenie, gdzie mikserzy, czyli reżyseży dźwięku nagrywali różnojęzyczne audycje dla Europy. Józef Patkowski miał godne szacunku ambicje stworzenia specjalnej pracowni, pomieszczenia, wnętrza i urządzenia warsztatu dla kompozytora muzyki elektronicznej, co było zjawiskiem niesłychanym. Chciał stworzyć pracownię, która olśniłaby świat swoją funkcjonalnością, swoimi wartościami architektonicznymi. Hansen podjął się tego dzieła. Dołączył do nich Krzysztof Szlifirski, który był szefem technicznym Studia, i opracowali projekt w za małym pomieszczeniu, które nie mogło być dobre. Studio było, owszem, pełne odkrywczych pomysłów architektonicznych, tyle że nie miały one głębszego sensu dla mnie i dla mojego klienta, który przychodził do pracy ze mną i pracował często 3 doby bez przerwy. Hansen wymyślił, że kompozytor może sobie zaprojektować walory estetyczne ścian, czemu służyły obrotowe elementy o różnych walorach akustycznych, o różnym współczynniku pochłaniania dźwięku i w różnych kolorach. Dwa głośniki, Kiedy zaczęliśmy nagrywać stereofonicznie, w rogach tego pokoju znajdowały się dwa głośniki. Największy fragment pomieszczenia wynosił 6 metrów. Odstęp między głośnikami był nie większy niż 4 metry, bo między głośnikami znajdowało się okno. Jeśli pracowałem 25 godzin bez przerwy w tym małym pokoju, gdzie znajdowały się urządzenia lampowe, które grzeją, a był środek lata czy noc czerwcowa, to musiałem otworzyć okna. A do ulicy Malczewskiego było 80 metrów, no i jeździły samochody, więc albo słuchałem muzyki elektronicznej, albo warkotu traktora. Owszem, Studio było dobre do fotografowania, ale nie do pracy, ponieważ to pomieszczenie było za małe. Studio Hansenowe miało spełniać funkcje pokoju odsłuchowego, montażowni, pokoju nagrań itd. Co najmniej cztery funkcje w jednym pomieszczeniu – nie dało się tylu rzeczy zrobić.

Muzyczuk: Studio sporadycznie dokonywało nagrań.

Rudnik: Mikrofonowych się prawie nie dokonywało, ale jak wprowadziliśmy technikę mikrofonów kontaktowych, gdzie można było przylepić mikrofonik, pluskiewkę taką do sprężyny czy do butelki szklanej, to mogłem nagrywać nawet w korytarzu Radia, nie chodziłem po klucze i nie traciłem czasu na procedury.

Muzyczuk: Inżynier dźwięku był w Studiu nazywany performerem. Dosyć ciekawe użycie tego terminu. No bo rzeczywiście, jest on wykonawcą pewnego zamysłu, często mglistej idei…

Rudnik: Zamysłu nie zawsze wyłożonego expressis verbis, niekiedy trzeba było „wydusić” z kompozytora, co ma na myśli. Jak już przychodził klient, to musiałem go traktować z najwyższym szacunkiem. Teraz niektórzy zadają mi podchwytliwe pytanie. „Eugeniuszu, a ile jest Rudnika w Pendereckim, a ile Rudnika w Nordheimie?” Nie wiem, bo ja tego nie mierzyłem. Ja robiłem utwór, a były określone rubryki w metryce: kompozytor, performer, czyli realizator dźwięku.

Muzyczuk: I Ty i Bogdan Mazurek gdzieś koło połowy lat 60. przetransformowaliście się z inżynierów czy z performerów w kompozytorów. To jest dosyć ciekawa ewolucja.

Rudnik: Ciekawa, ale nie taka znowu odkrywcza. Ja zwykle w takim wypadku cytuję Tomasza Manna. Powiedział on, że muzyka jest fenomenem takim, który może wszystkie prawidła bardzo ścisłe, zdefiniowane, opisane naukowo oddalić i zaczynać wszystko od początku, lekceważąc poprzednie reguły. I tak było z muzyką elektroniczną. Szkoła tych wściekłych eksperymentatorów uczyła, żeby totalnie odrzucić wszystko, co było dotąd. Prawidłowości, reguły, jakie zaczęły obowiązywać w muzyce elektronicznej, były robione tymi rękami. Estetyka i inżynieria, i forma powstawały, nie była zdefiniowane a priori. No, nikt nie mówił, że ma być taki podział jak w symfonii, nie. Może dlatego ja byłem pierwszy, który wyzwolił się od zachwytu nad sonorystyką⁴, od euforii, kiedy udało się wytworzyć nową fakturę. Bo faktura to faktura, a forma w muzyce jest najważniejsza. Bogusław Schaeffer powiedział, że utwór muzyczny to jest przede wszystkim forma. Musi mieć początek, środek i koniec oraz dobry tytuł. Chorobą muzyki eksperymentalnej było pragnienie kompozytorów, by cały czas zachwycać czy nękać słuchacza nieprzewidywalnymi zdarzeniami. Ja zabiegam o to, żeby słuchacz mógł śledzić mój wywód.

Muzyczuk: Wydaje mi się, że w twórczości Twojej i Bohdana Mazurka widoczny jest bunt przeciwko sonoryzmowi. Weźmy dla przykładu bardzo częste repetycje. Mam wrażenie, że zmagając się w dzień z tymi sonorystycznymi, nierepetytywnymi kompozycjami, wieczorami pracowałeś nad utworami, które przeczyły tym regułom, tworzyłeś je, żeby odreagować.

Rudnik: Mam parę utworów, które zrobiłem „na złość” kompozytorom, którzy byli „chorzy” na Stockhausena. Polacy bywają durni: jak Niemcy coś zrobili, to oznacza, że trzeba tak zrobić, bo zawsze wpływ kultury niemieckiej na nas był znaczący. Częstotliwości musiały być ustawione do dwóch cyfr po przecinku. Zrobiłem dobry utwór, który się nazywa Dixie, prawie w realnym czasie. Wtedy kategoria real time przy komponowaniu była nieznana. Podszedłem do magnetofonu, włączyłem, coś zrobiłem, potem wyciąłem i wycyzelowałem. Tak samo zrobiłem pierwszy chyba u nas kolaż, który trwał w realnym czasie. Nie musiałem walczyć z szumami, bo szum też jest zjawiskiem akustycznym i może być traktowany jako materiał użyteczny.

Muzyczuk: Chciałem Cię też zapytać o Twoją bardzo specyficzną metodę pracy. Chodzi mi o traktowanie odpadków i nikomu niepotrzebnych ścinków jako podstawowego materiału.

Rudnik: Nie ja wymyśliłem ready-made. W pewnym momencie potrzebowałem, żeby przejść jakby na drugą stronę. Dlaczego nagle ten dźwięk uznajemy w danej chwili za dobry, ładny, śliczny, godny umieszczenia w utworze? Znajduję coś niesłychanie interesującego w twórczości tych artystów, którzy budują kolaże. Uważam, że jeżeli artysta podchodzi i widzi, że leży tu w śmietniku laleczka bez rąk i wózek dziecięcy bez kółka, i on bierze ten wózek, tę laleczkę wkłada do wózka i sypie czarnoziem, to każdy z tych trzech elementów jest niepotrzebnym nikomu śmieciem, ale tak zbudowany byt plastyczny zaczyna być czymś niesłychanie ważnym i intrygującym⁵. Stąd te moje „podłe materie”, te przejęzyczenia, które się zdarzyło mężowi stanu, kiedy przemawiał, albo biskupowi, kiedy wygłaszał kazanie. W tym jest najprawdziwsza prawda o człowieku, w potknięciach, w wywodzie audialnym, akustycznym, przemówieniu, w oratorskim opisie. Ja niejako perwersyjnie, ale nie jako sadysta, penetruję te rejony, słucham kilometry takich rzeczy, żeby pokazać tę człowieczą niemożność, tę człowieczą wielkość i jednocześnie słabość. My jesteśmy na tyle wielcy, silni, na ile słabi. No, możemy upaść, potknąwszy się o ten próg i umrzeć, jak uderzymy głową o mur.

Muzyczuk: Czy mógłbyś mi opowiedzieć o tendencji Bogusława Schaeffera do nagrywania, czy też komponowania, tej samej kompozycji kilkukrotnie? Na przykład Symfonia – muzyka elektroniczna miała co najmniej kilka wersji. Ciekawi mnie, jak Schaeffer doszedł do koncepcji poliwersjonalności swoich kompozycji. To przecież rzadkie w muzyce na taśmę.

Rudnik: Opowiem jeden przypadek z Schaefferem, który mną wstrząsnął. To było najbardziej dziwne zdanie, jakie padło w mojej kanciapie, czyli w czarnym pokoju w Studio. Robiłem z nim wielki utwór, Missa electronica, moim zdaniem niedoceniony. Oczywiście, ja współpracowałem z nim bardzo intensywnie, on nigdy nie dotykał konsolety, nie definiował, co by chciał słyszeć. Ja mu pokazywałem jakieś propozycje. W pewnej chwili Schaeffer wypowiedział najdłuższą orację, jaką zdarzyło mu się we współpracy ze mną wygłosić. Powiedział do mnie tak: „Panie Eugeniuszu, dla mnie dźwięk nie jest ważny. Jak dla poety, któremu obojętne czy pisze zwrotkę swojej wielkiej poezji na serwetce w knajpie, czy na kredowym papierze”. Schaeffer przy swojej rozbuchanej wyobraźni narysował trójkąciki, kwadraciki, prostokąciki, prostopadłościaniki w dwóch układach współrzędnych: głośność-czas, wysokość dźwięku-czas. Czyli w sposób ścisły określił dwa parametry wysokość dźwięku i jego czas trwania. Niedookreśloność partytury Schaeffera jest dla mnie wielka. Nic nie wiemy o fakturze dźwięku czy jego barwie. Ja jestem antypartyturowy. Nie wiem, skąd się bierze u teoretyków czy muzykologów niezwykły kult partytury muzyki elektronicznej. Oczywiście, możesz powtórzyć za teoretykami, że jeżeli nie ma partytury, to nie ma muzyki. Taka zasada obowiązywała do 48 roku, kiedy zaczął improwizować Pierre Schaeffer.

Muzyczuk: Chciałbym zajrzeć pod podszewkę motywacji, z którą przychodzili do Studia reżyserzy filmowi. W chwili powstania Studia i gdzieś tak do połowy lat sześćdziesiątych, filmowcom zależało na charakterystycznych futurystycznych bulgotaniach, które można wykorzystać w ekranizacjach dzieł Lema, dla przykładu w „Milczącej gwieździe” i innych filmach science fiction. Gdy tylko na ekranie widać było komputer, rozlegały się dźwięki taśmy. Ten stosunek się z czasem zmienia. I motywacje stają się mniej jasne i powoli dźwięki ze Studia goszczą nawet w dramatach psychologicznych. Jakich dźwięków szukali filmowcy?

Rudnik: To, co powiedziałeś, jest odkrywcze. Nikt poza Tobą tego tak nie sformułował. Według mnie zgłaszano się do mnie w dwóch sytuacjach: albo kiedy był potrzebny kosmos, albo Hades ¬ wtedy leciało się do Gienia. To był pierwszy stopień prymitywnego rozumienia potencjału tej muzyki. To się brało stąd, że pierwszym wielkim dziełem ilustracyjnym, jakie zostało zrealizowane w Studiu, była „Milcząca Gwiazda” według Lema z muzyką Andrzeja Markowskiego. Ja od pewnego momentu przestałem świadczyć usługi bulgocąco-kosmiczne albo piwniczno-hadesowe, bo mnie mdliło. Moją specjalnością były filmy o miłości, o macierzyństwie, śmierci, martyrologii czy funeralnym świecie, ilustrowane muzyką konkretną. Natomiast bulgoty kosmiczne po pierwsze wyszły z mody, a ja po prostu robiłem to z odrazą. Ja zilustruję w moim warsztacie dowolny film na dowolny temat. Chciałem wygenerować czy wynaleźć, wymyślić dźwięki, których cechą jest to, że dotąd nigdy nie zaistniały, nie dają żadnych skojarzeń, bo jak ktoś bierze muzykę instrumentalną, to natychmiast słuchacz widzi te żyrandole i marmury w filharmonii. Moja muzyka ma się tylko kojarzyć z obrazem i dawać asocjacje takie, jak chcę, pod wpływem bodźca audio-wizualnego. Dlatego do mnie szli artyści czwórkami i niekiedy na klęczkach.

Muzyczuk: Skoro jesteśmy przy środowisku filmowym, to przejdźmy może w stronę awangardy, bo interesuje mnie też spotkanie Studia z Warsztatem Formy Filmowej⁶. Pod koniec lat sześćdziesiątych dochodzi do sporadycznych kontaktów pomiędzy Tobą a Józefem Robakowskim oraz Zbigniewem Rybczyńskim. Zostajecie zaproszeni razem z Józefem Patkowskim do Elbląga na Kino Laboratorium⁷. Wydaje mi się, że połączyły was sposób pracy oparty na strukturach i etyka pracy z taśmą, a nie względy czysto estetyczne.

Rudnik: Wymienieni przez ciebie artyści byli awangardą sensu stricto. Negowali klasyczną formę filmu. Przestało ich interesować rysowanie tysięcy klatek. Oni do mnie lgnęli z ogromną namiętnością, dlatego, że negowali zarówno formę, jak i wyglądy, jak mówią filmowcy. Jak przychodził do mnie filmowiec, to nie słyszał fortepianu, gitary, saksofonu, tylko słyszał, jak ja mówiłem o swoich fakturach „rzęchy”, które były zupełnie z innego świata. Kiedy ja podniecony jego obrazem umiałem znaleźć związki między jego abstrakcyjnym światem, czy jego paranoidalnym światem, czy jego reinterpretacją świata a moją muzyką, no to był absolutnie szczęśliwy. Oczywiście, to, co jeszcze mogłem zaproponować, to mianowicie ścisłe przyleganie muzyki do obrazu.

Muzyczuk: Do tego, co opowiadałeś o współpracy pomiędzy Tobą a, dla przykładu, Rybczyńskim, kiedy to reżyser zamawiał u Ciebie muzykę do gotowego obrazu, ciekawym komentarzem jest Prostokąt dynamiczny Józefa Robakowskiego, który jest sytuacją zupełnie odwrotną. Z tego co wiem, dostał od Ciebie taśmę, którą postanowił zilustrować.

Rudnik: To jest niesłychana zupełnie rzecz. To znaczy, jak ja robiłem muzykę, ciągle słyszałem od reżyserów wyspecjalizowanych w krótkich czy eksperymentalnych formach: „Jakby to było dobrze, gdybym najpierw dostał muzykę i potem sobie mógł montować pod nią obraz”. Ja się domyślam, że to jest nawet podniecające, że jeżeli masz już byt audialny, gdzie czas jest zorganizowany, gdzie są akcenty, to aż się prosi, żeby do tego „przypiąć” obraz.

Muzyczuk: Kończąc, chciałbym Cię jeszcze zapytać o jedną rzecz: Eksperymentalne Studio istniało prawie pięćdziesiąt lat. Zastanawiam się, na ile można zaobserwować przemiany i ewolucje w ciągu tego okresu. Czy można je streścić w stwierdzeniu, zmiany przynosiły nowe technologie?

Rudnik: Apogeum naszej świetności przypadło na lata 60. i początek lat 70. Był to okres niesłychanego ożywienia polskiej kultury. Cenzura osłabła. Tak jak każda struktura ma swoje narodziny, okres burzy i naporu, apogeum i zaczyna potem się degenerować ¬ tak też było też ze Studiem. Planowano prace teoretyczne, miały powstawać książki, opracowania naukowe itp. Był ktoś, kto się zajmował archiwizacją i promocją Studia. Ta działalność skończyła się tym, że nie ma archiwum Studia, bo zostało zgubione. Nie powstała żadna pozycja, poza wydaniem książki z audycjami „Horyzonty muzyki” Józefa Patkowskiego, które były nadawane w II programie Polskiego Radia. Początkowo mieliśmy budżet i mogliśmy zamówić kompozycje u Pendereckiego, Schaeffera czy u Krzysztofa Knittla, który wkraczał na rynek kompozytorski. Kiedy w Radio zaczęło się coraz głośniej mówić o braku pieniędzy, byliśmy coraz gorzej opłacani w Studio, ale tolerowani. Krzysztof Szlifirski zabiegał u pięciu prezesów, żeby nas wyposażyli w komputer, ponieważ zakładano, że studio analogowe musi ewoluować ku muzyce komputerowej, a nie ewoluowało. Zlikwidowano Studio w sposób nieelegancki, zagubiono archiwum. Pracowałem z Bolkiem Błaszczykiem 4 lata, żeby uporządkować dorobek Studia, który ja wbrew przepisom zachowywałem, nie wyrzucałem do kosza. Są to główne dokumenty (oryginały i kopie) tyczące się mojej twórczości kompozytorskiej i aktywności zawodowej w kraju i za granicą. Mam porozkładane te skoroszyty i wywiozłem do mojego domu na wsi te taśmy i leżą u mnie w tapczanach, a powinien przyjść do mnie zespół trzyosobowy i powiedzieć: „Panie Eugeniuszu, Pan jest ostatni, który żyje, Pan sporo wie o Studio, to niech Pan siądzie i my z Panem nagramy nie tyle wywiad rzekę, a wywiad ocean. I niech Pan pokaże, jakie ma Pan archiwalia papierowe i audialne. Niech Pan powie, co Pan wie o tym utworze i o tym”. Bo za chwilę to dla średnio inteligentnych dziennikarzy muzycznych i radiowych to będzie nazwisko i tytuł, nic poza tym. No tak, tylko że ja nie jestem teoretykiem ani kulturoznawcą. Ja jestem biednym i podstarzałym inżynierem i kompozytorem, ale myślę, że sporo wiem, amen.

(Luty 2013)

Czarny Krajobraz I – Dzieciom Zamojszczyzny(1974).

The post Ile jest Rudnika w Pendereckim, a ile Rudnika w Nordheimie? Rozmowa z Eugeniuszem Rudnikiem appeared first on post.

My specialties were films about love, about motherhood, death, martyrology, or the funereal world, illustrated with concrete music. In my shop I would compose music for any film on any human subject. I tried to generate, find, or invent sound, the character of which was new and did not call up any associations, because as soon as someone takes up instrumental music, the listener immediately sees the chandeliers and marble of the philharmonic. My music should only be related to the image and give those associations that I want under the influence of the audiovisual impulse. In this interview conducted especially for post, Eugeniusz Rudnik—a lifelong sound engineer of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio—speaks about the early years of Polish electroacoustic music, about his distrust of both musical scores and the deceptive idea of musical and artistic progress, and about the fine line between sound engineer and composer.

Daniel Muzyczuk: It is the prevailing opinion that Polish Radio Experimental Studio was to a certain point a safety valve. Set up during the “Thaw”¹ alongside the Warsaw Autumn Festival², it was taken as a sign of an opening to experimental music on the part of the authorities during the era of the People’s Republic of Poland (PRL). Do you regard its establishment as a political act, with a certain political role to fulfill?

Eugeniusz Rudnik: This was an absolutely remarkable period in Polish culture. I had been working in radio since 1955, and this “Thaw” passed through my own hands. I’ll tell you straightaway what I have in mind. Beyond all doubt, looking today at the role of the Experimental Studio in our culture, in the history of our music, and in our radio history, the Thaw played a role of unheard importance. I am proud of that, not because of megalomania or narcissism, but because I had the good fortune to come into contact with the director and founder of the Studio, Józef Patkowski. He played a crucial role. We were a kind of window onto the world. This was an unusual thing—that in this period of what many call “heavy communism,” which included martial law, the Experimental Studio was an exception. We had uninterrupted two-way contact with the whole world. Our works were played at concerts organized in South America, in Europe, in Australia, in Asia, and in Japan. Requests came for the performance of works from the Studio. We did not even have to go through the Office of International Cooperation, where there was censorship. The ladies who worked there sent packages to Japan, because sending was quite expensive, but no one dared ask what was inside. Now, as one of the few people of my era who engaged in the creative arts at that time, I ask myself a dramatic question: Did the creation of art ennoble that empty shell of a state? Should I be proud of that? Or should I be ashamed that I legitimized it to the world, with my own hands, as the producer of these works?

To the first question, I answer, “Yes, of course.” The presence of our works, which were technically and artistically on a par with the fine products being produced in Paris, Milan, or Utrecht, meant that Poland was alive. The same question could be asked of Andrzej Wajda or Kazimierz Kutz. Was it worth making art? Yes, it was worth it, and it was needed. Fortunately, we created works that lasted, that successfully function today in the free world, in free Poland.

Muzyczuk: Let’s come back to Józef Patkowski. I am interested in the moment when Patkowski conceived the idea of the Studio. He started to shape it into a reality, to go from office to office, but surely also to travel and collect information—from Paris, for example—did he not?

Rudnik: Józef Patkowski was a musicologist who had been a student, protégé, and—perhaps while still a student—an assistant of Zofia Lissa. She was the chair of musicology, and at that time single-handedly ruled Polish music. Patkowski—my boss, my friend—was a well-educated person. His father was a professor in Wilno, where, they say, he organized the physics department. At that time, after October 1956, Józef was one of the few Polish Radio employees who had been abroad. Włodzimierz Sokorski, who was a very unusual figure, had been designated as the head of Polish Radio. He appeared to be a person of imagination. It turned out that Józef Patkowski had a passport in hand, acquired with some difficulty. He traveled to Paris to take a look at the radio studio organized there in the 1940s by Pierre Schaeffer, nota bene, a sound engineer. Patkowski worked at Polish Radio as a consultant, advising Polish Radio Theater. To put it frankly, he was selecting music for radio plays. When he returned to Warsaw, he apprised Włodzimierz Sokorski of the need to organize a unit such as Schaeffer’s. Sokorski, who was a pure party functionary, although I have no doubt that he was a gentleman of exceeding intelligence, created the Experimental Studio and protected it for years from elimination, because we reported directly to the president. There was a phenomenon, particularly in Polish Radio, of following a certain pragmatics: division, department, office, section, division, editorial board. The Studio was the president’s sacred cow. Sokorski reported to him through the presidential secretary. Patkowski was appointed as the Studio’s director. A few days later I became the only employee of the Studio. A week after my transfer from the technical section to the Studio, I started to produce the first work commissioned by the Experimental Studio. This was Włodzimierz Kotoński’s Etude for One Cymbal Stroke.

Thus began my collaboration with Patkowski, and thanks to his intelligence and access to the world, the Studio started to function as a valuable, self-respecting outpost in the circle of European studios of electronic music. Our studio was distinguished by the fact that the composer worked with the sound engineer, and not alone. Labor costs in People’s Poland were always low (just like now, when compared to the rest of Europe), thus Poland was able to employ me full time, and later, my colleague Bohdan Mazurek as well. The composer had total luxury. He would go to the specialist, who could edit tape for him with scissors, push the buttons, and know why he was pushing those buttons. Some composers had bit of familiarity with the technology, and that was unfortunate, because they started to act smart and try to teach us which buttons to push. They were sharply put in their place. As a result, we made minor or major works—I called them “mmw” or “major minor works”³—that conformed to the high standards of the time and that were well crafted in the compositional sense. I worked without pause making incidental music, film music, music for radio plays, etc.

Muzyczuk: In Patkowski’s conception, such hybridity was fundamental to the functioning of the Studio, which on the one hand generated autonomous compositions, and on the other, was involved in mass production for radio, television, and film. This activity in two creative spheres was completely alien, for instance, to Pierre Schaeffer’s way of working. Maybe Patkowski’s genius lay in creating this hybrid foundation. The Studio would not have worked if it had been oriented exclusively toward autonomous music.

Rudnik: For us, incidental music for the Polish Radio Theater, the dramatic stage, Polish Television Theater, exhibitions of this or that, was just as important as autonomous music. Especially because in Western studios, incidental music was regarded as something inferior. Józef Patkowski realized that they were of equal weight. He was right, because how could anyone distinguish music composed for the Polish Radio Theater from autonomous music? Our contributions to the creation of non-autonomous art were heard by millions of listeners, while special concerts of autonomous music at the beginning of our operation may have had only thirty to fifty listeners in a small room in the basement of the National Philharmonic. However, I will not hide the fact that I learned a great deal about technology and composing by working with the theater directors who came to me for consultation and who used my music. No one expected that genius would arrive and that everyone would be inspired to create a masterpiece. The term “hackwork” was unknown to us. I treated a director making his debut in Television Theater with the same attention and respect as a famous film director or a famous composer. Our next client was the then-little-known Krzysztof Penderecki, with whom I worked on Psalmus 1961, a very important work that is still heard all around the world today. Apropos of which, Krzysztof Penderecki, today or yesterday or three years ago, in countless interviews or in his texts, always, or almost always, mentions that he was very grateful to the Studio and that he had learned a great deal there. We made not only the work Psalmus 1961, but also ten or twenty or thirty or forty or more incidental compositions for film shorts, animations, and documentaries.

The period of the 1960s was the golden age of Polish short films. As we may now see in DVD compilations of the films of Daniel Szczechura or the films from Bielsko or the Semafor studio in Łódź, the most famous of the works by these directors passed through my hands in the Studio, first when I was a sound technician and later when I was composing. Three years ago, there was an interview with Krzysztof Penderecki, “I Take the Rocky Road,” in which he said the following:

“I treat the word ‘progress’ in relation to art, to music, with suspicion. Gregorian chant is not particularly more primitive than the concerto or sonata. It is different, but not worse. The avant-garde had a style. It was connected to technical discoveries and is particularly the time of the great explosion of electronic music. When they opened the Experimental Studio, I went there at once. My right-hand man there was Eugeniusz Rudnik, an engineer of great creative imagination who later began, himself, to compose, and if it were not for my time in the Studio, I would not have written my Polymorphia. For instance, the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima in general doesn’t sound like a string orchestra, but rather like electronic music—this is due to my experience in the Experimental Studio.”

Do I not have the right to burst with pride because Krzysztof Penderecki wrote such things? He has frequently written “the Studio . . . Studio . . . Studio,” and then, suddenly—he recognized not this or that person—he saw fit to mention my otherwise humble name.

Muzyczuk: Patkowski’s invitation in 1962 to the architects Oskar and Zofia Hansen to redesign the interior layout and plan of the Studio attests to an unusual ambition to create a unique space for experimentation. I am curious to know in what manner this collaboration with the Hansens proceeded and what fundamental principles guided them and Patkowski. And from the other side, how functional was the Studio they designed?

Rudnik: What I will now say will be iconoclastic, because Oskar Hansen is something of a cult figure. Some associate the Studio more with Hansen than with Patkowski, for instance, or with other names that I am too modest to mention. Józef was able to procure big money for the design of the interior of the studio⁴. In its original form, the Studio was a space where so-called mixers, or sound directors, recorded multilingual programs for Europe. Józef Patkowski had the worthy and respectable ambition to create a space, a special workshop, an interior, and to arrange a workshop for electronic music composers, which was an unheard-of phenomenon. He wanted to create a work space that would dazzle the world with its functionality and its architectonic qualities. Hansen undertook this work. Krzysztof Szlifirski, who was the technical director of the Studio, joined him, and they worked on a design for a space that was too small, that couldn’t have been good. They redesigned the Studio to be full of newly discovered architectonic concepts, but they did not have a deeper sense for me or for the clients who came to work with me and who often worked three days and nights without pause. Hansen wished to allow the composers to design the aesthetic qualities of the walls, which were equipped with rotating elements with different acoustic qualities, different levels of sound absorption, and different colors. When we began stereophonic recording, we placed two speakers in the corners of this room. The longest dimension was six meters. Between the speakers was a space no greater than four meters. If I worked for twenty-five hours without a break in this little room, where the tubes were radiating heat, and it was the middle of the summer or a June night, I had to open the windows. Eighty meters away, cars were driving by on Malczewski Street, and so I could either listen to electronic music or to the rumble of a tractor. Of course, the Studio was photogenic, but it was not good for work, because the space was too small. Hansen’s Studio had to fill the functions of a room for playback, editing, recording, etc.—at least four functions in one space—and it was impossible to do all these things.

Muzyczuk: The Studio sporadically made recordings.

Rudnik: Almost never with microphones, but as we introduced the technique of contact microphones, where one could stick a small microphone with a tack to a spring or to a glass bottle, I could even record in the radio corridor, and I wouldn’t have to go for my keys or lose any time with this procedure.

Muzyczuk: The sound engineer was considered a “performer” in the Studio. That is a rather interesting use of the term, because actually he is the creator of a certain concept, often a hazy idea.

Rudnik: Intention is not always expressly laid out in words. Sometimes it is necessary to squeeze out what a composer has in mind. When a client arrived, I treated him with the greatest respect. Nowadays, I am sometimes asked some tricky questions: “Eugeniusz, how much Rudnik is in Penderecki, and how much Rudnik is in Nordheim?” I don’t know, because I never measured. I made the piece, but there were certain rubrics in the specifications: composer, performer, or sound engineer.

Muzyczuk: Somewhere in the mid-1960s, both you and Bohdan Mazurek transformed yourselves from engineers or performers into composers. That is an interesting evolution.

Rudnik: Interesting, but not so innovative. In such cases, I usually cite Thomas Mann. He said that music is such a phenomenon that it can defy all the very strictly defined and academically described truths and start anew from the beginning without regard for previous rules. And that’s how it was with electronic music. It was a school of inveterate experimenters who totally threw out everything that existed until that time. The truths, rules that we started to observe in electronic music—they were fashioned with these hands. The aesthetics and engineering and established forms were not defined a priori. And no one said that there should be such sections as in a symphony, no. Maybe that is why I was the first to turn away from the enchantment of the sonorists, from the euphoria they generated with each a new treatment⁵. Because a treatment is a treatment, and in music, form is the most important thing. Bogusław Schaeffer said that a musical work is above all form. It must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, as well as a good title. The disease of experimental music was the desire of composers constantly to enchant or torment the listener with unpredictable events. I am striving for the listener to be able to follow my reasoning.

Muzyczuk: In your work and in Bohdan Mazurek’s, there appears to me a clear struggle against sonorism. Let’s consider, for example, your very frequent use of repetition. I have the impression that after struggling all day with these sonorists, with their non-repetitive compositions, you worked in the evening on your own pieces in reaction against their rules.

Rudnik: I have a few works that I made out of spite for composers who were crazy for Stockhausenism. Poles tend to be stupid: if the Germans do something, it means it must be done that way, because the cultural influence of Germanness has always been meaningful to us. Tempos must be set to two decimal places. I composed a good work, which was called Dixie, almost in real time. Back then, the category of real-time composition was unknown. I went up to the tape recorder, turned it on, did something, and then I cut and trimmed. In the same way, I made our first collage that lasted precisely in real time. I didn’t have to fight with noise, because noise is also an acoustic phenomenon and may be treated as useful material.

Muzyczuk: I’d also like to ask you about your very particular working method—I mean, the treatment of outtakes and seemingly useless scraps as fundamental material.

Rudnik: It wasn’t I who came up with the readymade. At a certain moment, it was as if I needed to cross over to the other side. How do we suddenly find this particular sound good, nice, pretty, worth including in the piece? I find something remarkably interesting in the work of those artists who build collages. I believe that if an artist goes up to a wastebin and sees a doll that’s missing an arm as well as a stroller without a wheel, and he takes that stroller, and lays that doll in it and fills it with soil—each of these three elements is trash that is useless to anyone, but constructed into this visual whole, they begin to become something particularly important and intriguing⁶. Therefore, I have my shabby materials, those malapropisms that slipped from a statesman’s tongue, or from the bishop as he gave his sermon. In them, there is a person’s most truthful truth—in the slips, in the auditory or acoustic exposition, speech, or oratorical description. I sometimes perversely, but not sadistically, penetrate these regions; I listen to kilometers of such recordings, to show that human powerlessness, that human greatness, and at the same time, that weakness. We are only so great, so strong, as we are weak. Indeed we may fall having slipped on that threshold and die as we hit our head against the wall.

Muzyczuk: Could you tell me about the tendency of Bogusław Schaeffer to record, or also to compose, the same compositions several times? For example, Symphony—electronic music has at least a few different versions. I am interested in how Schaeffer arrived at the poliversionality of his compositions. This is rather rare in music for tape.

Rudnik: I’ll tell you about one case with Schaeffer that shocked me. It was the strangest task that fell into my garret, or into the black room of the Studio. I was working with him on his great work, Missa electronica, which in my opinion is underappreciated. Of course, I worked with him very intensively, as he never touched the console, never defined what he wanted to hear. I made various proposals to him. At a certain moment, Schaeffer spoke, delivering the longest oration he made during his collaboration with me. He said: “Mr. Eugeniusz, for me, the sound is not important. As with the poet, for whom it is irrelevant whether he writes his greatest poetry on the back of a napkin in a bar or on parchment.” Schaeffer, through his ever-bursting imagination, sketched out triangles, squares, rectangles, parallelograms, in two systems of coordinates: volume/time, pitch/time. Or, in a precise manner, he determined the two parameters of pitch and duration. The indeterminacy of Schaeffer’s scores is great for me. We know nothing of the treatment of the sound or its color. I am anti-score. I don’t know where the unusual cult of the score comes from in electronic music. Of course, you can repeat after the theoreticians and the musicologists that if there is no score, there is no music. This rule lasted until 1948, when Pierre Schaeffer began to improvise.

Muzyczuk: I’d like to peek under the lining at the motivations that brought film directors to the Studio. At the moment the Studio was established, and somewhere into the mid-1960s, filmmakers felt strongly about the characteristic futuristic gurglings that they might use in film adaptations of the works of Stanisław Lem—for example, Silent Star [1959], and other science fiction films. As soon as a computer appears on the screen, the sounds of the tape blare forth. This changes over time. The filmmakers’ motivations become less clear, and slowly the sounds from the Studio are incorporated, even into psychological dramas. What sounds were filmmakers looking for?

Rudnik: What you are saying is revealing. No one other than you has formulated it this way. As I see it, filmmakers would come to me wanting either the cosmos or Hades. They would rush to ol’ Gene to work it out. This was the first primitive step in understanding the potential of this music. It all came from this, that the first great work of incidental music to come out of the Studio was Silent Star after Lem with the music of Andrzej Markowski. At a certain moment, I stopped providing these gurgling-cosmic or Hades-underworld services because they were making me sick. My specialties were films about love, about motherhood, death, martyrology, or the funereal world, illustrated with concrete music. Then cosmic gurgling fell out of fashion, and I simply was doing it with disgust. In my shop I would compose music for any film on any human subject. I tried to generate, find, or invent sound, the character of which was new and did not call up any associations, because as soon as someone takes up instrumental music, the listener immediately sees the chandeliers and marble of the philharmonic. My music should only be related to the image and give those associations that I want under the influence of the audiovisual impulse. That is why artists came to me four at a time, sometimes on their knees.

Muzyczuk: As long as we’re on the film industry, maybe we can move to the avant-garde, because I am interested in the Studio’s encounter with the Workshop of the Film Form⁷. At the end of the 1960s there was sporadic contact between you and Józef Robakowski as well as Zbigniew Rybczyński. You were invited together with Józef Patkowski to the Kino Laboratorium in Elbląg⁸. It seems to me that you were connected by a method of work based on structure and the ethics of working with tape or film, and not only by pure aesthetics.

Rudnik: The artists whom you have named were avant-gardists in the strict sense. They rejected the classical form of film. They were no longer interested in drawing thousands of frames. They clung to me with enormous passion because they rejected both form and appearance, as the filmmakers say. A filmmaker who came to me did not hear the piano, guitar, or saxophone, but instead heard, what I called in my treatments, “creakings” that were from a completely different world. When, excited by a director’s images, I could find the connections between his abstract world or his paranoid world or his reinterpretation of the world and my music, he was completely happy. Of course, what I could propose was a precise correspondence between the music and the image.

Muzyczuk: An interesting commentary on what you have told me about the cooperation between you and, for example, Rybczyński, when it was the director who ordered music from you for a prepared film, is Józef Robakowski’s Dynamic Rectangle, in which the situation was completely reversed. From what I know, he received a tape from you that he wanted to illustrate in film.

Rudnik: This is a remarkable thing. While I was making music, I would hear from these directors specializing in short or experimental forms: “How good it would be, if I could first get the music, and then could edit a film over it.” I think it is exciting that, if you have a basis in sound in which time is structured, where there are accents, then the sound is asking to have an image pinned there.

Muzyczuk: In conclusion, I’d like to ask you about one more thing. The Experimental Studio existed for almost fifty years. I wonder how much you can say about the transformation and evolution you witnessed over this period. Can it be summarized by saying that change was driven by new technologies?

Rudnik: The apogee of our glory was reached roughly one-third of the way through the Studio’s lifetime. The 1960s and the beginning of the ’70s were a remarkably lively period in Polish culture. Censorship had grown weak. Just as every structure has its birth, period of struggle and conflict, apogee, and then its decline, so it was with the Studio. Theoretical works were planned; there were supposed to be books, academic studies, etc. There was someone who undertook the archiving and promotion of the Studio. That activity concluded with there being no archive of the Studio, because it was lost. Nothing was done beyond the publication of a book from Józef Patkowski’s broadcasts of Musical Horizons on Polish Radio 2. At the beginning, we had a budget and we could commission compositions from Penderecki, Schaeffer, or Krzysztof Knittel, who had broken into the composers’ market. When Polish Radio started to talk more and more loudly about funding shortages, we were paid less and less in the Studio, but tolerated. Krzysztof Szlifirski approached five directors to provide us with a computer, because it was assumed that an analog studio must evolve toward computerized music, but it didn’t evolve. The Studio was eliminated in an inelegant manner; the archive was lost. I worked with Bolesław Błaszczyk for four years to organize the products of the Studio, which against orders, I did not throw in the trash. These are mainly documents (originals and copies) concerning my compositions and professional activities in the country and abroad. I have these notebooks displayed, and I took the tapes to my house in the country. I keep them inside my couches while a team of three people should come over and say: “Mr. Eugeniusz, you are the last one still alive who knows so much about the Studio. Please take a seat and we will record not only an interview stream, but also an ocean of interviews. And please show us your written and audio archives. Please tell us what you know about this work and this one.” Because in just a moment, to any half-intelligent music and radio journalist, I will be a name and a title and nothing more. And well—only that I am neither a theoretician nor a scholar of culture. I am a poor and aged engineer and composer, but I think that I know a lot. Amen.

(February 2013)

Translated by David A. Goldfarb
Translation revised and annotated by Magdalena Moskalewicz

Czarny Krajobraz I – Dzieciom Zamojszczyzny (1974).

The Polish version of the interview is available here.

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The Studio, which quickly became an outpost for electroacoustic music east of the Iron Curtain, was many things. Officially, it was established as a utilitarian unit intended to produce incidental music for Polish Radio broadcasts as well as soundtracks for films. Set up only few years after similar experimentally-oriented radio units in Paris (1948), Cologne (1951) and Milan (1955), it was also there to provide contemporary music composers access to the state-of-the-art equipment for the production of their autonomous electroacoustic pieces. Physically, it was a medium-size room in one of the many corridors of the headquarters of the Radio, crammed with gear, which its everyday inhabitants referred to as the “black room”. Design-wise, however, this tight space was meticulously planned out by Oskar Hansen, Poland’s leading architect, together with Zofia Hansen, linking the musical endeavors of the studio to a wider artistic scene. Indeed, the charm and the influence of Polish Radio Experimental Studio extended far beyond the 300 square feet of the physical space.

Under the direction of the Studio’s founder, Józef Patkowski, PRES became a laboratory for experimentation, whose influence extended into most if not all public aspects of Polish musical life: Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, of which Patkowski was program committee member; Warsaw Music Workshops (co-organized by John Tilbury), whose concerts Radio broadcasted; Polish Music Publications based in Cracow, which together with PRES co-published musical scores of the previously produced pieces, simultaneously releasing them on vinyls (sic!). Patkowski was also the Polish contact person for George Maciunas and the Fluxus movement, who was supposed to contribute to the never realized Eastern European Fluxus Yearbook. He helped organizing the (in)famous Fluxus East Tour that in 1964 Eric and Tony Andersen took from Copenhagen to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Soviet Union, during which they gave concerts and distributed Fluxus materials and ephemera. As a result, Warsaw of the 1960s was inscribed into the history of Fluxus as the cultural entry point to the whole of the Soviet Block. In fact, around a third of a close to a hundred composers who worked in the studio over the course of its existence came from abroad. As such, PRES can be seen as critical hub for international exchange.

Here, post presents the history Polish Radio Experimental Studio and a sampling of the works it produced in its first three decades, a period that coincides roughly with Józef Patkowski’s directorship (1957–1985). Using the opportunities offered by the digital publishing platform, we will feature original audio and video recordings together with reprints of scores and documentary photographs, next to newly commissioned essays, an interview and bibliography. In order to fully engage with the time-based character of an internet publication, we are going to release new materials gradually over the period of next three months. You can “folllow” this theme to get informed about new additions, and to add comments and links of your own.

“Polish Radio Experimental Studio: A Close Look”, prepared in partnership with Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, is based on resources from various archives made available by generous institutions and individuals. The presentation is part of C-MAP’s efforts to bring the often underrepresented histories of the Central and Eastern European neo-avant-gardes to a wider audience; but also to take a close look at materials and media still all too rarely exhibited and studied in art museums.

This theme was developed in partnership with Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź (MSŁ). It was edited by Magdalena Moskalewicz, MoMA with Daniel Muzyczuk, MSŁ. The original content items in this theme are listed below.

The Future Sound of Warsaw: Introduction to PRES

Daniel Muzyczuk 

Magnetic Tape as Instrument: A Rare Selection of Electroacoustic Music from Poland

Magdalena Moskalewicz

Polish Radio Experimental Studio: A Galaxy of Writings, Prints, and Sound

Bolesław Błaszczyk

How much Rudnik is in Penderecki, and how much Rudnik is in Nordheim? Interview with Eugeniusz Rudnik

Daniel Muzyczuk and Eugeniusz Rudnik

Alchemist Cabinet of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio: Music Scores of and for Experiments

Michał Libera

Spatial Music: Design and the Polish Radio Experimental Studio

David Crowley

Colors of Joy and Sadness: Polish Electronic Music in Service to Cinematography

Agnieszka Pindera

Music for Film from Polish Radio Experimental Studio

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Inhabiting a space between studios that were dedicated solely to the production of autonomous works, such as GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris and WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Cologne, and facilities oriented toward work for radio and television, such as the Radiophonic Workshop of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES) occupied an interesting position that enabled it to adopt a slightly unusual modus operandi.

What is the use of applying the scientific concept of experiment to the art of music? In his 1953 essay “Vers une musique expérimentale”¹ (Towards an experimental music), Pierre Schaeffer used the scientific term “experimental” to cover musique concrète, elektronische Musik, tape music, and “exotic music.”² The purpose of the text was clear: to end the author’s competition with Karlheinz Stockhausen (being at the same time competition between musique concrète and elektronische Musik), by taking it to the next level and by grouping the two competitors’ practices under a single term. In an interview with Marc Pierret, Schaeffer explained how he felt about “the experimental.” Asked whether he would have been more conservative with some of his earlier pieces had he written them later, and whether this might have prevented him from becoming the victim of his own experiments, the composer stated: “Certainly not! We always make the same mistakes again. I have no regrets! I tell you: I prefer an experiment, even aborted, to a successful oeuvre.”³ Here Schaeffer defines “experiment” by setting the word in opposition to a “successful piece,” a closed structure, and thus aligns the experimental with the notion of research or trial.⁴

Polish Radio Experimental Studio (PRES)⁵, established in Warsaw in November 1957, was named by its founder Józef Patkowski using Schaeffer’s terminology and meaning. In this way, Patkowski demonstrated a desire to ensure the widest possible scope for the project, which was intended to combine a contemporary music studio dedicated to producing works that would be presented in concert halls with one that would provide sound tracks and effects for cinema and radio. The particularity of the program and the fact that the studio was part of the biggest radio station in the People’s Republic of Poland enabled a hybrid foundation for the project. Inhabiting a space between studios that were dedicated solely to the production of autonomous works, such as GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris and WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Cologne, and facilities oriented toward work for radio and television, such as the Radiophonic Workshop of the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), PRES occupied an interesting position that enabled it to adopt a slightly unusual modus operandi. In order to grasp the nature of the work made there, we need to understand what distinguished PRES from all other electroacoustic and electronic music studios of its time. Józef Patkowski and Krzysztof Szlifirski, the technical director, were inspired by GRM and WDR, but the singularities of media management and the position of contemporary music in socialist Poland enabled them to produce a very different quality. We should note that for the same reasons, the works made at PRES are poorly known today in comparison with their French, German, and American counterparts.

PRES may be considered a product of the “Thaw” that changed Poland’s cultural politics. Its official founding date is significant. In 1958 the People’s Republic of Poland was a very different place than it had been a year before. The doors of the Studio were open to composers from both the Eastern Bloc and Western countries. They were drawn to PRES by the opportunity it offered them to work with highly skilled engineers, who were referred to as performers and were considered as equals to musicians. Therefore, the composers didn’t have to spend hours learning how to operate machines and instruments. Their compositions emerged through discussions with a person who knew the possibilities and limitations of the equipment. Thanks to this arrangement, PRES was visited by composers for whom musique concrète was just a chapter in their oeuvre, not a vocation. This working process resulted in a number of unusual pieces of music. The composer’s only obligation was to provide a score, which was needed mainly for administrative and legal purposes. Considering the fact that the music was composed on tape, this requirement may seem absurd, yet it produced some extraordinary scores that attempted to translate highly abstract sound qualities into graphic notation.

Utilitarian ends and especially services for cinema also gave rise to collaborations between sound engineers and neo-avant-garde artists, such as those associated with the Workshop of Film Form (WFF), from Łódź.⁶ Working on a conceptual level seems to have been a shared goal. Józef Robakowski mentions the search for new forms that was the main motivation for him and his circle. “My colleagues at the Workshop of Film Form also knew that there is a necessity to change both the image and sound in our films. We had to find new stylistic forms based mainly on counterpoint.”⁷ However, the common ground with visual artists never became a common front. Collaborations were only occasional due to the Studio’s organizational framework. It has to be remembered that PRES was a unit within the massive structure of Polish Radio and had to conform to its daily routine and fulfill ordinary commissions.

Visual inspiration also affected the composers who worked at PRES. Many of their autonomous works bear titles relating to the visual arts, and especially to modernist art forms and techniques (Bogusław Schaeffer’s Collage [1965], Assemblage [1966], and Mobile [1972], and Eugeniusz Rudnik’s Ready Made [1977]). In the case of Bogusław Schaeffer, who was the author of one of the first happenings in Poland⁸, there are direct links to the visual sphere. He writes plays and directs his own theater pieces, and his experiments with graphic scores clearly reveal collage as a primary inspiration. Schaeffer and later Zygmunt Krauze were also inspired by Władysław Strzemiński’s theory of Unism, which called for the absolute homogeneity of painting.⁹ Schaeffer’s composition Hommage à Strzemiński (1967) incorporates fragments of Strzemiński’s book Theory of Vision (Teoria widzenia).¹⁰ The radical artist’s writings that were to describe the new vision were “here confronted with an experimental sonic environment using panoramic sound effects and inducing in listeners specific auditory illusions. These illusory perceptual structures bring surprises. With the help of technology, the composer creates a phenomenon that listeners perceive as the new hearing.”¹¹ Adopting the extreme unity of form that Strzemiński proclaimed for painting, Schaeffer created a composition in which sounds from heterogeneous sources are combined into a unified and horizontal whole.

The influence of visual art on PRES sound engineer and composer Eugeniusz Rudnik produced very different results. Rudnik’s main job at PRES entailed creating sounds for the cinema, which required him to adhere to the standard synchronization of sound and image. Independently, however, he created a unique form of what the French composer Luc Ferrari called anecdotic music.¹² Rudnik composed using readily available material—fragments of tape that were the byproducts of the radio production that surrounded him. This method points to the indirect inspiration of Surrealism and assemblage techniques employed by the Polish artist Władysław Hasior, among others. Titles such as Ready Made suggest that Rudnik was not only interested in creating surprising sound collages, but was also concerned with the status of individual recordings, which through his acts of appropriation became surrounded by other sound objects.

Visual art was not the only extra-acoustic field to which PRES was drawn. Poland’s cultural Thaw coincided with the growing popularity of cybernetics¹³ among a new generation of engineers who were developing computer technology. Patkowski and Szlifirski were eager for PRES to play a role in this revolution and treated the Studio not only as a production unit, but also as a research facility with scientific aspirations. They started by translating Fritz Winkel’s book Phänomene des musikalishen Hörens¹⁴ and campaigned constantly for computers to be brought into the Studio, which they intended to be the most advanced of its kind. Attempting to unite visionary sound potential with state-of-the-art technology, they approached Jacek Karpiński, who in early 1970 designed and produced one of the world’s first mini-computers, to ask him to design new machines. Their plans were invariably blocked by insufficient funding as well as the dwindling interest of the Polish Radio’s management.

Few of the compositions created in the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio meet the most radical criteria of experimental music as defined by Pierre Schaeffer. The composer who came the closest was perhaps Boguław Schaeffer, who introduced polyversional music and with it, great freedom of execution. The works Schaeffer composed in this vein show that each performance is to some extent a sketch, and just one among an infinite number of interpretations of the piece. Describing the music as experimental was an up-to-date way of presenting it to an uninitiated public. And yet, the music produced at the Studio could be hard to find, for although PRES was intended by the authorities to be token proof of artistic freedom, the art produced there was reserved mostly for contemporary music festivals and late-night radio broadcasts. On the other hand, audiences of mainstream and art house films alike were exposed to works composed at the Studio. This had a dual effect: while the aesthetics of electroacoustic sound were widely known, often in connection with science fiction, the music itself was anonymous. This duality raises further questions: Why did the composers who worked at the Studio never venture into mainstream music, which was a common practice at the GRM (Pierre Henry) and at BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop (White Noise)? Why did the authorities lose interest in supporting the Studio, a lapse which led to its demise in the 1980s? And finally, why did they not promote the activities and achievements of PRES? That failure resulted, until recently, in obscuring this chapter in Poland’s cultural history.

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