Martyna Poznańska is an interdisciplinary artist who works with different media across genres. This includes the practice of active listening and field recording in tangent to working with various visual tools such as video, installation, her own body, and drawing, as well as listening workshops and soundwalks. Responding to the climate crises related issues, she has been exploring the symbiotic relations between human and non-human beings, the endless entanglements between us and how to acknowledge their intrinsic character.
She has exhibited and performed internationally in shows at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (DE), Unsound Festival Krakow (PL), SPOR Festival (DK), Aperto Raum Berlin, Allgemeine Konsumverein Braunschweig (DE), Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (DE), Starak Foundation (PL). In addition, she has worked with renowned artists such as Hans Peter Kuhn (ÜBERGANG, Martin-Gropius- Bau Museum, Berlin, 2017), and Peter Cusack (There Will Be No Other Forest).
In 2013 she was a recipient of a grant from the Polish Ministry of Culture, and in 2018, as well as 2021 she was awarded a scholarship from the Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa. Martyna completed a master’s degree in Spanish Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, 2010. She studied Sound Art at the University of the Arts, London (LCC/UAL). In 2016 she obtained an MA in Sound Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK). Martyna currently lives and works in Berlin and Białystok.
FACTS
1. You are never alone.
2. Landscape memory and bodily memory are intertwined.
3. The way the other being sees you, matters. Whether it’s a linden tree, an apple, a nightingale, your neighbor fox, or a fellow human.
QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Non-Human (‘natural’) and Urban Environment.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Around 16 years ago when I started to listen more attentively
and became fascinated by the richness of the sounds, that
surrounded me, so decided to record and use them as a source
material for my compositions.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
There are too many to choose only five.
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Sunless dreams.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
52° 26′ 10″ N, 13° 13′ 0″ O
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
I would just continue listening to the environment around me. There’s plenty of music there.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Telemann’s Tafelmusik
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Bees.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
I really like performing ‘Requiem for a Fly’ (2018), in which I find myself deeply connected with the essence of being in the world.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
It depends on the project sometimes it’s indispensable but I find it nourishing for my work if I can be independent from it.
11. Do you have siblings and how do they feel about your career/art?
I have four older siblings and they’re quite supportive of my artistic work at least that is what I’d like to think.
