Artur Zmijewski Videos: Lekcja śpiewu / Singing Lesson

Another attempt at breaking free from the disabilities of the body, but which was doomed to failure, was Lekcja śpiewu / Singing Lesson (illustrations) (2001). Out of a group of deaf people Żmijewski gathered a choir of singers who performed Kyrie from The Polish Mass by Jan Maklakiewicz in the Augsburg-Evangelican church in Warsaw. Despite the efforts of the conductor, what emerges is pure cacophony. This project was reenacted two years later in Germany (Lekcja śpiewu 2 / Singing Lesson 2 - illustrations, 2003), when a professional opera singer joined the choir. In the Leipzig Cathedral they all sang a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach, a symbolic figure representing German high culture. Żmijewski was quoted as saying, By singing they manifest their insuperable otherness.