Correspondences | Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Language
The performance is in English without Greek surtitles.
Tickets
Full price: 50 € | Limited Visibility: 25 €
Reduced, Friend & Groups 5-9 people: 40 € | Limited Visibility: 20 €
Groups 10+ people: 36 € | Limited Visibility: 18 €
Neighborhood residents: 7 €*
Unemployed, People with disabilities: 5 €
Companions: 10 €
*Onassis Stegi Neighbors can purchase their tickets only at the Onassis Stegi Box Office from Wednesday to Friday, between 12:00 and 18:00. Access from the “Artists Entrance” on Galaxia Street.
Onassis Stegi Friends presale: from Thursday, 15 February, 17:00
General presale: from Thursday, 22 February, 17:00
Duration
90 minutes
Introduction
The legendary poetess Patti Smith lands on Onassis Stegi to take part in Soundwalk Collective’s sonic landscapes, in a two-day event full of images and sounds born of contemporary reality.
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Photo: Darren Keith
Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, live in Florence Gould Hall in New York
"Correspondences" is an ever-evolving project between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith. Spanning over 10 years, it traverses a wealth of geographies and their natural environments, where the artists have uncovered sonic steps left by poets, filmmakers, revolutionaries, and the impact of climate change.
Soundwalk Collective’s founder, Stephan Crasneanscki, has explored, captured, and collected the world’s remotest places in sound to awaken a sonic memory within the landscape, uncovering traces of past and current histories of the world we are living in. The resulting compositions are made of sounds that reflect our relation to this world, the environment, the soul of our existence, and the creative process of the artist.
Initially composed as long traveling shots, soundtracks to an invisible movie, Stephan brought these recordings to Patti Smith, giving her new landscapes to channel her poetic vision. This ongoing resonance between the artists―which started during a chance encounter on a plane―has been shaped by their correspondences: ongoing conversations with the intention of reflecting on life and nature.
From a collaboration with TBA21-Academy exploring the destructive impact of seismic airguns and human interventions in the oceans, to the resilience of Nature in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, to the decentralized societies envisioned by Peter Kropotkin, to the wastelands of Pasolini’s last night, the pieces presented become thought-provoking audiovisual journeys.
Featuring live films and director's cuts, "Correspondences" is performed by Soundwalk Collective’s Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, Patti Smith, and special guests. Visuals by Pedro Maia.
Soundwalk Collective is the contemporary sonic arts platform of founder and artist Stephan Crasneanscki and producer Simone Merli. Working with a rotating constellation of artists and musicians, they develop site- and context-specific sound projects through which to examine conceptual, literary, or artistic themes. Evolving along multi-disciplinary lines, Soundwalk Collective has cultivated long-term creative collaborations with musician Patti Smith, late director Jean-Luc Godard, photographer Nan Goldin, choreographer Sasha Waltz, and actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, among others.
Soundwalk Collective have performed and exhibited at a diverse range of arts and music institutions, such as Berghain, Centre Pompidou, CTM Festival, documenta, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Manifesta, the Mobile Art Pavilion by Zaha Hadid, and the New Museum.
In April 2019, Patti Smith collaborated once again with the Onassis Foundation. As part of the Onassis USA festival titled "Democracy is Coming" and in collaboration with the Public Theater of New York, she joined forces with Stewart Copeland of the legendary Police, Choir! Choir! Choir!, and the audience that formed a vibrant choir. Together, they delivered a moving rendition of "People Have the Power," the anthem symbolizing democracy.
An ever-evolving project between Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith, a sonic memory uncovering traces of past and current histories of the world we inhabit, while also shedding light on the profound impact of climate change.
Soundwalk Collective counts more collaborations with Patti Smith.
Their project, “Peradam” (2020), takes as its entry point René Daumal’s early 1940s novel “Mount Analogue: a Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing,” in which the French writer, critic, and poet mapped a metaphysical journey to “the ultimate symbolic mountain” in search of meaning. In it, Daumal introduced the idea of the “peradam,” a rare, crystalline stone―harboring profound truths―that is only visible to seekers on a true spiritual path.
The sounds captured and composed by Soundwalk Collective helped Patti Smith in her tough, tender, and tactile voicework: readings that dive so much deeper than mere readings. “It’s just attempting to create a breathing body of work that keeps growing as you do it; it’s alive,” she says. “You can’t just do it because you say you’re going to. People can go out to Central Park and record the wind, but we have wind from the top of sacred mountains, we have the sound of stones from the most dangerous parts of the Copper Canyon in Mexico.”
In “MUMMER LOVE,” Soundwalk Collective journeyed to Africa to explore the intricacies of Arthur Rimbaud’s most obscure period. After leaving France and what he deemed the “Western stagnation,” Rimbaud found himself in Harar, Ethiopia―an epicenter of Sufism in Africa. Sufi practice focuses on the renunciation of worldly things, the purification of the soul, and the mystical contemplation of God’s nature. Sufism is a mystical form of Islam, and its music is about reaching a communal ecstatic state, and once you find yourself there, you are granted access to the unknown.
The Soundwalk Collective spent time with the Sufi group of Sheikh Ibrahim to record their music and chants in the whole region formerly known as Abyssinia. “You obtain connections to other levels of yourself and consciousness,” Stephan Crasneanscki mentions of the musical process. “This connection, like poetry, is a universal language. A language of the soul, for the soul.”
Referring to the overall work, Patti Smith likens the project to a fourth-mind equation. “Because we are working with other people’s work and not just reading it but channeling these people, they become a fourth mind. We are Rimbaud, you, I, and the work,” Smith says in conversation with Crasneanscki. The unification of all minds together magnifies its power and potential. “It makes me think of Rimbaud’s energy, his strong will,” Smith says. “If we, the living, send out radio and energy waves, the energy of those last poems is still reverberating. It can’t be silenced because we understand that this work and the artists are not dead, they find life when we are recording them.”
