++++ The young people with the black gowns do not really look as if they wanted to make fun of themselves. Basically they even seem to be in a festive mood in the apse of this magnificent Polish church in which they have gathered. Only the noises which they are making are extremely strange. Sometimes they sound mocking, sometimes silly and sometimes like those of a small child. The unstructured cacophony of voices has a disturbing urgency which the youths themselves do not find at all remarkable. On the contrary, their faces are serious, a little bit celebratory, and they are visibly making an effort to do what they are doing, namely, to stand together in a group and make noises — or sing as well as you can when you cannot hear anything.
Artur Zmijewski films a choir of deaf boys and girls singing a fragment of the Kyrie from the Polish Mass by Jan Maklakiewicz. The words are distorted and nothing is synchronized. Despite that, music comes about, a superimposition of the most various acoustic stimuli which have little in common with each other, but nevertheless pursue an identical aim. This is situated outside what is audible, however.
"At this holy place our voices lift to you and rise like the wave of the tide from the deep sea. Oh Christ, hear us! Oh Christ, listen to us," they sing, even though some of them do not even know what tones are. Artur Zmijewski was born in 1966 in Warsaw where he still lives and works today. His film is a simple and moving document about perception.
In the beginning there is consternation about these members of the choir who are apparently behaving themselves in an unseemly way in church with their strange noises. This interpretation turns into its opposite once it becomes clear with what measure of devotion and conviction something impossible is being attempted here. At the same time, the question is posed concerning how the members of the choir themselves see this happening. The result of a deaf choir can be thoroughly satisfying for the singers. The knowledge of the imperfection of their action, after all, escapes them entirely.
Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Holbeinstraße 1, until 25 August. hoh