Tanja Brüggemann
About the artist
Born in Austria, she holds a degree in piano and music theory and efficiency, and was a student of Adriana Hölszky, Tristan Murail and Alexander Mullenbach at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. She also completed her PhD degree in the field of film and audiovisual studies at the Film School in cooperation with the Academy of Music in Łódź under the supervision of Zygmunt Krauze and Krzysztof Knittel. Tanja lives and works in Vienna and Linz and at the Sankt Florian Monastery. She received a scholarship from the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, an Anton Bruckner scholarship and others.
As the president of the Association of Composers of Upper Austria, she founded the Atelier PYSYP (Picture Your Sound Your Picture), a collaboration between film makers and composers as part of the 2014 Crossing Europe film festival. Since then, she has been a member of the group of film and media experts at the Austrian Society of Composers in Vienna. IGNM – International Society for Contemporary Music – invited her to curate organ concerts in 2015. In her work, she consults researchers and institutions such as the Austrian Institute of Artificial Intelligence, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research. Her works have been commissioned by Wiener Musikverein, Brucknerhaus, Kulturforum Berlin, Meeting Point Messiaen, ORF, Wien Modern, Crossing Europe Filmfestival, SALT Festival Victoria/Canada.
Her work is specifically tailored for the places and spaces as well as for the audience.
Lifelong research on acoustic phenomena of human perception is basic to her immersive installations and compositions, which let her create a specific world of experience, where one will hear the inner selves. Keeping the edge by postponing transitions of states, realizing new entropies on the next level is immanent in her artistic expression as well as contemplation of metamorphoses – from macrocosm to microcosm. Tanja’s work dives deep into the world of hearing: acoustic and psychoacoustic phenomena.
Spiral lamina
for Piano, Voice, Megaphone and Speakers
It is an acoustic and psychoacoustic journey into the real and evocative sounds of human perception. This performative installation is precisely tailored for the patio in the Płock museum. The piano in the centre of the composition echoes both
the direct and indirect sounds produced live by the voice and the piano itself
as well as artificial electronic sounds via speakers and megaphone. This physical process provokes an elevation and desorientation of the human body’s acoustic realisation which comprises many transformative steps due to the words of Stefan Themerson: ‘The world is more complicated than our truths about it’
Lyrics/voice – Małgorzata Sady