Magda Drozd | Research Trip

July - August 2023 — Music

Switzerland-based multidisciplinary artist Magda Drozd will spend time in Johannesburg, South Africa from 17 July to 14 August 2023 to connect with local musicians and explore the sonic structures of the city’s electronic music scene.

Magda’s work spans music, sound art, and composition. Her approach to music is experimental and boundary-pushing. Utilizing a diverse array of influences and techniques, she creates distinctive and alluring soundscapes combining an electroacoustic approach to field recordings with violin drones, orchestral passages, choral melodies, fragile voices, noise, and various instrumentations that delve into intuitive and speculative perceptions of the world through sound.

This experimental and exploratory approach will inform her research trip. She explains: “In my music, I like to work beyond genres and at the moment, I am looking for potential collaborators to expand my horizon, my music, and my way of working. I hope to find inspiration and new people to work with in Johannesburg.”

Alongside her interest in the electronic music scene, Magda is also keen to research choral traditions in South Africa and potentially collaborate with choir singers on new compositions that combine gospel music with experimental approaches. She also hopes to create field recordings exploring the sonic soundscapes of Johannesburg.

BIOGRAPHY

Magda Drozd lives and works between Zurich and Torino. She works as an artist, musician, composer and dramaturg. Her artistic practice explores acoustic ecologies and a non-rational perception of the world through sound. Songs for Plants, her debut album, was released in 2019 by Präsens Editionen and has reached a broad international audience of experimental music experts and fans. On her second album called 18 Floors which she published in 2021, Magda focused on the building she called home for several years. Within Switzerland her installations and performances have been shown at Shedhalle Zürich, Helmhaus, Lokal 14, Fabriktheater Rote Fabrik, sic! Raum für Kunst, Haus Konstruktiv, Südpol and Nationalpark Zernez among others. Internationally she has presented her work in art spaces in Detroit, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Trivero, and Trento. Since 2021 Magda collaborates as a composer with Torino-based artist Laura Pugno for her video works and installations. Magda earned her BA in Dramaturgy and MA in Fine Arts at Zurich University of the Arts, where she was also a research fellow between 2019 – 2021 and taught sound and listening as a form of knowledge creation.