Since October 13, Izabela Koczanowska is staying at m4 with her partner and her cat.
Iza studied media art and interior architecture in Krakow (Poland) and Paris. This summer, she graduated with honors with a master's degree from Willem de Kooning Rotterdam.
In October, Iza participated in Dutch Design Week with her work Lullaby For Depressed River Mussels. It is a sound installation based on field research.
Origin
The project arose from research into the water conditions in De Biesbosch National Park, focusing on the impact of noise pollution and continuous canal regulation on freshwater mussels. Recordings of natural sounds and man-made noise were interwoven with a folk song.
Listening
The installation frames these sounds as a poetic concert for freshwater mussels. Although mussels cannot hear, they can sense vibrations and water movements. Even when listening from a human perspective, the work invites us to immerse ourselves in their fragile world and imagine new ways of connecting with this endangered species.
Sensory system
The installation combines hydrophone recordings of ferry traffic and the crackling of broken shells with a sung folk song, creating a compelling, ASMR-inspired soundscape. This composition is played through waterproof speakers in 3D-printed shell-like shapes, made from biodegradable filament enriched with mussel shell powder.
Visitors can activate the sounds themselves, transforming the installation into a concert for mussels. Using silicone buttons molded from real shells, they cause subtle acoustic shifts and add their own presence to the piece. A hydrophone in the water allows visitors to listen back to these sounds as they are transmitted through the underwater speaker, wrapped in the 3D-printed mussel structure. This listening loop emphasizes the intertwining of sound, touch, and underwater life.
This was an interdisciplinary project led by Iza Koczanowska (art direction, research) with technical support from Łukasz Zuber. It explores the relationships between bodies and spaces, alternative forms of tourism, and post-rituality. Through experimental processes, it combines speculative design, biomaterials, 3D printing, performance, and interactive systems, including virtual and immersive environments.
During her residency in m4, Iza Koczanowskais will be organizing a series of workshops : Narrative Environments
The workshops are part of her broader ongoing research, through which she aims to reflect on how storytelling can help us reimagine spatial practices and consider the workshop form as an alternative form of collaborative research.
The aim is to explore and transform familiar understandings of tourism or traveled places, revealing spaces as relational rather than fixed. Participants conduct research through experimentation, engaging in critical-creative writing and model-making to give material form to personal narratives. This process opens ways to decolonize dominant stories and imagine fluid, relational modes of space and experience.
