What constitutes a musician’s presence on stage? What defines  their identity? What is our own presence, and what defines our identity?

Do instruments grant freedom, or do they impose limitations?

How long does presence endure in space, and without what is it  impossible?

When you look at photographs from the youth of the mature person sitting opposite you, it is as though it were the same person,  yet at the same time as though that image no longer belonged to  them. This suggests that even a human being does not belong  to themselves. So what remains present within them, and what  defines that presence?

What, in fact, belongs to a human being if even they themselves  cannot belong to themselves? Perhaps there is nothing that truly  belongs to anyone in this world. Perhaps everything we touch  slips through our fingers. What, then, remains? Perhaps sound— both actual and imagined—is the only true testimony to presence.

Yana Shliabanska