The caravan was just approaching an oasis scented with cardamom and incense. Its drivers whispered into one another’s ears in  an unknown dialect.

On the coast of Greece, waves broke unhurriedly against sunscorched boulders. An endless cornfield rustled, imitating  the swarms of cicadas that hung over drowsy Illinois that summer. Deep inside a mountain, rocks congealed from volcanic lava were  crumbling. Their crack and grind foretold a thunderous plunge into  the ravine below.

Above a tropical forest, the rain might have swelled into a deafening roar, had it not been cut through by the calls of exotic creatures  unknown to the human eye.

Fissures lengthened inside flower buds, audible only to bees.

Factories thrust smoke skywards, their rhythms shaking the streets  and floors of a nearby city, where glass towers silently scraped  the clouds with their spires. At that very instant, in each of these places, a gust of the Wind  swept scraps of words and sounds hundreds of kilometres towards  the ocean. As they skimmed over tracks, roads and rivers, more  sounds and stories clung to them, whirling together into wind-balls. Since time immemorial, the Wind had practised alchemy. Its chariot sped so swiftly that few could ever glimpse it; people felt only  the gust it left in its wake.

The Wind mingled stories, images and words, music and the sounds  of nature and machines, carrying them around the world—sometimes no more than a stone’s throw, sometimes across entire continents. In this way, it fashioned extraordinary music that held within  it both events as ancient as time and others of which the world had  yet to hear.

The Wind’s melodies then twined around cities, buildings and trees,  pouring into human ears and bringing ideas and dreams. Through  them, thoughts and memories, granite never before touched by  human hand and blocks of steel fashioned by that same hand took  on extraordinary forms and became a new story: Sculptures.

Several of them found a home in the park surrounding Królikarnia Palace. Seldom does the Wind venture here, into this maze of  paths and tall trees; but when its hand grips the palace dome and  an autumn gust races through the park, you will hear the melody  it has breathed into the sculptures. Who knows what it may inspire  in you as you carry it onwards? One day, from its fragments, you  may fashion an entirely new story…

***

Sculptures Sing the Wind invites us to see a sculpture not merely  as an art object, but as the sum of many forces: the biographical  and historical contexts surrounding its makers; its existence in  a particular setting, exposed to the workings of place, time and weather; its makers’ motives, craft and sources of inspiration; and  the perspectives brought to it by viewers.

In this project, we give selected works from Królikarnia’s remarkable open-air display both room and a voice, listening for what  the sculptures wish to tell us.

Working with composers and artists whose medium is the body  and movement, children’s and youth choirs will create a site-specific performance in dialogue not only with the works themselves,  but also with the parkland they inhabit.

The point of departure for this story is a tale of the Wind. In literature, this force of nature is often entwined with the world of  music; here, however, it becomes an elemental bearer of stories,  experiences, emotions and memories, linking distant continents,  communities and expanses of spacetime. At Królikarnia— an enclave of nature within the city—the Wind opens out our  view of the sculptures on display while carrying their resonance  further afield.

Might some members of the audience be inspired by the sculptures to explore new and varied forms of artistic expression?  Might others simply take quiet delight in escaping the city’s din,  resting in the company of the sculptures and a wind that has travelled thousands of kilometres, bringing relief from the heat along  with scores of stories from distant lands…

Amadeusz Nosal