Cosmos-Cosmos [excerpt]

Michal Libera - dramaturgy, libretto
Tomasz Nosinski - voice
Le Quan Ninh - percussion
Ingar Zach - percussion
Witold Gombrowicz - text

Fragments of "Cosmos" by Witold Gombrowicz in English (translated by Danuta Bockhardt, Yale, 2005): 

A soaring bird appeared
—high in the sky, immobile—
vulture, hawk, eagle?
No, it was not a sparrow,
and by the very reason of not being a sparrow
it was after all a non-sparrow,
and being a non-sparrow,
it was,
in a small way,
a sparrow. 

When the door opened, the cavern of the small,
low room that gave off a bitter, oppressive odor,
like that of a laundry room, or bread, or herbs,
that cavern of EEEEEHM.

I looked around,
nothing, silence, calm,
I looked again.
A hanging man. 
Ludwik? Ludwik.

He was hanging.
And yet this FACT was hanging,
a hanging fact,
a Ludwik-like fact was hanging,
hitting one on the head,
a fact that was big, heavy,
hanging down,
something like a bull roaming about on the
loose,
an enormous fact on a pine tree,
and with shoes 

like a, b, c, d 

What consistency!

A stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse
—though the logic was both heavy-handed
… and too much my own … 
personal 
… so …
separate … 
private 

A stupid corpse – a logical corpse.
They are like those magnetized balls,
they search for one another,
and when they’re close: pam 
pam, pam, pam, pam 
And its hanging brutality,
pam, pam, pam, pam,
was skillfully uniting with pam, pam, pam, pam,
sparrow—stick—cat,
it was like a, b, c, d,
like one, two, three, four!
What skill!
What zeal for logic.

Why couldn’t he have strangled the cat, hanged it? 
I had strangled it. 
Yes, I had hanged it. 
I had hanged it, strangled it, 
but he could have … 
He could have hanged it! 
But if he had not hanged the cat (because I had hanged it), 
he could have, in any case, hanged the sparrow …
and the stick!

Come closer,
touch,
enfold,
embrace,
and love
to the point of madness.

I began to walk across the field.

Cosmos-Cosmos [excerpt] - in French

Sociologist working in sound and music field since 2003, recently involved mostly in producing and staging sound essays and other experimental forms of radio art and opera which brought him to collaborate with Martin Küchen, Pete Simonelli, Ralf Meinz, Komuna// Warszawa, Hilary Jeffery, Apartment House and others; producer of conceptual pop label Populista dedicated to mis- and over- interpretation of music as well as series of reinterpretations of music made in Polish Radio Experimental Studio (Bôłt Records); curator of various concerts, festivals and anti-festivals and music programs for exhibitons; member of art group called „Grupa Budapeszt”.