We walk  

Over a waterless river

(Issa / Miłosz) 

Issa Kobayashi wrote these words, which Czesław Miłosz then transcribed from an English translation into Polish, filtered through his own poetic sensibility. How can we connect Slavic nostalgia with Japanese mindfulness directed towards transience? By using language, can we touch an experience that is otherwise inaccessible to us and immerse ourselves in a strange kind of concentration, one that seems to transcend the boundaries of time? 

The water thinks for me 

(Boldman / Miłosz) 

We meet for the finissage of Mizuno Toshikata's exhibition, an artist from the turn of the century, to attempt to embrace with sound what is unspoken and mysterious even to ourselves. With the composition Po horyzont (To the Horizon) by Aleksandra Słyż, we are not interpreting the lines and shapes, not the words and signs, but the very experience of the encounter itself. 

The visual layer of the piece was created by MAUKO, a graphic designer and graduate of the Japanese Shodō 書道 school of calligraphy in Kamakura. 

Ania Karpowicz 

Aleksandra Słyż - To the Horizon for countertenor, flute, piano, drums and electronics (2025) 30' 

Ania Karpowicz – flute, curator  

Michał Sławecki – countertenor 

Aleksander Wnuk - drums 

Tymoteusz Bies - piano 

MAUKO - shodo calligraphy visualisations  

Venue: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology 

The concert is organised by oto foundation and the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology.  

Note from composer: the Horizon is a piece in which the author reflects on the experience of death and the sensory and spiritual experiences of a person who has found themselves on the border between life and death. It is an attempt to capture a transitional state—a moment of suspension between the temporal world and what lies beyond its boundaries. The inspiration for the composition came from a variety of sources—literary, philosophical, and psychological. Of particular importance to the author was the selection of haikus translated by Czesław Miłosz, as well as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a classic Buddhist text describing posthumous states; Plato’s Phaedo, in which the philosopher considers the immortality of the soul; and Carl Gustav Jung’s Man and His Symbols, which serves as an introduction to the theory of symbols, archetypes, and the collective unconscious. 

Aleksandra Słyż