DŽYNA

Audiovisual installation, made for BUČENÍ 2024 festival in Lubná, Czech Republic

Džyna / Gina, a term derived from the word "ginetika" or "genetics". It is believed to be a natural symbiosis of a gift from God, ancestors, and persistent practice that every musician must possess.

"During the last three years, I have conducted time-lapse research in the borderlands of Slovakia and Hungary, close to my hometown, and in the Ukrainian and Romanian Carpathian Mountains with the ethnographer Lucia Nimcová. I started asking old village musicians to teach me how to play the violin despite having no prior experience with the instrument. During this practice, I prepared an archive of field recordings made from the perspective of a sound artist, becoming a member of amateur village bands. I sought the same type of old musicians and singers despite their diverse cultural backgrounds when working in the field. They were not considered "the best and representative" in the area; they learned to play by listening to their environment and are "amateur professionals" who still actively play at local celebrations.

I conducted dozens of "self-organized masterclasses" - conversations about instruments, a relationship of music to magic, sound environments of the locations where music was played, local acoustic memory... Their personal experiences provided insight into diverse cultural and social contexts.  

While collaborating with the participants, I document equally their playing and listening approaches. I recorded an audio journal of listening to the musicians, instruments, tunings, and the site."