Collection

Sound and visual artist, composer, instrumentalist, co-founder of the Musica Genera festival and label. She is the author of music for theatrical and performative realizations. A graduate of the Academy of Music (saxophone, conducting). She utilizes her background in improvised and experimental music, treating instruments as an open, organic form. As a composer and instrumentalist, Zaradny moves within a wide spectrum, from acoustic, minimalist improvised music to complex, structurally and compositionally entirely electronic forms. Her works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad (including the Avant-Garde Institute / Foksal Gallery Foundation, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Bunkier Sztuki, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, SILLBERKUPPE, Kunst Werke Berlin). She is a laureate of several awards, including the Maria Anto & Else von Freytag-Loringhoven Arts Award (2023), the SHAPE platform (2017), and the audience award at the 5th edition of the "Spojrzenia - Deutsche Bank Foundation Award" competition (2011). She was a scholar at Museums Quartier Vienna (2005). She lives and works in Warsaw.

Anna Zaradny's work Enjoy the Silence is the result of reflections on the essence of sound and constitutes an attempt to capture its negative – silence. The film consists of hyperrealistic sequences in which we observe the shattering of glass in slow motion. Flickering shards swirl in clouds of glass dust against a neutral black background, creating a pulsating composition reminiscent of avant-garde works, such as Eggeling's Diagonal Symphony or structural cinema.

The video is devoid of sound. While admiring the aesthetic and meditative dimension of the explosions of glass surfaces, there arises a confrontation with the suggestive imagination of sound. The sensual impact of the work transcends the visual and activates areas of memory. We experience memories that disrupt our sense of comfort – the crash of shattering glass objects, the danger of contact with shards. The absence of sound evokes associations with marine depths or the space above the earthly atmosphere. Anna Zaradny's work also evokes images of sunlight reflections far beneath the water's surface and visions of cosmic nebulae and asteroids traversing the sky, suggesting that the enjoyment of silence extends beyond our everyday, mundane experiences.

The installation, mounted at Plac Unii Lubelskiej, near the skyscraper housing the headquarters of the ING Polish Art Foundation, allows passers-by to look beneath the surface of the earth.
Under a glass panel, the artist has placed a composition consisting of a kaleidoscope of artefacts used to transmit sound and light. Zaradny engages in a dialogue with how our senses and memory work. On the one hand, she extracts sound from the underground, which we usually associate with silence. On the other, it deprives most of the devices used of their emissions, reducing them to a visual sign. Through a glass barrier, a looped composition reaches our ears, combining experimental analogue electronic music with sounds from field recordings (including the sounds of toads in Thailand and singing and conversations with children in the Democratic Republic of Congo).
The composition of the installation elements represents recycled, outdated technologies. As the artist says: "For me, it is a story about the inevitable passing and technological change, and the consequences of constant development. The stream of trapped rights, thoughts and desires brings together geopolitical and economic problems, as well as ethical, aesthetic and ecological issues – good and bad news. Listening deeply to them, we see ourselves reflected in the Secret Stream."