Natalia Revko

Artist in Residence

The recordings and photographs were made during my research into the sonic environment of the Bastions in Gdańsk, the remnants of medieval city fortifications that today function not only as cultural heritage but also as ecological sites. It is for the preservation of this heritage, including patches of green areas, artificial lakes, and swamps that have become home to birds, insects, and plant species, that eco-activist Natalia Grzymała, together with her colleagues from the organization Dzika Fosa Miejska, continues to fight.

The time I spent researching the soundscape of the Gdańsk Bastions was personally significant for me. It coincided with my final months in the city, before moving on to my next destination. During my emergency residency in Gdańsk, which by that point had lasted nearly two years, several spaces—ones you make your own by walking through them again and again—became places of quiet refuge for me. Among them were the green, marshy Bastions, which to the ear feel like a soft pillow. Throughout the summer I came there with a streambox, a small DIY device developed by my long-term collaborators at the UK-based organization Soundcamp, to listen to birds and winds, to read books aloud to people close to me, and to share these sounds with others through live online transmission.

When I brought the streambox to our interview and walk through the Bastions, Natalia Grzymała began her story there, speaking about how she came to this place during the pandemic and how a space already filled with memories from her childhood became a refuge for her. When the risk of destruction emerged, with plans for new construction on the site, she decided to fight for it.

We walked through the Bastions for more than two hours, and our conversation was accessible online to anyone through the streambox. As documentation, I chose Natalia’s song, one she wrote and dedicated to her friend, the curator Aneta Szyłak, who passed away in 2023.

Now, at the end of 2025, I think of Natalia’s song, which in the recording merged with birdsong, insects, fragments of human conversation, and the distant hum of airplanes, as a sonic imprint, as if pressed into memory. For me, everything was there: the convergence of all the languages spoken that year—English, Ukrainian, Polish—alongside a beautiful and tender female friendship, collaboration and mutual support, shared inspiration, the spaces we love and are ready to defend, and what we invest in people and landscapes, and what landscapes leave in us.