Paweł Kulczyński, Missing Fundamental, 2026 

Paweł Kulczyński’s sound installation transforms the MWW building into a giant instrument, in which reinforced concrete walls trap and reflect low frequencies. The titular Missing Fundamental refers to a psychoacoustic phenomenon whereby the human brain processes harmonics in such a way that it “hears” a deep fundamental tone that is not physically emitted.  

The bunker, transformed into a resonator for such sounds, becomes an acoustics laboratory, whilst the phantom frequency itself serves as a metaphor for the spectre of war. Referring to the original function of the museum’s premises, Kulczyński proposes what he himself describes as a sonification of the building’s “institutional subconscious”: the terrifying, repressed thought that the shelter may one day return to its historical function. Creating today within the fragile bubble of peace, the artist reminds us of the thousands of people in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan for whom buildings have become places of survival – protection from bombardment. Controlled in real time by a generative algorithm, Kulczyński’s artwork continuously composes a disembodied soundscape.  

The installation draws on the history of sound art exploring the displacement of trauma and memory into architectural space. The work takes its cue from Bill Fontana’s sound sculptures and Maryanne Amacher’s radical psychoacoustic legacy. However, rather than employing memories of the past, the Missing Fundamental materialises within the museum’s present a potential, dangerous future. The installation relies on absence – the absence of objects, the absence of any immediate threat, and the absence of the fundamental frequency itself – to create a space for speculation about what may yet come to pass.