Rafał Mazur
Rafał Mazur (born 1971 in Kraków) is a musician, philosopher and writer. In his artistic activity, he combines sound activity with cognitive issues. Also, he conducts listening workshops based on his own philosophical project Listening Philosophy in which he tries to construct the framework of a possible thought-cognitive system derived from the way of functioning the sense of hearing and listening mode. A founder of the ImproArt studio of improvisation, he has performed jazz and improvised music in clubs and festivals across Poland and Europe, and in China, South Korea and Israel. In recent years he has collaborated with Lisa Ullen, Frederic Blondy, Charlotta Hug, Raymond Strid, Keir Neuringer, Zsolt Sores and others. His current focus is the band "Ensemble 56" and "Mazur/Neuringer Duo". He is an organizer of the Laboratory of Intuition, a series of spontaneous art presentations in Kraków. Mazur's main field of interest and activity is collective and solo free/spontaneous improvisation.
In his practice as an improvising musician and on his way to mastery/artistry he studys Chinese philosophy (Jagiellonian University). He is academic philosopher and his main fields are philosophy of improvisation, Chinese daoistic philosophy, Chinese philosophy of art, evolutionary aesthetics and naturalistic philosophy of art. In his dissertation (2017 at Jagiellonian University) he propose the hypothesis about audiocentric ground of Chinese system of thinking and compare the traditional musical/sound practice of Chinese philosophers – wenren, with contemporary sound activities as sound art, soundscapes, sound walks and contemporary sonic philosophy. On the basis of his comparative work Mazur is constructing kind of innovative look on the concept of cognition which is developed by him in the project of listening philosophy and naturalistic concept of music as a vibration system. He is an author of philosophical book „The Great Tone has no sound. Daoist philosophical sound practice in the context of selected trends in contemporary art and philosophy.”, and philosophical fairy tale based on Chinese philosophy „Journey to the Great Mountain.”
He regards Taoism as a strong base for the enrichment of the improviser's attitude, and to this end he practices the Taoist's martial art TaiJi Quan Chen. For Mazur, following the masters of Chinese philosophy and martial arts is crucial in the development of a state of mind prepared for the unexpected situations an improviser encounters in the act of collective free improvisation.