tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-374079692024-03-07T08:27:45.777+01:00das kleine field recordings festivalNews about the 4th edition of the Festival that will take place in Berlin all through the year 2008. The information about the former editions that were held on 22-26 november 2006, 13-22 february 2007 and 1-29 august, 2007 are still to be found somewhere in the jungle of this blop.rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.comBlogger75125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-75158138102187353672008-11-26T12:35:00.004+01:002008-11-26T12:50:21.075+01:00A Still Life of Thoughts ( a kind of essay)<p style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><b>Essay</b></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Let's pretend, and call this piece of writing you are about to read an essay. It is important to masquerade one's thoughts. What goes up the chimney right now is meant to be smoke for some of you, and some kind of gas to others. Fuel? Hardly.</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Reading some of Momus' <a href="http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vaW1vbXVzLmxpdmVqb3VybmFsLmNvbS88d2JyPjQwNjg2Ny5odG1sPC9hPjxmb250IGZhY2U9" arial="" size="4">blog entries</a> on post-modernism, Derek Holzer's latest <a href="http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vYmxvZy5teXNwYWNlLmNvbS9pbmRleC5jZm0/ZnVzZWFjdGlvbj1ibG9nLkxpc3RBbGwmZnJpZW5kSUQ9ODAwMDYzNA==">blog entries</a> (second half of 2008), and Francisco Lopez' 'against the stage', caused collateral effects on my daily metaphysical digestion system. </span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >I owe some knowledge to the books on <a href="http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vY29zbWljcGxheS5uZXQvTWV0aG9kL0V4dHJhL2V4dHJhcGhlbjEuaHRtbA==">metabletics</a> by <a href="http://www.msplinks.com/MDFodHRwOi8vd3d3Lm15dGhvc2FuZGxvZ29zLmNvbS92YW5kZW5CZXJnLmh0bWw=">Jan Hendrik van de Berg. </a></span><br /><br /><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>Perilous Persil</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Momus' view that the post-modern period started with a book by Barthes on Persil and other objects and ended fifty years later with a quote on Persil by Victoria Beckham, brought to mind the books by one of The Netherlands' most underestimated writers. Van de Berg, the inventor of metabletics, stated that changes in society started with single events and that it would take forty years to have the thoughts generally accepted. Hence I doubted the period of fifty years. With Elvis as another onlooker it was easy to accept the publishing of Barthes' book as one of the markers of the beginning of an era. If van de Berg was right the end should be situated in the mid nineties. Personally I think the massive hysteria around princess Diana's death and its peak in bad taste, Elton John's mourning song, serve as a fine apotheosis.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Barthes published his book in 1957, the height days of existentialism. I don't know what the girls were like right then, but I have some serious suspicion that they must have been pretty bored by all the endless discussions going on. Talking about Persil might have guaranteed Barthes to get laid every now and then. Of course he discussed other topics as well. He did so in a time that television did not broadcast twenty four hours a day on numerous channels around the world. Tragically when post modernists invented themselves television was everywhere and in the most beautiful colours. It was not only omnipresent, but it was also inventing, shaping and exploring life styles. It was and is forever discussing Persil and other objects. Barthes was a visionary in foreseeing what would occupy the TV editors mind up to today.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >In short, in TV-land events occur in a linear process: cause and effect. In this constellation strategies fit in perfectly. Add some decisive restrictions on moral issues and one can almost visualize the manager. Post modernism as in new nihilism brought us the soft revolution of the editors. In the years after the funeral of Barbie politicians like Blair and Schröder represented the office stud who kicked all those emancipated women back into the centerfold of Playboy. </span><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>Post Mortem </b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >You don't need religion to believe in God. In post-modern times the authority of culture, politics, and other institutions vanished. In these globalist times friends and interests are either a flight, an email, or a few clicks away. An almost insurmountable distance away are those institutions that have replaced the institutions. One can get an idea of the fortress character of this newly created centre of decisions and thoughts every time a G8 conference occurs.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Irony was one of the main weapons of the post-modernist that made the mountains of authority crumble. It was a bit harder to be ironic with the ironics. Now, in a time that the word 'post-modern' leaves the doors of the Vatican to invade the ears of US-Citizens, and is meant to bother the greatest role model for future times to come, the absolute idol of every self proclaimed talent that washes upon the shores of television, now that the word 'post-modern' is used in an indirect dialogue between a religious leader and the next president of the United States, now that this word has landed on everyman's breakfast table, one can state that post-modernist thinking, is integrated in our culture.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >Still, the ex-postmodernists insist on nominating the new era in post-modern terms. A not at all so funny thing is that they do it in their own language. In fact it is this absurd language that serves as a wall and a fortress. Move in it, speak it, write it, sympose, essay, catalogue with it and be sure to cash in with it. A maybe a bit more funny thing is that, apart from God, the western culture, literature, monarchs, political leaders, education, outside the fortress also intelligence itself is no longer a means to justify an authoritarian position. The new authorities are since a long time making a fool of themselves. And with every new heavily sponsored event they make themselves even more ridiculous. Unfortunately they reside within the institutions and even more unfortunately my colleagues in the poverty zone don't have any other choice then to learn gibberish.</span><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>Interlude</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >Elvis and his likes also initiated youth culture. In the following decades music was consecutively optimistic, intellectual, rebellious, elegantly pessimistic and exotic. After 'goodbye English rose' youth culture got more and more independent of any institution except of those that exist in the internet and on TV. In this optic there is no postmodernism or whatever –ism that defines the second half of the last century. The (technical) developments of that era are also a result of the raise in pocket money. With wisdom being a quality of the aged, it is a bit striking that youth culture is extended into the retirement zone. I (1956) don't have to feel old, as long as Mick Jagger is alive. Maybe we are living in pantheistic times (as in Peter Pan), or even pre-pantisocratical times (as in 'everybody should wear the same panties').</span><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>The Executioner – an Analysis of 'Against the Stage'</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >On The Official Francisco Lopez Website one can find a caption:"essays." I don't know if in nominating his website the official website, Francisco has been ironic. Consequently I cannot judge if the few items he wrote were ironically called "essay." The official Frank Sinatra Website doesn't sound more pompous thanks to Francisco's intervention.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >As a result of the editors revolution also the publishing houses have been ethnically cleaned: don't think a new Isaiah Berlin will raise from the ashes. There is no more need to ironize the works of the scholars and call a note an essay. Now that the post-modernists occupy the offices of the institutions and act like the new rulers, an essay title appearing in an application form is a convincing argument to spend money on the artist who wrote it.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >On this thin line between irony and bank account I really don't know if Francisco Lopez' considerations should be taken seriously or not. I once saw him end a performance in Valencia (I was too late) and there he was in a kind of class room, behind a big long desk. The other opportunity was at a performance in Warsaw where he was not on the stage before me, but behind me at the DJ desk, mixing two CD..s. I reasoned "If you don't want to be on the stage, I don't have to be in the audience." More over, it was a fine summer evening and my great friend Jeff Surak was in the courtyard; I hadn't seen him in years.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > <span style=";font-size:100%;" >Basically what Francisco tries to make clear in his letter to the editor is that he wants to play in front of the speakers, so that no technician will have control over the sound. What follows after this statement is a description of his set up. Best is to take a look at the video clip to get an idea.</span><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FvL1Uik9lCc&hl=de&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FvL1Uik9lCc&hl=de&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br /><span style="font-size:100%;">Honestly, this image made me think of Breughel's Tower of Babylon, some of Hieronymus Bosch' paintings, but also of Darth Vader and a scene from a movie by Pasolini (maybe Decamerone) in which from a gigantic arse numerous black butterflies escape together with a well tempered fart.</span></span><span style="font-family: arial;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Francisco Lopez is in the very centre of this scene. He writes<i>: "Not that I'm aiming at doing something popular, but I can feel I'm tapping some of the universal powers of sonic matter in an intensified way. I actually feel that most of these powers are out of my control. I personally feel transformed by the experience in the live shows. There I enter a world I cannot reach in any other way I know of."</i><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >These are words that could be associated to religious ecstasy. Lopez, the de Loyola of electronic music? A further quotation could confirm this guess. <i>"Disappearing as performer, felt present as medium operator, felt as such in the sound."</i><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >I have experienced some surround sound concerts. I found them highly irritating. The perfected sound is at those few square feet right in the centre. It provokes a sensation of unrest, simply because every other position is always out of centre.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >But hey, this is all about post-modernism, right? The word 'iconoclastic' is prominent on the official website. What is so iconoclastic about this iconic appearance Francisco Lopez got immersed in over the last years? I cannot believe it is just a gimmick which masquerades the fact that the artist stripped bare to the stage is a guy mixing two cd-'s with the help of two cd-players and a mixing desk.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Maybe the next rather ill-omened, curiously Gnostic quote can shed some light:"(<i>…) darkness lights up regions of the mindscape and the spirit that are normally dormant and darkened by (…)</i> <i>light" </i><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >The whole set up is nothing but an image of the society we live in: The invisible ruler in the very centre, immersed in his very own world, deaf to everything that happens outside. He is surrounded by the obedient followers, dedicated and trustful. But in Lopez' vision these citizens are about to be executed, blindfolded in their last moments of life. The hangman wears a black hood. Expressing a sinister and utmost pessimistic view, Lopez' series of immersive concerts are an outcry for humanity at its darkest and most lonely moment.</span><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>The Sweet Life</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >It is so cute. Some of us out there in the field lead workshops. Since this is an institutional activity, the artist has to present a programme. The normal way is that the person behind the desk, I mean the money desk, has knowledge, decides after listening to the works of the aspirant invitee. Nope. You have to write your request, preferably in gibberish and take a seat in a virtual waiting room. In meta language we know that the relation waiting room/ office is based on power.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Of course in the same meta language the artists theoretical outline of his workshop idea, is an expression of his disgust for the situation. He/she presents himself as if talking to a five years old. A typical field recordings workshop could be: introduction to different kinds of recording gear and recording methods. Go out to places with a special acoustic quality.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Imagine a writer proposing this kind of workshop. He would tell that you can actually write with a pen, a pencil or a ballpoint. Also a computer or a laptop can be used. Then there is different kinds of paper to write on, as there is a whole range of computers one can choose from. Once we know what to use to write with and on, we can consider where. A café, a library, at home in the kitchen, the attic, the basement? Or maybe in the underground, or just everywhere.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:100%;" >Would some institution accept my proposal if I would say the participants should come to the first day of the workshop with their recordings and that we will use the time to shape it into a composition? Could that be enough? </span><br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><span style=";font-size:130%;" ><b>The Stage and my Fridge</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Winter is near, so is the end of this year's festival. I have chosen different locations, mostly in the Berlin Neukölln area, because I prefer to go home walking after the shows. I also like diversity. Luckily the area of Neukölln that confines with Kreuzberg has gone through a significant change all through this year. For a very long period the lack of bars and small galleries underlined the poor and in some corners dangerous character of the neighbourhood. In 2008 there was a new place opening every week.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >I have seen over fifty people perform at my festival. A special series within the festival evolves around the collaboration between Seiji Morimoto and Francisco Cavaliere. The theme is 'imitation of nature recordings' (referring to the tradition in painting; imitation of nature).The places where the festival lands don't have a stage in the traditional elevated sense. (The newly found bar/theatre Sowieso, excepted. I will write on the evenings there in a next entry). But in a kind of 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' reasoning, it is inevitable that with listeners and performer(s) in the same space, the performers defines the stage with their presence and their gear (yes! In front of the speakers and in charge of the mixing desk), and that from the very beginning on the listeners accumulate as an audience.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Whenever I listen back to my own recordings I focus on loudspeakers, or on the moving light columns of the recording level indicator or on the four track itself. Sometimes it happens that I wake up from the trance and wonder why I don't look outside the window. Well, it is about concentration. The same rule applies when looking at the least spectacular performer of all, the laptop artist. It helps with the concentration. And also the performer is helped by this attention.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Then there is times that the fridge bursts out in tears, because she feels so empty. Leftovers reside like tramps. And still, a little wonder occurs every time when I cook a meal with the last pieces from my fridge. It tastes just delicious. A comparable sensation comes from watching the performer behind a desk full of self made instruments and/or equipment that he bought for a few cents on the flee market.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > </span><p style="font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style=";font-size:130%;" >Seiji and Francesco use cheap electronics and branches. They are visible, entertaining to look at, sound and movement are connected. They don't need the hocus pocus of blind folded audiences, an essay to defend this all, and an overall listening situation that I, in a heated discussion and strictly of the record would call:" Bullshit."<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: arial;font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;" > All the people I saw perform can do without the degrading observation of Francisco Lopez:" With sound we can do much better then that" (it is playing on a stage.) I can assure that, to my surprise and excitement, the artists that I saw/heard at my festival, already can do much better then that. </span>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-41692883922578588562008-11-06T11:15:00.001+01:002008-11-06T11:17:56.584+01:00Halfway through the Year of the Rat - 9th of August Kim Laugs, ongaku- hh, Simon Whetham<div style="margin: 1ex;"><div><div style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;"> </span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">This years festival</span><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;"> official opening ceremony was on the 7<sup>th</sup> of February. At that day I was in Amsterdam. The Year of the Rat was about to start. I thought that was a good doorstep to use. Around midnight on a rather mild and therefore humid and still cold winter’s day I arrived at the Nieuwmarkt, where one of the town’s oldest buildings is to be found, but also where narrow streets lead into the red light district and other not that narrow streets make up the Chinese quarter. </span><br /> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Chinese quarter, Chinese New Year, Chinese fire works and Chinese girls with voices like tiny Tibetan bells. Dancers, banners, acrobats, chap soy and drumsticks. The Olympic Games were still far away, and already some minuscule part of the opening ceremony invaded my mind. The Nieuwmarkt, though, was as deserted as you could expect on a week’s day in winter. An announcement said the Chinese New Year celebrations were to be held on the 9<sup>th</sup> of February, a Saturday, in a big tent. Now, would the pope sell Christmas? Maybe he did so long ago. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Still I decided to record my walk through the Zeedijk with its Chinese restaurants and the Chinese temple and Chinese shops full of waving golden cats. I took a turn at the binnenbantammerstraat, just to find out if my resonating footsteps would sound the same. Around the corner and back again. I walked streets so familiar to me years and years ago, but other then a belated Christmas ghost asking for a place to buy cigarettes, there was no living soul. If there were some party going on, it must have been a very quiet one.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">In August winter is very far away. Great white clouds hang motionless over the city. The sunsets seem to finish the same day over and over again. Mosquitoes dance over the water, little black almost transparent dots, ever moving like some undecipherable scripture. Then there is bicycles and girls, people lying on the green, smiles and laziness. And there is the dusty golden light, the trees, open windows; the cars finally shut up.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Suddenly I realized that this episode of the festival marked the end of the first six months. When I invited the three artists, I didn’t have in mind to do something special. In fact, having roamed the virtual festival ground in these past months, it was no more but logical, that trespassers would reveal themselves as friends. “Why you give notice so short time in advance?” a listener from Hamburg asked. When I saw the microphone in his hand, I answered: ”Why don’t you come over and play?”</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">In real life Kim Laugs was always around some corner. If it weren’t for his programming activities in Maastricht and The Hague, it was because of his move to Berlin. Way back in February 2007, he played with his group Feedbacksociety at the unofficial opening of the festival, co-starring with Paulo Raposo. While Paulo’s intended concert was eaten by his laptop (the spellbinding alternative he had composed in the night before), Kim & Co were in Berlin as tourists. I considered them found artists, gave them my dictaphones to record Berlin, and my tape recorders to play with and they succeeded with great bravura. That’s why I knew I could invite him. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">In the days before I asked every now and then what he was preparing. “Well,” he said. “I am going to use some nice sounds from soundtransit.” I knew he was not joking. I would have been a joke had I instructed him to use his own recordings. Having the laws of plunderphonics applied to field recordings amused me. “What else?” I asked. Then he told me that parts of the low countries had been struck by a tornado recently, a very rare phenomenon in that part of the world. “Ah?” So he would use some weather reports as well. “You also have some recordings of your own?” I can’t remember I got a clear answer to that question.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Then on the evening of the concerts, Kim spread out his gear over the floor, connected strange looking self built electronics with a toy keyboard, some tape recorders, all with lamps and blinks, and when the lights went down, and the thunder storms came in, it was as if he was sitting somewhere high up in a lighthouse. When more winds (directly from outside?) and voices (ships in danger?) whirled around, it looked and sounded like he was actually creating the weather on the very spot. The concert was way too short, but maybe that was for safety reasons. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">The man from Hamburg looked like a person one could only meet when life is a kind of Mary Poppins movie. His musical background was a very long way from the places where I move. It was so far away that audiences queued up to enter it, and paid good money for the admission as well. We are talking Brahms, Bach and Beethoven. We are talking about Mahler, Mozart and Mendelssohn. They went out listening, and came back home composing. It is too easy to imagine what the B’-s and the M’-s would have done if recording gear had existed in their times. It is not easy to imagine what we would have been doing if those wig heads really had had the possibility to go out and record.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Udo used the artist name ongaku-HH. Thanks to this ongaku ( a word that came into his life when he was still a student in West Berlin), meaning ‘ music’ in Japanese, we had one accidental Japanese person in the audience. HH is Hamburg (Hansestadt Hamburg), especially when you see a car. I knew Udo had studied classical composing, and still did so, for piano and cello. He later told me that he had given up playing himself when he married. His wife could play Bach’s quattremain pieces with two hands. He didn’t want to sit next to that.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">I wanted to know if he applied the same composing laws when working with field recordings. He answered two times. One was saying:” yes.” The other was playing four pieces, that together made up for something noble that in literature is called a sonnet. To describe the pieces Udo played requires a vocabulary way bigger then mine. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">From where I sat I could see his profile while playing. I saw his hands rising from the keyboard as if he’d just touched the keys from a grand piano. Maybe he saw his wife’s image again as he’d recorded her while she was singing. In the glow of the screen, I could see intense satisfaction and pleasure on his face. Lasse, Paulo, Dale are you reading this? Udo’s work should appear on CD. He can take our kind of music one step further to recognition. .. should, actually.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Simon Whetham from Bristol, UK, approached me the official way. He sent a mail. Which among other things meant that he knew dkfrf existed. I just point this out, so that you can tell your local art councillor. I sent Simon an official invitation to show to his local art council. With the money of a grant it is less painful to spend money on travelling and bring your art to new ears. We all can see in every day life where a lot of the cultural support ends up: big posters in the streets, flyers, ads and whatever visual pollution one can think of. Simon’s request for a grant got turned down. Well, here is an appeal to those who decide over somebody else’s money.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Simon’s request got turned down for a lack of public engagement. Those who turned down knew better what they meant by ‘public engagement’ then Simon and I. But that is not the point. The point is someone going out to offer his recordings in an artistic way stands in the line of the aural tradition. One may think that aural tradition is about story telling, and passing on historical events, be they on local or cosmological level. In thinking so, one is partially right. Aural tradition is also about the listeners and the society they are part of. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">In a society based on aural tradition people move by foot. This results in a different pace very, but really very opposite to the ever more futile world of television and mobile phone applications. Opposing these two ways of experiencing life doesn’t mean that I would like to make a distinction between good and bad. I just want to underline the difference, and the importance that a new generation of story tellers, those who use sounds from our environment, is about to embark on society. The cultural value of having each one of them tell their story, doesn’t lie in the immediate artistic resultm it is twenty-five minutes of sound composition. Okay it does. But the main importance is in the medium that is used. A medium, I repeat, that comes from and transmits a different pace. A medium that invites and seduces the audience to listen. Where silence and attention is created, a sense of orientation originates. Field recordings create a different sense of space and time. </span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">Having said this, I can return to Simon. Some days after his concert I talked with him, to know more about his career. There was more pre-history then history to it. He started to make recordings somewhere out there, when he was in Iceland a few years ago. As part of a group of artists, each one of them with a well-defined task, he concluded that to record was the only thing he could do. What strong impact such recordings could have while listening to them, he only realized when he came back to his hotel room. He had been recording without headphones. This changed quickly. Headphones, different microphones, recording gear, Alps and other geographical destinations came soon into his life. I envied him for the lost recordings of the Gobi desert, and complimented Francesco Lopez for all his efforts; the Amazons reunion being one of them.</span><br /></p> <p align="justify"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:130%;">With all this information my memories of his concert was provided with some fresh connotations. I already had heard that he structured his piece as a novel, dividing it into several chapters. Tension in the last lines, and precarious explorations of new life forms in the first moments of every new chapter. But with the additional information I could hear in retrospective also the almost eighteenth century like enthusiasm of a natural scientist. There were no cracklings of dinosaur eggs and mating cries of a new specimen of the audivalirius moonbratum to be heard, but there might have. </span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> <br /></p> </div> </div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-43440896180192860122008-11-05T17:02:00.003+01:002008-11-05T17:09:58.593+01:00Ancient Life, a report, an essay, a story<span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ancient life was all silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men. For many centuries life went by in silence, or at most in muted tones. </span>These words were written by Luigi Russolo in his letter that we know as the manifesto: The Art of Noises. It is not known if Luigi had pulled a feather from a goose to provide himself with a pencil, or if he had used a typewriter that, after all, was an Italian invention. </span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Russolo got his vision of noise providing machines while attending a concert of a musical piece composed and conducted by a friend of him. In the letter to his friend the composer he sums up different sound sources that can be understood as noise. If Luigi had made recordings of these sources he would have been one of the first out in the field. </span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">One can have doubts on the suggestion that ancient life was all silence. Assuming that men had ears and have used them from the very beginning, there must have been sounds as well. These sounds didn't come with a well defined intellectual notion. These sounds were probably detected to define one's own position for safety, navigational or communicative reasons, more or less like we do today. Human being is homo-centric, otherwise we would never have grouped together to create religions, civilisations, cities or myspace. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">More recent thoughts on noise come from Harold Schellinx in one of his SoundBlog entry's:Writing a "Meaning of noise" <...snip...> would undoubtedly lead one to re-consider much of our history. Does not noise stand to signal as a yin stands to a yang? It is part of any kind of communication, and it is communication through which we shape ourselves and our world. But then, should one ask, are we shaped through the signals, or rather shaped by the noise ? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">One must know that Harold is part of a quartet. Three musicians (Harold included) use cassette players and dictaphones. Fifteen cassette players and dictaphones might run simultaneously at some point during a performance, each playing either found sounds or field recordings. Each of these recordings can be listed as a signal. But fifteen signals signalling at the same time produce noise, or do they? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">If we compare Luigi's noise to Harold's signal we notice that they both sound the same. The answer is in a yin and a yang. The symbol doesn't represent a static situation. What once was a yin is now a yang and will become a yin again and so a on. If Schellinx assumes that writing on the meaning of noise would re-consider much of our history, I somehow sense that the noise he talks about is much the same as Russolo's silence of old days.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">As a mathematician Harold takes the question to a decisive step. What will happen if signal interferes with itself, he writes. I write now: If, in that question, we replace 'signal' with 'God' one could expect a mathematician proving that there is more then one God, and more then one noise. For sure experiencing noise can only lead to listening better and hear more and thus push history in a different direction, unless you understand noise as sounds played at a very loud volume.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Michele Spanghero is more or less from the same region as Russolo, a not too populated area close to the Austrian and Slovenian border, a protectorate shortly after WWII, and geographically slightly out of focus, more noise then signal so to say. In discourse you get more noise then signal once there is an excessive use of slogans and rhetorics. Both Russolo and Michele live(d) in a country dominated by this kind of noise. Both Russolo and Michele were at one moment in their lives intrigued by the sounds of machines. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">A double bass player with double bass player's ears, he walked into an exhibition of projectors. Well, that was what he encountered. The idea of the exhibition was to show the projections, mostly abstract and full of colours. All these projectors were handmade by the artists, therefore different in shape, and in sound. Michele got intrigued by the rhythms the projectors produced, and recorded each one of them. Then he wrote to me, and asked if he could bring these sounds to the festival. I agreed, because of the direct line to futurism. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">I also agreed because I understood his recordings as a sonic essay, not only because of the direct line to futurism, but also because of the constructive aspect. Constructive as in semantics of a memory, or rather the semantics of an imposed memory. Old school sovjet scholars were very fond of these enterprises: they tried to construct a collective memory of a country's past. Sentiments in politics can't withhold the contemporary artist, or curator of a field recordings festival to add a postmodern notion to the idea of construction. That's why I liked the chaplinesque idea (modern times!) to offer the listener a journey right into the machine room of his imagination, and have sounds of projectors represent the psychological process of visualizing sounds. Michele's concert lasted hours, neatly divided between the projection room (noise) and the screen (signal). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">When I first saw Melanie Velarde she was struggling with the elements. She was supposed to be performing, but laptop, one loudspeaker, the amplifier, the quality of the sound in general, the interface and everything else that could obstruct, obstructed. The concert she had in mind, remained there. One could wonder that some sound was coming out of the other speaker at all. But it did. It was playing, like an unmanned assembly line filled with plates keeps running, even if at the end of the line there is nothing to pick those plates up. No plate crashing sounds, but on the running side of the performance Peter Prautzsch, the organizer of the evening, who kept running in and out of the room. Melanie's spot became the crisis center. Luckily she didn't interrupt the performance, because all the outside rumours, like the footsteps from the people passing in the corridor, the rhubarb in the kitchen, became, as by magic, a part of the ongoing soundscaping. I was delighted. Melanie was surprised, but hey, it was my ears against her intentions. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">In O Tannenbaum she brought two cassette walkman. Melanie was seated on the floor, on a carpet, because the basement floor of the venue is really cold and concrete. The walkman were lying in front of her. She picked up one of them, pushed play, placed it at the side of her. The walkman played a walk. Then she picked up the other walkman, pushed play, and placed it next to the other walkman. The walkman played a garden. Then her fingers touched the black keys of a little casio. Every now and then she looked up, smiled and looked down again. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">The walk and the garden were at the other side, like everything is at the other side when you press your nose against a window. On rainy days you will hear rain. On windy days you will hear wind. On sunny days you will hear the neighbours. At night you will hear an owl. But it will always be at the other side. And on this side are thoughts, memories, longings and a slow song coming from a casio.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span> <span style="font-family: arial;font-size:100%;" >Sean Barret came to the festival as Sean Ferguson Barret; I really don’t know where he got the Ferguson from; I had always thought he had some Bavarian moms amongst his ancestors ; never mind the household. I have seen him perform like kobayashvili, or whatever georgian name he had chosen as an alias; I have seen a movie in which he throws around his effect pedals; I know he is very much into noise as in NOISE, and that his pants are kind of tight and Mattin loves his work; we even have spend some fine moments headbanging in front of a guitar amp when everyone else was buying souveniers from the that evening to become ex-stralau 68, but that he had recordings from westcoast would never have occurred to me, untill the day he approached me and asked if he could play at the festival. Suddenly it all made sense : Sean as cross-over between a somehow upgraded hobo and a beatnik, yes why not : he could take it on the road with sounds that smelled like an ocean’s breeze. </span><br /></div><div style="margin: 1ex; font-family: arial; text-align: justify;"> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">But then he arrived at the venue, a bit depressed, because his computer had eaten all the recordings. My first thought was like his comment when he discovered my page on myspace : »what ? Sean works with a computer ? « Eventually he had planned so. His set would be of left over recordings and his favourite drone.<br /></span> </p> <p><span style="font-size:100%;">He played last. Remaining on the hobo/beatnik trail of imagination, in the glow of the red light at the end of the basement, a glow so darkening that one could see through the layers of time into a stage coach, or a small room above an abandoned bar somewhere in San Francisco of the Kerouac years, that drone came. Sean lit a cigarette and sat aside on a chair, and smoked that cigarette to its end. After all it was his favourite drone. He went back to his instruments at daybreak, and at that time one could clearly hear the ocean rolling its waves upon the shore.</span></p> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-69768357977426096932008-08-28T17:06:00.005+02:002008-09-13T14:19:03.214+02:00The Pavement Tapes – dkfrf intiem – 5th of July Harold Schellinx, Ben Roberts, Soinumapa<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgilBQmHZ8kMguXQ6EBLmATzObt3M-CaioikErNBLvh4N5VOJF7oqq943J-w5uRwaXtEMWJTD9qj2wbX3QpfY9WyuTGo0l4Jm6EyEuXrHuBqx9n1rk1tRAIh20yvjawveKchQlt/s1600-h/harold-schellinx_berlin08.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgilBQmHZ8kMguXQ6EBLmATzObt3M-CaioikErNBLvh4N5VOJF7oqq943J-w5uRwaXtEMWJTD9qj2wbX3QpfY9WyuTGo0l4Jm6EyEuXrHuBqx9n1rk1tRAIh20yvjawveKchQlt/s400/harold-schellinx_berlin08.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245478599300933906" border="0" /></a><span style=";font-size:78%;" >harold schellinx - picture by wolfgang dorninger<br /><br /></span></div><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;" ><br />I wondered where The Ramones had their music from. In the middle of the seventies there was nothing that sounded like it. Their songs were funny, fresh and explosive. They were also easy to hook up with. Those Ramones could have lived right around the corner. Everything else I heard then lived around the corner from years before.It took a few weeks to understand. I got a little help from television. It showed a piece of ‘paranoid’ by Black Sabbath. Now listen for yourself: “PT boat on its way to Havana, used to make a living man picking the banana” or “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 dàdadàdadàdadàm dàdadàdadàdadàm”, that “dàdadàdadàdadàm”, is half the riff of ‘paranoid’ which ends more like “dàdaaa dàm”, but needs loads more of dàda’s to come to the point.</span><br /><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">I can imagine The Ramones sitting together drinking beer and throwing empty cans at the loudspeakers. They somehow like the song, but Black Sabbath are a bunch of hippies wearing big silly crucifixes. The song is too long. The song is too long because it has to many dàda’s in it. And they don’t like the dàdaa dàm. The first Ramones long player is a 28 minutes remix of ‘paranoid.’ “Beat on the brat with a baseball bat, o yeah.” That ‘brat’ was Ozzy Osbourne singing “Can you help me?”<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Now I think this remodeling was a postmodern act. And if it was not a postmodern act, because I am too dumb to understand postmodernism, it was at least a liberating one. Black Sabbath and such were still battling with their formative years, when they were forced to listen to headmasters, and morality weighed heavy on the young souls. Their resistance was a moral and philosophical discourse; it hadn’t anything to do with street life. Their generation gave us the yuck of last century: Pink Floyd’s The Wall.</span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;">The cover of the first album is in black and white. Everybody knows that cover. Everybody who has seen that cover remembers the position of Joey’s right foot. Everybody knows that all four members had chosen Ramone as a family name. That was funny. In those days other families included The Waltons, The Partridge Family, The Carpenters, Sly and the Family Stone, The Osmond Brothers and The Monkees. Baptizing oneself Ramone could be classified a postmodern act, if I weren’t so ignorant about that.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Ramones were unique. Maybe only the Cramps can be compared to them. The Cramps used swamp zombies as their running gag. It is not a long way from Ozzy to the swamp, though the bookshop where they sell comic strips is almost next-door. Donald Duck and Ronald Reagan were equally important to the Ramones.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Just as their first album marked the beginning of a new era, so did disco. Disco is gay. The gayest of them all were Village People. Their songs came directly from Hollywood, an endless mix of ‘There is no business like show business’ and Kojak. Disco tried to restore the Hollywoodean America of the twenties, when everyone was gay (as in having or showing a carefree spirit) and white, well dressed and rich. The only black people around then were stall mates, waiters or chubby house helps. The disco blacks served their beats with a smile; all of them were very well mannered. Disco gave us funny diseases like Aids or the Beegees. But it gave us also postmodern philosophies, o yes.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">In the last years of the twentieth century postmodernism was really big. Every newspaper and periodical bulged with articles on postmodernism. Postmodernism was not only mainstream, it also defined what belonged to mainstream and what not. This mixture of being the nominator and the nominated was of course very postmodern. No wonder it attracted loads of persons who only wanted to talk about themselves and sneer at others.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Postmodernism was about editing; thoughts, fashion, arts, politics, city center’s, logo’s, companies, health care, shopping, language, social behavior, dna, the human body and Michael Jackson were all subject to this editing. If the Ramones and their likes behaved as if a new era had begun, this new era had to be defined. In politics the isms disappeared. In discourse serious thinking and arguments disappeared. Popular insult was to call someone moralistic. Immoral behavior makes you end up in jail or in big business. Mainstream postmodernists never admitted that they were in fact post nihilists. The meaning of ‘to bother’ and to care’ got mixed up. Buddhist maxims like ‘detachment’ were used as a disguise. In the nineties everybody was on its way to enlightenment. Everybody was wearing shades as well; you simply had to.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" face="arial" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">These days the very margins of society are well defined. And though Tuned City was big, as in lots of things happening, many people involved, hundreds of hours invested in organization, I consider it a marginal event. I don’t think Carsten Stabenow compromised a lot. I admire him for setting this up; I take also courage and inspiration from it. Carsten knew what he was doing: the subjects discussed in the symposiums reflected his personal interest; the sound installations came from artists he knew, the same for the performing artists. He didn’t look at numbers or curriculums; he looked at character and quality.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">On Saturday fifth of July Tuned City was built under the roofs of Funkhaus Nalepastrasse, former home to the GDR radio studios and equipped with one of the best recording halls in the world. I also read one day that in some parts of the buildings the marble floor was brought in from Hitler’s Reichskanzlei. This mere fact alone constitutes my fascination. Some day I want to go there and record echoes of footsteps that have died down long ago. But I was busy on Saturday. They won’t confiscate the building right away. MTV has still to colonize the more central river part of Berlin.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">In fact we were sitting on the sidewalk of the Weserstrasse in Neukölln. Next to us was a tailor studio, owned by a lady who had lived here for more then twenty-five years and had seen the rise and fall of her street. For long years she had lived between black windows and the noises of empty houses. Cake and Coffee records shop was yet another little store that opened in this dangerous neighborhood. We got in, while restoring work was still going on: the perfect space for Harold Schellinx’s Found Tapes Exhibition. Most of his equipment comes from flea markets. The tapes he finds along the road. While the neighbor repaired clothes, Harold repaired tapes. The idea to launch a tape repair shop came up. Maybe we will do so next year, when we can afford to pay the rent.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"> </div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Sunday afternoon might have been better, but most of us were leaving on that day. So there was Ben Roberts rushing in directly from Madrid who talked about his fascination for abandoned tapes and the sounds on it, especially the unintended sounds, because they evoked so many images and thoughts about life that once was and now is not any more. He played some of these recordings causing a kind of tap dance for three cassette players whose play, fast forward and rewind buttons were pressed continuously: in came voices from answering machines and African missionaries and lots more.</span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;">When that was done we went outside and had a long talk with Xavier Erkizia about the sound map of the Basque Region and his exceptional ideal situation in the Basque Art World, where he has carte blanche at the San Sebastian Art Centre, because the director has a blind belief in his moves. Of course also this situation is threatened by bureaucracy and political programs composed by editors. We ended up with hours and hours of recorded material. What started as an interview turned into a very long talk among friends. All the time Oier Iruretogoiena played sounds from his closed laptop. Some day it will be heard. But then again the program for ‘some day’ is quite full already.</span></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-67347487071529052792008-08-11T13:27:00.002+02:002008-08-13T14:23:11.388+02:0024th of July - Barack Obama's imaginary concert<p id="j.8x" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x0" style="font-size:130%;">Back in 1981 when the godfathers of emo carried white flags, I joined one of the biggest demo’s the Netherlands had ever seen: hundreds of thousands marched the streets of The Hague and protested against the neutron bomb. It felt like we the people really could influence politics. Similar protest marches were seen in West European capitals. Whatever the result of the protest was, the people also gathered in such huge masses because they were sick and tired of the cold war atmosphere.</span></p> <p id="j.8x1" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x3" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x4" style="font-size:130%;">Cold war ended in 1989. Now the godfathers of emo wear Gucci, and Bush and Blair have given us another cold war. In times of sloganism and endless zapping, of hyper realities and internet friendship, saturation is reached far more faster then in those days. Barack Obama carries a message of change and hope for a better and peaceful future. </span> </p> <p id="j.8x5" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x7" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x8" style="font-size:130%;">When Obama came to Berlin I claimed his speech at the Siegessäule as a performance at the dkfrf. This news was read by maybe one hundred and sixteen persons. It didn’t shock the world. It was not my intention to shock the world. The evenings of dkfrf have an average attendance of thirty-eight persons. Maybe some of the possible thirty-eight went to see Obama, and thought of his talk as an imaginary concert. Wasn’t it a visionary who would talk, and wasn’t this vision one of a better world? Does a better world also sound better? Obama didn’t know he was playing at my festival: The letter I send him along with an english version of Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin was identified as a dangerous object by security.</span></p> <p id="j.8x9" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x11" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x12" style="font-size:130%;">I did record his rally. I walked from Unter der Linden U-station to the Pariser Platz, where I found a crowd gathered in front of hotel Adlon. I took position among the onlookers, convinced that they were waiting for Obama; it was 18.25. The speech would start at 19.00. I thought, well he will come out, step into the car, drive to the stage, do ‘toctoc’ on the microphone and say: ”Hello Berlin, my name is Barack Obama, I’m the next president of the United States.” At 18.45 I thought that Obama was living up to Berlin conditions and would start his performance half an hour later. At 18.48 I thought to hear crowd cheering in the distance. At 18.51 I finally realized what fool I had been and started walking towards the Brandenburger Tor, and from there, together with others, to the Siegessäule.</span></p> <p id="j.8x13" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x15" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x16" style="font-size:130%;">I recorded fragments with the inbuilt microphone of a cheap cassette Walkman. Longer pieces, like the mumbles of the waiting crowd, some police walkie-talkie messaging, the footsteps of the people walking towards the stage I recorded with a separate mini microphone of a very good cassette Walkman. As soon as I heard the voice above the sounds of the moving crowd – he thanked the Berlin fire brigade – I started to record my walk; It was my intention to get as near as possible. I started at approximately thirteen-hundred meters from the stage.</span></p> <p id="j.8x17" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x19" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x20" style="font-size:130%;">On my walk I first encountered little improvised beer and wurst stands, uncountable rows of people in front of me, building an impenetrable wall, TV-screens and a massive loudspeaker system. The road to the Siegessäule is slightly going downward, so everybody could look over everybody’s head. Over all those heads there was nothing that could lead to identifying Obama as a person existing in real life, holding a speech. Since I didn’t want to fill the tape with sounds coming from the loudspeakers, I decided to enter the park at the left side of the road, and continue my walk towards the source of it all.</span></p> <p id="j.8x21" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x23" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x24" style="font-size:130%;">Here I encountered individuals sitting on the green, solemn faces, drinking every word they heard. Then I thought of Jesus who after his talk did this wonderful thing with bread and fish. Now I think of habitants of this earth, who, by attending the rally, gave expression to their concern about the current political state of things. My Walkman recorded people walking by, the sounds of little branches breaking under my feet. I ended up at a point where I recorded the voice coming out of two different loudspeaker towers. The message was captured by a sonic whirlwind; the sounds that escaped the centrifugal power were not detectable any more as words.</span></p> <p id="j.8x25" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x27" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x28" style="font-size:130%;">I finished my walk at three steps from a policeman, who joyously asked me where I thought that I was going. I recorded the question, but I didn’t record my thought. I was joined by some young men who had no problems with the policeman’s wit, and even got a decent answer after four attempts to find out what those white tents were at the other side of the fence. From the answer I learned where Obama was to be found in the immediate hours before stepping up to the microphone.</span></p> <p id="j.8x29" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="j.8x31" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;font-family:arial;" align="justify"><span id="j.8x32" style="font-size:130%;">Then I walked back through the centrifuge of sounds and recorded the end of Barack Obama’s performance. </span> </p>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-33450911075953304082008-08-11T13:24:00.002+02:002008-08-13T14:22:42.906+02:004th of July - Tuned Citizens<span style="font-family:arial;font-size:130%;">On the first days of July an event called Tuned City was held in Berlin. I quote from the programme: ”Tuned City between sound and space speculation is an exhibition and conference project which proposes a new evaluation of architectural spaces from the perspective of the acoustic.” I was invited to curate one evening of dkfrf on the Wriezener Bahnhof, a stretch of wasteland in Friedrichshain along the railway track. The idea was to have a pleasant evening of listening under a star spangled sky, given all visitors a perfect example of a new evaluation of an architectural space from the perspective of the acoustic. </span> <p id="bom53" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom55" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Derek Holzer who invited me and Carsten Stabenow who agreed on having the dkfrf at Tuned City – and my gratitude goes out to them, also from this digital screen – must have had similar visions to mine: A warm summer’s evening, sounds coming from a perfect sound system to give every listener the chance to dive into an acoustic wonderland, no outside noises to disturb the sonic flow, and enough land to walk around for those who wanted to chat without disturbing the dedicated listener.</span></p> <p id="bom56" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom58" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Alas.</span></p> <p id="bom59" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom511" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">The great weather prophet in the sky looked down on Berlin, saw a blending sheet of white sunny days spread over the city, and decided to treat that image in the same way Lucio Fontana did to canvas: He took out a Stanley knife and made a deep and sharp cut. On ’our’ Thursday temperature had dropped twenty degrees. Rainstorms swept over the barren land. It was cold, wet, humid and unpleasant. One could expect a theatrical remake of Moby Dick, with Ahab climbing the mast and going berserk. One could expect the most violent scenes of Wagner’s ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ One could even expect Vietnam, Beirut or Managua. But one could not expect that the audience, who had been listening for three days to lectures and stuff, would lean back and listen. No, now it was their turn to talk, and talk they did. A lot.</span></p> <p id="bom512" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom514" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Were they sitting in the mud? No, no, wasteland had it, that one of the buildings had a sane roof. What we had was a hybrid between a hangar and a market hall with excellent acoustic qualities. Too bad that only the ceiling had been complete renewed Made entirely of wood, it was an absolute masterpiece of German craftsmanship. Whoever commissioned it, was the secret star of the evening. The building also had doors, or rather, entrances, huge and wide entrances that gave a clear view, but above all, feel, of the weather conditions. The ambience was kind of brrr. The audience was kind of half eared. The performers were kind of lost. The dkfrf was kind of shipwrecked.</span></p> <p id="bom515" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom517" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">The next day summer had returned as if nothing had happened. The shore we had washed upon was a sidewalk in Neukölln.</span></p> <p id="bom518" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom520" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">An extensive report on the dkfrf evening at tuned city will appear in Harold Schellinx’ SoundBlog. He will also present an on line audio-impression.</span></p> <p id="bom521" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom523" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Playing on that evening were ( in a continuous flow) preluded by a walkman performance by Harold Schellinx.</span></p> <p id="bom524" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">The Phonographic Arkester</span></p> <p id="bom525" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Peter Prautzsch</span></p> <p id="bom526" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Richard Francis</span></p> <p id="bom527" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Somaya Langley</span></p> <p id="bom528" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Soinumapa</span></p> <p id="bom529" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">Lasse Marc Riek</span></p> <p id="bom530" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom532" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;">The recordings (from the mixer) will become available soon.</span></p> <p id="bom533" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span> </p> <p id="bom535" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-family: arial;" align="justify"> </p>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-23232882792385723962008-08-11T13:16:00.002+02:002008-08-13T14:22:19.320+02:0014th of June - Through the Mazes of the Map – Koen Holtkamp, Stephane Leonard, Daily<p id="aori3" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori4" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">The man who tried to find the origins of money committed suicide. He was a German who studied in Munich in the seventies. Germany in the seventies was a good place to take your life. But why one should become so desperate on the way to the very beginnings of money has always puzzled me. And it also disappointed me, because he had arrived at some strange places where coins looked like stone wheels, had a hole in the middle and were left outside leaning against the house. They were bigger then a man who would stand on the shoulders of his stronger brother. </span> </p> <p id="aori5" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori7" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori8" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">I mean he got so close to the solution, or did he? Was he cursed? Money is about organizing a society, or a community. It is also about here and there, and us and them and a sense of geography that stretches beyond the horizons, thus adding past and future to a present that probably never was experienced in such way. But inventing money is about knowing this all, before every one else knows.</span></p> <p id="aori9" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori10" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">It is said, written and printed that scripture was invented in a civilization that was coming to its end. The writer felt like packing his suitcase. Just like Abraham did at one stage in his life. Maybe he was also a writer. He counted the stars.</span></p> <p id="aori11" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori13" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori14" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Everybody is in ispace. The second coming of oneself can only be canceled by an eternal electric fall out. Did you know that the first politician who will be treated as a rock star wants to come to Berlin to talk at the Brandenburger Tor? There are two sides to the Brandenburger Tor. At one side is the Pariser Platz where the new USA embassy has found its home and JFK is the name of a museum. At the other side is a long road that leads up to the pillar with the golden angel. In times of popular demand this stretch of land becomes a zone known as the fan mile. Love parades or the matches of the German football team projected on big screens attract up to one million people. Obama might not talk directly from the Obama main stage on the fan mile, but I am pretty sure that at the other side of the Brandenburger Tor the biggest crowd this place has ever seen will follow his speech. The next day you will find the videos on youtube.*</span></p> <p id="aori15" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori17" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori18" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">What is it about this frantic archiving that has invaded our lives? Why should every move be recorded/filmed/stored so that it can be seen or listened to by an invisible audience? Are the number of views or downloads the poor mans substitute to the millions of dollars from the rich? Is someone packing his suitcase? Sure one does so, because he has the tools. But what would a historian write about this phenomenon in a few hundred years from now? “File under gossip”? And will the satellites with all these data be rusted or even disintegrated by then? How futile is it all?</span></p> <p id="aori19" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori21" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori22" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Field recordings are related to a space, even if you record refrigerators. Some of them are site specific. The rain forest sounds different from a rainy day in Berlin. Field recorders have discovered the Humboldt in them. Not the cdr or the hard disk became the storage place for their recordings. Internet has provided them with a visual aid. Futility? It gives the user a possibility to experience one aspect of life outside its physical boundaries. But this visualization is also an important help in the process of convincing curators and politicians to consider field recordings as a groundbreaking discipline. And it defines ‘home’ to the field recorder.</span></p> <p id="aori23" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori25" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori26" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Then they walked out one fine summer day.</span></p> <p id="aori27" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori29" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori30" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Koen Holtkamp’s parents probably took the plane when they emigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S.A. Koen (short for Koenraad, that is the Dutch Conrad, the ‘oe’ is pronounced like ‘ou’ in ‘you’, but short, so more like an ‘ou’ in a James Brown song) arrived in his new homeland at a very young age, and grew up in the American language. He speaks this language like every other American, with a deep round voice that seems to come from somewhere below his knees. </span> </p> <p id="aori31" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori33" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori34" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Alessandro Bosetti might still wonder why different languages resonate in different parts of the human body. He might have been flabbergasted if he had heard Koen speak, or rather stumble through a restricted vocabulary of Dutch words. I found myself not listening at what he was saying when talking to him; actually –sorry Koen – I was listening through him, because I couldn’t understand what I heard. Untill I realised the virtual time travel: I had been listening to the Dutch language as it was spoken some thirty years ago. Language is an invisible continent: this one opened up a vision of the Netherlands in the late seventies. Now go and be touched by far away years, and see what happens.</span></p> <p id="aori35" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori37" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori38" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">The dkfrf evening turned out to be a meeting of travelers, but geographical distances were not the only ones to be covered. Koen played binaural recordings from a walk through the forest. If there is one thing besides the clouds and the canyons that the first immigrants to the Americas found on their way, it was a forest. So his walk could easily be listened to as a momentum in American History; If then from the crackle of the bushes a most angelic voice arises the momentum becomes monumental in its reference to the enormous almost supra – religious impact this landscape must have made to the stranger who entered this world for the first time; pure bliss!</span></p> <p id="aori39" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori41" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori42" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Dkfrf-veteran Stephane Leonard had freshly arrived from Brooklyn, New York City. ‘Brooklyn’ is not only the name of one of the Beckham kids; it is also an answer to a popular Dutch quiz question. What part of NYC is named after a Dutch city? Breukelen is now a part of the city of Utrecht. Van Breukelen, Hans was for many years the goalkeeper of the Dutch team. I am sure the Beckhams weren’t thinking of him when they made love under the Brooklyn bridge. Their sighs must have gone since a long time. </span> </p> <p id="aori43" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori45" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori46" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">In Bosetti’s imaginary discourse Manhattan was a small island. It is a strange thing to realize how field recordings can visualize the layers of time. Now imagine a young man from Berlin, born and raised in the last years of a now non-existing country who comes to New York, stays at a friends house in Brooklyn and who is confronted with the bridge almost every day. The bridge has become a symbol of the new world and everything this new world stands for. As a photographic and cinematographic icon it has entered our minds even if we will never be able to see it, touch it, go over it. Stephane found out that it produced noise. And noise he played for thirty minutes, like a kid would play with cars and trains. Or should I say like Woody Allen imagines playing his clarinet alongside Django Reinhardt? Or do you hear Gershwin poke his stick to the ceiling of his coffin? Rhapsodies sound different today. Stephane should return some day to get us the next movement.</span></p> <p id="aori47" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori49" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori50" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">When Daily embarked for the first time on the German part of the western hemisphere he spend some time in the regions where volcanoes seem to have fallen asleep eternally, but in fact observe the land of whine and wheat from under half sunken eye-lids. The town that was chosen as the capital to the BRD because one of the greatest composers of all time was born there became his second hometown. Here, walking the streets at daytime Daily got stunned, because he actually saw a fast running animal that resembled a rabbit but is larger, has long ears and legs, and doesn’t burrow. It was not the reason he moved on to Düsseldorf, or maybe it was. At the Art Academy he heard Yannis Kounellis tell long stories. That was then. Now he was in Berlin, because Baruch Gottlieb, an assistant professor at a Seoul university popped up in my mailbox for a short chat. A few weeks later, kindly supported by the Arts Council Korea, Daily arrived in Berlin.</span></p> <p id="aori51" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori53" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori54" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">He stayed at my house and we watched some matches from the European Championships together. He amazed me that he never had one favorite country. He laughed and booaad just the same when the Turks scored or when the Germans did so in the same match. An extensive portrait of Daily can be found on Hars’ <a href="http://www.harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00640.php">sound blog</a>. While staying at Berlin he was either out shooting pictures or making recordings, cooking dinner or working and cutting until very late at night. He had to. And guess what? The Arts Council Korea also sponsored the propaganda! Ten nice posters were made, that looked so good in fact that I put up only four of them in public spaces. I am sure the ATK can forgive that move.</span></p> <p id="aori60" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori62" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori63" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Also because more people showed up at our evening, then at Daily’s show in Amsterdam where three guest musicians played the city nightscape turned musical score. On the evening of DKFRF we agreed on showing two of his compositions. The first one was made in Seoul. It would give the general public an impression of what Daily’s work should look like. It looked like a lot of white dots on a black surface that slowly moved from the right to the left. Each dot was a light in the nightly city. To each dot a computerized note was played, a very dry note, as you can expect on short wave radio. It made me think of the art movements in the sixties when intellectualism met good-looking women smoking cigarettes, and men looked like scientist who read poetry.</span></p> <p id="aori64" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori66" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori67" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Those days poetry looked like</span></p> <p id="aori68" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori70" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori71" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Summer in a dry shirt wrinkles over the low cast frowns of your face shuts up in a factory when the sirens call and the trucks drive charcoal in a baby’s mouth in a winter of drug stores worn down petticoats forgotten hillsides and row row row if veronicas drench the shiny part of the birch and beasts come nibbling from your nipples and weasels are fearless in the shadow of America America moon love dairy mothers and olive trees washingshiningshirts come back from next summer</span></p> <p id="aori72" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori74" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori75" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">Or maybe it didn’t.</span></p> <p id="aori76" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori78" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori79" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">The Seoul composition also looked like a short movie one could encounter on television. It looked good, but it looked good in a world that was not mine anymore. The composition with the field recordings looked good as well… a different good. It was fascinating to see the result of two days hard work. It was also fascinating to see how the images floated with the same speed from the right to the left of the screen, the same slow as Tarkovsky used for his camera shots. His pictures showed Neukölln, the most dangerous area of Berlin. Daily can be lucky he didn’t fall victim to a robbery. </span> </p> <p id="aori80" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori82" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori83" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">All his pictures and recordings came together in a composition especially made for the festival, an enterprise in which Daily showed more courage then when walking the extremely notorious Rütlistrasse at night. He risked very much to fail. He did not. No way. Watching his composition was like daydreaming behind the window of a bus that after a long day of traveling drives through the streets of a new town. One is too tired to get excited, even a bit anxious because the hostel has still to be found. The bus slowly moves on along shops and bars that somehow look familiar. Daily stated that he would need another two years to perfectionize this concept. Yep. That was to be seen. I guess that is part of the fascination: if you leave enough space for the onlooker, then the story will meet another story. In this invisible space that got created by Koen, Stephane and Daily a lot of stories must have been told. Most of those stories will remain unheard. And unmapped.</span></p> <p id="aori84" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori86" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span></p> <p id="aori88" class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;" align="justify"><span id="aori89" style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;font-size:130%;">*This paragraph shows how much time it took me to finish this report. Barack Obama came. He was not given a stage right under the Brandenburger Tor, where the German football team shared cheers with the most sought after dumbo’s from German television, but he was offered a kind of ‘taxi zum klo.’ He stood right under the Siegessäule, the pillar with the golden angel on top. Not my expected one million people showed up, but with a crowd of two hundred thousand he still could beat a German chancellor who had held the record for more then seventy years. I claimed Obama’s appearance as an imaginary concert at my festival, since no one ever presented the rally as his or her event.</span></p>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-77064546449587992982008-07-26T13:44:00.003+02:002008-07-26T13:58:34.309+02:0016 august in kule, auguststrasse 10 berlin mitte<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocx_t0PiAtQL6NooW1gE9nUNSA-0lpSwVyt15LcF-kikpqVSh5AixCf8W0gzdGb-fkC5vvk8QFySQjvuIGyMYmPJDEPM9o1wLZPwft_VkwbpEOcGdC5WHeS_WZ5PT_s7yQ55V/s1600-h/rva_f2a16_08.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocx_t0PiAtQL6NooW1gE9nUNSA-0lpSwVyt15LcF-kikpqVSh5AixCf8W0gzdGb-fkC5vvk8QFySQjvuIGyMYmPJDEPM9o1wLZPwft_VkwbpEOcGdC5WHeS_WZ5PT_s7yQ55V/s400/rva_f2a16_08.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227287777605549490" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: courier new;">What to expect?<br />For sure it won't be a regular evening of field recordings:<br />This evening will focus on the imitation of nature.<br />And nature is the great reservoir of sounds.<br />Scholars are talking about caves<br />and the pictogrammes on the walls:<br />deer and buffles,<br />hunting and dancing.<br /></span><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: courier new;">Caves with resonances<br /> that would carry the sounds into nature. </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Did they imitate those sounds at those times? </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Would they have done it for artistic reasons? </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Or had they already figured out </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">that they had to bow to some </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">higher being?</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Will the scene on the 16th August resemble a cage or just a venue? What is to be found at the heart of field recording?<br /></span><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-family: courier new;">Can the human voice help? </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Can radiowaves lead us to a way of better understanding. </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Is there life on earth?</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier new;"><br /><br />Forget all the questions. </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Come and see </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Minuit DelaCroix, </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Haarmann </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">and </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">Seiji Morimoto & Francesco Cavaliere </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">do a mindbubbling show at Kule, </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">and maybe they will touch </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">your soul </span><br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">as well.</span><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-35076356955791637082008-07-13T12:34:00.000+02:002008-07-13T12:36:43.232+02:00The Tao of Sound – Michael Northam, Soichiro Mitsuya and Alessandro Bosetti<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><br />1. Sound and Archeology, Sound and Biology, Sound and Cannibalism, Sound and Dermatology, Sound and Endomorphism, Sound and Futility, Sound and Geometry, Sound and Holography, Sound and Industries, Sound and Justice, Sound and Kinesthesia, Sound and Loathing, Sound and Marxism, Sound and Neighbors, Sound and Orthography, Sound and Picasso, Sound and Quaternity, Sound and Revolution, Sound and Space, Sound and Triviality, Sound and Universalizability, Sound and Villosity, Sound and Warfare, Sound and Xenophobia, Sound and Yoghurt, Sound and Zen.<br /><br />2. The most popular combination of all is Sound and Architecture. Of course it is just another sign of the times. The success of an architect like Calatraves is a flag on the building of popular opinions. His monuments magnify the esthetics of the 55cent shops.<br /><br />3. Communication happens by means of slogans or by the use of one sole word: Architecture. It combines power, control and structure. It evokes movement and decisions. It promises a better world. It doesn’t make any sound, because it is just a word to describe a discipline.<br /><br />4. Building houses and palaces must be one of the oldest professions in the world. To imagine that it is even older then prostitution would radically change the view on our society and its history. Architecture is closely related to the law. But it is also closely related to the occult side of the law. And it is closely related to human engineering: designing ways of living.<br /><br />5. Every new form of power attracts its supporters. At the beginning of the 21.Century the editorial revolution started by managers has almost come to its end. The new world looks great in the designer magazines, in the frivolous bars and restaurants, in the restructured and partially rebuilt bigger and smaller city centers. The new look is the result of politics and architecture. Architecture and Sound. Get a special permission, get a nametag, design sound.<br /><br />6. Index of an imaginary exhibition on Sound Art: Architecture and Morality in the Dark Ages. Joan of Arc meets Enola Gay. Movies and Modernism. Lights and Glasses. Gallery of Thoughts. Benzedrine. The Shorelines of Waste. The Tao of Sound. The Sounds are Down.<br /><br />7. There is always a before and an after, even if you’d like to discuss the beginnings of the Universe. Marcel Türkowsky was one of the first persons I met in Berlin. He was playing Asa Stahl`s found tapes in a twelve square meter gallery in the Torstrasse. Indian voices and instruments were turned into blissful layers of sounds by his loop machine. Meanwhile we talked. Months later we were part of the Tape Only Gang that played over twenty concerts in Berlin during the summer of 2006. When we exhausted all possibilities to tear down the walls with our lyrical tape noises, I invented das kleine field recordings festival. Marcel is one of the dkfrf – veterans. He was close to desolation when he had to cancel his appearance at the 3rd edition, due to severe toothaches. Then he started traveling. In fact he traveled so far, that I had the impression he’d never come back.<br /><br />8. Nothing had changed when he returned to dkfrf. We talked when the concerts were done. Somewhere behind the black windows in the Lenaustrasse people were contemplating their phone calls to complain about the noises. I asked Marcel about this new thing, this soundendarchitecture everybody talked about. It is hard to follow discussions by connoisseurs. He explained. He was qualified to explain because he had studied the subject. And then he talked as an office worker. And I understood that I might as well forget right away what he was explaining.<br /><br />9. Then two or more weeks passed. The thoughts got covered by the fermentations of time. Some thoughts are like passionflowers.<br /><br />10. Michael Northam is from Indianapolis. I saw Indianapolis once, when I was in a car driving from Louisville to Chicago. Indiana was a flat stretch of land. It reminded me of the Netherlands. Indianapolis was a town on the horizon. It was there for a while. The skyscrapers reflected some sunlight. And then it was not there anymore. There was green land instead, for hours and hours. On the way back it rained without end.<br /><br />11. It took Michael some time to arrive in India. When he performed at the festival he had just finished a six months stay. His suntan was from an Indian sun. For his achievements during a musical career that spans over more then twenty years, he should have been the main act. I made him play first. Michael looks like a person who could take care of a hard winters work. With the right hat on, he could be one of the Amish people: his set made the venue glow for the rest of the evening.<br /><br />12. Boxes you can buy in India. They are smaller then a bird’s cage. The boxes produce drones. The boxes look like boxes. They contain sitar drones or harmonium drones. I guess Indians put them next to their little house altar, burn incense, put the switch on, and pray; they won’t have a PA and big speakers in the room to have the drones float from their doors and windows into the dense Indian night.<br /><br />13. When the last drones had died down on the nearby Kottbusserdamm it was exactly that dense Indian night that fell upon us. It was almost tangible. Behind the visitors that were seated on the floor a parallel world unfolded itself: a night on the countryside with distant voices and a sky with zillions of stars. Michael walked around, played a shrieking flutesomething, his clothes still smelling of India. Too bad he had to take us back to Neukölln with another drone that scared the neighbors out of their easy chairs.<br /><br />14. Soichiro Mitsuya showed me his walkmen a few years ago, and asked if he could join our Tape Only collective. Soichiro played loud, because of noise attitudes. But what is noise? If a sheet big enough to catch the winds of the most severe hurricane could be held up, it would mold itself to the most beautiful forms.<br /><br />15. This cassette Walkman is always with him. If you live on the poor side of Berlin, all your crossroads come together on Alexander square. Such an ugly square. Ever since he came to live in Berlin, construction works were going on. He passed it in the middle of the night, on weekdays and peace days. The square was always filled with noise. He started to record.<br /><br />16. Construction noises were shaped into a choir of mechanical voices. Neighbors had wondered about Indian drone machines, now they heard the mating calls of prosperity. People endured hours and hours of everyday life drills: to them those noises must be part of a greater design. To Soichiro they came from a breeding place of trash. His treatments made them sound good.<br /><br />17. As soon as the room was vibrating with the hidden sounds of Alexanderplatz, Soichiro started to lecture. He always does this. Our listeners bended forward, frowned, tried to listen hard, but his voice was just under the surface of sound. He had a large cylindrical self-built loudspeaker that would tremble and shake: it was a representation of the television tower. It nearly fell down. At the end he stood up and walked to the sliding doors. He played the sliding doors, used them as a giant fan, and said it was hot inside. Then he thanked everyone and wanted to know if there were any questions. Months later I still meet people who had seen his performance. They all laugh and tell me how remarkable it was.<br /><br />18. Break<br /><br />19. Alessandro Bosetti moved from Milan to Berlin. I knew him by name. He was one of the seven musicians who always played at Ausland, a club in Berlin that once was known for their fine concerts. But since the programmers adapted a more sectarian policy, concerts are getting scarce. Then he moved to Baltimore, a place where a lot of experimentalists are gathered. But when I asked a good friend of mine why he’d never performed there, living so close, his answer was: ”45 minutes to the ghetto.” Funny enough I would need just as much time to arrive at Ausland.<br /><br />20. Alessandro’s is another known name in this small world of ours. Even my girlfriend knows him. His sound of the month appeared every evening shortly before midnight on the little radio in her kitchen in Wuppertal. Last year he was praised for his African recordings. Last year private reasons made him cancel his show at dkfrf.<br /><br />21. This year he succeeded in setting up a tour of Europe. On the festival day he arrived from Prague, a young man wearing a white shirt carrying his belongings in a little mobile suitcase. On the way to my house and his dish of the day (pumpkin stew cooked following an old avignonaise recipe) he talked about a radical visitor to his Praguean performance that never stopped ranting. Part of the audience thought the man had been recruited to act as an upsetter.<br /><br />22. After the break Alessandro sat down and started to talk, not using a microphone. Unclear if it was an introduction, and disturbed by the voices from outside I had difficulties following the contents. It was only after picking up some geographical indications (Manhattan as a small island in the north) that it came across my mind that he was impersonating a traveler to the new world when that world was still new. The pedantry of those early raconteurs added a beautiful touch to his performance. One could imagine a young man traveling around to collect plants and stones.<br /><br />23. This follower of the natural history of science, however, was investigating the great variety of languages that were spoken in the various regions in the southeast of what now are called the United States of America. We heard voices coming from the eighteenth century that for their sound alone was a pleasure to listen to.<br /><br />24. My guests had also planned to play a set together. This turned out to be a surprise and gift to everyone present on that evening, yours sincerely included.<br /><br />25. This all happened far away from any discourse or theory.<br /><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-53603850142735629032008-05-27T13:14:00.004+02:002008-05-28T13:09:50.593+02:0030.May<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBViQevH2hsu3xx5NqhpAWe12SuQzNo4Lv8A1-W-s9m99x9Z2n1o5z5N3MYaa58t7dm6vgrKlt26a1XGAcMezoWfu28rcizsI940VSOdtwrxjc3H73OPVNzVZv_Fzvp3vIQheU/s1600-h/frf.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBViQevH2hsu3xx5NqhpAWe12SuQzNo4Lv8A1-W-s9m99x9Z2n1o5z5N3MYaa58t7dm6vgrKlt26a1XGAcMezoWfu28rcizsI940VSOdtwrxjc3H73OPVNzVZv_Fzvp3vIQheU/s400/frf.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5205384087500088482" border="0" /></a><br />flyer design by soichiro mitsuya<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Alessandro Bosetti will report in from his travels through the southern states of the USA and will perform translations from gullah/pennsylvania dutch/creole/cajun french/tewa and navajo languages.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Soichiro Mitsuya will translate his amazement and wonderment about the ongoing noise constructions on Alexanderplatz in Berlin, and will use a special setting to amplify his recordings.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Michael Northam has freshly arrived in Berlin after a six months stay in India. His soundworks will be based on recordings made in that period.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">Ben Owen from freepoint radio in New York will be the DJ.</span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">come in time.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:100%;">shows will start at 22.30</span></span></span><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-91632012079761486732008-05-22T14:42:00.010+02:002008-05-26T14:10:53.702+02:00The American Trauma - Report on John Hopkins, Ben Owen, Brandon LaBelle<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: arial;font-family:arial;"><br /><br />A good thing about a book that holds almost one thousand pages is that it can be worthwhile to read it. It might absorb you and make you forget everything around you. Dom DeLillo`s attempt to write The Great American Novel that made him create <span style="font-style: italic;">Underworld</span> is such a book. But growing into the story of a baseball that covered three generations of Americans I wondered where my cinematographic memory from my youngest years when I watched <span style="font-style: italic;">the comedy capers</span> interfered with the situations DeLillo described. More and more impressions from movies and photographs showed up before my inner eye. I got lost in the book and didn’t get the sense of it. It was a giant flood of pictures, which made me shipwreck and ask myself at the last page why I had read it to the end and why I felt as if I had been wasting my time.<br /><br />Should there be a clue to understand this? Another book by a US writer, <span style="font-style: italic;">City of God</span> by Doctorow left me with the same question; The book was far more superior to <span style="font-style: italic;">Underworld</span>, but still I couldn’t get it that such a simple and even boring plot of a crucifix being stolen from the roof of a church could lead to so many little stories without a point. Some of those stories were pure gems.<br /><br />The American culture must have some qualities at its very core that could give us a key to understanding. Where the pompous themes The American Dream and The New Frontier has given the world John Wayne and Apollo 11, the rest of the world might return the favor and state that poverty and persecution has given the Americans a good reason to come into existence.<br /><br />As a warming up to the last edition of dkfrf I had a dinner at my house in Neukölln. Chance made it that three Americans would perform: Ben Owen (who came with his girlfriend Sara) from Brooklyn, New York City, John Hopkins from everywhere and Brandon LaBelle from Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. When talking about the American culture, one of them brought it up that exactly this escape from poverty and persecution is what united most of the early immigrants.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJsC14WIUS1vxCQbY7JnPd4dOvsUGVHOa6Jal90A_QmqYevNHX8ucDpd4dMJ0gIDbqcI0ZoJFQVye6HFC2vry961QFuBSnRfEAW8aaU3ABteENxHNOpGPPgxm-5HSvznw06sX/s1600-h/dkfrf2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJsC14WIUS1vxCQbY7JnPd4dOvsUGVHOa6Jal90A_QmqYevNHX8ucDpd4dMJ0gIDbqcI0ZoJFQVye6HFC2vry961QFuBSnRfEAW8aaU3ABteENxHNOpGPPgxm-5HSvznw06sX/s400/dkfrf2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203182740667229298" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">picture by John Hopkins</span><br /></div><br />Fear for poverty and the fear for losing one’s God given right to individual freedom have burned enormous holes in the heart of the American society. Watching every now and then the Obama/Hillary marathon run I see star spangled smiles and star spangled swollen breasts; I see speakers almost overwhelmed by their own heroism; I hear messages to a people that still seem to be moving west. It all makes up for epic television.<br /><br />I also see barns and sport halls behind all that decorum. I can imagine tractor shows, junk sales for charity and Miss Lollipop elections to be held there; I can imagine rows of empty seats, and volunteers drinking endlessly coffee in the backroom. I can imagine that it will get cold in winter, and that there is no money to pay the bill. To cut it short, I can see a lot of individual lives behind all the glamour of a tantalizing political circus that has come to town. And these lives have very short lines to the early generations that arrived to the Americas with a lot of pain.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxCE_2g7OwAhCr11vDaHYX8AvLRLZx5q9cCcbKV_chVapM5F8lsUYBIkShZa-Fzhgo7QmF2R03CJ3DYwfHlaHzQNw3RWfmkq-DBylGnPtprx7tUJi9KQGm6EkAlW451lh5QlJU/s1600-h/john+hopkins.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxCE_2g7OwAhCr11vDaHYX8AvLRLZx5q9cCcbKV_chVapM5F8lsUYBIkShZa-Fzhgo7QmF2R03CJ3DYwfHlaHzQNw3RWfmkq-DBylGnPtprx7tUJi9KQGm6EkAlW451lh5QlJU/s400/john+hopkins.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203535336007394434" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">John Hopkins - picture by Ben Owen</span><br /></div><br />John Hopkins dinner talks included information about his early years. Born in Alaska, his parents moved with him to another place. John described a communtiy he couldn’t relate to, nor take part of. He lives like he lives, being a nomad for almost half of his life, crossing those wonderful frontiers that so many Americans before him had aimed at. His performance gave an insight in his dwellings. A hurricane of images projected on a screen was accompanied by their sounds and unsounds. Dislocating, discomforting, wild and seductive. You need a lot of guts to live like John does. In an abstract way he demanded a lot of civil cultural courage from the onlooker; courage to dive into his experiences and have these sounds and images grow upon them like a second skin. No wonder he split the audience in two. Outside on the doorstep the Republican Party was holding their rally.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixAgYX3ZZqbEEq7gyu6MypEoWY81KU1y_BLIsRLscFQLNb8VvC5to0v4C3ObS4SS5Mj1EqAj3lmJYoV7JlkJbpWZaBfDnRNxK_xi8r2UqUl-7nydqyWdPzdbu_Dxh0KlPXRWIE/s1600-h/dkfrf1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixAgYX3ZZqbEEq7gyu6MypEoWY81KU1y_BLIsRLscFQLNb8VvC5to0v4C3ObS4SS5Mj1EqAj3lmJYoV7JlkJbpWZaBfDnRNxK_xi8r2UqUl-7nydqyWdPzdbu_Dxh0KlPXRWIE/s400/dkfrf1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203182392774878306" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Ben Owen, picture by John Hopkins</span><br /></div><br />While John took us running over unknown lands, Ben Owen returned to the silence of home. He played in the dark. From my other end of the performance space it looked like I was at the other side of the street, watching out of my window; Ben was a small figure, computer screen light on his face. Unidentifiable shadows were around him. The room at the other side of the street is always without sound. Still I could hear something, a monotonous drone as if to underline the alienated waiting situation. Then it started to evolve and I shifted my attention to the speakers. It sounded like they were animated, possessed, and they were discovering the wide range of little crackiling and dripping sounds that they held. In the room across the street, in the heart of darkness other sounds were heard, sounds from Brooklyn, where silence meets the far rumble of a big city.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6PzfORiUqDo5mrP-ekP6C7xv9RK-NcDNshDllcz1Da7x2PXSCOxrWavwqlU_oXQmrZbxfgUH3LHmH_g4Dv6YvjO7tATkXwl3V2f8CwN8UNFt4Rs4E6pe6DaeDgPbZ7UakXjz0/s1600-h/brandon.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6PzfORiUqDo5mrP-ekP6C7xv9RK-NcDNshDllcz1Da7x2PXSCOxrWavwqlU_oXQmrZbxfgUH3LHmH_g4Dv6YvjO7tATkXwl3V2f8CwN8UNFt4Rs4E6pe6DaeDgPbZ7UakXjz0/s400/brandon.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203182285400695890" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">Brandon LaBelle, picture by Ben Owen</span><br /></div><br />There is no escaping to the American Myth. Brandon LaBelle`s set was pure pleasure. It evolved around a very simple scheme: Young, soon ripe, but still not old man shows a picture. Four pictures were shown, four different stages in a life. Four stories from four decades leading from heroes, dreams, identities to the present day; just the story of somebody’s life who is Brandon to friends and family, Mr. LaBelle to those who need id-pictures. There was also sound in between those picture stories, sound that served as an elevator, bringing the audience to higher levels of empathy.<br /><br />It was the first time Brandon LaBelle presented his work in this way. It is hard to imagine that he will stop at this point. It is far easier to imagine that he will continue working on a theatrical piece where pictures emerge from his smooth tale telling voice. Imagination can send you into orbit, away from the little stage where the next story will be told, up through the clouds, past the plane that will bring Ben and Sara back to the States, higher were time stands still and spirits whisper, and where one can look down to the Siberian woods and see smoke coming from the chimney of John Hopkins next residency.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-3601896518448133432008-05-11T14:36:00.005+02:002008-05-14T14:27:27.122+02:0012 April - Between Natura Morta and Lanterna Magica<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Nicolas Wiese lives in Berlin Neukölln. His house is close to Tempelhof. In Billy Wilder's movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One%2C_Two%2C_Three"> one, two, three</a> there are scenes that show this airport in its black and white cinemascopic glory. Probably a lot of the nostalgic feelings for this remarkable place in Berlin were inspired by the reports of glamourish arrivals of the stars of those days. Now the airport is almost closed. In its last months it is used by small business planes. You have to be lucky to catch the arrival or take off of one of those planes.<br /><br />The future of Tempelhof is still uncertain. One wishes for a big park; money people long for a massive commercial project. I would like to see it as a zeppelin port, or a place where worldchampionships kite flying can be held, or <a href="http://images.google.com/images?client=opera&rls=en&q=Hot%20Air%20Balloon&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi">hot air balloons</a> can have their <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/23/balloon-journey.html?ref=rss">home</a>, even leaving the place like it is, as a monument to airports could be an idea. And then have Eno come over for an annual festival.<br /><br />Nicolas went to record sounds, shoot pictures, make short movies. He did it in the immediate vicinity of Tempelhof, where borders become unpredictable and generate their own esthetics of refusal and terra incognito. The result was shown in a small room with the audience sitting close to each other as if they were posing as illegal African immigrants caught by the sicilian water police.<br /><br />But so much hardship he had to go through to arrange his room. Walking to and fro between gallery and his home he slowly changed it into a kind of white cube. I heard the sounds coming from outside, while in the main space the audience was waiting. And got a bit puzzled when they heard applause. Nicolas had been doing a private concert for his friends.<br /><br />I couldn't get a clear impression of his sounds. It made me think of the cloud covered days of last winter. In fact I hear those field recording conceerts more and more as a biographical audio portrait . Music is on Nicolas' last Cd, so rich and overwhelming in its guirlandes of sounds. At one point I was thinking of a very richly decorated synagogue, and every object in it was singing with his own voice.<br /></span></div><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaRma9MOuNxsMkrJI-4LY30tCyT5tfvPeVcwlyDIIv4QeELgKEx141AySkEBQZZpXc6pSya-2FiyfCvqBMOTcuLPi9lOwj0pi1H52MYVKOugqpHI9l26fLKBKcXV2vCcUxjZSj/s1600-h/NMLM03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaRma9MOuNxsMkrJI-4LY30tCyT5tfvPeVcwlyDIIv4QeELgKEx141AySkEBQZZpXc6pSya-2FiyfCvqBMOTcuLPi9lOwj0pi1H52MYVKOugqpHI9l26fLKBKcXV2vCcUxjZSj/s400/NMLM03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200191244799841618" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">nicolas wiese</span><br /></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">In the opening of the door, next to the video image, you might recognize newspapers. <a href="http://asiaks.de/">Albert Plank</a></span><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">helped me all day to put them up. Lanterna Magica means </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_lantern">magic lantern.</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> <span style="font-family:arial;">This device has found its way to the museum. The bewonderment aroused in those days should still linger among us. I tried to capture a bit of this, recreating a poor cinema, with unrecognizable images, and the expectations glowing in candle lights. I don't know if I succeeded. but the space looked strange and intimate. The newspapers were shining dark and golden. The portraits looked familiar in a way, but the persons on it seemed to have been immortalised many years ago.</span></span><br /></div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></span></div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Albert Plank is not on a picture. His audio portrait was a long slowly moving one, as morning fog creeping over the fields, o yes. The audience was listening intensely. Surely they imagined stories to it, or were mesmerized into some memorial activities. I had to think of Alberts homeland, a region of Bavaria that had been a niche, a kind of dead end area in the days Europe was still divided into two parts. A region full of natural beauty, so close to the romantic wanderworld of Heinrich Heine. Field recordings travel by foot. And that is a beautifull awareness.<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAnax-guKY2hPfTw0nSxR9bYeGkZo2C-pYFRH8w4g7aQKoOJFeEVsppZ8DEsxTRl5mrVPIlvHDwFSvP11rfVBB8A82thkyNQon_JvaBpl19ee075_yvauEGZRDmdhClQQG5R_/s1600-h/morimoto_cavalliere_totalartspace_210408.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvAnax-guKY2hPfTw0nSxR9bYeGkZo2C-pYFRH8w4g7aQKoOJFeEVsppZ8DEsxTRl5mrVPIlvHDwFSvP11rfVBB8A82thkyNQon_JvaBpl19ee075_yvauEGZRDmdhClQQG5R_/s400/morimoto_cavalliere_totalartspace_210408.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5200188706474169666" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Seiji morimoto and francesco cavaliere (pic by udo noll)<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Natura Morta in the title referred to the collaboration Seiji Morimoto and Francesco Cavaliere have started. Seiji is from Tokio. Imitation as a learning process is an important cultural feature in his country. He uses electronics to imitate nature sounds. Francesco is from Siena in Tuscany, a poetic relation with nature is an important part of Tuscan culture. Francesco uses nature to built his instruments. The duo will be a regular feature all through the festival, because theirs is an ongoing process of how to use and imitate the elements whose sounds other collegues capture with their microphones.<br />Their humoristic, playfull and yes indeed poetic performance provoked a bravo and a long applause by the audience. Listen to an </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://aporee.org/index.php?bid=2606">excerpt.</a><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">To be continued in August.</span><br /></div></div></div></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-29127872364835627252008-03-29T17:02:00.009+01:002008-04-13T16:07:07.952+02:00April 2, 3 and 4 reports and comments<div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Wednesday April 2 might have been the last time that the Wendel Bar hosted the festival. Martin, one of the owners, who has been a loyal supporter from the very beginning of dkfrf, brought the bad news. Inspired by international warning signs, pure logic and a notion of the invisible and the invincible, he made clear that the way the artist’s rights were protected in Germany was not compatible with the festival’s idea of protecting the artist’s rights. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >This said and done, the strict policy of convincing everyone to pay, changed into a non-violence attitude, which is so en vogue these days. Like a blind man just having arrived from Eastern Europe, I went around with a piece of paper. On it was written, that I would accept a mini-sponsorship of 5 euro. One out of twenty people paid 4 euro. A group of seven young Basques shared a five-euro mini sponsorship between them. Very cute. Unfortunately they thought that the contribution came with a bonus: a vocal feature during the first performance of the evening. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >This episode of the festival showed the crossroad character of Berlin. <a href="http://www.velocitymadegood.org/projects/projects_main.html">Perri Lynch</a>, a Seattle based sound artist and sailor, on a Grand Tour in Europe with her partner Jim, had just freshly arrived from Budapest and would continue for Nice. The four young man of the Paris based ensemble <a href="http://www.myspace.com/lesmolairesdelest"> Les Molaires de L’Est</a> were on their way to Gdansk. Colin at some time had left his hometown Vancouver to explore the remote regions of Nepal. He, in fact, was still under the spell of that visit, having left the country just a week before coming to Germany.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Colin performed as <a href="http://www.freewebs.com/brokensleep">Broken</a> <a href="http://www.myspace.com/brokensleep"> Sleep</a>, but thanks to the participation of the Bilbo’ Boys (in the classification loudest countries in the world, Spain ranks third) his performance evolved into a Broken Concert. It started and ended with the chants of monks, and in between there were myriads of harmonic drones. Since Colin had done some trekking, an activity that requires solitude and silence, his performance must have brought him memories of the tourists he had met on his way. Spanish tourists. To my regret I had difficulties to penetrate the veil of drones and could hardly get a glimpse of the colorful world behind it. Colin had been there. His comment was a sigh and the notion that all those experiences were captured in twenty-five minutes, and that it was all over. Maybe the recording will become available. The ears of his razor/recording device were closer to the loudspeakers then mine. Once I have heard it, I can give a more accurate review.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span> </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Perri Lynch came second. And, praise and glory to the muses, our mini sponsors from Bilbao had decided to leave. <a href="http://aporee.org/download/radio_aporee/Perri_Lynch/DKFRF_perriset.mp3">She started</a> with a weather forecast, a lady’s voice recorded from a radio broadcast. To it came a man’s voice from the radio, of course talking in a different key. Just when I started to wonder how she would go on, Perri amazed me with the introduction of a melody playing along to those voices in perfect harmony. Then I knew this was going to be a great concert. Voices came and went and with the same calm rhythm the melodies floated on or entwined with those voices. It was relaxing and fascinating at the same time, a soundtrack to some dear memories or a monument to the fragility of time. It was also entertaining to see her at work: a laptop, and two ipods, as if she was working from a control room. You can listen to the result for yourself; In my humble opinion Perri Lynch is a musician that could find an interested audience beyond the confines of phonography. She got involved in a series of dkfrf activities the days after, through which I managed to understand her work better. But first let me dedicate some words to the eastern molaires.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >I had seen Cedric Anglaret in concert before, together with two of his friends, in a grey gallery close to Pigalle in Paris. Back then they looked like postmen solemnly at work in their office. They went through their sounds kind of leisurely. If I had seen this concert recently I would have had strong doubts to invite them. But there were some good reasons to have confidence. 1. They still existed, meaning they had grown. 2. The trio was now a quartet, meaning there had been a person who got inspired to join them. 3.They wanted to come and perform in Berlin, one of the global capitals for our kind of music, meaning they had balls.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Well, to say it right away: every one out there who sets up festivals or related events should invite the molaires: they are the most hilarious group that I have seen since the Marx Brothers. Not that they are just funny, the music makes great sense, but there is a touch of electrified humor to it that only the French can produce. It is a precise combination of intellectual discourse tackled by absurd statements, of narrative recordings put side by side to sonic acrobatics. Great comics like Sarkozy can combine all of these characteristics in one facial expression. Even if they were using the laptop, the four of them were as agile and jumpy as any pop group that plays more traditional instruments. There was a constant interaction between them through eye contact. There was constant movement as they leaned over to each other to say something. Every member of the audience was doing its best not to burst out laughing aloud, (let me repeat) not because they were ridiculous, but because their way of talking and joking through their sounds was spectacularly funny. Vraiment, a must for every festival. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><b>One Day Later and One More Day Later, Too</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Many millions of years ago fish walked out of the sea and some of them became human beings much later on, when history started to make sense. It is also true that eighty percent of our body is water, which makes us a bit similar to lettuce. On the mystical side of life, one can state that most part of our existence is made up of nothing but energy, because of the structure of the atoms. Talking about atoms: the elements liberated during the Big Bang are still among us. To state it even bolder, everything is still the same: nothing was lost and nothing was gained. Our sounds are made of the same particles that built up to the most orchestral crescendo God has ever heard. </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" ><br /><br /><a href="http://aporee.org/download/radio_aporee/Perri_Lynch/">Most of the talks by Perri Lynch</a> on the evening at Udo Noll’s <a href="http://aporee.org/index.php">Studio Aporee</a> were about navigation, either about finding fixed points in a landscape or installing them. The nominator for this activity is ‘cognitive mapping’, (= being in a landscape as we experience it, rather then GPS or road signs are telling us.) During the live presentation of her website Udo came up with a lot of footnotes, which made it more easy for Perri to proceed with her lecture.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >Some sounds were played, among which the representation of a soliton struck me most. A soliton is a big tsunami like wave that travels over the surface of the ocean. Occasionally such a wave encounters another wave. Ms Lynch demonstrated this by moving her hands with wavelike speed towards each other, as if she was going to clap hands, or say an Ave Maria. But when those waves meet, they pass through each other, without loosing speed or energy: no collapse, no violence. And no handclap or prayer: her hands moved pass each other, as if in the moment of meeting they had become transparent.</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span> </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" >The key to understanding it all came at the very end of the evening. When everybody had left the studio/living room I asked Udo the meaning of ‘velocity made good’, the name of Perri’s website. I heard it was an expression from sailing. With all the information I got that evening, something sparkled. When we (and Cedric Anglaret) met again the next day at Total, to prepare a radio show for Cedric’s <a href="http://www.lapointedeliceberg.tk/">La Pointe d’Iceberg</a>, I asked her for how long she had been sailing. With her hand she indicated time: she had started when she was knee high. Then later in the program she told that she was always taking care of navigation; the radio voice telling the weather forecast and other news was always in the background. Now I only had to imagine the movements of the sea and listen again. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;" > </span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /><br /></span> </p>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-76994508811723676782008-03-11T18:45:00.002+01:002008-03-11T19:44:04.285+01:00The first results of the 2008 edition of dkfrf<span style="font-family:arial;">This year has started with some encouraging recognition. In Regensburg an enthousiasmised Albert Plank set up </span><embed style="font-family: arial;" anchor_height="18" anchor_width="132" anchor_top="21" anchor_left="94" onmouseout="" hover="true" pref_url="http://asiask.de/" type="application/browster-plugin" height="0" width="0"></embed><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://asiask.de/">his version of dkfrf</a><span style="font-family:arial;">. He got financial help by the Graz Kunstverein. I was invited to perform there myself, and thus met the people from pomodoro bolzano who back in 2007 were involved in the second life version of the festival, so thoroughly curated by Björn Eriksson.<br /><br />Another recognition came from Australian angelic sounds explorer Jodi Rose, who, as an artist in residence to Gallery Program set up a two days meeting evolving around the theme <a href="http://programonline.de/soundconstructions.html">sound constructions.</a> The festival took up the second day.<br /><br />On the first day of that symposium some fine sonic events got introduced, one of them being <embed anchor_height="18" anchor_width="671" anchor_top="60" anchor_left="636" onmouseout="" hover="true" pref_url="http://tunedcity.de/" type="application/browster-plugin" height="0" width="0"></embed><a href="http://tunedcity.de/">tuned city</a>. The organisers are playing with the idea to give dkfrf a place in their 6 days programme this coming summer.<br /><br />Meanwhile the 2008 edition of the festival started on the evening of 7 february when I did a recording on the Nieuwmarkt in Amsterdam. This recording can be found on <embed anchor_height="18" anchor_width="93" anchor_top="98" anchor_left="527" onmouseout="" hover="true" pref_url="http://aporee.org/maps" type="application/browster-plugin" height="0" width="0"></embed><a href="http://aporee.org/maps">aporee/maps</a> search for amsterdam.<br /><br />It continued later that month with a performance by Jodi Rose and Maria Keski Korsu. It was a joint work on a bridge under construction in Bangkok. Jodi expressed the great idea that the tuning of a bridge could serve as the prove that the construction was done right. While the video works of Maria showed the workers and the wind on the bridge, Jodi's sounds came along. Unfortunately her computer started to hick-up just as I was about to flow with the sonic stream. A few last grumps and the computer crashed,(and died a few weeks later).<br /><br />Jodi remained a file rouge. At Wendel she came with her fellow Aussies Somaya Langley and Rob Curgenven. But on that day I was close to dying, completely knocked out by the one day flu that is hoovering souls all over the globe. I think Somaya's performance was a very rafinated composition of swirling and spiraling sounds, but I am not sure. I only know the audience was completely absorbed and silenced. Jodi chose for a different presentation, introducing the singing bridges as old friends. But by that time I was to weak to get anything to me. (At the symposium I heard her fairytale like statement that I liked so much, about the earth transmitting sounds that only bridges could pick up. And there (at the symposium) she played a recording of a bridge actually picking up radiowaves and transmitting them.<br />By the time Rob played I was hallucinating on my bicycle wondering if I ever would get home. Rob played a legendaric set at the second edition of the festival in early 2007. This evening, it was different, since he had chosen to reconstruct an organ, using drinking glasses and their feedback. Our first hour fan and supporter Gerd Gebhard told me about Rob's performance, and the impressive impact it had on the body. He called it a unique experience.<br /><br />The sound construction theme on march 9 on a sunday afternoon in Berlin Mitte gave me the opportinity to experiment with the presentation. I invited old and new friends, and made sure that not only the images but also the stage would disappear, only to come back as a postcard and an immediate historifisation of the afternoon.<br /><br />It started with Momus presenting visual field recordings. Thanks to co-gallerist Carson Chan, his marketing strategies and a sponsorship he had managed to get twenty program friends to his gallery. Young people they were, most of them completely unknown of the fact that 'field recordings' existed. Momus showed the visual sonic results from a workshop he did with young people in Venice. Then he stepped aside from the laptop and read from his ipad (I think it was something imac) words and names, and turned the space into a class room. Now that was fun. The next filming showed poetic images from Japan, and a voice over battling with the wind. I couldn't follow his discourse (i heard the word "schizophonia"), but was amused by his presentation, and the almost tirannic influence on young people that were under the spell of an enthousiastic lecturer.<br /><br />Udo showed his maps, and surprised some of the audience by the possibilities that google maps offered. Now Udo is a big programming wizzard. His telephone can be used as a microphone and a tool to upload recordings to his maps. Us mortals have to be satisfied by phoning in, and running home to give the exact coordinates. But the result is a kind of digital answering machine. You can subscribe to it, and listen to new messages out of the unknown, every morning.<br />His latest atribution to the maps is a mixing effect. He simulated a soundwalk from his home to the Invalidenstrasse, and in this way built the perfect bridge to the next performance.<br /><br />Kim Cascone streamed in from somewhere on the coast of California. A very impressive wall of sounds that were taken from recordings by Leif Boman. The latter had taken the rocks and stones from a bombed house (this is Sarajevo 1998) to built a wall around a soldiers HQ with it. Through heating the stones he could learn from the frequencies the composition of the rocks. Frequencies can be translated into sounds, and this is what he did. A great piece by both of them.<br /><br />Seiji Morimoto confused the audience when suddenly during Kim's fade out, other sounds came crackling in. In fact he was on the streets with a microphone, transmitting sounds he encountered to the gallery. By this time the gallery space was slowly disappearing from the concert context. And after the radio silence, there were only two postcards left: one form California, again to be seen on maps, and the other one showing a visual field recording of the audience waiting for the show to begin. They were watching it, knowing in their heart that the show was almost history.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-44600845413809001632008-01-27T21:23:00.000+01:002008-01-28T18:24:18.180+01:00The China Times informesDear Listeners,<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I have made a page </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">in the great central square of weblandia.<br />Find it </span><a href="http://myspace.com/daskleinefieldrecordingsfestival"><span style="font-family:arial;">here</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> .</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It is a bit more friendly then this blog. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">You will find the links, </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">most of the former & upcoming performers in the friends list, </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">and indications on the next festival </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">which will start on the 8th of February, </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">and probably will go on for a year.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Greetings from Berlin,</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://zeromoon.com/rinus">Rinus van Alebeek</a></span><br /><a href="http://myspace.com/rinusvanalebeek"><span style="font-family:arial;">The China Times</span></a>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-25579079874914410642007-09-03T13:30:00.000+02:002007-09-03T13:59:23.868+02:00Flying Chairs and other Roses<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: arial;">At the end of the last performance on the very last day of the festival, I had to say some words of gratitude and farewell; a ceremonial moment, during which I threw a chair in somebody's face. Some of the audience might have wondered at this punkish behaviour. But those who knew the victim, know better. In fact it was Markus Schwill -who should work on his reflections- that got caught by this identifiable flying object. Markus has been a loyal visitor to all the evenings, and one of the thriving forces in the propaganda machine. (In fact Markus is one of the most accurate organisers I know in Berlin). He could take my action with grandeur.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">There is so many people I have to say thank you to, to those invisibles out there who supported me with cash that I could hand over to the artists that came in from far away; to the artists themselves who were prepared to take the risk of loosing money on their trip; to the owners of the venues; to the individuals who helped me promoting; to those who contacted me through mail; Man, I should have prepared my speech, next time I will thank God and my parents.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">It was not only about performances, but also about meeting new friends. It was particularly entertaining to have Patrick McGinley (Murmer) and Yannick Franck as a guest, or the two punks from Malmö. The short lived ritual of long breakfasts in Kurt's gallery/sousterrain/living room with Björn Eriksson was heavenly appreciated, as were the hilarious dialogues between Dr.Frank McCoy and Patrick. It was also great fun, almost like playing at a concert, to be interviewed by Wolfgang Dorninger and his wife Gaby, who are shooting a documantary on 'field recordings.'</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">As for the evenings itself, I missed most of the Glogauer evenings, so I cannot judge on that. If there should be a price for the best performance, it has to go to Gilles Aubrey' audiostory about Cairo. In fact that evening in Stralau68 was one that stood out, because of the light, the set up, and the very intimate atmosphere that slowly fell upon the evening.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Completely opposed was the evening with Wolfgang, Debashis Sinha and Yannick, more joyfull and not as introspective as the Swedish/Swiss coproduction in Stralau68, but a very coherent composition of three diverse approaches.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Everyone will have his own favourites. Udo Noll and his Radio Aporee are a complete eye and ear opener to me; Mattin's performance was one that should slowly become legendarious; I remember the intensily satisfied face of Lucciano Maggiore and the ovational applause his performance got; the guy who took a walk along the Landwehrkanal listening to Kate Donovan's tape; I could mention every single one, but hey, some of you I will meet again, and hopefully we can continue doing things together.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Last but not least I would like to mention Tore Honoré Boe. To be nominated for the Nobel price for Peace.<br /><br />Please check this blop, or bookmark it, because here you will find the announcements of field recording related events that I will set up in Berlin. See you next time, and thanks for your ears and your support!<br /></span></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-5962393524001758122007-08-26T14:40:00.000+02:002007-08-27T13:59:54.619+02:0029. August Kunsthaus Glogauer, Berlin Kreuzberg<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">On the last day of the festival we will be again in the garden. And I hope this time the haunting clouds won't chase us to the second floor. The guests of this evening are here to my pleasant surprise. Kate Donovan is here because she has to. At the last festival she presented the suite for three walkman: "post porn movie for 1". It is sunday and I still haven't heard from her. But I am sure she is on her way. </span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.staalplaat.org/">Carsten</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.garage-g.de/">Stabenow</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> I had spotted at the two premieres of the first two editions. As one of the creative forces behind the Staalplaat Sound System, he travels around the world. He who travels has many tales to tell, and lots of occasions to record new sounds.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">On a compilation CD from gruenrekorder there is one track by </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.myspace.com/budhaditya">Budhaditya</a> <a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.gruenrekorder.de/?page_id=12">Chattopadhyay</a><span style="font-family:arial;">. I approached him to ask if he was interested to join the long internetradio day. His answer was that he was coming to Germany in August. My reaction was to invite him to the festival. My pleasure and an honour to have him with us!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.peter-prautzsch.com/">Peter</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.frozenelephantsmusic.com/">Prautzsch</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> came out of the blue. A good proof that the noble art of field recording is practiced by more people then we usually see in the fine venues here in Berlin. After Yehlin Lee, another artist to look forward to.<br /><br />Carsten will bring his 8 speaker surround system. All the artists are kindly allowed to use this system. A big thanks to Carsten!<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Here is what they say in their own words:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Budhaditya Chattopadhyay presents: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">1.Benaras: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">a soundscape design based on field recordings </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">collected from Varanasi, India. (7 mins)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">2.Landscape in metamorphoses: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">an audio essay designed according to </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">the sound actuality of a site called</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">'tumbani'. ( 28 mins)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">3. On the move: </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">a soundscape design based on </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">my phonographic exploration </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">of suburban rail in Kolkata.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">(5 mins)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Carsten Stabenow presents:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">pure, unprocessed fieldrecordings from taipei, one take of a nightwalk</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Peter Prautzsch presents:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Live recordings directly on location</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">mixed with recordings from Japan, Ireland and other places.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQ6iq7ZkBZtrx5I-xej3hm_Wvj-hiQT4oIpa1hNvCW_BOPobIWz4bmmIQK0BGUG6nbXMCP-TzDN8fTbIwuYQZ70L_KvPjaVy2NGk8Tu1vF0AxIa9DmQsKDJVjsZ6kudrDFDpF/s1600-h/PumpkinPlant-m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisQ6iq7ZkBZtrx5I-xej3hm_Wvj-hiQT4oIpa1hNvCW_BOPobIWz4bmmIQK0BGUG6nbXMCP-TzDN8fTbIwuYQZ70L_KvPjaVy2NGk8Tu1vF0AxIa9DmQsKDJVjsZ6kudrDFDpF/s400/PumpkinPlant-m.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5103085997425932578" border="0" /></a></span><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:85%;" >Kate is cooking.</span><br /></div><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Kunsthaus Glogauer<br />Glogauerstrasse 16<br />Berlin Kreuzberg<br /><br />doors open 20.00<br />shows start approx 21.15<br /><br />in case of rain,<br />we will suffer a delay,<br />because of logistic problems.<br /><br />entrance fee 5 euro<br /></span></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-87104454488479917782007-08-23T19:56:00.000+02:002007-08-24T13:17:02.625+02:00Extra! Extra! Extra!<div style="text-align: justify; font-family: arial;">Ben Roberts has arrived in Berlin, just yesterday.<br />All was uncertain up to the last moment.<br />Ben came in from Madrid:<br /><br />"I have:<br />1x large radio-twin tape (modified with hand magneto-reader)<br />2x small radio-cassettes (modified with hand magneto-reader)<br />3x dictaphones<br />1x childs sing long cass player +mic<br />1x mini radio-cassette<br />1x portable reel to reel deck<br />1x mono cassette recorder."<br /><br />he writes.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrlusB4fzUqLdEdl8jNhvOOSOBPCMZEQZwYBV0Ui0cQX-gfHYYP3QBPIyl9hggDJlK4tEZirQpubILogqIof0GRViiS6LSiddhjT04_XBOkRVCNu8iiNfwITCRZvZcLE5KJ1OT/s1600-h/yml+table.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrlusB4fzUqLdEdl8jNhvOOSOBPCMZEQZwYBV0Ui0cQX-gfHYYP3QBPIyl9hggDJlK4tEZirQpubILogqIof0GRViiS6LSiddhjT04_XBOkRVCNu8iiNfwITCRZvZcLE5KJ1OT/s400/yml+table.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5102220802033957138" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6lsJqV-Tw">Ben TV</a><br /></div><br /><br />He will set up his installation in the Bürknerstrasse in Neukölln,<br />just off Maybachufer adn Kottbusser Dam.<br /><br />"As concerns the event, I am not 100% certain yet of what i intend to do, but will definitely do something with the magnetic cards and metro tickets and possibly mount some on a background board or canvas, in an 'aesthetic way' so they can be hung on a wall and 'played' by people walking by. Also some kind of live event would be good."<br /><br />It will all happen, in some way or another!<br />Be there either today, or on saturday afternoon,<br />and listen what the metro tickets from Paris or Madrid sound like!!!<br /><br />gallery/living room radio aporee<br />bürkner str.9<br />U-bahn Schönleinstrasse<br />Berlin Neukölln<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf6lsJqV-Tw"><br /></a></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-1572778964826599912007-08-19T16:06:00.001+02:002007-08-22T15:22:20.573+02:0025. august, Wendel, Berlin Kreuzberg<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">(Deutschsprachige Information weiter nach unter)<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Saturday we return to Wendel in Kreuzberg. Non German languageneers might encounter a hard time, because there will be two performers who will use German lyrics for their stories.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">Stefan Thielke, A German writer will read his short story that is situated in Berlin and India, against a sonic background made from original recordings of both the German capital and India.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Udo Noll will present his <a href="http://aporee.org/maps">Radio Aporee</a>. It is full of recordings with spoken word, or background noises, that were transmitted using a telephone, be it public, mobile or stabile. Perhaps slightly delayed real time interventions will take place.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The evening will be presented by Tore Honoré Boe, who some of the festival visitors have seen in action at Stralau 68. He will round off his Berlin stay with a dream concert that will start approximately at 02.30 and will last untill approx. 04.00 in the morning.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The whole programme, including Origami Boe and Origami Tacet's dream concert, will be held in Wendel. Entrance fee of 5 euro will be collected untill the last moment, in order to preserve the intimacy of the night, and to avoid disturbance of audience and performers by casual onlookers.<br /><br /><br /></span></div></div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/file-731430.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/file-731427.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Erzählungen, Gedichten, Traumen, in Klang und Wort</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> mit<br />Philips N2234<br />Stefan Thielke</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Udo Noll und Radio Aporee<br />Origami Boe & Origami Tacet<br /></span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/India-Thar-Desert_Jaisalmer-Rain-760385.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/India-Thar-Desert_Jaisalmer-Rain-760381.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: arial;">Es begann an einem Montagmorgen – Eine Geschichte aus Berlin und Indien</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: arial;">Ein Mann Mitte 50, der sich eigentlich für glücklich hält,<br />erleidet einen Herzinfarkt und beginnt im Krankenhaus,<br />über sein Leben, Leben an sich und Überleben nach zu denken.<br />Parallel dazu verarbeitet ein Junge in Indien seine Geschichte<br />und muss zusehen,dass er überlebt.<br />Fünf Jahre zuvor,<br />er war 10 Jahre alt,<br />verlor er seine gesamte Familie bei einem Erdbeben.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: arial;"><span id="st" name="st" class="st">Stefan</span> W. Thielke schreibt seit mehr als 20 Jahren<br />Schwerpunkt Erzählungen, Kurzgeschichten.<br />Zahlreiche öffentliche Lesungen<br />und Gemeinschaftsprojekte mit Künstlern aus anderen Bereichen.</p><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: arial;">Udo Noll entwickelte die maps auf seinem <a href="http://aporee.org/maps">Radio Aporee</a>.<br />Von jeden Telefon kann angerufen werden.<br />Die Botschaften, Beschreibungen, Hintergrundgeräusche<br />stehen nach abschliessen des Gesprächs ins Netz.<br />Udo stellt Radio Aporee und die Anrufer vor, und bringt davon Klangbeispielen.</p><br /><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; font-family: arial;">Mitten in der Nacht Träumen die Origami's<br />ein anderes Atlantis.<br /><br /></p> </div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Wendel</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Schlesische Strasse 40</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">U-Bahn Schlesisches Tor</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Anfang 21.00</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Ende 04.00</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Finanzielle Beitrage von 5 Euro</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">wird bis zum Sendeschluss gefragt<br />um die Intimität der Abend/Nacht<br />zu respektieren!!</span><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-37216421193157643282007-08-16T17:37:00.000+02:002007-08-16T17:40:49.511+02:00Glamour Trivia<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Hello Visitors of 15. august evening at Glogauer.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">I have lost my sunglasses on that evening.</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Did any one find them?</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">They are slim black shades</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">of Versus by Versace,</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">bought some ten years ago</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">by my girlfriend.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">They are totally out of fashion,</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">even out of retro fashion,</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">and they might even not look good on your,</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">or on your friend's face.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">please get in touch with me </span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">in case you found them</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">or saw them walk off with a nose.</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">thanks,</span><br /> <span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">rinus at zeromoon dot com</span>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-20223769111558776192007-08-14T13:31:00.001+02:002007-08-17T13:00:17.849+02:0018. August - Stralau 68 - Berlin Friedrichshain<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">The fish can speak and the insects can dance. Bamboo is a great teacher. </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.michaelpeters.de/">Michael Peters</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> has it all with him. His guitar will also be there, because Michael was in Köln when krautrock was growing out of everyone's ears. How his years of experience have lead to underwater recordings from Sardegna and bamboo recordings from Indonesia to become a part of a sonic composition will be proved on this saturday.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsS-Cy2K1xIF1jCxrQ7kCx1YfKCb9lHt3xNMPxChZEuIDPjSJUz6rKSDemMvQgw2kAzIP2JcAE0wrNTJ6XeXPud8PJ4knl0b3a0ZngRJ6VltV19dM6lMo4woug9L9rliy4F7S/s1600-h/boe-5.3-lap-w01-w.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsS-Cy2K1xIF1jCxrQ7kCx1YfKCb9lHt3xNMPxChZEuIDPjSJUz6rKSDemMvQgw2kAzIP2JcAE0wrNTJ6XeXPud8PJ4knl0b3a0ZngRJ6VltV19dM6lMo4woug9L9rliy4F7S/s400/boe-5.3-lap-w01-w.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098517548297981426" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">The Origami's come from a huge networkframe that has brought them recognition in </span><span style="font-family:arial;">some Berlin cold war zones. While steal was being bended, and secret hide-outs were searched for with steam engines, (much to the delight of a leatherfetished public with a srcreaming hairdo), Boe was booed at because he played his acoustic laptop. What to expect from one of the key figures of the ground breaking collaboration world?</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Tore Honoré Boe puts it this way:</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Origami Boe: </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://kunst.no/origami/boe/2.3-005.html">Woodwork</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> is a meeting between wood, action and subtropical field recordings</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://myspace.com/origamitacet">Origami Tacet</a><span style="font-family:arial;">: An acoustic post-jazz duo that have been said to play live cut-ups in diverse rooms. Michael Duch and Boe (with guests?) </span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;font-family:arial;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I am not going to introduce </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.mattin.org/">mattin</a>. T<span style="font-family:arial;">he Berlin public should know him by now. And those who do not know him, will not forget him after they have seen him. Expect to be scandalised, provoked, pleased and entertained. But above all, expect it loud... very loud.</span><br /></div><br /></div><a href="http://www.mattin.org/"><br /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Stralau 68</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Alt-Stralau 68</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Berlin Friedrichshain</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">S-Bahn Treptower park</span><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://www.soundimplant.com/stralau/Infos.html">map</a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">entrance fee 5 euro<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">read about proletarian vs eletarian popular people's culture in </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://myspace.com/rinusvanalebeek">The China Times</a>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-57540245568417998402007-08-12T13:59:00.000+02:002007-08-15T13:16:24.151+02:00Wednesday 15. August , Kunsthaus Glogauer, Berlin kreuzberg<div align="justify"><span style="font-family:arial;">This Wednesday the festival goes ambient. Two young guests from Italy will show how their existential situation in Bologna Italy can be transformed into a work of art. Both <a href="http://www.myspace.com/nathiascatola">Francesco Cavaliere</a> and <a href="http://www.myspace.com/lucianomaggiore">Luciano Maggiore</a> will use sounds from their working environment.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Come early, O all of you who want to see <a href="http://www.novi-sad.net/">novi_sad,</a> because he will play at none o'clock!!! He has just released a CD. And those who know about music in Berlin are looking forward to catch him live. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Read what those who catched his cd told:<span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;">"</span></span><span style="font-family: arial;">Beautiful, cryptic and spartan", a connaisseur from The Wire wrote. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"Rather poetically" and "strong stuff", the encrypter of earlabs managed to puff out.</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">"an exceptionally strong debut" and "stunning" sighed an admirer in rare frequency. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Three listeners can't be wrong. </span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></div></div><div align="justify"><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><br />Come early. <a href="http://www.myspace.com/macumbista">Derek Holzer</a> will provide you with recordings from his <a href="http://soundtransit.nl/">soundtransit</a> site. <a href="http://murmerings.com/">Murmer</a> will play found sounds and found objects. They will play the garden and its sounds. Come and marvel and get entangled in an environment where the real and the surreal twine.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig0brYyDdbLctBuW5Dy4mAN2xPKXiW2ddgCFawjX3sssI73rACumrpCbIypmN-sjc09XJPUAAzfPhYA8zd4SrYc4eUIrwPCTJc-33SWoEmgq38XaUriyqsN3K5QDjFzEbk5of7/s1600-h/DSCN0126.jpg"><span style="font-family:arial;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5097782473235205602" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig0brYyDdbLctBuW5Dy4mAN2xPKXiW2ddgCFawjX3sssI73rACumrpCbIypmN-sjc09XJPUAAzfPhYA8zd4SrYc4eUIrwPCTJc-33SWoEmgq38XaUriyqsN3K5QDjFzEbk5of7/s400/DSCN0126.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></p></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br />Come early, because we will start at 20.00 sharp, and end at midnight. We do not want police voices in the back yard. Though I trust them to be friendly and polite, once they enter the garden of sounds, will they recognize what is coming from loudspeakers, what is coming from the streets, what is falling from the trees, what is crackling in the bushes?<br /><br />A bird visited me this morning.<br /><br />More information to come soon.<br /><br />Glogauer is in the Glogauerstrasse 16, near Maybachufer in Berlin Kreuzberg.<br /><br />You pay 5 euro to get in. Is that okay with you?<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><a href="http://kleine-frf.blogspot.com/2007/07/1-august-glogauer-berlin-kreuzberg.html">Complete programme</a> of the festival.<br /><br />Youth, sport, cultural education,<br />read it in <a href="http://myspace.com/rinusvanalebeek">The China Times</a><br /></span>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-29648049051751684482007-08-09T19:37:00.000+02:002007-08-09T19:41:43.208+02:00DKFRF in SecondLife<embed anchor_height="200" anchor_width="547" anchor_top="3" anchor_left="3" onmouseout="" hover="true" pref_url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgssjRFdKCJrwvOD31z25aF7ZM2shSTqcsL9HPrp4tslj1kcsuFyB2xHpLqxdGj0-PqWL6aoVGhFRdOpx5CftzD446kZtnOCxa2x0mJx0C8bLRrK1xvV-hDgvMM8SLAEt3CEuGt/s1600-h/poster02_sl_res.jpg" type="application/browster-plugin" height="0" width="0"></embed> <div style="text-align: center;"><embed anchor_height="200" anchor_width="400" anchor_top="3" anchor_left="150" onmouseout="" hover="true" pref_url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgssjRFdKCJrwvOD31z25aF7ZM2shSTqcsL9HPrp4tslj1kcsuFyB2xHpLqxdGj0-PqWL6aoVGhFRdOpx5CftzD446kZtnOCxa2x0mJx0C8bLRrK1xvV-hDgvMM8SLAEt3CEuGt/s1600-h/poster02_sl_res.jpg" type="application/browster-plugin" height="0" width="0"></embed><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgssjRFdKCJrwvOD31z25aF7ZM2shSTqcsL9HPrp4tslj1kcsuFyB2xHpLqxdGj0-PqWL6aoVGhFRdOpx5CftzD446kZtnOCxa2x0mJx0C8bLRrK1xvV-hDgvMM8SLAEt3CEuGt/s1600-h/poster02_sl_res.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgssjRFdKCJrwvOD31z25aF7ZM2shSTqcsL9HPrp4tslj1kcsuFyB2xHpLqxdGj0-PqWL6aoVGhFRdOpx5CftzD446kZtnOCxa2x0mJx0C8bLRrK1xvV-hDgvMM8SLAEt3CEuGt/s400/poster02_sl_res.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5096757097037925842" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family: arial;">poster designed by Annie Spinster</span></span></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-35790309015180082502007-08-04T13:16:00.000+02:002007-08-13T14:11:06.834+02:0010. August, Staalplaat - Berlin Mitte<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />August 10 starts early at 14.30 o'clock in <a href="http://www.staalplaat.com/">Staalplaat Record Store</a> in the Torstrasse in Berlin Mitte. Outerberlineesh sound artists will be heard through streaming. Tobias Luther from radioincorrect.org will publish the programme on his </span><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://radioincorrect.org/">website</a><span style="font-family:arial;">. Expect participants form different time zones.<br /><br />Tobias Luther is a dedicated radiomaker who covered the complete second edition of the dkfrf. Edited versions of his recordings were transmitted by radio's around the world and were praised by all who had ears.<br />In Harold Schellinx <a href="http://www.harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00607.php">words</a>: "Did I already mention Tobias Luther? <a href="http://www.harsmedia.com/SoundBlog/Archief/00607.php#note_4">( **** )</a> Tireless Tobias lugged along a huge suitcase crammed with equipment, all over Berlin, up and down from Schöneweide to the ever changing locations where the das kleine evenings were taking place. Tobias recorded everything, and aired it on his radioINCORRECT. He moreover made the recordings available to other radio stations, and produced a fine two hour summary of the festival for ResonanceFM's Framework, giving an interesting overview of all that went on at das kleine."<br />I am glad he will come to Berlin for this long radio day.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Breaking News: Tobias has cancelled his trip to Berlin, because of domestic reasons. Tobias will coordinate everything from Leipzig. Take a look at the <a href="http:radioincorrect.org">programme</a>. Ruben Patino will give a helping hand from Berlin, directly from Staalplaat.</span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">From 17.30 onwards Berlin based artists will play live. You can hear dkfrf-veterans </span><span style="font-family:arial;">Stephane Leonard and rauschpartikel and newcomer Marta Zapp(aka xpenelopex). </span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://stephaneleonard.net/">Stephane Leonard</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> surprised me on both of the former editions with his raw punky approach, offering in this way an audio impression of a molochial metropole hard to dominate, but ever so inviting to explore for whatever adventure. In Staalplaat Stephane will bring his unedited recordings from Berlin, that will lead up to an acoustic story about wandering and wondering.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" href="http://rauschpartikel.de/">rauschpartikel</a><span style="font-family:arial;"> made his debut with tropical typewriter sounds, that made me think of Graham Greene working in a far away colonial world. On his (rauschpartikel's it is) next debute he changed the domestic sounds of a refrigerator into a mesmerising drone that impressed everyone. Little did Martin know, but I saw it, that Wendy, his collegue at Wendel's, was doing her barwork in a swift and gentle way. Her movements were like a summer's breeze (though it was midwinterly February), and the sounds she produced interacted as by magic with Martin's work. This Friday he will use the sounds that Staalplaat record store will produce, and recompose them in real time. </span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: arial;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcjhfYtwhwOUOc4Nw7vXOpuIRt0NdrPQqel6KQ6ZuZfZ_YgGWTIVbqfT3f1zXV5lrVukk9knEvfZWjQCPn3Ahfa1FKgQY_VJnVpI8SozOTVvn81SOP3by3KnajfF6Pe2Pycj2B/s1600-h/1475286330_m.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcjhfYtwhwOUOc4Nw7vXOpuIRt0NdrPQqel6KQ6ZuZfZ_YgGWTIVbqfT3f1zXV5lrVukk9knEvfZWjQCPn3Ahfa1FKgQY_VJnVpI8SozOTVvn81SOP3by3KnajfF6Pe2Pycj2B/s400/1475286330_m.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095175428086533554" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.myspace.com/penelopexproject">Marta Zapp</a>(aka xpenelopex) comes from a town in Italy where people drink grappa for breakfast, and where tourists look for the remains of a Shakespearian play. Marta came to Berlin to live and play, because she neither wants to drink grappa in the morning or poison in the night. And what else is there to do in Italy?<br /></span><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">So far she has succeeded to present herself in various locations all around town. Gifted with a very impressive stage presence, she succeeds in leading .. let's talk for myself.. she succeeded to transmit those first moments of audible bliss when trance sets in. Field recordings and urban witchcraft? In Staalplaat she will present broken melodies.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Last minute extra act</span>: <a href="http://www.dis.playce.info/">dis playce</a>, highly recommended by Stephane Leonard.<br /><br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"> STAALPLAAT</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Torstr. 68</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> 10119 Berlin</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Metro U2 Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz<br />start 11.00<br />live performances from 17.30 to 19.00 sharp!!<br /><br />on the internet: <a href="http://radioincorrect.org/">radioincorrect.org</a><br />from 14.30 Berlin time onwards<br /><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><a href="http://kleine-frf.blogspot.com/2007/07/1-august-glogauer-berlin-kreuzberg.html">Complete programme</a> of the festival.<br /><br />More readings about the ongoing people's revolution<br />you will find in <a href="http://myspace.com/rinusvanalebeek">The China Times</a><br /></span></div></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37407969.post-46226330262024881142007-08-04T13:05:00.000+02:002007-08-07T19:18:13.256+02:0010. August , Raum - Berlin Wedding<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:arial;">At Raum we start at 17.30 with the SecondLife version of the festival, organised and curated by Björn Eriksson. Almost five hours of virtual concerts can be seen and heard untill far after midnight.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Over the last weeks networking wizzard Björn Eriksson has contacted his sonic friends and managed to organise a <a href="http://odysseysounds.blogspot.com/">festival parallel</a> to the one taking place in the real world. His work consisted in finding the place in SecondLife: (the concerts will take place in a green house, but maybe not, because designing works are still in progress). In this way all sound collegues spread around the globe can come and visit and enjoy. Björn will de present in 3D lifeform at Raum to coordinate the virtual concerts. Some beamers will be set up to give a cinematographic impression of the concerts in the other world.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">And then the lights will go out:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Three live acts will play from 22.30 onwards. <a href="http://www.andreasbick.de/bick/pages_de_en/biografie/biografie/biografie.php">Andreas Bick</a> will present his radiophonic work <a href="http://www.andreasbick.de/bick/pages_de_en/akustisch/akustisch/akustisch.php?mainldn=15&thissubarea_int=kunst">Frost Pattern</a> that he made for Deutschlandradio Kultur. I was lucky to hear the final mix of this composition in one of the studio's of Funkhaus Berlin over a five speaker surround system. Very impressive. And I am glad Andreas accepted my invitation. One can hear among others sounds from icebergs and gletschers, captured with an underwater microphone. All mixed together in a slowly evolving work of sound that has all the characteristics of an orchestral symphony.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/iceberg-792576.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://www.zeromoon.com/rinus/uploaded_images/iceberg-792566.jpg" border="0" /></a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I really don't understand why I have never seen <a href="http://rio.recorderz.com/about">Yehlin Lee</a> perform in Berlin. It is thanks to Magnus Schaefer that I found him. I invited him and he said yes; it's that simple. And I am glad he did so. When he came to the second day of the festival and heard Debashis' happy tambouring, Wolfgang's tribute to Mozartian melancholy, and Yannick's singing Tibetat bowl, I mean after hearing sounds that in the FMradio world is actually called 'music', he was a bit surprised. He expected 'field recordings'. So i guess that is what we are going to hear on thursday in his soundwork </span><span style="font-family:arial;">TSU - L'Objet Sonore Trouvé.</span><br /></div><span style="font-family:arial;">In his own words:<br />"Tapei Sound Unit - TSU focuses on the audition, collection, analysis, reflection, deconstruction, and re-contextualization of humanistic soundscape of Taiwan. With the total respect of sound object / soundscape, TSU tries to capture the spontaneous (extra)ordinary moments of real life."<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;"> <a href="http://www.myspace.com/stupidityforever">Soichiro Mitsuya</a> is one of my favourite noise artists in Berlin. Capable of scandalising the purist field recorders ear, he is one of the sonic artists that is 100% loyal to the original definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_recording">field recordings.</a></span> <span style="font-family:arial;">For his performances he always uses his little sony cassette walkman, that he carries around with him everywhere. He also had it with him when he visited Teheran earlier this year. It is sounds from that city that come to us in RAUM.</span><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">How to get to RAUM in Berlin:<a href="http://raum.modukit.com/info.php">look at the map first</a><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">How to get to festival deck in Second Life: <a href="http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odyssey/25/226/556">start from here</a><br />In case you are new to <a href="http://www.secondlife.com/">SecondLife</a>,<br />download <a href="http://secure-web7.secondlife.com/community/downloads.php">the free client</a> of Second Life<br />create an avatar<br />come and visit the festival.<br /><br /><a href="http://raum.modukit.com/info.php"></a></span><br /></div>rinushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18109729745604016528noreply@blogger.com2