Soccos Catalogue

Title: Tales of Sonic Displacement Sub-Title: SoCCoS: A Sound-based Artist Residency Network Editors: Julia Eckhardt & Luís Costa Graphic Design: Luís Costa Redaction: Henry Andersen, Julia Eckhardt, Taïca Replansky & Rui Costa Printing: Tipografia Beira Alta (Viseu, Portugal) ISBN: 978-989-97205-9-6 Legal Deposit: 422672/17 Copyright: © 2016, all rights reserved

by Edições Nodar, Q-O2, DISK Berlin, Hai Art, Binaural/Nodar

& CCA Ujazdowski Castle

www.soccos.eu

Contacts:

Q-O2 workspace Koolmijnenkaai 34 1080 Brussels Belgium +32-2454824 info@q-o2.be www.q-o2.be

DISK - Initiative Bild & Ton e.V.

Veteranenstr 21

10119 Berlin Germany

+49 (0)30 44041852 www.ctm-festival.de Hai Art ry Pölläntie 455 90480 Hailuoto Finland info@haiart.net www.haiart.net Binaural/Nodar

Rua do Seixo, 5

3670-280 Vouzela

Portugal +351-232723160 info@binauralmedia.org www.binauralmedia.org A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle ul. Jazdów 2 00-467 Warsaw Poland + 48-22 628 12 71 info@csw.art.pl www.csw.art.pl

{CSW} Zamek Ujazdowski

TALES OF SONIC DISPLACEMENT SoCCoS : Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound

A Sound-based Artist Residency Network

TA B L E SECTION 1

OF 006

SoCCoS: A Sound-based Artist Residency Network Antie Greie : Hai Art (FI) Sonic wilderness

Luís Costa : Binaural/Nodar (PT) Poetics of permanence

Julia Eckhardt : Q-O2 (BE) Home through foreign ears

Taïca Replansky : DISK Berlin (DE) Dissolving sonic borders

Krzysztof Marciniak : A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle (PL) In the centre

SECTION 2

009 013 017 021 025

028

Artists in Residence SECTION 3

186

Texts by Invited Researchers Annie Goh

Migrational listening

Angharad Closs Stephens

Sounding Europe: Nationality and the affects of language

Leandro Pisano

SoCCoS: Critical cartographies of sound in Europe

Elen Flügge

Connecting flights, common sounds

SECTION 4

Biographies

187 193 199 205

212

CONTENTS Kaffe Matthews

030

DISK Berlin Micro-Residency (CTM 2016 Festival)

Helena Espvall

034

112

Pierre Berthet

036

Maciej Kierzkowski & Jarosław Urbański

116

Yannick Guédon

040

Frederik Croene & Lilia Mestre

120

Juan Duarte Regino

044

Ryoko Akama

122

Caroline Claus (A-I-R Laboratory)

046

Heimo Lattner & Judith Laub

124

Luka Ivanović a.k.a. lukatoyboy

048

Q-O2 Micro-Residency (the other the self)

126

Donia Jourabchi & Davide Tidoni

132

Susana Santos Silva & Torbjörn Zetterberg

052

Hai Art Micro-Residency #1 (Field Techno)

056

Camera Sonora

136

GrawBöckler

062

Giorgio Mega & Marta Romaszkan

140

Soundwalk Collective

068

David Birchall & Vicky Clarke a.k.a. Noise Orchestra

Jaume “Mal” Ferrete

074

144

Aurélie Lierman

076

Binaural/Nodar Micro-Residency (Vougascapes: Around the water dam)

150

Tiina Laurila

080

Xabier Erkizia

082

Hai Art Micro-Residency #2 (Sonic Wilderness Camp)

156

Tiina Sainila & Mikko Kanninen

086

Marija Bozinovska Jones a.k.a. MBJ Wetware

090

Daniel Brożek a.k.a. Czarny Latawiec

094

Caroline Claus (Q-O2)

098

Deena Abdelwahed

102

Peter Cusack

106

Juan Duarte Regino & Sébastien Piquemal

164

Marialuisa Capurso

170

Rima Najdi with Kathy Alberici & Ana Nieves Moya

174

Julian Bonequi

178

Francesca Saraullo & Cabiria Chomel

182

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

SECTION 1 SoCCoS: A Sound-based Artist Residency Network

6

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION SoCCoS (Sound of Culture – Culture of Sound) is a residency and research network engaging with exploratory music, sound art, and culture. Five European organisations collaboratively designed the project as an exchange network in which artists, curators, researchers, and non-professionals could work together on an equal basis.

S

oCCoS began with the simple idea that a residency abroad can be more meaningful for artists than one at home, that through time and space away from known environment and everyday routines new sites and different cultures can be discovered, skills developed, and networks expanded.

In turn, the experiences of the returning artists will strengthen their artistic community at home and benefit a broader culture of sound. Creative means of communication will have to be invented and, against the mirror of a different culture, the artist’s own habits can be both questioned and reinforced.

Five organisations collaboratively designed the project as an exchange network in which artists, curators, researchers, and non-professionals would work together on an equal basis.

We explored topics on the thresholds of other domains, opening questions like: What can art mean or do for society?

Who is the artist? What do we hear and how do we listen? What is the significance of context?

7

This publication aims to demonstrate what a sound art residency can mean. It does not represent all activities of the project, but rather takes three distinct perspectives: that of the artist, the organiser, and the outside observer - in this case four researchers deepening the project through related topics.

SoCCoS is shared by the organisations Hai Art (FI), Binaural/Nodar (PT), DISK Berlin (DE), A-I-R Laboratory (PL), and was initiated and led by Q-O2 workspace Brussels (BE).

Julia Eckhardt

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

8

SONIC WILDERNESS

Sonic wilderness Thoughts around the decentralisation of art and culture, visions for rural art practice, remote influence in broader network constellations, art, and friendship.

by Antye Greie Hai Art, Hailuoto (FI)

S

oCCoS has been a tremendous surprise to me. Out of a complicated application and guideline process came moments overflowing with fun, excitement, togetherness, connectedness, kindness, and unprecedented sound art. Whether from professionally established or emerging artists, the creativity these residencies unleashed has surpassed even my most naïve expectations.

Northern and remote

Hai Art docked into SoCCoS from our remote base in northern Finland, 200 km south of the Arctic circle. Situated on the island of Hailuoto, just off the coast of Finland’s fourth biggest city, Oulu, Hai Art represents the most remote contribution to the SoCCoS network. With a conference, 10+ artistic residencies, a children’s listening programme, and four years of experience in cultural locality, the idea of extending and diversifying Hai Art’s network seemed worth pursuing. The fact that SoCCoS concentrated on sound as an emerging field allowed Hai Art to line up with like-minded organisations in a visually dominant culture.

9

For us, the goal was to improve the sound curation, production, and facilitation of our residencies.

During the period of SoCCoS, Hai Art developed a new residency format - the collaborative hybrid intervention camp. This residency format better suits our set up and multiplies the effect of cultural exchange.

We started out with a single, three-day residency with lukatoyboy (see pages 48-51), who explored the island in various ways. His final work was a sonification event in Hailuoto’s landmark lighthouse on International Lighthouse Day. Lukatoyboy worked with his signature text-based walkie-talkie interventions, an approach which inspired local cultural worker Tiina Laurila to incorporate these devices in future workshops which she later conducted in Portugal during her own SoCCoS-supported residency (see pages 80-81).

To spell this out simply: a nomadic Serbian sound artist came to remote Finland and inspired a local cultural worker, who then undertook

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

her own residency with Binaural/Nodar in rural Portugal where she ran a threeweek children’s workshop using her own techniques plus those inspired by the Serbian artist. Subsequently, her own residency influenced local practice in Portugal.

Next, we organised a microresidency with ten emerging artists, and even beyond the appearance of the northern lights, magic happened.

The intense multi-cultural one-week camp was incredibly fruitful, resulting in 10+ audio (visual) works and several lasting friendships. The residency house was played and amplified, outdoor intervention scores were created, radio shows were produced (see pages 56-61).

Coincidentally, I listened to a Radio MACBA podcast in which Franco “Bifo” Berardi argues that friendship is one of the most resistant tools against imperialism. This cemented my resolve to change from single residency programme to theme-based, one-week, plug-out-and-play, sonic intervention camps.

The second camp, called #Sonicwilderness, hosted nine established artists, researchers, and journalists, with a focus on instrument building (particularly on home-made, off-grid battery-powered devices). Proposals were built and tested: feedback systems, creations based on Arduino sensors, a mushroom synthesiser, energy-bending mycelium signification systems. We organised listening sessions and recorded analogue improvisations in the forest at dawn (see pages 156-163).

These camps are structured in such a way that all participants live in a single house in a very silent part of

the island. Participants have to live in double rooms and share two kitchens, two bathrooms, two saunas, and a wooden fireplace near the bay. Food is self-financed and cooked in teams; we decided on vegetarian food by default.

Two to four hours of organised interventions and trips took place every day and the rest of the time was free for research, group work, cooking, listening, discussions, building, charging batteries etc. There are a lot of restrictions on the island and these have to be communicated. We are learning to plan camps more precisely and to execute them with less administrative effort and more focus on play.

Ok, as a millennial would say: ‘these camps gave me life’, and it is remarkable to me that something so extraordinary can arise out of such bureaucratic structures.

Silence and collaboration

The unique energy of our specific and remote location became useful in a wider, transnational context without exploiting the place’s beauty but by enhancing it in unexpected ways. I assume that the sense of crowdsourced creativity, knowledge sharing, the peaceful space with its retreat-like quietness, the sight of an actual horizon and the overwhelming visibility of stars (due to lack of artificial light) supports these results.

It has bewildered and rewarded me with a rare sense of content.

10

SONIC WILDERNESS

sonic wild code scatters between small pines blue techno abstraction between mushroom networks ferry gate for silence preservation diamantine listening and amplified set ups

Quite often, islands are treated with nostalgic, heritage-turned-kitsch ideas of culture and tourist fetishism.

Somehow, the camps at Hai Art work in opposition to what tourism perpetrates, assembling inspiration for practicing artists who, in exchange, leave their own memories and altered realities behind.

The partner meetings in all the diverse SoCCoS network locations have been another necessary yet enriching experience. Portugal, Berlin, Warsaw, Brussels, and Hailuoto all very much stand for a diverse Europe, for the traction between rural and urban thinking, for the exchange and benefit of decentralising art, and for the dispersal of artistic organisations and diffusion platforms by inclusion and diversity. Each locality has its own unique potential to stimulate artists. This project develops a vision of how urban and remote places can interact and benefit from one another. Personally, I was inspired by the international diversity and quality of the curation. The discussions we went through together have strengthened my curatorial practice.

Critical coexistence

This intercultural exchange, encouraged by the often demonised EU, can be a vision for creative and critical coexistence. If that sounds hippie, that

11

is ok. It is a truthful study and undertaking to investigate ways of listening.

Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound is a visionary project which the whole world can look to and be inspired. What if governing bodies all over the world set up peace projects such as this instead financing and tolerating militarisation.

Again, the key to everything is listening – spending time to listen to a place.

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

12

POETICS OF PERMANENCE

Poetics of permanence In a forgotten corner of Europe, practicing sonic localism through the listening of rural densities, poeticising permanent realities and convoking alterity through the art of sounds.

by Luís Costa Binaural/Nodar, Viseu Dão Lafões (PT) A forgotten corner of Europe

A

long time ago, back in the mid 70’s, when electricity was yet to arrive in our rural village of Nodar (located in the Gralheira mountain range, Centre Portugal), we would listen to elders telling wonderful and sometimes frightening stories by the fireplace in the kitchen, where families would gather during long winter nights.

These stories mixed the wanderings of maverick characters such as musician beggars, blind farmers, beautiful witches, devilish priests, and ancestors coming back from the dead to check their estates. In a sense, these stories and being close to people who were living essentially in the same way they did two centuries ago, made us appreciate a series of what we would now call values: being humble and hard-working but at the same time being outspoken and free to imagine and share unorthodox ideas and stories, and being permanently conscious of the fragility of life and of the enduring presence of the past and of nature surrounding their communities.

13

Many years later, around 2006, we decided to establish Binaural/Nodar, a rural sound art and experimental music residency project in the village we felt so attached to. In a way, to start inviting international experimental artists to work and interact with the local context and, more importantly, with local people, was our humble homage to the generations of mavericks who lived and wandered in these remote villages, assuming that art is still one of the few areas of human activity where idiosyncrasies and strange ideas can be accepted and understood.

When we started our project, we were committed to a simple yet powerful idea: that the opportunity to make sound art in a place so detached from sophisticated art circles would require the freedom to really explore expressive possibilities, to be able to fail and not be surrounded by inquisitive eyes and ears, and naturally to be able to produce meaningful art that could eventually go beyond the clichés of mainstream discourses.

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

Let’s face it: life is complex, places are complex, and their history is also complex and so much incomprehension is now present in Europe (between countries, regions, populations, genders, political aisles, religions) that listening to and creatively sharing what the forgotten places of Europe really are can be a valid morsel of hope for a more open-minded future.

the stimuli they received. We entitled this series of artist residencies “Playing the rural landscape”.

Fighting the same friendly fight

Listening to sound densities

After almost a decade of existence, Binaural/Nodar received an invitation from Q-O2 to be part of a sound art residency network that would apply to Creative Europe Programme’s funding. This invitation, and all the wonderful experiences and reflections that followed, made us sure that this was the right project at the right moment for us, one that would broaden our mindset and enable future possibilities. At last we found good people fighting the same friendly fight and living similar experiences as ours yet in completely different places within Europe.

‘Rural’ as a dense context, away from the naive sketches some use to define these places as nothing else than landscape and old things.

No, no, no! These places need to be addressed with more patience and subtlety. That’s why we remember with affection French composer Yannick Guédon’s viola performances in nature for solo audience, which were a great context for both physical detachment and deep listening, or Swedish improviser Helena Espvall’s instant cello and electronics compositions in different places around the tiny village of Açores that produced amazing reverberations in the landscape and made locals feel they were being touched by the grace of some Northern sonic goddess. And speaking of densities, how can one not feel touched by Italian vocal performer Marialuisa Capurso questioning her own artistic identity in a strangely beautiful place like the top of the Caramulo Mountain?

After several years hosting projects that explored thematic aspects of the territory that were previously proposed to artists (‘riverscapes’, ‘voicescapes’, local religion, rural architecture, social mobility) we decided that with SoCCoS we should return to the liberating nature of not having a strict underlying theme for the artist residencies to host, thus inviting them to emphasise organic, expressive and visceral interactions with (natural and built) landscapes of the region through performances and installations that would be entirely conceived in situ from

If we retrospectively analyse the work of the great artists that we hosted in 2015 and 2016 in the context of SoCCoS network, we can identify three parallel reflection streams for the sound art works they created:

14

POETICS OF PERMANENCE

Poetics of permanent realities

One of the counter-values of local contexts such as our own is (still) its distance from a certain progressive optimism based on technological and social change as necessarily positive.

We particularly question these tensions between permanence and change through our curatorial practice, which values unlikely artistic encounters that help to untie the ‘Gordian knot’ of a set of complex dualities that are in place (artist vs, community; local vs. global; perennial vs. ephemeral; manual vs. intellectual; practical vs. poetical; work vs. art; rational vs. irrational; understanding vs. misunderstanding, etc.).

Therefore, we embrace artists who really can grasp ancient but valuable narratives and we had three perfect examples of that during our SoCCoS residencies: Belgian sound artist Pierre Berthet’s fragile sonic garden, a set of micro-installations placed in a field made with simple objects (metal cups and pans, dry leaves, etc.) and tiny electrical motors, Basque artist Xabier Erkitzia’s quest for the screeching sound of ox-carts that are still used in our region, and finally Japanese sound and visual artist Ryoko Akama’s poetics of abandoned, forgotten or newly-found memorabilia.

Convoking alterity

We always thought that artist residencies are an interesting and somewhat “libertarian” context to bring imaginary possibilities to an isolated region like ours, which can include technologies, connections, concepts and most

15

importantly, ways of social engagement.

Just by hosting international artists we are therefore convoking small-scale alterity without forcing any agenda, and that can be beautiful.

Throughout our SoCCoS residencies we witnessed several examples of idiosyncratic projects that followed unbeaten paths: Polish artists Maciej Kierzkowski & Jarosław Urbański brought together udu drums, granite stone xylophones and local traditional singing; Finnish sound educator Tiina Lapola developed a holistic series of workshops for children around experimental sound, body, movement, and nature; Mexican artist Juan Duarte together with French artist Sebastien Piquemal developed a temporary FM station with local youths using both global and local sounds, Belgian composer Frederik Croene and Portuguese performer Lilia Mestre used their residency to investigative the possibilities of performing impressions of a place using unorthodox visual scoring techniques, and finally we hosted a one-week collective residency, entitled Vougascapes, where ten participants developed a free investigation on the impacts of the recently built Ribeiradio-Ermida water-dam, one that produced a set of wonderful sound and audiovisual pieces and performances and that demonstrated how any subject or any place can really be inspiring with the right combination of focus and perseverance.

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

16

HOME THROUGH FOREIGN EARS

Home through foreign ears or: good neighbours and far friends

by Julia Eckhardt Q-O2, Brussels (BE)

Artists as travellers

P

ersonally, I can be afraid of foreign places, of people whom I don’t understand, of situations which I cannot frame and recognise. I don’t find it self-evident to leave my comfort zone. I’m worried about how people perceive me compared to their own standards, feel guilty when they have more hardship than I do, and most of all I feel unsure about how my art, or the art I’m involved in communicating, will be received.

In consequence, I feel grateful to those artists who come here, courageously jumping into a different world than the one they are used to, meeting and working with people and places, discovering and embracing the unknown in this city which is rough and not museatic at all. I’m grateful because in a way it feels like they are substituting for me. They allow me to discover this place - which I think I know and so don’t pay much attention to anymore - in a different way, through their eyes and

17

ears. They make a bridge which I don’t feel able to make. It is as if I had become a guest in my own city and I enjoy it.

Brussels

The orbit in which Q-O2 operates as an artistic workspace is the centre of Brussels, a complex and completely urban context with all the benefits and problematics that entail. The artists who visit us as residents describe it as dirty, noisy, grey, and smelling of lead. Yet, they also find it inspiring, interesting, welcoming – we don’t know why. Maybe because it’s a city with many cracks and little polishing, and thus, in a very human way, it exposes the parameters of cohabitation. Brussels, where almost everybody has a background of migration, seems hospitable without being host, able to provide a little spot for everybody. At the same time it opens fields of tension which are fertile soil for artistic exploration.

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

Within this context, most of the artists who participated through the SoCCoS network, have happily agreed to work with, around, and about people and places, stories and their languages.

In this way, for instance, Kaffe Matthews conceived the Brussels version of her Sonic Bikes in collaboration with various communities, Heimo Lattner and Judith Laub explored the limits of translation, Jaume Ferrete talked his way through Brussels researching masculinity, Daniel Brozek discovered different local language projects and radio initiatives.

Various workshops created bonds with and between children, youths, students, the mentally handicapped, professionals, and, not least, local organisations.

Places and spaces have also been a topic for the artists and other researchers who lodged here during the last two years. Brussels’ urban design and its failures has been an inspiration for artistic projects and hybrid research projects by for instance: Caroline Claus, Peter Cusack, and Susana Santos Silva and Torbjörn Zetterberg. All these projects and activities have accompanied us through the whirlwind of attention which carried our neighbourhood of Molenbeek into world news in the last two years.

Our overall topic at Q-O2 for these two years was ‘the other the self’, an exploration of gender issues through the adjacent matters of voice, language, and identity. This has linked nicely to the framework of SoCCoS and has offered several meaningful connections.

Culture of sound in the micro and the macro

My own personal horizon of sound curation was enriched through the visits of, and exchange with the partner organisations. Each of these places has its own specific qualities and since we are all organisations which have been growing out of local dynamics, each of the partner organisations is strongly rooted locally. It was a simple but illuminating discovery that not only the quantity but also the quality, content, and even form of artistic organisations grounded on residencies are determined through place.

Rurality and urbanity, climate and light, social structure and consciousness of identity, socio-economic situation, and much more, are all mirrored not only by the artists and their work but by the supporting structures as well.

I discovered very different urgencies visiting the different partners. In Warsaw, sound ecology and activism were very present because of the city’s precarious political situation.

The natural bond with tradition, and the easy and humorous relation to religion impressed me in Portugal. In Finland, the most prominent trait appeared to be the overwhelming yet also insistent and unignorable natural environment.

The working circumstances in Berlin seemed to be the most comparable to our own situation, and still the difference in social tissue is reflected in the topics and structure of the work of DISK annex CTM.

This ‘hands-on’ experience of the partners locality and context lead to long debates on how to work together whilst still remaining different, individual, and specific as organisations – each rooted in our own territory.

18

HOME THROUGH FOREIGN EARS

The quality shift

It seems to me that it is exactly by enhancing these differences that the collaboration has been made sustainable and fruitful. What we seem to share is an approach in which context takes preference over a traditional hierarchy in the appreciation of art. Together, we have taken each of the activities and art works which occurred during the project equally seriously, concerning ourselves with only the impact each residency had and the energy it released. In this way, the notion of artistic quality gets newly implemented and ‘big’ and ‘small’ culture melt into each other.

Most of the artists have picked up on this, making it clear that the idea of ‘quality’ in the arts has undergone a shift. Quality has become relative. It no longer stands on a ground of the implicit standards of a homogeneous society.

Sharing culture through sound

Sound is a connector. It is easily accessible and it operates on a very intuitive level. It is an ideal means for questioning, exchanging, and developing culture because it so easily touches on other artistic, scientific, and political domains. Sound is always available. It is endlessly participative – at the scale of the individual, the common, and the public. It reflects societal matters such as who we consider as minorities, who is in power, where the socio-economic interfaces are, how to deal with gender, race and cultural territories. Sound is a nice excuse for reflection and discussion.

Sound and music offer ways to share, experience and undergo culture, by collaborating, by inventing a different

19

common language, by being a guest in a foreign or a home country, but also by being host. As Martha Nussbaum suggests, music offers possibilities to extend solidarity; a ‘we-feeling’. It can unlock seemingly deadlocked societal and urban situations through creativity.

The artists have brought their own culture and ways of dealing with the world, and sometimes challenged us with either their shyness or their outspokenness, sometimes with their claims.

As curators, we have sometimes had to guide them in how to be respectful to ‘our’ territory. Some artists we met again at their home context after having hosted them in Brussels. Then I realised how different they are between the two settings, in consequence, and how much we all depend on the energies which surround us.

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

Photo by Udo Siegfried

20

DISSOLVING SONIC BORDERS

Dissolving sonic borders

by Taïca Replansky DISK Berlin (DE)

“I

n a talk on the [CTM Siberia] festival’s opening night, Robert Henke remarked that ‘the beauty of globalisation is that our generation, and the ones to come, have access to the world of sound’. This might read like a rather naive statement, yet [...] it reflects the optimism of this strange festival in the back of beyond. This is why CTM Siberia is an inspiring and hopeful experience, where a new generation of Russian artists, internationally connected, are creating their own futures and narratives in a way that’s at once very familiar and unlike anything I’ve seen [...].”1

Luke Turner of British journal The Quietus best describes the feeling of elation we at DISK Berlin experienced while completing our first action within the SoCCoS project. Taking the opportunity presented by our collaborative “CTM Siberia” festival with the GoetheInstitut Novosibirsk, we immediately organised two sound art residencies in a city that marks the geographical centre between eastern and western Russia.

Here, Berliners GrawBöckler created a new chapter in their ongoing, languagebased “Let’s Talk about the Weather”

project, which explores weather as the lowest common denominator in starting up a conversation (see pages 62-67).

Arthur Larrue, a collaborator of the international group Soundwalk Collective, came to investigate the first steps of a sonic research project exploring the Отшельник (otchelnik) – the Russian term commonly translated as “hermit” but also used to designate a wider international movement of people that are withdrawing from conventional society, or going “off the grid”, with a focus here on those escaping to the remote Altai Mountain region along the Russian-Mongolian-Chinese border (see pages 68-73).

Politics are not a safe subject for discussion in Russia, where coded descriptions are the norm. Here the challenge and importance of encouraging deeper dialogue and exchange through art and music is very apparent.

In a country where power and culture are often centralised in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the physical gathering of foreign artists, and more significantly, of Russian artists from other cities, helped cement links that until then had

1 Turner, Luke. (2015). “The Quietus | Features | Three Songs No Flash | Eastern Dawns: CTM Siberia

& The Importance Of Dancing Across Borders”, http://thequietus.com/articles/18952-ctm-siberia-festival-review. 2015 The Quietus.

21

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

been mostly virtual. Many of the young producers and creators in Russia are very much used to exchanging online, having met in person perhaps once or twice, if ever. Despite this remoteness, many young Siberians are steeped in a conscious internationalism that feels extremely necessary right now.

Traveling to Novisibirsk to accompany GrawBöckler and Arthur Larrue impacted us strongly in many ways. Among other, these first two projects unintentionally made very clear much of what we wish to achieve by supporting artistic residencies: encouraging the artists to feel like an Отшельник by leaving their own comfort zone and exploring new ways of mediating the non-verbal (and unfamiliar) through sound. As a unique feature, DISK Berlin is the only organisation within the SoCCoS project that strongly linked its residencies to the festival format – namely within the yearly CTM Festival we have produced in Berlin since 1999.

Most residencies were thus tied to CTM Festival, providing a platform for presentation and open public discussion of the SoCCoS-supported works.

A curious residency narrative emerged when our next two artistic residencies, selected by an open call via the ongoing CTM Radio Lab, both strongly connected to the internet. One of the Berlin-based residencies was held

by Deena Abdelwahed, who expounded on the internet’s positive powers of connection and discovery, based on her own enlightening experiences with the internet while growing up in a conservative Tunisian family and society (see pages 102-105). In direct contrast, the second resident, Marija Bozinovska Jones, who collaborated with Lithuanian musician J.G. Biberkopf, dove headfirst into the darker side of hyper-circulation,

globalisation, and the isolation and anxiety of a life increasingly lived online (see pages 90-93). At a time in which the unifying power of the internet is undermined by increased control and algorithms that trap us into suffocating echo chambers, the two residencies’ balance of hope and caution resonated particularly well.

At the same time as our first Radio Lab residents were performing their works at CTM Festival that year, we organised our first-ever Micro Residency. It assembled 15 students in music and sound art from Germany and Europe who followed a week of meetings and discussions in parallel to performances and presentations at the festival. We were pleasantly surprised by the intense satisfaction from this action and general potential of this new format.

The first year of SoCCoS opened up many reflections in the DISK team about the limits of reaching out to new audiences: Can you truly reach out to someone very different from yourself? As event organisers, what kind of new formats of audience engagement can we imagine? How far can we push audience development? How ‘diverse’ can our audience become? This is something we are much looking forward to continuing to explore.

Through a second round of the CTM Radio Lab, we rounded out our artistic residencies with Mexican artist Julian Bonequi, who came to Berlin in November 2016 to test, script and create the basis for a piece that, like Marija and Gediminas’ project, leapt firmly into the future, but this time with a humorous, sci-fi twist (see pages 178-181). Around the same time, Berlin-based Lebanese artist Rima Najdi took collaborators

22

DISSOLVING SONIC BORDERS

Kathy Alberici and Ana Nieves Moya on a two-week residency in Beirut to explore themes of pervasive, indirect violence and how people cope in navigating it in their daily lives (see pages 174-177).

The types of sounds, the research methods and the artistic approaches of all of these artists might seem incredibly diverse, but their preoccupation with very current and pervasive issues hints at sound’s fundamental unifying power and at its ability to touch us directly, without interference from our consciousness. In this immediacy lies the power of sharing sounds and sonic experiences across borders, of being enthralled by unexpected similarities or baffled by differences as musicians and artists weave personal experiences that open new spaces for collective emotional understanding. This is not to say that sound is inherently peaceful or peace-inciting, but that it offers a space that can be both abstract enough to make room for difficult engagement, and directly emotional enough to make us stand up and act.

23

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

24

IN THE CENTRE

In the centre Trying to harmonise the sound waves of global and local politics.

by Krzysztof Marciniak A-I-R Laboratory Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (PL)

Centre for Contemporary Art

Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw is (physically) the most massive partner of the SoCCoS network. It is enormous - like one of the spaceships from Stanisław Lem’s literary prose; armoured, but a bit too cold and not really cosy. Artists of various disciplines, who spend few months in the Residencies Programme (A-I-R Laboratory) at Ujazdowski, sometimes remark on the similarities between the institution and the setting of Kafka’s novel „The Castle”. For SoCCoS artists visiting Warsaw, but also for me as their guide, their residencies were not only the experience of moving in space and culture but also an experience of the various aspects of the system of contemporary art. We were trying to find our paths in labyrinths of corridors and galleries, elevators and staircases, rooms, cells in Excel spreadsheets, studios, offices, warehouses, libraries.

Ujazdowski Castle – an edifice of art, surrounded by the rickety park extremely polluted with noise from a neighbouring highway.

25

Warsaw – a lively city, contaminated with its terrible history and recurrent architectural, economical, and political conflicts.

The institution was our platform / space station. Artists were given a place to sleep, flight tickets, budget from EU and the municipality. Shouldn’t we give this back to people?

As sound artists/researchers/ curators we are using public money to produce sound. That is what we do our entire lives. An artist residency is probably one of the most expensive way to produce sound that has ever been invented. Isn’t it a waste of money?

Here, in this monstrous factory with its subtle oscillations, the feeling of being a cog in the wheel is tangible. You can feel the system of contemporary art and economical paradoxes of its processing in your skin.

I am the youngest curator involved in the SoCCoS project. In two years coordinating the Warsaw branch of SoCCoS, I have spent more public money than I have earned in my entire life. Was it worth it?

SECTION 1 | SOCCOS: A SOUND-BASED ARTIST RESIDENCY NETWORK

The art of sound – a branch of alchemy in which cash flows transform into acoustic waves.

Publicly-funded sound – an experimental way of redistributing wealth.

The value of sound is impossible to measure with a volume meter or by the number of tickets sold. We are not interested in sound as entertainment – our activities in the city are aimed at spreading auditory competence and curiosity. I also believe that there are people who simply need to be given access to proper sound. There is a huge lack of good vibration in this society.

But one can also listen to sound art without perceiving acoustic waves at all. We are stimulating sound imaginations not (only) eardrums. Listening can be a starting point for various political, intellectual, ecological, and aesthetic actions. We are using it as a lever, as a tool for silent resistance and social acupuncture. But secretly we dream about inventing a way of listening that could be a detonator, a trigger for political and ecological change for the better.

A sound artist – a contemporary alchemist trying to invent a miraculous oscillation to bring peace and happiness.

As with many of the other residents and Residency Programme curators of Ujazdowski Castle, we chose to work in the city, as far as possible from galleries, clubs, and concert halls.

Institutions usually concentrate on public events; we were interested in public spaces. We were searching for our audience in the streets, presenting effects of our work in crowded places, squares, parks, and bus stops - at rush

hour and in the middle of the night. I can recall the tangled chains of sounds and their echo-consequences amplifying socially.

I remember a sound performance by Davide Tidoni that lead to a difficult discussion between its listeners, which itself then became the starting point for Warsound|Warszawa a book

by Donia Jourabchi and Taufan ter Weel which was published a half year later.

Or a soundwalk with the participants of a workshop that inspired another publication: Urban Sound Design Process

by Caroline Claus. And I recall a megaphone, which Edyta Jarząb had used as a tool in one of her sonic interventions that was later employed during dozens of demonstrations and protests. And an amateur DIY electroacoustic instrument, first played as part of a workshop lead by Juan Duarte and which I later saw on a festival stage some 518 kilometres from where it was first built, being played by Izabela Smelczyńska, who originally constructed it.

A sound – an acoustic wave and its political consequences.

Listening – analysing presence and predicting the future.

It is not pure sounds or sounding objects that have such influence on our lives, but sound’s users and the practices in which sound is used.

The transferral of knowledge was one of our priorities during the residencies.

Each of the four artists who visited Warsaw in the frame of SoCCoS, organised a number of workshops and collaborated intensively with Warsaw-based researchers and practitioners. If sound and listening are to be seen as critical

26

IN THE CENTRE

factors in culture and politics, then they are far more valuable when they are a product of collective work, an effect of social interaction. Mutual listening is a basis for communication, collective improvisation can be a basis for reinterpreting our environment, performing sound and listening together in public spaces is a way to communicate with the environment - to be influenced and to influence it. We can learn how to listen to architecture or politics, how to describe and neutralise acoustic violence. We can share these skills and knowledge with the citizens of Warsaw.

The paradoxes accumulating above must be confusing and they can’t be much help in the process of creating work. Still, it would be improper to ignore them. We should treat our position seriously. CCA Ujazdowski Castle is located in the centre of Jazdów governmental district in Warsaw - somewhere between the Russian embassy (1000m south), the embassies of Germany and France (650m north), and USA (900m metres north-west). We are exactly halfway between the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland (700m southwest) and the polish parliament (700m north). It is a powerful geographical metaphor: culture should always be in the centre, with the conflicts and individual ambitions of the politicians as nothing more than its satellites.

As artists and art curators, we should make efforts to harmonise the waves of global and local politics - to use an edifice of art which transforms cash flows into acoustic waves in order to invent an oscillation that can bring peace and happiness. Analysing presence and predicting the future at the end of 2016, we should consider this our prime and inalienable duty.

27

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

SECTION 2 Artists in Residence

28

TWO YEARS OF SOCCOS ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Two years of SoCCoS artists in residence In the following pages we collected texts, impressions and images from all the artist residencies either artist/project-based or collective short term ones, hosted by the five SoCCoS partners in 2015 and 2016. The texts follow the chronological order of the residencies themselves.

29

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Kaffe Matthews composition : community-based sound art : sonic bikes Residency Period: From 16/02/2015 to 15/03/2015 From 09/05/2015 to 30/05/2015 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels Over a period of four months, Kaffe Matthew developed a Brussels version of her Sonic Bike Operas.

She explored the city and its socio-politics by collaborating with different individuals and local community groups, GlobeAroma and Vaartkapoen among many others. She ran route composition workshops for children together with theatre director Ivan Vrambout at La Maison des Cultures Molenbeek. She held a lecture and workshops for students on geo-localisation technologies, the latter in collaboration with software developer Tom Keene. The gathered material was shaped into the composition of Finding Song Home, to be experienced by riding a Sonic Bike. The project was a co-production with Opera House La Monnaie and the Bicrophonic Research Institute.

Finding Song Home

“Jump on a sonic bike to explore the city and let the sounds, music, and stories it plays transform your ride. You are sonic cycling, floating through a changing audio landscape, not going on a journey. Do take your time. Your pace and the routes you decide to follow will create your own opera.

We suggest you check the map to see the boundaries before you set off, but don’t look again unless you have to. The map shows you which areas of Brussels will play through your bike. When you find yourself pedalling in more than 3 minutes of ‘silence’, you have left the mapped areas. There’s one simple rule: old cobbled streets are bad for sonic bikes, scores, and maps, so do not use them. In the squares you will find surprises, circle slowly to find them. Also continue straight on unless you hear an indicator sound to turn right or left.

The rest is absorbing perceptions. Let your ears guide you ~ explore!”

F

inding Song Home explores the injustices of birthright and the power of national governments to enable or prevent the free movement

of its citizens. Through meeting and sharing with often illegal, non-European Brussels immigrants, Matthews has gathered a mass of their stories which, intimately told through the voices of the storytellers, create a multithreaded libretto to be revealed by an audience cycling the GPS-linked sonic bikes through and beyond Brussels’ city centre. The diverse routes - the opera’s score - pass between La Monnaie Opera House, the canal, and the squares of Molenbeek, redefining the neighbourhoods through songs and narratives, the shifting street’s soundscape, and Matthews’ electronic counterparts. With sounds triggered by where and how fast the bike travels, each participating cyclist creates and defines their own experience of the opera. Compositions are linked to locations using a bespoke Sonic Bike mapping software. Created in fragments, sounds are mapped into different zones across the city, enabling multiple routes for a cyclist to take and endless compositions to experience.

30

KAFFE MATTHEWS

Process of composition

The specificity of a site becomes a source of decisions around audio content and compositional strategies. Therefore, historical, geological, social, physical, political, and experiential inputs are considered for a variety of sites. Then starts the process of sonification with a variety of possible approaches; from pen to paper, actual to digital, the process removes and abstracts outward from its original source. It creates an amount of confusion, stimulating fundamental thought like: why do I make music? who is it for? and what sounds? you mean there’s a choice?

The sonic bike

Invented by Kaffe Matthews, the Sonic Bike has evolved over 10 years of international projects and continues to be researched and developed in order to expand the compositional potential and unique listening experience which it allows for.

The Sonic Bike is an instrument that plays site-related sound pieces for it’s rider and those that it passes. The instrument is simply a bicycle with frame mounted speakers which perform different sounds and music depending on where the cyclist goes and how they ride, using a location sensitive software and hardware system, with software designed by David Griffiths and developed by Tom Keene.

Project developed in collaboration with Bicrophonic Research Institute, Cyclo, FoAM, GlobeAroma, Rits/School of Arts, Maison des Cultures et de la Cohésion Sociale de Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Vaartkapoen. Finding Song Home is the BRI’s 8th bicycle opera, commissioned by Q-O2 and La Monnaie.

31

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

FIN DIN G SON G HOM E

■ TEX TURES

■ MELODIES

■ SONGS WOMEN ■ SONGS MEN ■ GIRL S VOX ■ BOYS VOX ■ DONGS

■ MOLENBEEK RECS ■ BRUSSEL S CITY ■ PUL SES

Cette carte est seulement un guide et reste sujette à changement Deze kaart is enkel een leidraad en onderhevig aan verandering This map is only a guide and subject to change 1

LA M ONNAIE / DE M U N T

2

Q- 02

3

LA M AISON DES CULTU R E S /

HUIS VAN CULTUREN M O L E N BE E K

32

3

KAFFE MATTHEWS

3

2

1

CON COURS / W EDSTRIJ D / CON TEST P R EN EZ U N E P H OTO – GAG N EZ U N E SA IS ON DÉCOU V ERT E DE L’O P ÉRA 1 Prenez une photo de l’un des endroits inattendus que vous découvrirez durant votre vélopéra.

2 Postez-la sur votre Instagram avec l’hashtag #findingsonghome.

3 Chaque mois, jusqu’à la fin de la saison 2015/16, l’auteur(e) de la photo la plus intrigante gagnera un ticket duo pour assister à une production (opéra, récital ou concert) de la Monnaie.

N EEM EEN FOTO – WIN EEN S EIZO EN LA N G OP ERAG ELU K ZA LIG H EID 1 Neem een foto van een van de vele onverwachte locaties die je op je fietsoperatrip zal ontdekken.

2 Deel je beste shots op je Instagram met de hashtag #findingsonghome.

3 Elke maand tot het einde van het seizoen 2015/16 krijgt de auteur van de meest intrigerende foto een gratis dubbelticket voor een van de concerten, recitals of operavoorstellingen van de Munt.

TA K E A P IC T U R E – WIN A S EA S O N OF O P ERA EXP ER IEN CE 1 Take a picture of one of the unexpected locations that you will discover during your bicycle opera experience.

2 Post it on your Instagram with the hashtag #findingsonghome.

3 Every month, till the end of the season 2015/16, the author of the most intriguing photograph will win a free double ticket for one of the concerts, recitals or opera productions of La Monnaie.

L A M O N N A I E . B E / D E M U N T. B E MM TICKETS +32 2 229 12 11

33

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Helena Espvall site-specific : cello : improvisation Residency Period: From 12/04/2015 to 03/05/2015 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in the rural village of Açores (Portugal) Swedish cello improviser Helena Espvall was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2015 in the tiny village of Açores (municipality of São Pedro do Sul, Portugal), on the foot of the mystical mount São Macário.

34

HELENA ESPVALL

T

he mountains are towering over us, strewn with yellow flowers.

There is a constant drone of water at different speeds that we hear wherever we are, indoors too. A creek running close by our living quarters, a reservoir of water always dripping and overflowing. And rain. Lots of rain. A tiny remote rural village, Açores, part of the Gralheira mountain range, with only a handful of inhabitants, all elderly. A vertiginous winding road leads to our cottages. It is a breathtakingly beautiful place. Orange trees, eucalyptus, mint, a few ruins.

We are only three artists, Yannick Guédon, from Brussels, Pierre Berthet, from Liège, and me - a Swede living in Lisbon for the last couple of years now. Over time, Pierre creates a magic garden full of sounds emanating from found objects, rusty cans, wires, twigs, small motors, water dripping into containers - wondrous contraptions.

Some rare days without rain, I sit with my cello in that garden and jam along with his wires’ sublime drones.

Pierre also turns out to be capable of coaxing extraordinary music out of vacuum cleaners (the visual appearance

35

of this is quite striking). Yannick plays long notes on his viola da gamba, in the same pitch but with different spacings of silence, and the sound carries into my room and blends with the river and rain. I yearn to sit and play by the creek on top of some decrepit ruin, but most days, I sit inside my room and listen to the rain on the roof, playing for the big lizard that shares my space. So much rain. I run my cello through a chain of loop stations, delays, and distortion pedals. My process is improvisatory.

I sit down to my tools without specific expectations, trying to stay empty and open to see what will show up. I’m overly sensitive to my surroundings and to energies - my curse and my blessing. Sometimes I enter a kind of altered state of mind.

Afterwards, listening to the recordings, I wonder: where did that come from? I enjoy creating and getting lost in many layers and drones with subtle changes and developments. Patterns, ornaments. I was first drawn to Portugal by the azulejos, the decorative tiles, and couldn’t bring myself to leave. Now in Açores, in the rainy season, I find my music highly affected by all the flowing water.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Pierre Berthet found materials : diy electronics : vegetable garden : water Residency Period: From 12/04/2015 to 03/05/2015 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in the rural village of Açores (Portugal) and proposed by Q-O2 Belgian musician and sound artist Pierre Berthet was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2015 in the tiny village of Açores (municipality of São Pedro do Sul, Portugal), on the foot of the mystical mount São Macário.

Pierre built a sound garden below the residency house using found materials, simple electronics, watering techniques plus immense amounts of intuition, observation, detail and poetry.

Instructions to make a sound garden in the last house of Açores, a hamlet with five inhabitants at the end of a road in central Portugal.

T

his house has three parts.

The last part you reach is very small and consists of just one room. It’s now a kitchen but you can put a bed in it.

It faces a terrace with a stone table on which you can work if it isn’t raining.

You might start by assembling the dead, dry leaves of a palm tree and two empty cans of tomato concentrate – suspending the device in front of the house to the left of the little door and attaching a small motor to it.You could fix a little silicone fan to the motor so that it would hit various

parts of the assemblage and shake it.

Between some of the old stones that the house’s external walls are made from, you will find rusty parts of some old garden tools. You could suspend one of the smaller tools just beside the tomato can assemblage, so that the fan would sometimes hit against that as well, depending on the wind. Wind brings a lot of changes and variations.

Sometimes the fan gets blocked for a few seconds. Put a little bit of butter on the fan if it stays blocked too long or gets blocked too often. Adjust the fan to obtain as much variations in sound as is possible. Connect the larger of the two cans to the metal part of the roof with steel wires so that vibrations travel through it. Firmly attach a very thin steel wire to the tomato can, adjusting the length of the wire so that it strikes the stone wall when it is shaken.

36

PIERRE BERTHET

You could then cut the + cable (or the - one) of the motor and strip both ends. You could wrap a flat stone in aluminium foil and fix it to the end of the cable that goes to the motor. Attach the other end (the one that goes to the micro-controller) to a fork and suspend this fork above the wrapped stone in such a way that when the fork swings, the stripped end of the cable touches the wrapped stone when it passes over.

In this way, the contact alternates and the motor switches off and on. When it doesn’t swing, contact is permanent.

There’s another milk bucket around, when you find it, you can pierce a tunafish can and suspend it from three small, metal wires.

Somewhere near, you’ll find an old milk bucket in galvanised metal.

Suspend it with a metal wire in front of the house to the right of the door, attaching it to the roof so that it is just above the ground. On the way to Açores from the airport in Porto, on the first highway car park where you can stop, there are some small palm trees from which you can discreetly cut some long, thin, dry leaves – more or less 25cm in length. Attach them firmly around a small, low-tension motor so that it looks a little like a giant spider. Suspend the spider so that it touches the milk bucket and connect the motor to a micro-controller which can vary the speed of the motor according to variations in tension.

37

Two meters above you could hang a plastic bottle upside down from the roof. You would have cut the bottom of the bucket beforehand and have pierced the stopper. You would need to put a plastic tube in the hole – 5mm in diameter, 5cm in length, and put a stop valve at its end. You could lengthen it with a silicone tube of the same dimensions, fixing a ball of aquarium filter material to its end. Fill the plastic bottle with water and regulate the speed of its flow with the valve until you find a tempo of dripping water that you like.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Adjust the milk bucket underneath so that the water-drops fall into the suspended tuna can. Put some stones in the bottle so that it doesn’t swing too much. At this point, you already have three sound devices near to one another: listen to this trio as long as possible. At the end of the terrace, behind the stone table, you can take the stairs down to the garden below. On your left, after walking eight meters through the garden, there’s a small waterfall fed by a reservoir above, in the courtyard near the house. You can stop the waterfall by regulating the level of this reservoir. This is done by using a valve to direct the reservoir’s flow into another garden. Measure a length of plastic tube from the reservoir to the waterfall (5mm in diameter, 15 meters should be long enough). Fix a ball of aquarium filter material to one end to weigh down the tube to ensure that it stays in the bottom of the reservoir. Bring the other end to the mouth of the waterfall below, cut the plastic tube and insert a length of silicone (about 30cm). Curl copper wire

around this length of silicone so that by pressing more or less on the copper you can tune the changes in water flow.

Attach a stop valve and let the drops fall some two meters onto a PVC drum you have built in the way of the water. Make the skin of this drum from silk paper, and cover the membrane with layers of airplane model varnish. The rhythms of the drum vary with the wind flow.

Later in the garden is a disused goat-shelter, made from wood and corrugated iron. You could pierce the roof of the shed with steel wire and suspend a small battery-powered motor from a steel wire. You might pervert the motor with small weights so that it can no longer turn right around. When the motor is switched on, it will resonate up through the wires and the iron structure of the goat-shelter. By extending the net of wires or adding other materials from the garden, you could enrich the resonances it creates. You could wrap the motor in some corn leaves, so that will add a soft ‘frrr’ sound to the mix.

There are many more things you could do of course, but begin with these and make mistakes. Mistakes are a good way to get different results.

38

PIERRE BERTHET

39

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Yannick Guédon composition : treble viola-da-gamba Residency Period: From 12/04/2015 to 03/05/2015 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in the rural village of Açores (Portugal) and proposed by Q-O2 French composer Yannick Guédon was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2015 in the tiny village of Açores (municipality of São Pedro do Sul, Portugal), on the foot of the mystical mount São Macário. Yannick interpreted some of his compositions during the residency, inviting local inhabitants to specific spots in the landscape for individual listening, and created a sound piece for the final event.

Story of “a_ _ _ _ _ _ _”

Saturday 2nd May, 2015

I

am about to play the sound piece ‘a _ _ _ _ _ _ _’ in the bedroom of the cottage where I am staying, in Açores, a remote hamlet of seven inhabitants.

The cottage is situated at the end of a little country road, at the top of a rocky promontory on the inner edge of a meander in a small river.

Thanks to its multiple openings, the bedroom on the second floor of the house offers different views on the valley : one door and one window to the east, two windows to the south, and three to the west.

From these openings, one can see the river flowing from west to east towards the village of Sul, three kilometres downstream.

The sound of the river is very present and it is emphasized as the river passes through several weirs along its course.

As the spectators enter the bedroom, I invite them to sit wherever they like on the available beds, chairs, cushions and mats.

The door and the windows are closed.

The windows are covered with white cotton curtains that let the daylight enter the bedroom but obscure the view of the landscape.

For now, the sounds of the environment are muffed, barely perceptible. Before starting to play, I inform the audience that they can leave the space whenever they want. A way to let them choose an end to the piece I will perform for one hour and a half.

40

YANNICK GUÉDON

The concert can start.

I open the wardrobe on my right and take out my treble viola da gamba. Then I sit down before the only wall without openings, my back to the north.

I first play one bowing on the lowest string of the viol – silence – then two bowings on the same tone – silence.

I stand up and open the door on my left, to the east.

The sound of Pierre Berthet’s installation enters into the bedroom and prolongs the note just played on the viol.

It’s a drone generated by a wire whose vibration resonates in an abandoned shed in the garden.

I come back to my chair then resume the series I started before by playing three bowings – silence – then four – silence.

I get up again to open the window on the right of the door, overlooking the hamlet. From this window, I often see a woman tending her sheep, or hear the dog barking whenever someone walks past its house. The sound of a second installation of Pierre Berthet is heard more distinctly : it consists of drops of water, defected from a pipe, that fall on resonating objects.

I return to my place and play five bowings – silence – then six – silence. I get up and open the window beside the first one.

The sound of the river is now much more present.

I go on with this process until the end of the concert. Each time, I add one bowing to the previous series, and each two series, I open a window,

41

progressively revealing the landscape, both visually and sonorously. When I open the first window on the west side, Helena Espvall starts her concert with her amplified cello on the other side of the river.

Now, three pieces of art interact : Pierre’s installations, Helena’s concert and my own performance, all subject to the vagaries of the surrounding sounds. From the bedroom, the three are perceived as very singular proposals and since the viol is played softly, none overwhelm the others.

I always play the same note on the viol but this sound is enriched gradually by others. Those of my voice.

I hide the fundamental note of my voice in the one of the viol, and develop the natural harmonics series with subtle vocal overtones. Each bowing is related to a specific vocal harmonic of the series.

The first harmonics emphasize those of the viol ; the following ones emerge little by little from the sound of the instrument and become more discernible.

The score could be simply written like this :

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Each number corresponds to a bowing and the related number of the harmonics series.

Consequently, there is a perpetual return to the beginning of the series, a way to deepen our listening to what has been already played but not necessarily heard - because one does not necessarily perceive at frst that the progressive coloration of the sound of the viol is produced by the harmonics of the voice.

Addendum

A few days before performing this piece, this is what I read :

When all the windows are open, I go on with the score and start to close them in the same clockwise direction.

“Anyway, the landscape appears in European painting around 1420 in Flanders, literally through the window. For example, the one that opens onto a city, behind The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen, by Robert Campin, the Master of Flémalle - a “veduta inside the painting” that Alain Roger states to be “the invention of the western landscape. The window is indeed the frame that, by insulating, by enshrining the country in the picture, establishes this land in a landscape.”

The closing generates a different configuration than the openings : the first window opened was on the east side, the last one to stay open is on the west side.

from Augustin Berque, in Les Raisons du paysage, de la Chine antique aux environments de synthèse. Paris, Hazan, 1995, p104.

After having closed the last window, I end the concert by putting the viol back into the wardrobe.

Detail from The Virgin and Child before a Firescreen, Robert Campin (National Gallery London)

View of the hamlet of Açores from the cottage

42

YANNICK GUÉDON

43

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Juan Duarte Regino playful sounds : diy sound electronics Residency Period: From 01/06/2015 to 15/07/2015 Invited by A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle to work in Warsaw and proposed by Hai Art Juan Duarte Regino describes below two projects he realised during his artistic residency in Warsaw: Pulsar Kite and DIY workshop Electroacoustic Atelier. Only one important thing should be added here: Juan’s intensive collaboration with developing sound-artists, among others Izabela Smelczyńska, Kinga Kozłowska and Mateusz Śmigasiewicz created beautiful energy and was an impulse for their further involvement in the SoCCoS project – effecting with their artistic journeys to Hailuoto, Berlin and Brussels.

M

y project at the A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle consisted of two planned activities framed around the topic of Sound of Culture – Culture of Sound. The first activity was based on the development of a Pulsar Kite, a sound instrument controlled by a flying kite. The second project was based on a workshop in sound electronics, which was produced in a collaborative concert using the built electronic instruments.

The residency at the A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle enabled collaboration with local participants interested in sound electronics. This call, set in Warsaw, brought together a group of artists and professionals curious to try sound experiments in a playful manner. My work with sound, through the creation and play of sound artefacts, explores the medium of sound. Thus, I wanted to use a method that would enhance a sonic experience between players and sound objects

in a given environment with specific and malleable qualities, shaping sonic materials to experience interaction and contemplation around the act of listening.

I had the opportunity to fly the Pulsar Kite next to the Vistula River and another location next to the Ujazdowski Castle. The riverbank location offered an interesting view of a bridge that connects Praga and Warsaw. It was windy and cloudy by the river on the day of the recording; it began to rain heavily, but fortunately right after we finished the video and sound recording.

Unfortunately, flying a kite near the Ujazdowski area had less favourable wind conditions; however, there is an additional meaning to flying kites in this space: since this area, connecting the Stanislaw Axis with the Ujazdowski Castle and the landscape of the Vistula embankment, forms a network of locations known as the Smile of Warsaw, or the Flying Kite.

44

JUAN DUARTE REGINO

45

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Caroline Claus sound ecology : urban sound design Residency Period: From 08/06/2015 to 15/07/2015 Invited by A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle to work in Warsaw and proposed by Q-O2 The Warsaw edition of SoCCoS aimed to react to the actual problems in the city soundscape – research on sound in its political and ecological aspects. In 2015, inspired by the Castle’s location near Łazienkowska Road, the dynamic urban spaces of Plac Zbawiciela (Savior Square) and Marszałkowska Street, as well as the tranquil surroundings of the Royal Route and Łazienki Park, resident Caroline Claus concentrated on urban sound ecology and sound interventions in the particular acoustic environments of the CCA neighbourhood. Sound ecology is a relatively new field of artistic expression, research, and urban planning - developing since the 1970s, the concept of soundscape stresses the importance of clarity and diversity of the sound environment in human life. The task of the artist was to undertake actions in public spaces, with the goal being to arouse an interest in city sounds with the residents of Jazdów and other districts of the capital. “Opening the ears” of city dwellers translates into their everyday sound practices, and long-term, into changes in the sound environment, aiming to make the soundscape of Warsaw more aesthetic and friendly (both for humans and for other species of “listeners” living in the city). Caroline Claus organised workshops for local sound artists and researchers. Effects of the workshops were presented during events within the frames of the CCA Ujazdowski Castle festival Jazdów Archipelago. In December of 2015, the bilingual Polish-English publication Urban Sound Design Process by Caroline Claus was published by A-I-R Laboratory - CCA Ujazdowski Castle. This project had financial support from the City of Warsaw.

46

CAROLINE CLAUS

Urban

sound design is the practice of modelling sonic experiences.

It is a design practice in the sense that we’re dealing with shape, texture, distance, scale, ideas of process and change. We’re dealing with acoustic space, but also with psychoacoustic space in a very definite way that literally opens up a normal space outside of itself. Urban sound design is not so much about the design of an object — it’s a sound art practice producing time-space places that are contingent and reciprocal, invisible in the sense of ‘unseen’.

The Urban Sound Design Studio at MDM took place in the fortnight following the residents’ meeting. During several sessions, a group of young sound artists and landscape architects explored and worked with the approach described above. The objective of the studio was the design of public space and/or action for future sonic experiences along Marszałkowska Street. In advance we defined three project areas by cutting

47

up a map of MDM and its surroundings into different pieces, based on the residents’ everyday experience of place and sound. We selected zones that we found to be most interesting in terms of sonic experience, appropriation, and urban, architectural design. The following distinct atmospheric unities were carved out of the supposed unity of MDM: a monumental square, an express-way and its surrounding neighbourhood, and a small-scale neighbourhood possibly threatened by gentrification. The resulting cartography could be used as a catalyst to explore and navigate oneself through varied ambiences, both physical and psychological. Participating artists and designers each made a design proposal for one of the three defined zones.

They worked on one or more sonic experiences for the public space along Marszałkowska. On the final day of the studio they presented their ideas and design proposals by arranging a soundwalk which was open to the public.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Luka Ivanović a.k.a. lukatoyboy lighthouse : blueberries : noise Residency Period: From 27/07/2015 to 16/08/2015 Invited by Hai Art to work in Hailuoto The artist lukatoyboy [Luka Ivanović] visited Hailuoto and Hai Art for three weeks in JulyAugust 2015. Three weeks of sound, blueberries, walks, talks & silent sessions.

ACTIONS > Lighthouse performance on International Lighthouse Day Aug. 18th (video, images, sound) > Woods blueberry noise session (video) > Junk yard sample session (video and sound) > Organum sessions (sound, pictures) > Walkie Talkie LAB action w/ local children (audio, pictures) > Walkie Talkie bird tower Quartet (audio)

To the Lighthouse by lukatoyboy

T

o the Lighthouse is a live sound intervention by Hai Art / SOCCOS Artist in Residence Lukatoyboy, especially prepared for the lighthouse in Marjaniemi and staged for the International Lighthouse Heritage Weekend.

48

LUKA IVANOVIĆ A.K.A. LUKATOYBOY

Although the lighthouse is a famous landmark in Hailuoto, there is another element which might not have the same visual, historical, and architectural value, but has a great influence on the Marjaniemi atmosphere.

Some visitors, who are desperately trying to capture a frame with the lighthouse without it’s ugly brother (or sister), are very much aware of it.

The others, who have already spent a lot of years in Marjaniemi, maybe don’t even notice it. Listen.

Yes - the radar. Its particular sound governs Marjaniemi nowadays (when the wind turbines are silent) and it’s an audible counterpart to the lighthouse.

On Saturday the lighthouse will be filled with sound as well, raising the awareness of a unique soundscape which might be easy to miss for those who are not living in of the Marjaniemi huts.

This way, a duo of the lighthouse and the radar, will have its premiere. Saturday, 15.8. 14:30

Impressions by lukatoyboy

Hai Art is based on an island with a population of 1000 people, which is a very different, rural, farming and natural atmosphere comparing to the European capitals I am the most familiar with. Nevertheless, a media lab is based there, and given the portability of the equipment and the internet connection, the actual workflow bears similarities, but everything else is very different: the audiences, the venues, media, transport, public spaces, social gatherings. Most of these things either barely exist, or are

49

very particular and different to a city life. Its geographical aspects provided a never-ending to surprise subtle change of ground, it being mostly sand, but sometimes ending up being a surprising mud, swamp or filled sponge-like dry organisms which sounded beautiful when crushed, but would then die, leaving permanent tire marks, as they are sometimes impossible to miss. ::::: ::::: Excerpts from a shared diary Hailuoto week one / Not a single car on the road.

Sounds beatiful here: contant waves oscillating radar percussive flag ropes & poles.

Left internet “on” in Luoto resturant area behind the curtain (suggested location) off to sleep. / 4 hours bike ride: 2 guys riding weird vehicles, wearing headphones with antennas 2 senior blueberries pickers, envious of their load (1 pit stop with the best find so far, the biggest and the easiest to pick, although mosquitoes are impossible to escape) 3 Thai women entering a car 1 car parked deep in a wood / Crazy hum coming from a farm-related house nearby, a machine, truck-alike, in front of it.

The grid as the loudest sound on a road.

Some kind of sensor on the ceiling, a good-night blink. / no shopping mall no football team no police no cinema

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

no nightclub one elevator / I went towards the bird tower.

It was occupied, and it was too early to stop.

Tried many roads, often dead-ended. ::::: Organum Sessions: sound soon ::::

Sound in Hailuoto Observations by lukatoyboy

Not being a city means you can get away from the traffics sounds.

On top of that, no human made sounds are inescapable, which helps to discover the sounds of local nature. A different kind of noise occurs: the humming sea waves, the trees in the woods causing traffic-sound aural hallucinations, the local birds. Sometimes, the “rush hour� on the main road reminds you of how it is now for the majority of humans alive living in the cities.

The stream of cars (and buses, because of the summer season) provided the constant reminder, since all roads are connected to the main road. The small roads provided different sounds: sandy (being really quiet), rocky (being really loud) when walking and biking, producing all kinds of small sounds as the effect of each footstep or wheel movement. Branches, and other kind of woods debris, were additional sounds on these roads, something which usually gets removed from city streets, if it becomes present at all.

To be able to perceive these as loud sounds, so many other sounds my ears were accustomed to had to be non-exist, which makes an interesting topic for a noise-to-signal debate.

It was also interesting to stumble upon a recycling scrap yard, where all kinds of human made objects waited for their next destination in a open field, which could be recorded outdoors, without disturbing anyone.

Night were so quiet sometimes that you could only hear the electricity grid, but then, on some nights you could hear constant hums of farming machines.

The sounds related to the accommodation / living situation places are the first and the last sounds we hear in our daily lives.

Comparing to a city, where all kinds of dynamic action are audible if living on a street side, and a bit less if within a backyard, at the first place I was staying in, the wind, since it was a marina, provided a lot of opportunities for loudness.

Its previously operating trio of windmills dissolves into a silent solo, but there is still is a very special sound caused by a radar, a very close and operating partner of an old landmark, the 19th century lighthouse.

The sound of the radar in Marjaniemi was my main inspiration in Hailuoto, as the thought material, and as readymade partner for a public event we staged (more on that later).

At the other, more in-theactual-village place I was staying at, the loudness was both internal and external, related to sustainability of the farms and the guest house. The internal loud air condition, which was used (and I guess is much needed) for the kitchen, was quite something.

An occasional car was coming in an out, and suddenly it became an event - comparing to a city- constant

50

LUKA IVANOVIĆ A.K.A. LUKATOYBOY

stream of car sounds, in which we are able to identify only those much louder than average events: blasting music, obsessive honking, trash picking, police or emergency sirens etc. This particular example of a zooming out / zooming in thought process relating to “sound pollution� was constant throughout my stay in Hailuoto.

Talking further about this, I was informed about a single hut being alone in the woods, far away from the other houses and roads, therefore without sounds to disturb you. But there was a catch, it had a certain device, impossible to turn off, probably related to air, water or a sort of a fire alarm, and that sound usually disturbed the guests in the hut.

It is another example of how much we can be focused to particular sound after being accustomed to the uncontrollable varieties of sounds and background noise in a city, and since recently, the majority of the population lives in a citylike soundscape.

Another very site-specific sound, albeit more as an effect, was tested and used for recordings - the Organum, an acoustic sculpture made by an architect and curated by Hai Art. It is positioned far away enough from any

51

neighbour, after a road ends, and water starts.

The particular acoustics are free for everyone to explore, and there is no plane, car or similar sounds to disturb you - although you may hear some birds, depending on their time for calls.

I also recorded a sound of a friction, squeaks and bangs made during the contact between a sock gangway and the land in Marjaniemi marina.

These particular sounds last only while there is some particular wind, which causes water level to change (since there is no proper low tide / high tide) and/or brings a bit more waves into the marina than usual built protection allows. It is an interesting sound, not only because of its musicality - you could easily imagine free improv percussionists and brass players - but also because of its dual origin - the construction would not provide any sound if no unpredictable and particular natural/geographical events would occur, nor would there be something like a dock gangway without the human in(ter)vention. This also is related to the topic of geography above.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Susana Santos Silva & Torbjörn Zetterberg double bass : trumpet : site-specific improvisation Residency Period: From 10/08/2015 to 05/09/2015 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels Susana Santos Silva’s and Torbjörn Zetterberg’s plan for the residency was to explore the city by playing it with their instruments; trumpet and double bass. They travelled around Brussels and recorded improvisations on sites which they felt inspiring. Brussels video artist Val King joined them to capture place and space. This plan related to an earlier project, an album which was recorded in the north of Sweden capturing the harsh yet beautiful and tranquil environment.

Interview by Henry Andersen Can you talk me through the process you went through to find the spaces in Brussels? Did you have particular spaces or kinds of spaces in mind? Did you travel by foot?

We

went around town by foot, bike and tram. Even before starting we’d been asking around for interesting spots around Brussels. Q-O2 provided us with a list of locations and great ideas for our project. We didn’t really have any specific type of places in mind but we knew we wanted to find both acoustically and environmentally interesting spaces.

How do you think the experience of making this experiment in Brussels was different than it would have been in a city you were more familiar with?

Do you think the kinds of environments you found in Brussels are particular to this city?

1. It probably made the process a bit more interesting for us being in a foreign city since we tend to find foreign things somehow more exciting.

2. Yes and no. Some are very much so, like the tram station. While some others, like the garage, might not be so unique to Brussels. This was something we talked quite a bit about during the residency, where to put focus. We did want to capture Brussels, but that was not necessarily more important than for example acoustics or just an interesting vibe.

52

SUSANA SANTOS SILVA & TORBJÖRN ZETTERBERG

Can you tell me about the difference between the inside and outside sites you chose to improvise in? From the video, it seems like inside you are working more with the resonances and acoustics of these large spaces, whereas outside the environmental sounds become more important. Is this accurate do you think?

We found it particularly interesting with the mix of the silent big wet rooms and the dry sound in the busy and sometimes very noisy outdoor environments. Also in the outdoor locations we really wanted to bring the surrounding sounds into our improvisations. Of course, in a large room the resonance plays pretty much the same role as the environmental sounds in an outdoor setting. And whatever it is, it will affect the improvisation.

Can you talk a little about the relationship you had with Val King, who shot the video for the project? You describe working with him as being like performing in a trio.

Can you elaborate a little?

I think it might have a lot to do with the fact that he made all the videos in one single shot. Since that was his idea from the very beginning it probably helped him get in that same ‘life and death’ mode you somehow need to be when you improvise. Of course Val was improvising too, with us. As we played Val danced around us, being in the music, fully present.

Why did you want to include a visual element in this project?

Both of us are quite interested in the mixing of art forms. As a duo we’ve only done one real collaboration like that before. That time it was at the Stockholm City Theatre with Swedish

53

actress Gunilla Röör. For this project, it really was natural. Picturing all these fantastic environments we would find in Brussels. We just had to have this documented visually.

Is it unusual for you to improvise without a live audience in this way?

This is an interesting point.

Most of the time we play it’s in front of an audience. This is a totally different setting and there is a different energy.

But that’s also very interesting, the subtle differences. Somehow playing in front of a camera, the camera becomes the audience. Also, the different environments somehow provide some kind of audience. Like at the tram station, there were all the people’s different reactions. In the park, there were some people doing yoga or similar, birds all over the place and so on. All these things bring in a whole new energy, and that probably (hopefully) has an impact on the performance.

When you perform together normally (outside of this project, I mean) you usually play in dedicated music venues, with a stage, audience etc. In these cases, do the space and environmental sounds still filter into the way you improvise, do you feel?

It does for sure, but in more subtle ways perhaps. It’s basically the same thing. Only that the difference between two concert venues might not be as big as the difference between for example the beautiful acoustics at La Loge and the business down in an underground tram station. Concert venues still differ in acoustics though and there are usually people making noises which naturally becomes part of the experience and so on.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

As I understand it, working so directly with different sites is new for you too.

Has the experience affected the way you work in general?

Is it something you will continue to do?

It is new and not new to us. I don’t think we ever thought about it so clearly before, but when I think about the different places we played prior to our month in Brussels a park in Stockholm comes to mind, a huge church in Paris, theatres, clubs, festivals, indoors and outdoors. I think what is really interesting about working so intensively with the spaces like this is that it forces you to widen your perspective. And so to speak ‘become’ not only what you are playing,

but everything else going on at the same time. Improvising in a group you have to be open to what the other musicians are doing and respond to that. The idea here is to widen your perspective further and let the whole environment join the band. I do think it has affected the way we work in general, though it would be hard to pinpoint how. Will we continue? Well, after our month in Brussels we certainly are tempted.

[The videos can be watched at http:// ssstz.tumblr.com/residencyqo2]

54

SUSANA SANTOS SILVA & TORBJÖRN ZETTERBERG

55

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Hai Art Micro-Residency #1 Field Techno

listening : exploration : voicing : movement Hailuoto Island, Finland Micro-Residency Period: From 30/08/2015 to 06/09/2015 • 10 emerging sound artists invited for a one week residence in Hailuoto • remote work in nature / off the grid situation • intuitive iPad / app music / real time sampling workshop • sound and movement • sound, exploration, voicing, group action in the Organum • outdoor, sea, sand, space, time • internet, LAB space, audio and video tech available • curatorial company with: Andrew Jarvis, Anne Lepère, Antoni Michnik, Izabela Smelczyńska, Kamila Staśko-Mazur, Kinga Kozłowska, Marine Drouan, Paweł Paide Dunajko, Federico Dottini, Jacek Sotomski

56

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #1

RUSSULA CAMP

MUSIC FOR WOODEN SURFACES

BLUEBERRY TECHNO NON-PLACE SOUNDWALK

MUSHROOM BEATS

WERKZ & FIELDZ SOUND OF RESIDENCE {HOUSE} NORTHERN ISLAND

MUSHROOM FIELD WORK

SOUNDING PLACES

TRIBUTE TO JOHN CAGE BIRTHDAY

STUDY OF MOVEMENT SONG OF AURORA 57

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

FIELD TECHNO Event score A field practice for 9+ people

• gather about 9 people for field techno practice • assemble as many possible battery powered speakers (with cables or bluetooth) • collect multiple analogue, digital, portable noisemaking objects • if you don’t play - dance or record • if a consequent rhythm or vibe is established - dance all together • don’t stress for results, let it happen • listen to the environment, incorporate the non-human • use your voice once in the session • have 2 people record your shit and 2 cameras • publish with hashtag #fieldtechno

58

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #1

Mise en Abyme on Hailuoto

[by Anne Lepère]

-1At first you arrive on an island. You have heard stories of this Hailuoto community.

What is happening here is like a microcosm, certainly something that can be expanded on a larger scale.

Interactions on a local level always reveal the best and the worst of human beings, but they seem stronger in a smaller space where people are still able to discuss any problem that arises.

Arguments, reflections, debates, acceptance, …

Here you can find the codes for a global society.

What is the position of the strangers, the children and the elderly in this community?

How can we react to drama?

How to move in this island space with its territory so definite?

How does living in a community ask us to understand the world around us.

Understanding & composition.

A composition which cares about others but still respects yourself at the same time.

-2On a second level of community life... living with 10 strangers 10 people listening carefully to each other create an effortless atmosphere where everybody is moving softly.

Usually it takes time to be able to act out your own rhythm within a group. Here it seems so easy.

59

-3 Then, on a third level these 10 people are exploring this astonishing place: the Organum.

Organum, a space on the island where you can also hear yourself belonging to a space. Bringing you to the awareness of a resonant inside.

Like a skin between voices and world.

Your own voice has an effect on each of the walls of this architectural proposition, except when sound is suddenly absorbed by a hole.

Natural openings on the environment around.

Also, by being fascinated by one sound, by focusing on it, you may forget the ensemble and find it difficult to observe all life inside the Organum.

It can be a fragile composition: Outside feeling inside, inside feeling outside.

And maybe it’s here that we reach the fourth step of the mise en abyme

-4Behind the ear Deeper & deeper To reach silence / calm / understanding / acceptation Maybe the more carefully we use our ear the more the limits between ourselves and our outsides decreases life ... ... and finally we belong to a same-space a same-world Melting the borders ...

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

60

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #1

61

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

GrawBöckler language : weather Residency Period: From 14/09/2015 to 21/09/2015 Invited by DISK Berlin/CTM Festival to Novosibirsk, Russia Let’s Talk about the Weather is the latest initiative by duo GrawBöckler. The project explores different particuliarities of language, taking the weather’s position as the lowest common denominator for a conversation as a starting point, and elevating the subject by artistic means.

GrawBöckler added a chapter to this ongoing project during a residency at the CTM Siberia festival. The duo interviewed CTM Siberia participants and festtivalgoers, as well as the residents of Novosibirsk, asking them to describe diverse feelings and thoughts using weatherrelated words and symbols. Currently assembling the footage into a video montage, a whole new range of colours and expressions from Russia and Siberia is now being added to their ongoing weather “episodes”.

62

GRAWBÖCKLER

63

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

64

GRAWBÖCKLER

65

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

66

GRAWBÖCKLER

67

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Soundwalk Collective memory : landscape : frequency Residency Period: From 14/09/2015 to 21/09/2015 Invited by DISK Berlin/CTM Festival to Novosibirsk, Russia As part of CTM Siberia festival, which took place 14-20 September 2015 in Novosibirsk, Russia, Soundwalk Collective affiliate Arthur Larrue conducted preliminary research focused on the Отшельник (otchelnik), as a type of person exiting contemporary society and living in relative isolation in the remote Altai Mountains, some 600km of Novisibirsk. The work gradually evolved into an experimental multimedia piece when, in spring 2016, two other Soundwalk Collective members ventured to the Altai Mountains to collect sound and visual materials for the project. Titled Memory, Landscape & Frequency, the project became a broader research on a Siberian (sound) identity. The final work will be premiered at CTM 2018.

Foreword by Arthur Larrue

“I

consulted an empty dictionary, somewhere. All information that was too precise had been erased from its pages. Entries relating to locations had no mention of governments, no important dates, nothing of wars or revolutions.

Location names were simple invitations to dream. The cities were purely mental constructs, as were the countries and oceans”.

At the entry, Russia, I found: “an immense, uninhabited territory”.

At the entry, Siberia, was written: “carte blanche”. In 2013, I attempted to describe in a novel the definition of St. Petersburg, but I found this task extremely difficult.

Only one word came to mind the entire time I was writing the novel: “fog”. I was nonetheless living in St. Petersburg at that time. Living in a place does not necessarily give you permission/the ability to describe/speak of it. In 2012,

together with my friends the Soundwalk Collective, we created a dictionary of this sort. It contained one lonely entry: Black Sea. We travelled around this sea by sailboat. Together, we wished to create the most broad definition for it possible. They recorded the sounds of our journey, musicians and all other voices that were able to tell us something of this region of the world. Using these recordings, Soundwalk Collective composed a work that they named after a witch that inhabited the area: Medea. Each time I listen to Medea, I hear the words, ‘Black Sea’. I no longer remember the words that I created for the Black Sea Journal, where I described the creation of Medea. I do remember the following questions: Is it possible to escape? Isn’t it preferable to get lost?

Siberia is an ideal word for getting lost / to get lost in. The work, Memory Landscape, brings up another question in me: What kind of memory do we keep of those that have left? / of the one that left?

68

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

SYNOPSIS

MEMORY, LANDSCAPE & FREQUENCY is an audiovisual project that attempts to establish a confrontation of the geographical landscape of a territory with the anthropological memory of colonisation. The attempt by human beings to appropriate a land, revealing the psychic claims that they impose on nature.

With the cooperation of Stas Sharifullin and Klammklang, we compiled unpublished audio diaries of first Siberian colonisation and sonar recordings used to map the land from a scientific standpoint, towards the creation of a sonic journal that re-asserts the relationship of human and land (landscape).

Landscape and myth establish themselves more than anywhere else in Siberia, making metaphors more real than their references and becoming in fact part of the scenery.

The sacred, the memory, the woodland wilderness of Siberia, generation after generation have consolidated the myth of an uncontaminated territory. The forest and the rivers have seen war and terror, elation and desperation, death and resurrection; a sense of primitive darkness is re-enforced by the endless forest. It is a bewitched land.

The composition depicts Siberia as a place of myth, sacredness and expanse. It will set off on the trail of ‘social memory’, acknowledging the ambitious legacy of nature that Siberia’s uncompromising landscape embraces.

69

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

CO-PRODUCTION & COLLABORATION

This project is a co-production between Goethe Institute Novosibirsk under the supervision of Stefanie Peter, DISK Berlin, Deutschlandradio Kultur & Radio France Culture.

KLAMMKLANG founder Stas Sharifullin was invited to explore the groundwork and assist in the discovery of sleeping sonic memories that originated at the time of the first expeditions in Siberia. These exist under the form of tape reels, cassette tapes, SONAR, SODAR and ultra sound land scanning methods that were adopted to map, grade, understand and possess the land; measure its depth, its space - ground communication, the weather conditions it is subject to, its water basins.

The recordings derive from the local geo/weather scientific labs at the Siberian Federal University archive in Krasnoyarsk, and local History Museum archives retaining reel-to-reel audio diaries on Siberia colonisation and urbanisation recorded between the 1950s and 1970s, as well from the national radio archives and the Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Information Sciences.

We undertook the process of researching, identifying, re-archiving towards an ongoing human chronicle of the discovery and structure of the land from the first settlements.

In a cut-and-paste collage these sonic documents are juxtaposed against field recordings of exemplary forests, emblematic wind, storms and trees; confronting the sound of nature with the one of human ownership and settlement.

70

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

SONAR / SODAR

Sonar (originally an acronym for SOund Navigation And Ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, communicate with or detect objects on or under the surface of the water, such as other the presence position of the land (land measurement).

Two types of technology share the name ‘sonar’: passive sonar is essentially listening for the sound made by vessels; active sonar is emitting pulses of sounds and listening for echoes.

Sonar may be used as a means of acoustic location and of measurement of the echo characteristics of ‘targets’ in the water.

71

Acoustic location in air was used before the introduction of radar.

Sonar may also be used in air for robot navigation, and SODAR (an upward looking in-air sonar) is used for atmospheric investigations.

The term sonar is also used for the equipment used to generate and receive the sound. The acoustic frequencies used in sonar systems vary from very low (infrasonic) to extremely high (ultrasonic).

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS

In collaboration with Gennadi Krivolapov of the Siberian State University of Telecommunications and Information Sciences, and Andrey Smirnov, founder of the Theremin Centre of Electroacoustic Music in Moscow, we researched the scientific instruments that were initially used for the mapping of the Siberian landscape above and below the Earth’s surface.

These instruments of scientific origin produce ultrasound and subsonic frequencies used to scan the surrounding territory.

By adopting them as musical instruments / synthesizers, Soundwalk Collective operated them in a studio setting to generate the same tonalities and pulses that were once employed for landscape measurement and mapping in Siberia, towards the creation of a multi-layered tonal backdrop in the sound composition.

72

SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE

SOUND COMPOSITION

We conceived an atonal meditative piece that references the Siberian solitude and landscape and evokes the immensity and abstraction of the land.

Recordings from the region were used as a point of departure in the composition: archive tapes that contained conversations or diaries, short-wave / long-wave radio transcripts, sonar and ultra-sound land inspection studies, field recordings.

Ultrasonic frequencies were transposed to their fundamental frequency denominators in the human hearing spectrum to become hearable.

73

The sounds of artificial origins were laid out against the field recordings to create a counter point with the sound of nature, both of them trying to reveal themselves and progressively growing into each other forming a drone composition where all sonic sources are melting together and create a meditative aural space.

The outcomes of the project are an album composition, a narrative format for radio broadcasting on Deutschlandradio Kultur and Radio France Culture, and either an audiovisual installation or live audiovisual performance realised in early 2017 in collaboration with DISK Berlin and CTM Festival.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Jaume “Mal” Ferrete voice politics : masculinities Residency Period: From 28/09/2015 to 15/10/2015 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels For his research project Afónica/Masculinities, a document and conversation-based research and creation project on the issue of masculinities, Jaume Ferrete took different interviews and dove into archives in Brussels. Jaume’s project fits within the frame of a growing interest in this issue within academia and social movements. Special attention is paid to the problem of unsaying (from) a position characterized by the privilege of saying.

Afónica/Masculinities builds on the work Jaume Ferrete has done in recent years on the subject of the political dimensions of voice as developed in Catalan, Spanish, Latin-American, and European contexts.

Q-O2 is a place where I return.

I

have returned several times since my first visit in 2010, as part of Sons de Barcelona - a sound-pedagogy project related to the Pompeu Fabra University and taking part in the Sounds of Europe project.

The last time I was a resident at Q-O2 was in October, 2015, with a project around masculinities and the voice and in June 2016, I again returned to Q-02 to speak about the research I had undertaken within this project.

Taking the politics or ideologies of the voice as a starting point, I attempted an approach to the problematic participation of the male/masculine position in feminist activism, theory, and

aesthetic practices. This approach could be summarised with the question: “How to unsay oneself from a position characterised by the privilege of ‘saying’?”

It seems to be a social given that any legitimate practices or discourse around masculinity must necessarily originate from a biologically male body; that it is men, male bodies, and male behaviour that form the material basis of what we call masculinity. A look at recent changes on the perception and practice of masculinity, however, would seem to suggest that these are occurring, either in reaction to or directly produced by the work of feminist and LGBTQ theorists and activists. I did not want my project to reinforce the idea that the legitimacy to address issues around masculinity is contained only in the male voice.

Instead, I focused on speaking with

74

JAUME “MAL” FERRETE

bio-women, trans women, trans men, etc. all of whom had much to say on the subject.

Attempting to find people to speak with is always an important part of my research process. In October I received a good tip from Laurence Rassel, who I knew from her work at Fundació Tàpies in Barcelona. She suggested I write to Sophia (sophia.be), a Brussels-based organisation dedicated to stimulating research and education in gender studies. This was a huge help.

The people at Sophia were so kind as to send me a list giving the names of organisations, researchers, and other people who they thought could be of interest for the project.

Of the people I contacted, it was Josephine Hoegaerts - a historian of gender, politics, and vocal culture in modern Western Europe – who was the biggest influence on the development of the project. In her texts, Josephine has dealt with ideas around masculinity and the voice in a way that I felt was close to what I was trying to do.

75

By the time I contacted Josephine, she was living in Finland but I had the opportunity to speak with her via Skype. During our conversation, Josephine made a comment that provided an important clue with how to go forward with the project. Her words suggested a possible turn from a politics of the voice to a politics of listening.

This lead me to the work of others, including artists Fiona Whelan, and Brandon LaBelle, and - in Mexico, where I reside - Carlos Lenkesdorf’s accounts of the language and cosmo-vision of the indigenous Mayan Tojolabal people.

In June 2016, I gave a lecture performance at Q-O2, which was a helpful prompt for me to attempt to recollect and present all the different testimonies and ideas that I had collected while researching the project.

It also allowed me a chance to experiment with the format of a presentation and how to approach the reading of a standard text. The context of the festival included the company of several other artists and researchers whose work dealt with a politics of the voice, and their research was very interesting and enriching for me as well.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Aurélie Lierman composition : vocal art : radio art Residency Period: From 01/10/2015 to 31/10/2015 Invited by Q-O2 alongside Dutch collective iii to MoKS in Mooste, Estonia During the residency, Aurélie Lierman researched the speaking voice in an acousmatic context by creating a vocal theatre piece exploring the boundaries between music and meaning. Her composition in progress, Home as a Shelter, reflects on the idea of home as a symbol for ‘shelter’ and ‘safety’, and its shifting meanings in times of disaster. Several presentations were held in the area together with the collective iii.

A musical affair with nature:

I

was invited for a one-month residency with iii and Q-02 in MoKS, Mooste, South-Eastern Estonia (about 2 bus stops from the Russian border). My most vivid memories of MoKS are my daily, solo walks right after breakfast in the surroundings of the MoKS artist residency. These were not sound-walks like those I usually make in urban environments, but walks without attitude or microphone - walks whose only purpose was to take some fresh air, to clear my ears, and to relax my eyes before beginning my day’s work. I travel often and over the past 10 years, I have seen many landscapes across several continents. To date, Mooste in Estonia is perhaps the second most silent place I have visited, topped only by the empty desert of inner Australia.

On my daily walks in Mooste, I would explore the region’s fairytale

fields and woodlands, walking each day in a larger circle around MoKS. One day, I went a bit further than usual, arriving at an intersection with an earth road for farmers, facing toward Russia. All I could see in any direction was desolate, ploughed fields and farmland vaulted by a bright blue autumn sky. It’s there that I re-lived John Cage’s famous anecdote from the anechoic chamber. There was no wind. The whole scene was so still and quiet that I could hear the soundtrack of my own nervous system and my blood in circulation.

On another of those walks, in another part of Mooste, I experienced the opposite. I began singing and playing with the natural echo, which created an unintentional acousmatic effect in full nature. The sound accidentally caught the attention of two passing foxes. Both confused by my echo, they would stop the middle of their course, for tens of minutes, trying to understand whether the echo was coming from me or from another (invisible)

76

AURÉLIE LIERMAN

human being hiding somewhere at the other side of the field, valley, or forest.

This was not an isolated incident. In fact, Echo’s confusion was everywhere. I also remember a watchdog near the village of Mooste that would bark endlessly, differently than the way in which dogs usually bark. It was as if the dog had gotten trapped in a perpetual cycle - an ongoing, antiphonal game of question and answer where the answer would never come.

Echo was also there when I walked into a dense, majestic forest of birches and coniferous, right on the shores of a fairy-like lake in twilight.

There, the natural sound effects touched me on a different level. The long stems of the plants all stood very close to one another. When singing my first notes, the stems would carry my voice with a very pure and long-lasting reverberation, as if I stood in a large, invisible cathedral with perfect acoustics. While singing to the trees and the lake, I finally understood that every hi-tech DAW and plug in, every concert hall and every church is merely an imitation of natural phenomena that have existed since the beginning of time. Today, powerful natural echoes and reverbs, like the kinds I found in Estonia, have become very hard to find (at least in Western Europe). I have enjoyed (artificial) reverb and echo so many times, but it was never as mystical as it was when I was alone next to that lake and old forest in the remote woodlands of South-Eastern Estonia.

Another (last) anecdote from the Estonian countryside: this time, there was no musical interaction with echo and reverb, but a sort of musical communication took place between me and a herd of cows. Passing their large

77

meadow, I wanted to greet the cows.

Instead of human speech or mo-oing, I felt like singing to them. At first some Bach-like inventions, classical vocalisations, and improvisations in gospel style.

When I wanted to continue my journey, I realised that the cows had become fascinated by my vocal utterances. At that moment, the cows closest to me had all stopped their usual activities and kept staring at me. I walked a little further, continuing my vocal improvisation. As I continued singing, the cows nearby would follow me, almost as if they wanted something from me. Now also those at the very far end of the meadow would stop eating and come closer to me. At one point the whole herd (30 or more cows) was standing still in front of me. I was impressed by this, and I stood still and stopped my singing. I looked over at the cows.

They were all looking at me too, I guess waiting for me to continue my singing.

I hesitated a little. The herd was so big and so close and the fence between us not so high. At that point, I wasn’t yet sure whether the cows liked what I was doing. I started to worry that my sounds may have intimidated them unintentionally. I also had no idea if there were bulls amongst the herd who may want to protect the cows. I made myself smaller; went down on my knees so that they could see that I didn’t want to harm them. The cows all followed my actions with their eyes. Because I had stopped singing, I guess, the cows came closer, step by step, and waited for something to happen, looking with patience at me.

At some point, I had the feeling they were expecting me to continue to sing and so I did. First softly, then with more confidence. I was so intrigued at how this spontaneous singing session had turned into a kind of interaction, almost like I were a snake charmer. I continued

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

my singing in baroque, classical, and gospel style.

Finally, when I had to leave, I carefully stood, all the while continuing to sing in the same manner. As I quietly sang and walked away, the whole herd was quietly following me, step by step, until the far end of their meadow.

Even when I had left the meadow behind, hundreds of meters further, the whole herd kept standing together and looking in my direction. And when they couldn’t see me because the road would descend or turn, I was sure the cows could still hear me because some of the cows would go and stand on a hill and continue watching me until I was completely out of their sight.

Maybe communication is not an accurate word for this experience.

Rather, I think my singing to the cows

had a therapeutic, emotional, trance, or narcotic effect on the herd. I came to Mooste for a completely different research (to explore the speaking voice and the correlation between speech, music, and meaning), but since my adventure with the cows (as well as the foxes, the dog, the natural echo and reverb) I am now more curious about the effects of musically-organised sound on animals living outdoors, in full nature.

I am most curious about what it can communicate and what its psychological impact may be. Perhaps a topic for a future project‌? Chance encounters and anecdotes like those I described above were only possible because of this residency in a remote place like MoKS, located at the South-Eastern backwaters of Estonia. An unforgettable musical treat and definitely a gateway to something new!

78

AURÉLIE LIERMAN

79

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Tiina Laurila field recordings : electronic sounds : movement : voice Residency Period: From 06/10/2015 to 24/10/2015 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Fataunços (Portugal) and proposed by Hai Art Finnish sound & media educator Tiina Laurila, who helps partner organization Hai Art in some projects with children/youths, was proposed to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape series of artist residencies, one of which took place in October 2015 in the rural village of Fataunços (municipality of Vouzela). Tiina developed a series of workshops with local children using field recordings, improvisations with electronic music and explorations with voice, movement and expression. She created a final audiovisual piece using all these collected materials.

“Kids don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.” ― Jim Henson

W

orking with the local children was, without any hesitation, the best part of my residency with Binaural/ Nodar in the village of Fataunços. For me it was wonderful to have the possibility to witness evolving processes in these kids, how they quickly learned to listen, to tell stories, to react to stimuli and generate ideas, and to see their enthusiasm, liberation, imagination and freedom of expression. That made me become convinced that most of the methods that can be used with kids are universal and valid in any culture.

Children are naturally curious and keen on experiencing new things and perspectives. Bringing sound art close to them and to familiarize kids with the multiple possibilities of observing

and listening to their surroundings and nature through modern technology yet in the process retain something very characteristic in all children’s movement and action.

When not having a mutual language, just being myself, present, open and honest, turned out to be the key to our successful communication.

Kids hardly never listen what you say (although they sense everything), but they will follow your example.

I find that being close to kids and working with them, is probably necessary for everyone who works as a sound artist, since there is so much to learn in ways of observing things and life around. Hearing through children’s ears, seeing through their eyes will give everyone so much detail, tiny things that in the end are very significant.

In Fataunços there is a beautiful and diverse nature around, but I found out that only few of the children

80

TIINA LAURILA

I worked with had ever played in the woods or made a trip to the nearby river, let alone knew about the significant role of local agriculture and the interaction between nature and people in the village and in their family’s history.

For me, when observing reality as an outsider, this came to prominence quite in the beginning of the residency and finding and testing the ways to provide these children a deeper experience and connection with the nature, became my goal and rather the essence of the residency.

Hearing the forest whispering, gnomes and fairies laughing are universal substances associated with childhood as part of an imaginary world.

In the rational world only kids have the privilege of expressing their experiences of the invisible or unseen as real.

81

At some point, one is expected to grow up and start using the senses in appropriated and accepted ways, suitable to the operating environment, oriented to performance and achievement.

Seeing a tree as a tribe and leaves as its people is a possibility for understanding the importance of cherishing life. Connection with nature and seeing its fragile yet abundant renewal is a gateway into understanding the diversity in people and cultures and the richness in them.

I hope that in my work, connecting sound art to this invisible world and environmental awareness, could give people new perspectives in understanding and appreciating childhood and how necessary it is to be more aware of it in our existences, specially in later stages of our lives.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Xabier Erkizia oxcarts : sound anthropology : storytelling : radio Residency Period: From 06/10/2015 to 24/10/2015 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Fataunços (Portugal) Basque sound anthropologist & artist Xabier Erkizia was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in October 2015 in the rural village of Fataunços (municipality of Vouzela). Xabier developed one interaction of his long-standing sound anthropology project around oxcarts, one that has led/will lead him to such places like the Azores Islands, Brazil, Africa and Asia. Xabier produced a radio piece (Os Eixos do meu Carro Deixaram de Tocar) using some collected materials, like recordings of oxcarts in the fields and interviews with some of their owners about the local traditions of using the oxcarts.

THE AXLES OF MY CART STOPPED PLAYING

A

daptation of the original script for a radio piece with the same title.

In the 60’s, the Argentinian singer-songwriter, guitarist, poet and writer Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992) borrowed from the Uruguayan poet Romildo Risso (1882-1946) a poem that, dressed with his music, became almost an anthem to an entire generation. The song in question is called “the axles of my cart”.

Because I don’t grease the axles They call me abandoned ...

If I like that they sound, Why should I want to grease them?

Fataunços (Vouzela, Viseu District, Portugal) October, 2015.

I arrive here looking for a sound that resists me. In all probability this resistance is the main reason to insist on this trip. It is known that impossibility always gives better results than easiness, even more so when it comes to sound. And, in this case, the curious silence surrounding this sound makes my quest to be amplified by the frustration of not being able to listen to it.

A sound already turned into a dream of which only an echo remains, closely kept in the memory of people who in most cases I don’t know, nor will I; And, in other cases, people I barely know but with whom I have listened and tried to learn to listen. It is a sound that, by its presence, mainly in rural environments, has long ago lost its original meaning and became just a trace, a wound that reminds us of the richness of all that knowledge that, by being oral and not corrupted by written knowledge (official, academic, formal),

82

XABIER ERKIZIA

has fallen into that sack that no one remembers, claims or disputes and that we call collective oblivion.

Luckily, my friends at Binaural/ Nodar, with whom I share geographic distance and affective closeness in equal measure, were able to help me with my search. We share wounds.

obvious excitement, he promises me that we will go for a ride on the cart.

The same one that has been driving for decades, since, after a traffic ticket (he has never had a driving license), he stopped using the tractor and went back to the old cart. This time around it is drawn by cows. A matter of economy.

Romildo Risso was born and lived in Uruguay, in the capital Montevideo.

He was not a professional writer. He combined his literary work with other jobs such as clerk, lubricant salesman and factory manager. He was not a country man. He lived in the city. But even so, he wrote several odes to the peasant world, in which the references to the ox carters were constant.

Thus we came across Fernando Lourenço da Silva, probably the last cattleman of Fataunços. The last soundmaker of that countryside.

This song was published in a record album that, with time, became a classic of South American music. It was the year of 1968. The same year tractors arrived in Fataunços. The same year Fernando got married and settled in Fataunços. The album was entitled “El hombre, el paisaje y su canción (“The man, the landscape and its song”).1

It is obvious that Fernando likes to tell stories. He is more eager to talk than to be interested in understanding what we are doing. Actually, the latter has the least importance. So it must be. Although we don’t share a common language, we chatted at ease between rescued jargon and improvised Portuñol (a loose mix of Portuguese and Spanish), understanding more by intuition than by definition. Celebrating every understood word, although that is still the least important thing.

He tells dozens of stories about the ox carts that used to cross the Vouzela valley for centuries. He talks about the importance of the old Roman road and the squeaking, usually called “singing” in that region, that the carts made when they would pass on that road. It touches my wound. Seeing my 1

Crossing the salt flats One dies of thirst That is pure desert.

And there is nothing to do.

Work, I want work.

Because this can’t be.

I don’t want anyone to endure The pains that I have endured.

I’m angry at the silence For all that I have lost.

Do not remain silent that who wants to live happily. 2

After several delays due to the irregular rain, it seems that the day has finally arrived. We drive to the appointment at the plot that Fernando’s family own a few hundred meters from their house. There they have a shed and a stable where Mourisca and Amarela sleep, the two cows that pull his cart every day. He treats them with the same affection he shows when he speaks of them. He tries not to yell, although occasionally he threatens them, almost affectionately. We notice that there 2

Atahualpa Yupanqui: Trabajo, quiero trabajo (1968)

RCA Victor, 1968

83

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

are people working in the cornfield surrounding the stable. Only the random movement of the plants warns us of their presence.

It’s too boring to follow and follow the trail to walk and walk the roads Without anything to entertain me.

While attaching the pair of cows to the cart, Fernando recites with good humour the name of the pieces that shape the cart and the mounts. ‘Cocões’ is the name given to the pieces that generate the much desired squeaking sound. An old fixed brake system that works by friction and depending on the type of wood it’s made from and the intensity with which it is actioned, it “sings” in different ways. It is not the result of chance or technical default.

It is a sounding that can be adjusted, designed, and tuned. It is as much the sound of the cart as it is of the cows but it is mainly of the carter. The ‘cocões’ are the key to a process of musicking that, however old and obsolete it may seem, is still alive, mutated into another shape, but alive in the way we design our everyday sounding. It’s a way of saying ‘Here I am, listen to me.’

I don’t need silence, I don’t have anyone to think about I had, but long ago, Now I don’t have anymore.

Although the song was already well known, “The axles of my cart” became really known throughout South America thanks to another singer called Facundo Cabral. He was a very special person since his childhood. At the age of nine he escaped home, with the goal of arriving in Buenos Aires to ask a question to the then President of the Republic Juan Domingo Perón, known for being the president who “gave work to the poor.”

After getting past the police siege around the President’s house, he got in front of him and asked, “Is there work for me?”

Because I don’t grease the axles They call me abandoned If I like that they sound why should I want to grease them.

I watch Fernando’s preparations, as if watching a cellist preparing his solo concert, in that strange mixture of rudeness and fragility. All kinds of microphones are ready to record this old ‘singing’. The expectation, however few we may be, is remarkably great. I am in the back of the cart that will travel about 150 meters and arrive at the spot where the maize plants are already stacked and ready to be transported.

With my weight the cart should sound even more.

Fernando calls and the cows pull. However, no singing is heard other than that generated by the rubbing of the upper wooden pieces of the cart.

The cart sounds but it doesn’t sing.

Romualdo Risso died in 1946 in Montevideo. He didn’t live to know the tractors that silenced his beloved carts.

Atahualpa Yupanqui, died on May 23, 1992, far from his beloved Argentina, far from the peasants and carts. After a concert in France, he felt indisposed and died suddenly.

Facundo Cabral, after becoming blind, was murdered on July 9, 2011, in Guatemala, by mistake. His assassins wanted to kill a prestigious businessman but instead they killed a blind singer who used to sing to the carts.

84

XABIER ERKIZIA

Fernando Lourenço da Silva didn’t remember that a few years ago he had to add a piece of stainless steel (a muffler) to the axles of his cart so that it wouldn’t sound, so that his company wouldn’t make the neighbours suffer.

And although I suppose disappointment is visible in my expression, he doesn’t seem to be concerned about it.

So it must be. It’s been a while since his concert ended.

I prefer to think that, in reality, although the axles of his car stopped playing, he continues to listen to them singing.

The axles of my cart I will never grease them.

“Silence is not the absence of sound but the beginning of listening.” 3

3

Salomé Voegelin, Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. A&C Black, 2010

85

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Tiina Sainila & Mikko Kanninen sound : movement : architecture Residency Period: From 01/11/2015 to 15/11/2015 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels and proposed by Hai Art The main objective of f Tiinas Sainila’s and Mikko Kanninen’s residency was a workshop for children between five and nine years old. The workshop explored the relationship between sound, movement, and space. It started from iPad music apps and was held at the community house in Molenbeek (Huis van Culturen/Maison des Cultures Molenbeek).

Interview by Julia Eckhardt Can you tell me about the workshop you organised in Brussels?

T

he workshop was our main project during our two week stay. The first week we were hosting the workshop and the second week we edited the video and went through all the material that the kids had recorded. We wanted to make a video that would be meaningful for the kids who participated to the workshop as well. Being heard, seen, and noticed seemed to be really important to all of them.

Can you describe how your host site differed from your normal working environment?

The environment is totally different compared to our home, the rural island of Hailuoto. Hailuoto is very silent, peaceful. The forest starts

from our backyard. In Brussels, there was a lot to see and experience, many happenings going on. Brussels was also really loud, a bit dirty, filled with different kinds of people. We enjoyed the contrast and the atmosphere but it was also nice to come back home – somehow calming.

The kids in the workshop were speaking French or Flemish. We didn’t have a common language, which was a bit difficult. We had people helping us though, and so despite the language barriers we were able to create really nice connections with the kids.

The lifestyle in Brussels was very different compared to our daily life.

We were always eating out and meeting a lot of people - a lot of events, a lot of possibilities to choose from. We’ve lived in Berlin, which was a little similar.

In Hailuoto there are two or three options of places to have lunch, and they are all at least 5km away, meaning

86

TIINA SAINILA & MIKKO KANNINEN

that we always cook for ourselves... And there is not so much happening on an island of 1,000 inhabitants. In Hailuoto we fish, pick berries, chop wood, enjoy the nature and the peace. Brussels was so loud for us - sirens all the time, traffic noise, constructions, people... We needed ear plugs to be able to sleep. In two weeks we got more used to it and now since getting home, all this silence seems a bit weird.

Did you gather “raw materials”, specific to the local environment of this residency, for new projects?

We are not really sound artists and don’t currently make music or sound art of our own. Our visit was a research trip to try out some creative ideas with the kids by combining sound, movement, and space. As architects, we are interested in combining architecture / space with different art forms.

We got new ideas for future workshops or social / communal art projects, but also ideas for performances combining sound, movement, and architecture. For us, it would be interesting to work with professional dancers, to really emphasize or play with the architecture with sound and movement in a way that the combination becomes really meaningful, interesting, and touching.

In Finland, we don’t have so many immigrants and the groups we have previously worked with have usually been quite homogenous. The multicultural environment inspired us and forced us to think in a different way. The language barrier affected our way of working too. It was interesting to be ‘forced’ to give the kids free hands to create. We learned that you don’t always need to give a lot of advice, just inspiration.

87

How did you experience the residency on a practical level with regard to lodging, eating, working etc?

We only slept and ate our breakfast at our apartment. Otherwise, we were out working or discovering the city. The apartment was very basic, enough for our needs - not a place to hang around. We were always eating out, which was great (and a bit hard on our wallets). We really enjoyed that part of Brussels. The workspace at Q-O2 was very nice. We got all the help we needed. Everything was well organised and we had some nice conversations.

Did the residency somehow change your approach or understanding of sound art practices?

Yes. We must say this whole field is kind of new to us because we started to work with the sound as Hai Art’s workshop leaders just two years ago. We are outsiders. Experimental music interests us and there was an interesting event at Q-O2 while we were there. Hearing the work and thoughts of other artist was also mind-opening.

During your residency, you immersed yourself in a new sound environment and its surrounding culture. How did it influence the sound art you created during this residency?

Because the workshop with the kids played such a big role during our stay, the contact with the local children was the main thing for us. It was nice to discover that the kids enjoyed the workshop and were truly excited to create and try out different things – something totally new. Even without a common language, we were able to inspire them and that was nice to notice. We will remember each of them and their different personalities for a long time.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

We found the participant’s different backgrounds really interesting.

How they behaved, how they worked together, how they came really close to us, touched. It is different.

Would you consider the work you created as a form of cultural hybridism?

Very much so. We were told that our way of working is very much different to what the kids are used to.

More free and creative, not so strictly supervised. We had our way. The kids were all different, but it worked out well.

We learned and they learned.

Did what you experienced during the workshop change your working concepts and thoughts?

Was the output different t o what you had previously in mind?

Our own workshop concept changed during the week. We had to improvise and change some plans when we saw what kind of group we had, how things were working with the language barriers etc. We had to give up on our most ambitious thoughts of combining architecture with sound and movement. We felt that it was necessary to simplify the concept, both because of the young age of the participants (five to nine years old) and because every instruction had to be translated to two languages.

This work gave us new ideas for future workshops, we know how we would like to develop them. It also gave us ideas for different artistic projects combining sound, movement, and architecture.

88

TIINA SAINILA & MIKKO KANNINEN

89

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Marija Bozinovska Jones a.k.a.

MBJ Wetware radio : location : culture : gender : race Residency Period: From 13/12/2015 to 22/12/2015 Invited by DISK Berlin / CTM Festival as part of the CTM 2016 Radio Lab “GAD Technologies” is a project by Marija Bozinovska Jones a.k.a. MBJ Wetware, an artist active in London and her native Macedonia. Jones collaborated with J.G. Biberkopf, an emerging Lithuanian producer whose Ecologies EP recently launched Kuedo’s KNIVES label.

As a verb, gad is defined as “to move from one location to another in an apparently random and frivolous manner”. It is also an abbreviation for General Anxiety Disorder. Floating in a virtual realm where cultural markers, gender, position and race are symbolic and arbitrary, and where subjectivity becomes divorced from the constraints of locality, GAD Technologies explores fictional geographies by harvesting the overflowing streams of collective imagery.

Supported by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Radio Drama / Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Ö1 Kunstradio, and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, the CTM Radio Lab winners held 2-week residencies in Berlin mid-January 2016, and premiered their works at the CTM 2016 festival, which ran 29 January - 7 February 2016.

“GAD Technologies” was subsequently broadcast in its radio version via Deutschlandradio Kultur in March 2016.

90

MARIJA BOZINOVSKA JONES A.K.A. MBJ WETWARE

GAD* Technologies

G

AD* is a concept initiated

by Marija Bozinovska Jones who through MBJ Wetware as hybrid embodiment examines media ecologies and architectures as open biological systems. For Radio Labs, she invites J G Biberkopf as a musical avatar collaborator; together they premiered GAD Technologies at the 2016 edition of Club Transmediale in form of a diffused spatial performance and produced a radio play for Deutschlandradio Kultur.

* gad (verb) - to move from one location to another in an apparently random and frivolous manner * GAD is an abbreviation of General Anxiety Disorder.

GAD Technologies engages with the concept of liquidity in an era of amplified technocapitalism and complex geopolitics. Creating simulations of non-places as virtual landscapes, GAD approaches subjects ranging from fluid identities and diffused nationalities within networked capitalism, to dromological state of existence and speculations on future scenarios.

It draws on “deterritorialization” as liquified cultural globalization aided by the effect of informational hypercirculation. In the virtual realm where nationality, gender, position and race are symbolic and arbitrary, cultural and national subjectivity become divorced from the constraints of locality.

Disembodied identities devoid of national representation become fluid as the state of existence perpetually accelerates.

With omnipresent technology the citizenship of the liquid state allows

91

for free mobility across borders while swimming through oceans of information, albeit in waters that are murky, unclear, opaque. Engaging in digital capitalism work blends with play; the data produced and consumed gets analysed and monetised, behaviours predicted and conditioned.

The citizens of the liquid state are being pulled between two polarities: one where limits initially seemed washed away with promise of democracy and the other where they are being continuously re-established via algorithmic rule and governed by the coupling of economy and political agencies.

We find ourselves in transit, floating in ambivalent waters between the two currents of freedom and control of planetary scale computation. How do we preserve our autonomy and sovereignty while being entangled in an opaque power structures’ apparatus?

Our bodies are in transit, shifting between their physical subjectification and virtual representation; our bodily fluids circulate, maintaining feedback with our environment – systems within systems engaged in mimicry.

Everything appears in perpetual state of flux and flow between aggregate states.

Psychoanalysis considers perpetual change and uncertainty leading to loss of control of the internal world often contributing to mental disorders; it is acknowledged as an unreciprocated mental investment.

Eastern philosophy on the other hand, offers a positive redefinition of change in terms of flexibility and as opening new possibilities. As the global South leaks into the global

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

North and the local amalgamates the global, impermanence becomes a condition to be accepted. The transnational macrocosm consolidates the personal microcosm initiating new non-solid meta-narratives. Can we embrace liquidity without drowning?

1| LIQUID STATE Heterotopia tears, saliva, sweat, blood, semen, plasma, streams, currents, rivers, lakes, seas, oceans, rain life flows, time flows, information flows, money flows endless flow of reappropriation, repurposing and transmutation reposts, reblogs, comments, likes, retweets, shares washed away geopolitical context, diluted history and temporality transnational hybrid existence, avatars technocapitalist condition, capital flow, ‘liquidity’ as assets converted into cash #amorphous #movement #dissemination #reappropriation #distribution #liquidity #mobiliy #autopoiesis #circulation #bricolage #code, systems, processes #instability #immateriality #globalization #fiber optics #fusion #curated identities #branded nations #global market flows #permutation #flexibility #prosumerism #exchange #playbour #fluid identities

2I FAST FORWARD Dystopia state of acceleration, speed of information exchange and perception of time a paradox: ever faster communication versus ever decreasing time availability attention deficit through information overload and interminable connectivity overload and system failure #epileptic state #affective algorithms #overflow #excess #overproduction #doping #entropy #surplus #precarity #BPD #megastructures #augmented reality #network analysis #cognitive mediation #HFT #non-equilibrium economics #big data #austerity #liquidation #ABM #DDoS #MITM #ADHD #GAD #MDMA #K-hole Time has taken control of us Technology has taken control of us No stability, no security, nothing to hold onto 0oll; ../l/.’;;’’’’’’’’’’’’’\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\’’\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ The liquid reaches its boiling point

The liquid flows

92

MARIJA BOZINOVSKA JONES A.K.A. MBJ WETWARE

3I OPTIMIZING ZEN

implementation Tendency towards equilibrium point.

Utopia state of permanent flux predicting probable future developments meditative states, not struggling against slowing down as disruption of acceleration breaks as necessary breathing space awakening mindfulness, inviting awareness focused approach challenging dystopian vision of technological

#contingencies #uncertainty #parallax #probabilities #impermanence #transit #elasticity #serenity #equanimity #ephemerality #deceleration #resilience The liquid evaporates into the air

93

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Daniel Brożek a.k.a.

Czarny Latawiec field recordings : found speech : city folklore Residency Period: From 04/01/2016 to 17/01/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in Brussels and proposed by A-I-R Laboratory The main subject for Czarny Latawiec’s sound works is the process of tracing fragile correlations between the past soundscapes of a place and memories of people hidden behind their beliefs and daily rituals. During the residency, he collected city folklore, field recordings, and traces of found speech and outlandish cultures.

T

hanks to the rich catalogue of publishing houses such as Sub Rosa or Metaphon, Belgian exploratory and experimental music has been very close to my heart for many years. Though the work of Belgian composers and artists such as André Stordeur, Henri Pousseur, Léo Kupper, Arsène Souffriau, Thierry de Mey, Théo Fleischman, Paul De Vree, and Wim Vandekeybus (to name but a few) includes some masterpieces of contemporary music and sound art, these artists have never been as widely recognised as their French colleagues like François Bayle or Henri Chopin. Often dense and demanding for the listener, Belgian music and sound art of many different periods and genres provides a good example of how an apparently peripheral scene can evolve over long periods of time into a strong and multi-dimensional culture.

was to dig into several radiophonic archives. Brussels radios-stations Panik and Campus, not only offered me access to their archives, but also an opportunity to take part in special sound creation events. I was amazed at how well established the sound creation activity is amongst young radio art enthusiasts, especially the community working around Radio Moniek. It was not only their great sonic imagination, knowledge of the history of sound art, and their passion for this less-than-popular form of sound art that impressed me about these young artists, but also their ability to work in a group, to share a common passion, and to create new things together. This is something that seems at odds with the rest of the modern and electronic sound culture of the West, which tends to be more focussed on individual careers.

A vast part of the research I had planned for my residency at Q-O2

Such patterns of cooperation and work-sharing are also visible at an

94

DANIEL BROŻEK A.K.A. CZARNY LATAWIEC

organisation level among Brussels NGOs focused on culture and art. At the same time that I was working in Brussels, my home city of Wrocław was beginning to celebrate its title as the European Capital of Culture. A huge number of spectacles, festivals, and big shows hosted in stadiums were planned to underline and highlight what Wrocław’s mayors understand as “culture”. In order to be able to organise the 1000 events and 400 projects connected to the European Capital of Culture, the Wrocław city council demolished many good, working NGOs and independent cultural creators, absorbing them instead into a single, large, corporate-style festival office. As a result, most of the independent activities in Wrocław stopped. We can observe a similar pattern in Kraków, which held the title in the year 2000 along with 8 other European cities. That same year, Brussels also hosted the European Capital of Culture. Here, however, the approach was very different. The intent was to create or make use of as many independent organisations as possible in order to share and participate in the preparations for the ECC events, to allow them to develop and to continue to contribute to the city’s culture. In 2016, many of these NGOs are still continuing their contributions and together create the reality of Brussels as a city with a vivid and rich multi-genre, multi-layer culture.

This may be one of the factors which speaks for the healthy state of sound art in Brussels. Though Brussels is not as big as Berlin or London, the amount of people and projects orienting themselves toward sound art is, in many respects, doing better than those bigger European capitals of modern music.

Not only my great hosts Q-O2, but also organisations like Overtoon, BNA-BBOT,

95

Constant, iMAL , MAAC, FoAM, STUK, Werktank, Les Ateliers Claus, Argos, and Musiques & Recherches are each developing their own original programs focussing on various aspects of sound studies. None of these institutions has big budget. In many cases they share administration costs or rent, but they manage well to maintain their curatorial and organisational independency. By focusing on constant development and long term projects, they have together managed over years to create a very unique scene of contemporary sound art in the city.

In the context of my own research, it was very important to come across the Parlez-vous Saint-Gillois? project (www.parlezvous1060.be) run by Constant. Over several years, Constant has been working together with local communities in the district of St. Gilles to collect and catalogue words from the unique, local dialect which has developed there between speakers of many different languages: Flemish, French, Bosnian, Spanish, Arabiac, Russian, etc. Based on their linguistic studies, Constant has created a variety of sound walks, word maps, sound installations, and workshops to document the unique language and culture of this particular part of Brussels. Parlez-vous Saint-Gillois? is but one example of how interesting, unique, and long-lasting results can be achieved through long-term projects.

However, things during my stay were not always easy. The beginning of my research was to look further into Iannis Xennakis’ and Le Corbusier’s conflicts during their collaborative work on the Philips multimedia pavilion for the 1958 World Expo in Brussels.

This pavilion - one of the first and

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

most interesting examples in modern music history of an architecture built specifically for sound spatialisation and granular synthesis - no longer exists.

There have been attempts to create virtual versions of the work (e.g. http:// edu.vrmmp.it/vep/), and Xenakis also extended the project’s idea of hyperbolic paraboloids in later construction projects, but the original Philips Pavilion is lost. (As a side note, a very similar building, the Warszawa Ochota train station by Arseniusz Romanowicz still exists in Poland). During my stay in Brussels, I had a lot of difficulties

to get stories about an earlier world exhibition in Brussels related to the presentation of Congo culture, as well as to missing documents relating to the Belgian genocide in Congo. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren was closed for renovation and their archives and libraries were inaccessible.

At the same time, the Marolles district is full of commercial galleries and fancy antiques shops which sell African traditional art, masks, and instruments.

How is it that these pieces of art ended up in Brussels? To whom do their profits go?

96

DANIEL BROŻEK A.K.A. CZARNY LATAWIEC

97

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Caroline Claus urbanism : sound design : mapping Residency Periods: From 04/01/2016 to 06/02/2016

From 08/10/2016 to 29/10/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels The L_28 Urban Sound Design Studio, designed by Caroline Claus, was a research cycle on the undeveloped open space along the Western ring railway L28 in Brussels, an area which has long been marginalized in Brussels planning processes. Thanks to its natural, historical and ecological richness the site is an excellent research object, especially in the context of urban sound design.

Four workshops explored the relation between the sonic environment and the landscape of the area through listening experiences accompanied by reflections via site-specific performances and a sound map. In dialogue with experts from fields such as field recording, acoustic ecology, and urban planning, reflection was undertaken on how the current sound environment could be improved in a participatory manner. Invited guest speakers were Nadia Casabella, Marie Poupé (IBGE), Flavien Gillié, Stijn Demeulenaere, Peter Cusack, Burak Pak, Petra Pferdmenges, Thomas Laureyssens, Robin Koek, Nicolas Remy (CRESSON).

Interview by Caroline Profanter

November - mapping and observing the area through field recording. At the time, I was living in the area too. I really like these kind of open places in a city, just before they start to transform.

hat I try to do is work with very concrete material and look for how experiments in electronic music can inspire you to listen to the city. It’s about reading a city. You have these small elements that one can hear in the electronic music that can help you to open your ears when you are in the city. I was already working on that in

For a long time now, I’ve been working in very socially dense urban contexts. Contexts where you have a lot of people, a lot of text, a lot of collaboration, politics etc. In the areas around Brussels subway stations Weststation and Beekkant, similar things are happening but you also have this openness. So if you’re in that area, you can abstract yourself from the density of the urban context that you work in, more so than when you are working in a square like here around the corner. You can take some distance and observe a city like Brussels in a different way, in an abstract way.

During the first part of your residency at Q-O2 in January 2016 you explored the connections between techno music and the urban environment. You made field recordings, maps, and created spectrograms of the urban sound environment. What did these practices reveal to you?

W

98

CAROLINE CLAUS

Actually, for me, listening to Techno music is similar to this. Techno is about reading an urban space. There, I think, you have a very spatial experience in a way that you don’t have in other music. If you would listen to hip-hop, for example, it’s really about an interaction between people; two people, more people, a battle or something similar.

When you listen to Techno though (or other types of urban electronic music) you are dealing much more with a kind of abstraction. You start to observe all these mechanical sounds - not necessarily industrial but mechanical sounds.

Techno, for me, represents a kind of a possible observation / manipulation of an urban landscape.

In Brussels, Peter Cusack and I went to a place where the electricity installation is. There you really get the experience of a field of hum. Around L28, these kinds of experiences are more possible in such an area than in the centre of Brussels neighbourhood Molenbeek or somewhere. The area around L28 is a rail field, so you have this kind of openness. It’s a sonic quality which I think is quite interesting to work on, because it’s more like a volume you can walk through, a sonic volume. Also, an acoustic horizon, which is bigger than what you have here – it’s on another scale. This is something quite tied to some experiences you can have when listening to Techno, I think.

What do you mean by another scale?

Well, you have a city, you have a neighbourhood, you have a square.

This is a very local scale, where people interact, and it’s meaningful. Above this, you have another scale. You could think about a city on the scale of a municipality (like Molenbeek, for example) or larger

99

again even. You could see how all the streets and squares are interconnected.

At this point you are thinking on a metropolitan scale – but a metropolis also includes railways, not just those connecting the squares of Beekkant with Weststation or Étangs Noirs, but also those connecting Brussels to Flanders. Then you might begin to think about speed. You can read a city via speed. For example, here in the centre of Molenbeek, you see people walking, moving by car, metro, busses, but at Weststation you also have the train and above that there is the larger sonic impact of planes flying over.

These kinds of qualities of an area, its speed and its connection to other spaces, are something that I like to explore and introduce into my work.

Sonically, it is something that allows me to observe different elements and materialities which might be interesting for future experiences. Via the recordings, maps, and the spectrograms, I try to identify some such experiences.

You were speaking about taking distance; why is that important for you?

To explore something in a different way. Like I said, abstraction is quite important to me. I think it’s important not to always keep the same relationship to what you are observing or reflecting on – to change space / time difference and to look for other relations (also sonically) to the object or situation you are thinking about. What interests me is the relation between what is happening sonically and what is happening on the ground. It’s not only about what people are doing. It’s about the area and it’s about the social image. The landscape becomes really important. If you are always working

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

on the ground and with people, you can loose sight of that scale, of that relationship with the landscape. I like to think about working on an urban scale, like most urban planners or designers do - to take some distance and to observe the transformation of a city at a distance and think about what that means sonically.

Do the inhabitants understand the work that you are doing?

Are they interested?

That’s another thing. For me this work is also a way of dealing with a complex social situation. As a sound designer/artist you create a kind of vacuum. Mostly, the people I meet are outside of society, who are not so well connected to the rest of society. If you start to talk to people in these areas (which I did for the Urban Renovation Contract project) you start to have discussions on work, on tensions with the police and with soldiers, on tensions with the social workers in their area, on tensions with politics they don’t accept, etc. And then, if you go on to talk with them about sounds, you create an openness, you have another discussion. I think this openness is really interesting. In a way, you can see the sonic environment as a territory that is not yet claimed. This is something that I want to follow more in a future project – to look for ways that these people can participate, that they themselves are able to identify the sounds of their environment that they would want to manipulate or to keep. A lot of the street workers and music-producers in the area I met listen mostly to hip-hop, but it’s not mainstream hip-hop. A lot of these guys are living under the radar. Their music is not so popular. They listen to popular sounds, I think, but I’m more interested in how they are producing and sharing their

music, under social conditions which are not really positive for them.

They really are interested too.

Sound is quite important for them in their situation and their appropriation of public space. They are mostly not working with environmental sounds as a material, but they are interested in them. They are interacting with the sonic environment, using their voice to make some noise, or playing music through their portable speakers, their phones etc.

What are the sounds that you most like in the Brussels environment?

What sounds do you dislike?

There is one spot at Gare du Midi, just before all the trains enter.

You can stand in the belly of the River Zenne, hear it passing you just before it goes underground, and then it’s layered with all these trains – up and down. It’s a large area; Forest, St. Gilles, the art centre Wiels – you can observe all of that. And then Anderlecht too. Its really big. There are a lot of different trains, but not many cars because it’s really the middle of a rail field. If you stand there at 6 o’clock, when the train traffic is really dense, you have a really layered sonic experience of the city. I think it’s that, and also the trains just passing beside you. You really hear the details.

So what you maybe most dislike are the sounds of car traffic?

No. It’s just a pity that they dominate so much. What I really dislike since the attacks in Paris and in Brussels are the sirens. I react really emotionally to their presence. It’s a stress factor that I really don’t like.

100

CAROLINE CLAUS

101

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Deena Abdelwahed radio : culture : place : identity Residency Period: From 15/01/2016 to 31/01/2016 Invited by DISK Berlin/CTM Festival as part of the CTM 2016 Radio Lab Deena Abdelwahed was one of two winners of the CTM 2016 Radio Lab, an ongoing initiative that seeks ideas for pairing the specific artistic possibilities of radio with the potentials of live performance or installation. With All Hail Mother Internet, the artist asked “How would I have ended up without having access to internet when I was a teenager?” as a starting point to explore frustrations about feeling fixed by the constraints of a pre-defined culture, place, identity, and the strategies employed to tackle them.

Supported by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Radio Drama / Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Ö1 Kunstradio, and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, the CTM Radio Lab winners held 2-week residencies in Berlin mid-January 2016, and premiered their works at the CTM 2016 festival, which ran 29 January - 7 February 2016.

Deena’s work was subsequently broadcast in its radio version via Deutschlandradio Kultur in March 2016.

« All Hail Mother Internet » Thoughts Log: CONTENT //

/J

ust after presenting All Hail Mother Internet during CTM festival in Berlin, the presentation unveiled another angle for me in its meaning.

More than just a recognition/thank you to the most used information tool in our century: Internet.

/That experience proved to me how much early education in our society depends largely on pride of our ancestors and our blameless cultural identity.

This education, that sometimes takes a

military form, prepares us to face up to the strangers or the unknown… leading us to confront the “new”, in All Hail Mother Internet’s perspective.

/Personally, this radio art piece revealed the amount of frustration within myself toward these primitive instructions and the behaviour of my fellow citizens. Those who are defending at all costs their tutored convictions and are wishing or fighting for conformism.

/According to “All Hail Mother Internet” always, I made myself grow up encased by internet to dodge the intellectual and cultural limits drawn harshly by my family and my society.

102

DEENA ABDELWAHED

But in fact, I found myself facing these limits instead [of avoiding them].

/I am not the only ungratified here… most of my fellow youngsters are gazing at the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Consuming the best of foreigner artistic experiences in one click through their internet browser.

/Like in any other 21st century society, diversity is inevitable: not all young people are the same. But I did try to classify them in my radio art performance and I figured out three types:

a/I will not talk about the elders’ puppies, as it is not interesting to me nor to my project.

b/ In this war of mentalities and social values, some are experimenting to find compromises to fit fully in their entourage. When the old meets the new, revalue the history and such initiatives… it would be great if only their intentions were respected and not accused of nonsense by the seniors.

c/ Others rejoices over being the only one finding unexpected /unfamiliar art or entertainment in this global digital network, without referring to their geographical environment. They are fine with loneliness. They mistrust the system installed in their country, anyways. It is more safe to build its own fictive bubble then facing the streets where no one will understand them.

/Now it is clear that in this piece, the young population are trying to differ from their parents and their system. In addition to internet which has fully taken their attention and made it an alternative reference. But these 20’s and 30’s women and men become as tend, as firm, as violent as their ascendants when you question their convictions. In other words: the matter is different, say innovative, but not the shape.

103

CONTAINER //

-Music /As far as I saw, nothing is left for generation Y but only already made and evolved art from the internet. And as I mentioned earlier about youngsters’ different types, compromises like blending the outer frontiers influences and local cultural codes in art and entertainment is booming. Maybe because this generation tends to avoid provocation. Nervous as they are, they prefer peaceful and easygoing solutions. They are mutating to adapt to a dual reality.

/My choice to use Club Dance Music as a slip away from my daily life reminds me of the factors that were associated with House Music in the United States. Particularly when marginalized showed up and rolled in warehouses, looking for the right community, to be as loose as possible and just dance the pain away.

/But I have seen a line between my geographical environment and my passion/entertainment: Gathering around loud music to unwind; in opportunities like marriages parties and religious rituals. The method may resemble but not the motivations. I think it is obvious to play around this “link” in “All Hail Mother Internet”.

/If we assume that in this link we’ve got what I’ve heard, seen, felt and desired (between the Internet and the streets). What if I use this to break the taboos and use traditional pop dance music to criticise? In the most direct and explicit way? It is the only way that makes me familiar with my geographical environment.

/This “link” may lead me also, indirectly, to invent a new tone/ stamp of electronic music based on or

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

defended by one person rather than a predefined group of individuals. On the contrary of the different music genres out there in the world, nourished by a muster (gathering) of followers.

-TV /Television had the same attraction as the Internet at the early age of our parents. Until today, it is as present in living rooms and waiting rooms as minarets in a city. We all think that this box hosts the essence of human foolishness.

/But it was only reflecting the society of that time. Today, in my opinion, TV is more sensationalist than informative: It does dictate people’s feelings.

/My astonishment of the efficiency of this influence is present in my radio art piece performance. I found absurd that, with all the tools to information and distraction in this hour, we are still looking for ourselves and compare

ourselves in the images broadcast on that screen.

-Politics /After 2011 in Tunisia…

Revolution? Maybe. But it was mostly a second chance to implicate youngsters and activists in a second level of fear. To test their patience and efficacy. I ensure you that what is going on the field is a big arm wrestling! Money versus moral. What should we expect from an economically poor and robbed country?

/I do not need to be politicised to observe what is going on. Since Ben Ali has been removed, politics in this country became as present as advertisement screens in New York’s Times Square. There is no way to have a break from it as a simple citizen.

/Between the unstable future of the country and the arrogance of the elders, young people are getting more and more discouraged.

104

DEENA ABDELWAHED

105

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Peter Cusack field recording : performance : radio Residency Period: From 17/01/2016 to 14/02/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels The aim of Peter Cusack’s residency was to explore the possibilities of using field recordings in performance. This led to different reflections, which were shared during a workshop together with Ruben Nachtergaele, a performance in the framework of La Semaine du Son at Point Culture, and an emission through Radio Panik.

Peter also collaborated with Caroline Claus in her research on urban sound design and returned to Q-O2 in October 2016 to participate at the related symposium, speaking about sonic cartography. During the residency together with Flavien Gillié, they visited the neighbourhood of Haren in the north of Brussels, which has a very particular soundscape due to its proximity to the airport and several railway traces, but also due to activist activity against its controversial urban developments.

Interview by Caroline Profanter October 2016 I was interested to know what you studied at university?

Did you study an instrument?

A

t university I studied biology and chemistry. I never went to music college. I did study instruments, though.

I played clarinet at school when I was very young and then I took up guitar when I was a teenager, but I never really studied either conscientiously. Anyway, the music that I wanted to play back then - blues and rock music - you don’t go and study, you just play. Quite soon I became involved in the improvised music scene of the early 70s.

Where did your interest in field recording come from? When did you start to get interested in this as a technique?

I’ve always been interested in the sounds of the environment. When I was young, I was very interested in watching birds. I learned to recognise birds by their songs and their calls. I think that most of my life I’ve been listening to the environment for one reason or another.

When I started at the Institute for Sonology (those days in Utrecht), they had a portable recorder. That was the first time I had access to the technology to make field recordings, and so I borrowed it and started recording then.

That was in 1976 or 1977.

106

PETER CUSACK

As soon as the Sony Professional Walkman was invented – in 1981 or ‘82, I think – I got one of those. I used that for many years.

Your residency here in Brussels was about making field recordings “performable”.

Can you elaborate on this?

When I first made field recordings I used them for performances, but after a while I moved onto other things.

For me, Brussels was a chance not to ‘perform’ field recordings so much as to integrate my guitar playing back into performances with the field recordings.

the environment. That could mean field recordings or it could mean just opening the window and letting the sounds from outside come in. It depends on the venue and the circumstances.

So you created this piece in relation to the field recordings?

Yes. I also wanted to work on a relationship with photography. Over the years I have begun to take photographs.

I wanted to integrate image projection into my performances too, so it became a little more technically complicated.

I needed the time in Brussels to try to work some of this out.

I played the guitar for a long time, but about 10 years ago I stopped doing so publicly. In the last 2 or 3 years I decided to start again, so the residency in Brussels was a good opportunity to work on some new material (which is exactly what I did).

Yes, I mean, I made the piece I spoke about earlier in Brussels. I like it. I still play it. I did some performances in Brussels too which integrated these things and for me they worked.

Did you ever miss playing guitar?

Did you write a score for the guitar part?

The reason I stopped originally was that I became bored (also disappointed) with what I was doing. It didn’t seem to change very much, particularly in improvised music. That was one reason, at least. The other was that the field recording projects I was doing were taking up a lot of time and becoming more dominant in my work.

No, I don’t write it down. I just remember it. The pieces I write are only for myself.

After five years though, either I don’t mind boring myself as much as I used to or something has changed a little. Not changed very much, mind you, but a little bit.

For example, in Brussels I made a guitar piece which I can play more or less the same way each time. However, the piece is designed to leave a lot of space in which to hear the sounds of

107

Do you think that it worked out?

Nobody else could play them?

Lots of people could play it.

It’s actually not technically difficult to play, but nobody else would know about it... Well, I don’t know actually. Perhaps I could make a recording of it and others could learn from listening...

Do you think that the musical aspects of the field recordings are similar to how they could be on a guitar?

They are different. The way we listen to sounds from the environment is different to how we listen to music.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

We tend to listen to environmental sounds for their informational content. We want to recognise what they are, where they are, whether they’re moving or not, whether they might be potentially dangerous to us or whether they might be telling us the time of day or something like that. That’s how we listen to such sounds.

We don’t listen to music for those reasons. We listen to music for more aesthetic, pleasurable, kind of emotional reasons - but there’s a strong overlap. There’s no reason that you can’t listen to the sounds of the environment for aesthetic or emotional reasons.

Obviously, that happens too. So there are links, but I think going from one to the other is actually quite tricky but because of that it’s interesting, and that’s what I spent my time thinking about.

Perception changes a lot.

If you hear both guitar and field recordings at the same time then you are not anymore so concentrated on the information of the field recordings.

That’s right. Playing a guitar changes the way you hear the other sounds and vice versa. It’s not so easy though. You can’t play just anything on guitar. You have to play something which fits to the environment in some way. I mean, lots of people use drones which I don’t find very interesting. I tend to use space rather than drones. That doesn’t always work either though.

Is there a particular musical aspect that you follow, for example the rhythmic aspect, or does that depend on the recording?

After spending many years in improvised music, where the idea of a melody and harmony was down-played,

I actually do like melodies and harmonies so a lot of the pieces that I do for myself are actually very simple. They are often very tuneful. They could be songs. In fact, some of them are songs.

Pop songs, I mean, not Schubert-type songs. So I am interested in melodies and harmonies and I use those. And now I use them in improvised music too, and the other people just have to live with it.

You perform both solo and with others. How does the experience change for you when there are other people involved?

Well, it makes a big difference of course, because you have to be attuned and sensitive to what the other people are doing. For me, the interest in group improvisation is in trying to make something you would never imagine as an individual. For me, that’s when an improvisation is working, when the group does things which you really didn’t expect. I’ve been lucky enough to play in several groups where that happens.

Do you think that this kind of experience, in improvisation, is also possible playing field recordings?

I think the relationship between field recordings and improvised music is closer than the relationship between field recordings and lots of other kinds of music, particularly composed music. Not in the way that you listen, but in the way you make recordings. When you are making a field recording you have to be very sensitive to what the sound is. You have to react very quickly sometimes. You have to change your position. Making a recording is a form of improvisation and I think my experience as a musical

108

PETER CUSACK

improviser was very helpful when I began as a field recordist. For both, you need to be able to give attention to a lot of different things happening at the same time and you need to react appropriately and often very fast. You need all that for improvising musically, too. I think they are related in that respect.

One part of your residency project was creating a system to make these field recordings more flexible.

Did you explore this further after the residency?

I’ve had to reprogram and develop it a bit since then but I haven’t explored it so much further. When you get something that is ok and that works, then the question is what you do with it, not whether you want a different machine. That’s just a distraction. I haven’t changed the technology so much, but I have changed the recordings, some of the pieces, and the photographs.

I am working on the relationship between the sound and the images.

When I was in Brussels, I couldn’t decide.

The image was either there or it wasn’t.

But now, the sound can affect the image.

It can affect how long it’s there. Loud sounds can trigger images to appear so there’s a little bit more coordination happening between changes of image and sound.

But you still use only still images?

Yes, I still stick only to photographs. I am not interested so much in video. I think moving images actually get in the way of you hearing sounds.

Whereas still images leave room for you to hear. I prefer that combination.

109

And you use images that are taken from the places where you recorded?

Yes, usually. I don’t go out and take photographs for the sake of taking photographs but I do take a lot of photographs when I am recording, or in places where I am doing sound projects.

How did you experience Brussels?

Brussels is an interesting place for sound actually. Berlin, where I live now, is rather quiet and London is much noisier. Brussels is not quite as noisy as London but there is a lot going on. In the area around Q-O2 you hear sirens all the time. But they are not all the same.

There are a number of different kinds of sirens and on occasion - if they combine right, or if they’re at different distances - it can actually be quite musical, just by accident in the environment. The sirens are rather special to Brussels.

Also Brussels is like London in that it’s very multicultural. You hear many different languages. Brussels has hills so there are places in which sounds are echoed, and there’s quite a big contrast between places that are very quiet and places that are very loud. Brussels is a very atmospheric place. Now that all the traffic is banned from the centre of Brussels, the centre is quiet from traffic, but it is still noisy from people.

You can hear all the details of the peoples’ sounds there, which is much more interesting than traffic noise. I think Brussels is an interesting place to be for sound. So that was a very good experience.

And the other very important thing I did in Brussels, which we didn’t mention yet, was to work a little with Caroline Claus and with Flavien Gillié.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Flavien took us on a walks to different places in Brussels. He knows Brussels sonically probably better than anybody else. Brussels itself is a very interesting city, because it has this language divide between the Flemish and the French. It has ridiculously complicated politics for the same reasons. On the other hand, though, it is also quite community-organised. Caroline knows a lot about that, and Q-O2 is in itself a small community. All of those things are different in Brussels than in other cities that I have lived in.

to speak about it, because one of the difficult things about field recordings is that there is no real outlet. Most music places are not interested in field recordings. If you play them in an art gallery, most people will listen for ten seconds and then go on to the next exhibit.

It was very interesting speaking to Caroline. We walked around Molenbeek and couple of other places.

We made recordings together and she spoke about her projects, which I think are very original. More than that, they are important in developing ideas around the relationship between sound and the people who live in the place. So for me that was as important as the work I did on my solo-music.

How did the workshop at Q-O2 with Ruben Nachtergaele work for you?

It worked well. If you are doing field recording workshops, they are very dependent on the weather and the weather was terrible in February. On both days though, people came and did what was planned. Interesting people came. One person, I don’t remember his name [Willem Sannen] came with recordings he had made in Brussels.

Nobody here had met him before, I think.

He was a new person for Q-O2, and everybody else, but his recordings were extremely good. And he came asking how he should make these public. We had a discussion about how do you make field recordings public, which of course is a necessary thing to discuss. We need

So to present field recordings to the public is actually not so easy.

That’s what he was asking about. He thought about making a CD, which is fine, radio is a possibility, but all of them have pluses and minuses.

Now you are here again, because you are participating in the seminar on urban sound design, organised by Caroline Claus and Q-O2. Are you happy about this collaboration?

Yes, I think what Caroline does is really interesting and her perspective is completely different from anybody else that I know. And its important, because she has a lot to say about the more disadvantaged / disassociated people that are in this area. She speaks to them and works with them and nobody else I know is doing anything like that. So I think it’s very good, and I am very happy to be taking part.

Caroline is involved with social planning and part of her job is to take part in discussions about proposed city developments with planners, government officials, and developers.

Most of the people I work with are artist colleagues or academics, who have little connection with the real world of planning and development. In working with her it’s very nice for me to glimpse these other perspectives, which are so different.

110

PETER CUSACK

111

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

DISK Berlin Micro-Residency CTM 2016 Festival, Berlin sound : exchange : research

Micro-Residency Period: From 29/01/2016 to 07/02/2016 Ten international and five Berlin-based sound art students and emerging practitioners were invited to participate in a SoCCoS Micro Residency during CTM 2016 Festival. Apart from visiting the festival’s concerts and daytime talks, the students took part in a programme developed together with the Humboldt University Chair of Transcultural Musicology. A special thank-you goes to Dahlia Borsche and sound art curators Carsten Stabenow, Eric Mattson, Davide Tidoni, Carsten Seiffarth for helping create the programme, and Bianca Ludewig and volunteers Kyra Crisp and Salomé Stressing from SAE’s Music Management class for coordinating hospitality. with: Anabela Veloso, André Guerreiro Pinto, Andrew Simon Miller, Benjamin Düster, Carlos Humberto Ortiz Ariza, Caroline Profanter, Dejana Sekulic, Diana Combo, Mateusz Śmigasiewicz, Niklas Meier, Olli Aarni, Philipp Koller, Primoz Sukic, Raimonda Žiūkaitė, Sini Silveri

“A vibrant experience of Berlin, of personal and collective discoveries of its sonic surroundings. An inspiring place to conceive and imagine further, all the way to the non-existent, and to get inspired to make the imaginary real.”

Dejana Sekulic

112

DISK BERLIN MICRO-RESIDENCY

“For me, Berlin is a very relaxed metropolis. I experienced some kind of shock when I came there from Warsaw and for the first time went for a walk in Kreuzberg. The mix of different people and their spontaneity can also be heard when we listen to Berlin. Cars, trains, noise of thousands cumulated spontaneous talks is making a layer-like kind of construction. Spontaneity is a key word here.”

Mateusz Śmigasiewicz “a few things i learned/noticed during the micro residency: never judge your sonic environment just listen and interact be aware of elitism, isolation and apathy amazing how group dynamics develop in such a short time i very much appreciated the visit to the Lautarchiv and the library of the Humboldt University and definitely will come back to it. i will not forget the cry of keiji haino and his white hair (a wig?) and the impressive sound system and acoustics of berghain.”

“As a participant of this residency, I accepted the challenge to make a short presentation about my solo work as Eosin. In preparing, the reflections around the project’s start and its route opened the way to great new developments. More sure about what Eosin means, I have been playing often since coming back to Portugal and I’m now preparing my first solo publications, one K7 and one online record. Just before this experience, I couldn’t imagine to do so.”

Diana Combo

113

Caroline Profanter

“Ymmärsin jälleen hieman paremmin, ettei minun tarvitse olla ymmärrettävä.”

“Just being exposed to the huge variety of approaches at the festival makes me feel good and confident about whatever the heck it is I’m doing myself.”

Olli Aarni

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

“Here is my part, I like to contribute the title of my Sound and Performance Piece that I am working on at the moment and that I will first perform on 13th of May in New York. I received a lot of inspiration for this work while meeting awesome artists from the SoCCoS group and seeing performances like Bread Woman, Keiji Haino or Stephen O’ Malley.“ (Digital Life) ア クティブ Rudimentation

“This is a performance focussing on the imprints that a digital life is leaving on the physical human body.

Along the path of this examination there are idiosyncratic questions and thoughts that are picked up and transformed into movement and sound: Sounds of a fleshy and bony object that spend a quarter life sitting in front of a computer. Composing a gender-neutral body by guiding it to the extremes of physical Interasexuality and Digi-intra Hypersexuality. Working towards an identity of the self by creating multiple persona and genders sharing the same physical object. Gaining conscious of the body through intentionally splitting it into pieces. Naturally moving one foot after the other into an active formation of the rudimentary.”

Benjamin Düster

“Not only was it great to attend the festival but also, through the micro residency, to have the immediate opportunity for exchanging thoughts and ideas based on a mutual appreciation and shared understanding of the importance of sound in contemporary culture.

Within a diverse group of mindful and articulate artists this, for me, brought a lot of things to the table that I still think about. Be it the relation between the expectations towards and the presentation of performances or between the material properties and the contextualisation of sound-based art, especially with the festival’s theme.

Also it was quite nice to get to know about the modes of operation of the other participants – their motivation to get ideas across versus the struggle of getting by in an environment that may not always share the their values. In that respect, everybody was glad to share information about networks, scholarships and other possibilities of funding related to their artistic undertakings.”

Philip Koller

114

DISK BERLIN MICRO-RESIDENCY

“I choose to describe my time there through these pictures.

First one is from Nico’s grave (I escape from program swell to spend a day in the forest. A kind of place wandering around in a hope to found this grave. There it was. Silence and sunlight, birds. Peaceful place to write and record sounds. To work.)

Second and third picture describe this question that came into my mind there. It came up in many conversations with other residence people and also from performances. Inside of music I heard: Do we have one identity or many? Or are we now in spot to choose our self our own identities?

Escape place.

If we have one is it including many. How ego and identity meet, whom leads whom? Do I own identity. Is it something that I can left behind? During this spring I have been concentrated more on improvisation itself. How to really leave everything behind.

Are we now in spot to choose our self our own identities?

start new. discover. this circle.”

Sini Silveri

115

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Maciej Kierzkowski & Jarosław Urbański ethnomusicology : sound sculpture : communal music Residency Period: From 11/04/2016 to 30/04/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Santa Cruz da Trapa (Portugal) Polish folk musician and ethno-musicologist Maciej Kierzkowski and Polish sculptor Jarosław Urbański were invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2016 in the village of Santa Cruz da Trapa (municipality of São Pedro do Sul).

Their project followed an holistic approach towards artistic work with children, involving both the construction of musical instruments made in stone, clay and bamboo and later improvisation with them, using local folk music scores as melodic and rhythmic inspiration.

116

MACIEJ KIERZKOWSKI & JAROSŁAW URBAŃSKI

Da Trapa Sound Sculpture

W

e are two artists from provincial Poland: Maciej Kierzkowski, musician and ethnomusicologist living in Marynin, central Poland; and Jarek Urbański, sculptor and cook, from Chojnice in the north. In April 2016, we spent three weeks together in residency at Santa Cruz da Trapa in Portugal. During our stay there we created a sound sculpture, conducted artistic workshops, and performed with members of the local community.

Before arriving in Portugal the two of us had worked together on one joint project, which was called Coloured Trees. Together, we created a set of tree sculptures from recycled materials and conducted musical workshops. The final presentation of the work included concerts on musical instruments made from recycled materials with the involvement of participants from the local community.

Based on the success of this project, we decided to develop the ideas further. The opportunity to do so came with the possibility of a joint artistic residency in Portugal. Initially, we planned to make a big udu-drum sculpture (the ‘udu-pture’) which could be put in the public space so that locals could play it any time they wanted. We planned to conduct ceramic and music workshops, record sounds, and burn the final piece during public event with music and dances.

After coming to Santa Cruz da Trapa, however, our plans had to be modified. The weather conditions of the first week in residence (permanent

117

rain), as well as delays getting all the necessary materials (clay), forced us to reconsider our project. We decided to construct a sculpture which could be played by the local people. We worked with the local stone, conducted workshops with children, and organised common music performance during the final presentation of our work.

During the two last weeks of the residency, our vision took complete form. The main element was a sound sculpture made of marble from the south of Portugal. Using its acoustic qualities, we created a musical instrument, which could be played with sticks made of bamboo from the area. During the residency we organised several jam sessions with musicians from the neighbourhood. During these sessions, we discovered that the sound sculpture could be played by one person or by several. At the same time, we began to work with bamboo (which was everywhere in Santa Cruz da Trapa) in different musical ways. We used it to make flutes and as elements of small xylophones we made for children.

The workshops were organised in a local primary school. Over three sessions, we worked together with young participants to create several udu-drums. For this, we used the green clay of Molelos – a local ceramic centre.

We taught the children how to play udu-drums, bamboo flutes, and small portable xylophones. Finally we created an orchestra with different instrumental sections, soloists, and a conductor. For the final presentation of the common work, we invited the children as well as their teachers and parents.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

The presentation was a spectacular music performance. We collected all the instruments outdoors, next to the art gallery of a local cultural centre. We were really happy to see participants from the workshops, teachers, parents, and other members of the local community there. They really wanted to take part in the presentation.

We performed one improvised / composed piece for an orchestra of udu drums, xylophones, bamboo

sticks and flutes, metal parts, and the sound sculpture. Later, we stayed and jammed a little. After the presentation, which was a shared social and artistic performance, some participants took the instruments home. The main instrument made from stone and metal became a part of an exhibition in the local gallery. www.facebook.com/ datrapasoundsculpture

118

MACIEJ KIERZKOWSKI & JAROSŁAW URBAŃSKI

119

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Frederik Croene & Lilia Mestre composition : performance : video scoring Residency Period: From 21/04/2016 to 01/05/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Santa Cruz da Trapa (Portugal) and proposed by Q-O2 Belgian composer/musician Frederik Croene and Portuguese performer Lilia Mestre were invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2016 in the village of Santa Cruz da Trapa (municipality of São Pedro do Sul, Portugal).

W

hen we arrived in Portugal we were exhausted from the everyday (working) life in the city. Starting the residency with a series of long walks amplified the feeling of being on a holiday. In the second part of our stay, we began to develop the idea of making a score. We had much more mental space in the residency context than we would have had at home. It doesn’t seem likely that we would have been able to finish the piece in such short timespan at home. Not only did the lack of daily responsibilities generate new energy for us both, we suspect the vastness of the rural landscapes opened up a different feeling of time. Even now, months after the residency, this wider, three-dimensional perspective still lingers in the brain as a promise that our working atmosphere at home is the exceptional situation and that the rural landscape is the real working space of the artist.

A video-score was the result of our short residency at the Binaural/ Nodar space in Santa Cruz da Trapa where we worked between April 21 and May 1, 2016.

The video begins with a spoken introduction and follows with a photo montage that serves as the piece’s score. This montage is composed from a series of changing images which alternate against a black screen. The pictures, taken during walks in the surroundings of the village, form the basic working material of the score.

As the piece progresses, the rate of alternation between the images and the black screen increases, following a structure comparable to that of a Rondo form.

Throughout this form, the voiceover remains present – offering an ad-hoc explanation of the internal structure of the score. The text is

120

FREDERIK CROENE & LILIA MESTRE

bilingual. It alternates between English and the local language of the place where the work is performed (in this case Portuguese).

The piece has an open instrumentation, with a minimum of 2 performers required. Playback consists of a click-track on the left channel (for rehearsals only) and on the right channel a soundtrack with recordings from around Santa Cruz da Trapa supporting the voiceover. The basic principle of the piece is for the performers move or make sound during the sections of black screen and then to be still and silent while the images are displayed.

121

However, the left corner of each picture includes is a black square which can be interpreted freely via sound or action without taking the pictures into account.

We came to this concept while thinking through what it means for us, as artists living in cities in Belgium, to come to such a beautiful, bucolic village in Portugal. Our first, primal reaction was to collect sounds and images of the landscape. Later, we tried to find a way of ‘performing’ our impressions of the material after it had been digitised.

The Rondo form, offered a cleat grid on which these impressions – as sound and movement – could play out.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Ryoko Akama found objects : diy electronics : text scores : installation Residency Period: From 25/04/2016 to 30/04/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Santa Cruz da Trapa (Portugal) Japanese sound & visual artist Ryoko Akama was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in April 2016 in the village of Santa Cruz da Trapa (municipality of São Pedro do Sul), where she developed a set of “object compositions”, meeting with wild and found objects, fetching and attempting to transform them through composition, installation and text scores.

O

n my arrival to Santa Cruz da Trapa I was very intrigued by evidences of stone structures such as pedestrian paths, walls and houses. I took many photos and thought of using them as a standpoint. However I began to scavenge an incredible hall of memory: trash from the residency space’s owner, an immense amount of old objects, and after I connected my sound sculpture to his objects. I like these accidental occurrences to which I always expect to be the best outcome of residency, rather than deciding what I would do beforehand.

When I achieved a first composition outside the residency house, alongside the stairs, that became so familiar that I decided to place also some paper balloons in the air, which eventually reminded me of Japan, or made me understood why I had chosen that place. The place looked so familiar because the stairs had a similar structure to stone steps to shrines in Japan,

as I am a half Korean and Japanese but lived in England for one third of my life.

I was trying to make a balance between ‘memories’ as romance and ‘memories’ as objects through texts and found objects. My work was presented in the outside landscape and then brought into a gallery space which composed an utterly diverse experience.

In the meanwhile I joined in other artists’ school workshops and the children were so active and energetic wanting to do more with sound instruments they were provided to perform with.

On the last day, after the gallery performance, I exchanged some discussions with local people who I had met before in the village. One woman was very pleased by my work that she came out of a driving car and thanked me, which was very touching. It is a pleasure to connect with human beings though experimental sound art.

122

RYOKO AKAMA

123

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Heimo Lattner & Judith Laub whistling language : translation : archives Residency Period: From 07/05/2016 to 29/05/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels in the framework of ‘the other the self’ festival and proposed by DISK Berlin Judith Laub and Heimo Lattner continued their work around the whistling language Silbo Gomero, addressing the voice in a political sense through the phenomenon of translation.

Starting from the plan to involve the expat community of Brussels through this project, they ended up diving into their own archive, explaining that everything they had hoped to realise in Brussels was already there.

T

he core of our practice is an interest in how the human voice plays a role in the formation of (cultural) identity. Since 2012, our artistic and scientific collaboration has been based around an investigation into the whistling language Silbo Gomero. Typically, where the fields of art and research diverge from one another is in the visibility of their processes. While the paradigm of art is still mainly that of the finished work, science is more bound to a methodology in which the process is always traceable. Our initial research is undertaken in a manner that is non result-oriented – beginning concretely with extensive field-work. The sound and images which we collect (interviews, field-recordings, video, photographs), are then analysed in terms of their formal and conceptual potentials.

Further artistic considerations then depend on the respective format of

the presentation – be it an exhibition, performance, or lecture.

Our proposition for the residency in Brussels rests on an interest in the ‘Voiceover’: voice-over-voice, voicing out, giving voice. The foundation for this interest was a series of experiments which we conducted in La Gomera, during two research trips in 2012 and 2014, in which the whistle language Silbo Gomero was also used to modulate a variety of different spoken languages. This immediately suggested many possible angles to investigate: to what extent is a sound-based translation of languages into whistles actually possible? To what extent can we document this cultural phenomenon without representing it? The cycle closes itself with the key question of voiceovers: who speaks?

124

HEIMO LATTNER & JUDITH LAUB

When we work, we follow the principal of ‘staging’, in that the changes between the entrance and exits of roles both mark these roles as well as bringing them into question; facts, theories and anecdotes are interwoven through different styles of speech. The title I am ready to recite my lines (a continuation of a setting in Festpielhaus Hellerau – Dresden, May 2015), implies both that I know my role as a performer within the staged piece and that I am also a part of the story – that is, the identity to which I am anchored is not my own.

Q-O2 encouraged us to take the more risky path in going forward with our work. For us, the essential aspect of an artistic residency is time: time to look back and to follow a work with full concentration. This is what Q-O2 so generously allowed us. During an intensive investigation of our archives, we were surprisingly struck by forgotten texts, fragments, concepts and recordings which had been made previously and were partially forgotten.

These findings were newly arranged and developed into a performative setting. In

125

the context of the other the self festival, from 4 – 5 June, 2016, we finally had the opportunity to present a new version of I am ready to recite my lines and to test it with a public.

The infrastructure of Q-O2 allowed us to experiment with audiovisual technologies to a new extent in collaboration with Q-O2’s technical expert Ludo Engels. The three-week residency and the resulting artistic work made a new set of potentials clear with which to bind the two strings of our collaborative practice together.

This was enabled by the generous allowance of time, the possibility to work without external expectations, the many inspired conversations, technical resources and know-how and, not least, by the hospitality with which we were treated.

We are thankful to Q-O2 and wish them all the best for the future.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Q-O2 Micro-Residency the other the self

voice : gender : language : identity Micro-Residency Period: From 29/05/2016 to 05/06/2016 The micro-residency took place in Brussels the framework of Q-O2’s project the other the self on the connection between voice, gender, language, and identity. Participants were Izabela Smelczyńska, Julia Dyck, Radoslaw Sirko, Carlos Ortiz, Isabelle Stragliati, Laura Tack, Owen Roberts, Micaela Maia and Albano Ribeiro. Three related workshops were offered, by Peter Westenberg (Backgrounds and practice of the language projects Parlez-vous Saint-Gillois? and La Langue Schaerbeekoise), Myriam Van Imschoot (Inside outside - voice workshop - on physicality and vibration of the sound of one’s own voice in relation to other voices), and Marc Matter (Speech Voice - Sound: Who is speaking? What is speaking? And how? - sound poetry).

126

Q-O2 MICRO-RESIDENCY

“I’m usually more used to solitary work, but through the residency at Q-O2 I also discovered how much I enjoyed working in a group. I really liked the collective energy of the group and the rich variety of the resident’s backgrounds. The residency drove me to confront areas of sound practice that I’m usually uncomfortable with - working

with the body, improvising... not usually my thing. Since I naturally felt safe within the group, I experimented with these things without resistance. I just went with the flow and I loved it. This was the first time I had really enjoyed improvising in a group. I feel like this was a big step in my work and will open new possibilities for me in my practice.”

Isabelle Stragliati

“For me the Q-O2 micro-residency was a very difficult experience. On the third day, I lost my laptop at the metro station and was pretty sure I wouldn’t get it back. The whole stay became a torment as I realized 5 years’ work was gone. A lot of thoughts came to mind in the next days as I tried to reconstruct my work from scratch, on a piece of paper. I learned a lot about my addiction to digital media. Amazingly, after a few days someone found and returned the computer. I didn’t participate much in the workshops because I was visiting police stations and lost-and-found services and moving between depression and feeling super lucky. Finally, the experience turned out to be somehow purifying. Apart from the experience with the missing laptop, for me, the residency was mostly about meeting other people working with sound, but with very different approaches. I didn’t find Brussels very inspirational as a city. It seemed to be somehow frozen in time and melancholic.”

Radek Sirko

127

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

“Inspired, intrigued, and nourished; this is how I felt after one week of the MicroResidency - as if someone wiggled a little wire within me. Enough nutrition for a week but a week of residence is just too short. The workshops from Myriam, Peter, and Marc were a perfect platform for exercise-in-practice.

The discussions worked for me as a trigger to explore new thoughts on a personal and a social level. The pace of the workshops and the week had a very natural flow because of the dynamics of the group (an openness which cannot be overestimated in these times).

The moments after, in between, within, and before the workshops were always moments to connect on a practical, musical and philosophical level with the other residents.

Spontaneous collaborations and jamming through the night were beautiful and nourishing. There wasn’t really space for internal fog or distraction. I felt very present. The structure of the residency definitely gave us time to explore on our own terms. However, at times there was a lack of specific ideas as the context, space, and timing of some workshops were very fluid. At times, a feeling of aimless wandering.

In their individual practices, every resident had a strong sense of awareness and this provided a good context within which to function. My ears are sharpened. The new ideas and connections made during SoCCoS are only the beginning of more to come for me.”

Laura Tack

128

Q-O2 MICRO-RESIDENCY

“SoCCoS was a good opportunity for new artists to get to know one another, and Q-O2 was an ideal place, providing us time and space for creative work. I made new friends and was inspired and challenged by colleagues to try new things. I feel that all of the residents were open to new experiments and to test the boundaries of intimacy. The workshops were relevant and contributed to a deepening of knowledge in music and sound. All sessions were open for creative minds that seek time to reflect, discuss, and create.

Brussels is a city of contrasts. Despite the grey rainy weather we had all week, the people in the subway, on the bus, and on the streets were friendly and good humoured. Like any good tourist, I had the opportunity to taste some great beers, eat the famous fries, and buy some chocolate. If the weather had been better, I would have really liked to participate in Kaffe Mathew’s Sonic Bike project - maybe next time.”

Albano Leal Ribeiro

129

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

“It was a complete and at times unexpected experience for me to come to Brussels and to feel so welcomed in the Q-O2 residency. Never before had I had the opportunity to work together with artists coming from so many different parts of the world, with such different backgrounds and expectations.

The workshops we had around the city were an interesting chance to really see how the week’s topic (the other the self) are present in the everyday life of a multicultural city like Brussels.

Personally, I had the impression of a lot of tension and contrast in the city, and a richness to be explored around these issues. The voice workshop with Marc Matter was the session I most liked. Through this workshop, I was exposed to a lot of interesting ways of dealing with the voice which I could apply to my own artistic practice. Working in such a diverse group was not always easy, but I guess these difficulties depend on the personal perceptions and experiences of the group. I had a bad experience while catching a tram near to our apartment in St. Gilles when someone stepped out of a car and tried to violently rob me. No one around helped me and I ran away with a lot of fear. This reinforced my impression of the tension in the city and added an element of insecurity to my experience there. Even though this was a very personal and specific experience, it nevertheless influenced my overall impression of the week.”

Carlos Ortiz

“For me, this residency was a transformative experience at a pivotal point in my emerging art practice. I found the opportunity to discuss my work with peers outside of my usual community hugely beneficial in developing my understanding of my own artistic intentions. Discussing and interacting with the work of the other residents in a casual manner over the course of the week was very productive; finding common threads and differences among one another’s technical means and theoretical frameworks was exciting and inspirational. Miriam Van Imschoot’s workshop on the physicality of voice, and Marc Matter’s workshop on the politics and theory of voice were both extremely relevant to my practice and I left both sessions feeling stimulated and excited to apply what I had learnt. The opportunity to collaborate and present work with a dynamic and international group was a fun challenge and a rare opportunity. I do wish we had slightly more time to work on producing work, but overall the residence was a rich experience.”

Julia Dyck

130

Q-O2 MICRO-RESIDENCY

Molenbeek walkwords

(workshop by Peter Westenberg) 1) the beautiful words: moror achator (everyodies garden) malik (a beautiful young woman) amarok (a special kind of beauty, that can not be described only felt) 2) the funny words: mennuisserie (art of making a menu) slaapkamers (schlephammer) apotheek (character in an Asterix book) la fonderie (a place for lost things such as love and .... ) vergunning (it is definitely a verb, the act of bending) ramada: the girl who I loved, the lover prado: name of a street, museum, green, a meadow in spanish and in portuguese zen zen boutique ! repetition, da da bees inside the boutique, black and yellow animals hobas: visual graphic horeca: matras brand, meaning; now is the time to sleep little hour H: a letter with no sound buurt voor matensa: meet the professionals (in portuguese: the killing, massacre) la passerelle, la passerelle, la passerelle, la passerelle: a construction schaffolding amei: passed sense of love (...) english word salad confusion toitteur: looks like torture pain (bread): pain (hurt) traitteur: traitor

131

guardiens of the peace paix, pays (a failed discussion) the pretty shop love pretty girl (pink clothes) asprl diamant hair shop “yes you’re beautiful” gemeenschapswacht (...) when I walked I just listened I ended up with words that didn’t mean anything at all. words that i heard: halteki wie owie wiowi grum toro chalki bachikoooo toiletzzzsszsz chauke tsjep nakooo poker videoclub rido (...)

I have no words, just big sentences: cheap car parts, free entrance la sonnette ne fonctionne pas just toquer pas poubelle arrêt et stationement même pas 5 minutes j’appelle la police tout de suite.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Donia Jourabchi & Davide Tidoni protest sounds : politics of sound Residency Period: From 01/06/2016 to 19/07/2016 Invited by A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle to work in Warsaw In 2016, the sounds of demonstrations and political protests became a very important part of the sonic environment of Warsaw. Organisers of these events were rarely aware of just how important a role sound can play during protest. The activities of sound artists Donia Jourabchi and Davide Tidoni, invited to partake in the residency at A-I-R Laboratory in June and July 2016, were linked to the topic of the acoustic design of demonstrations, politics of sound, and the critical potential of sound art. The sound, in this case, is considered a tool that can be used by the citizens to express their political opinions and stand up for their rights. Residents cooperating with Warsaw artist Edyta JarzÄ…b and Cafe Kryzys were searching for new strategies of designing the sound of political protest and protesting through the use of sound; they organized workshops and improvised sound interventions in public space, but also actively participated in the ongoing demonstrations. In December of 2016, bilingual Polish-English collective publication Warsound|Warszawa by Donia Jourabchi and her collaborators Taufan ter Weel, Edyta JarzÄ…b and Dorian Batycka was published by A-I-R Laboratory CCA Ujazdowski Castle.

132

DONIA JOURABCHI & DAVIDE TIDONI

Donia Jourabchi The proposed plan of action

for wildcat communities and sonorous mobile exploration consists of a temporary autonomous zone formed in the streets of Warsaw, as non dualistic social resistance and collective experimental sound intervention.

Low-power radio transmission is easily accessible and requires low-cost equipment. The self-made 1-watt radio transmitter is a portable sound system that can play any of the activists’ sounds, radiating the message over an area larger than the physical location.

The potential to bring the sounds of resistance to the streets, from within protests and marches, expresses

133

strong mutual support and functions as a gathering place by the simple fact that it provides a signal to anyone informed, tuned-in and within reach of the station. It can multiply listening sources in public space, but it can also deviate to include isolated spaces. It modulates the transmitted signal, not as a conceptual solution for social change, but rather to define an experimental approach by which sound practices amplify clandestine infrastructures of resistance. It forces building the direct space of knowledges together, engaging listening and transmitting local content in a radio intervention, joining together the voices of those affected by oppression and marginalisation.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

134

DONIA JOURABCHI & DAVIDE TIDONI

135

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Camera Sonora improvisation : performance art : installation Residency Period: From 14/07/2016 to 21/07/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Montorio al Vomano, Abruzzo (Italy) Camera Sonora (a collective that includes Italian performers/sound artists Marialuisa Capurso and Adolfo La Volpe and Danish sound artist Morten Poulsen) were invited by Binaural/Nodar to take part in Suoni di Monte d’Oro (“Sounds of Golden Mount�), a one-week artist residency co-organized together with Italian organization Bambun from Abruzzo, Italy. The residency took place in the rural area of Montorio al Vomano (province of Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy) as an integral part of both Interferenze/Liminaria Festival and SoCCoS network.

CAMERA SONORA #3-4 (Montorio al Vomano, Ginestra degli Schiavoni)

C

amera Sonora is a longdurational performance that combines music, performance art and installation with an aim to explore aspects of time as a method to venture into thoughts and emotions.

Camera Sonora uses the surroundings of the performers and the audience as inspiration and stimuli for the subconscious travels, to dive into a liminal process of constantly passing through or arriving at different states of mind, using sound and rituals as guidance through the many phases. By performing and improvising for several hours (or several days), the performers invite the audience to immerse themselves in their personal experience and to be spectators and participants by the way their bodily presence changes

the resonance of the room on both a physical and metaphysical level.

Camera Sonora often follow a chosen theme from which they create new concepts and rituals to be explored during the extended performances.

New rituals are then carried over into the next performances, and Camera Sonora is therefore constantly expanding every year, gathering ever more history and echoes of past performances. Through extended live musical improvisation, the performers use themselves and the music to get into trances, with the use of music loops, rituals, objects, an open minuteto-minute written documentation of events, keywords to trigger new ideas, and much more. Through durational performance, the artists decorate and alter the room with lights, spontaneous and ritualistic art, objects, colours and words. Using the room as an emotional resonance chamber, the performers

136

CAMERA SONORA

create intimacy to channel energy and reach levels of subconsciousness. In addition, other interactive tactics are being used, depending on the theme of the particular performance.

In July 2016, the Camera Sonora team was invited by Binaural/ Nodar to participate in the Suoni di Monte d’Oro residency in the mountain area of Montorio al Vomano. For that particular instalment of Camera Sonora, we decided to use the theme “Rituals” as the basis for both the site-specific artistic research and the performances that took place both in Montorio and in Ginestra degli Schiavoni.

field recording trips and gathered information to translate into artistic material to be used as source of inspiration to modify and shape the official Camera Sonora performances by the end of the residency, which took place in an old cloister in Montorio, and subsequently in the small rural town of Ginestra degli Schiavoni, a few hundred kilometres south.

We asked ourselves several crucial questions:

One of the most interesting aspects of doing Camera Sonora is to collectively participate in the creation of A ROOM, a very special place, every time different and yet the same, that grows before our eyes and ears, from moment to moment more disconnected from the reality outside, and at the same time being its mirrored image.

- What is a ritual?

- How and why do we use rituals, both on a individual and collective level?

- Which rituals are present in both natural and urban (man-made) environment?

- How can we monitor the manifestation of these rituals?

This time the curious task was that we had to take a landscape, an environment (or at least fragments of it) inside the room; we had to translate the rituals of this environment and incorporate them into our performance (which is in many ways a ritual itself).

During the residency we investigated the both hidden and obvious rituals of the surroundings of the specific location, we interviewed the great Catholic priest Don Nicola Jobbi, who made recordings of the local culture in the 1960’s, made several

Whether we succeeded is left open, but during the process some beautiful and unexpected things occurred and, furthermore, we had lots of fun in connecting with the environment surrounding Montorio al Vomano.

137

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

138

CAMERA SONORA

139

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Giorgio Mega & Marta Romaszkan field recordings : performance : photography Residency Period: From 14/07/2016 to 21/07/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in Montorio al Vomano, Abruzzo (Italy) Giorgio Mega and Marta Romaszkan were invited by Binaural/Nodar to take part in Suoni di Monte d’Oro (“Sounds of Golden Mount”), a one-week artist residency co-organized together with Italian organization Bambun from Abruzzo, Italy. The residency took place in the rural area of Montorio al Vomano (province of Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy) as an integral part of both Interferenze/Liminaria Festival and SoCCoS network. BIOS seeks a de-hierarchisation of the subject-background system in both landscape and soundscape and the project applied a field study process based on an active observation through body awareness techniques, movement research and site-based sound interventions.

The

residency for Suoni di Monte d’Oro had been a very good opportunity to apply and condense the kind of processuality we had already experienced in our former research for BIOS project.

By application we mean getting to a sensible result, such as the audio-photographic installation that was presented both in Montorio al Vomano and at the Liminaria festival in Fortore; while the condensation appeared as an effort to bind together quite various passages, and in a relative short period of time.

The first step, observation, is therefore a direct perceptive experience of the environment that we encountered, in the proximity of the place where the creative part of the residency occurred,

the mountain territory around the town of Montorio al Vomano, set between Monti della Laga and Gran Sasso.

We chose three areas in the surroundings: one is a little wood in the middle of cultivated hills in Valle Cupa, the crofting hamlet where we actually stayed nearby Montorio; the second is the natural park along the river Vomano on the valley floor, which starts close to the last houses of Montorio and continue up, rich in biodiversity; the third area is around the path that connects two villages on the other side of the valley, and which is definitely wilder and located higher than the other two.

In our work, observation is anything but passive: it’s involving our whole body in its presence, through

140

GIORGIO MEGA & MARTA ROMASZKAN

sounds, smells, orientation, climatic and geomorphic context, when being in a dense forest, lying under a carpet of ivy, or reaching a peak to lean on the trunk of a tall chestnut.

The touch itself, is just the purest and more archaic form of observation, being that all senses evolved from there (seeing is touching from a distance, and just like listening, is perceiving other bodies through an interpretation of vibrations or frequencies).

After this collection of undisciplined impressions and sensations, that brings a kind of non-structured knowledge (unlike botanic), it’s time to enter literally inside plants spatiality, namely their proper domain, given that they stay outside of the temporal that ethic and philosophy normally consider as the dimension of subjectivity.

Adapting the body to a place, to the forms of other bodies and to the bodies of other forms of life, in a state driven by what we described above talking about observation as neither active nor passive, is entering in the choreographic level of BIOS.

In an article published online in 2011, called “Vegetal anti-metaphysics: Learning from plants”, Michael Marder poignantly argue that is from the vegetal world that commence a “fundamental re-conceptualization of Being” which gives access to a different perspective to the end of metaphysics. “[...] the plants […] articulate themselves spatially: in a body language free from gestures,‘‘they can express themselves only by their postures [ils ne s’expriment que par leurs poses].

In using the word ‘language’ to describe vegetal self-expression in all its spatialized materiality, I am not opting for

141

a metaphor. What I propose, instead, is that contemporary philosophy include the plants in the tradition of treating language neither as a means of communication, nor as something exclusively human, the tradition that, in Heidegger’s ‘totality-of-significations’ and in Benjamin’s ‘language of things’ or ‘the language as such’, is attuned to the spatial relations and articulations between beings, whether animate or inanimate”.

It’s by tuning with the plants spatial horizon that our body research enters in a togetherness with the vegetal bodies, a field in which we see plurality more than singularity, whereby the body is de-individualised and de-unified in a tactile dimension.

This specific perception of space is then translated (and reinforced) into photography and sound work.

Our challenge in the field of photography is to maintain and make visible this world in the form of a balance research, where the human body is declining from the position of being the only subject that shines above a green background, moving back but without disappearing, trying to find the critical point in which all the bodies, human and plants, are balanced in their exposition.

Caught in this double movement, plants are fore-coming. The soundscape, at the same time, is playing a similar role on another plan, where our sonic intervention (being acoustic derived by movements or by subtle playing instruments directly on the field, or even electronic manipulation) are in search of the same kind of equilibrium in the sound field.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

We are just joining a very large orchestra, in terms of concept and number of performers, or in other terms, birds and cicadas are the same as a musician.

Submerged in the midst of river canes, we raise questions.

We are trying to challenge an established phenomenology of landscape by imaginative exploration, loosing our habitual points of reference in the space, adapting to and adopting other spatial conditions.

The body reveals itself in the contact with other bodies – as in the sound of crackling and swishing moving among canes and ivy.

The condition of contact, and this double moving in the hierarchy in image and sound is therefore making all bodies’ bios, and this kind of movement is shared with other thoughts in philos-

ophy, more-than-human anthropology and avant-garde political rights.

But what does it means that we want them to be political bodies?

And what about the opposite movement, are we aiming to depoliticize ourselves as humans? “[...] plants [...] extend themselves in space, exposing their vegetal bodies in utter vulnerability to being chopped off or plucked, harvested or trimmed. Ethical humanism will interpret such selflessness as an unattainable ideal only if the possessive model of subjectivity is, ultimately, undisturbed by the critique of metaphysics. But, as soon as ethics sheds its humanist camouflage, the subject will join plant life in a self-expropriating journey toward the other.”

M. Marder, Vegetal anti-metaphysics: Learning from plants.

142

GIORGIO MEGA & MARTA ROMASZKAN

143

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

David Birchall & Vicky Clarke a.k.a.

Noise Orchestra sound : movement : architecture Residency Period: From 07/08/2016 to 21/08/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the city of Brussels through ‘meet and greet’ at CTM/DISK Berlin During the Q-O2 residency, Noise Orchestra developed prototypes of noise machines and created new oscillator circuits to create a new performance/assemblage researching the interactivity of the circuits and light/movement sources inspired by the urban and rhythmic environment of Brussels.

Reflections by Vicky Clarke and David Birchall David: gathering things

A

s I began to think about coming to Q-O2, I started to gather all the things I thought might be useful and to formulate ideas I could propose as departure points in our process. I knew Vicky had brought some electronic gear and would be already building circuits in the week before I came, so I concentrated on thinking about ways we could begin to play together. I put together a simple system of circuits the days before I left and played with it a bit at home. The system put into practise an idea we had been discussing about developing circuits in chained/tree systems. I brought a Steim cracklebox circuit, a tremolo unit, volume pedal,

and an arduino programmed LED ‘drum machine’. With this material, I wanted to spend some time working together with Vicky and improvising with whatever systems she had built.

Vicky: before arriving

My time at Q-O2 was contemplative and productive. Before arriving at the residency, I had originally aimed to develop new circuits that would echo the rhythms of the city and to think about how such rhythms could potentially be translated into light input to feed my noise machines. I also wanted to explore Brussels - to make field recordings and be inspired by the city and to see how these explorations would impact my work on the electronics.

144

DAVID BIRCHALL & VICKY CLARKE A.K.A. NOISE ORCHESTRA

David: playing around

In the first days we began experimenting by playing with the circuit systems we had built and getting speakers set up. I also made some super noisy straight-to-tape field recordings, mainly in the area of Molenbeek around Q-O2. Listening back to these recordings, the most interesting seemed to be those of children’s games, cricket, football, shouts, clapping – short, sharp reverberations off buildings around the squares where playing takes place.

materials. I was surprised and a little awed that the event had become an opportunity for spectating and noise appreciation.

Vicky: sound walks

For my first week in Brussels I took several sound-walks throughout the city. I made a recording of a demolition/construction site in the heart of town, next to the Bozar art centre at Mont des Arts. As I approached the area, I was arrested by the loud sounds pinging back and forth and reverberating between the giant buildings. The juxtaposition of the brutalist office block being demolished right next to the prestigious art gallery was visually striking. Positioned around the site, giant billboards by local street-artists depicting faces (maybe of Brussels citizens) were supposed to provide a visual softening of the harsh world of construction, but nothing could soften the reality of the violent crushing noises. The location’s sound-field was immense, with the digger taking giant, individual pieces of steel girders and parts of internal walls and pounding them slowly with creaking power, piercing metal sounds, and crushing booms as the loads were dropped to the ground. The gap between the entrance and art boards was large enough that so I could record the sounds.

Next to me was a family who had also stopped to watch the demolition and to sort through the leftover

145

David: light and electromagnetic signals

After a few days, it suddenly seemed as if we had a really good opportunity to explore the ways in which we could use lights to trigger and play our circuits. We began to explore using fluorescent light fixtures as a signal source by passing them through guitar pickups and into various homemade step sequencers to some nice divisions of signals and rhythms. This idea of using guitar pickups to capture input from electromagnetic signals was a new and interesting development for us. A basic aim of our work in general is finding ways in which light can be translated into sound. Usually this is managed by working with light-dependant resistors in circuits.

We have previously used pickups as microphones for field recording, to record electromagnetic signals, but the

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

experiments at Q-O2 were our first with taking a direct input from lightning as a signal. This development allowed us to add another layer of complexity to our working process by arranging 3 separate lights in a triangular formation.

Vicky: flea Market and found items

The flea market was a source of inspiration for the enclosures of my noise circuits. I wanted the individual pieces to be sonically and visually constructed of items from Brussels. For example: I constructed a siren circuit using a 40106 and a 4051 chip, with a Sample and Hold button. The dial on the left is a Voltage Controlled Oscillator that varies the frequency. The dial on the right varies the speed of the siren.

The enclosure is made from collage materials and an old cigar box found in the flea market.

David: acoustic and electrical elements in balance

In performance, I feel we found a good balance between the acoustic

and electrical elements. Acoustic sound came from the sound of the relay switch and the switching device in the fluorescent tube. The electrical output was picked up by stereo pickups placed very close to two of the lights. By adding a third light, we found we could bring in a distant layer of electromagnetic input creating a beautiful overall effect at low volume - a diverse set of small rhythmic sounds popping, clicking and droning in the stereo field. We found sonic analogies in the sounds of our light array to the sound of the tongue on the roof of the mouth in certain languages and to the hypnotic crackles of a camp-fire.

Vicky: new performance installation concept

Having access to such a large space at Q-O2 was fantastic for my music partner David and I. Our studio in Manchester is quite small, so it was great to be able to work in a space the size of Q-02. Physically and mentally, the space broadened what we were able to achieve. Recently, our work with noise machines has involved thinking of different light inputs with which to trigger sound. We’d wanted to use fluorescent lighting tubes for a while and were amazed to find a stack of them at Q-O2. Ludo Engels, the technician at Q-02, helped with the arduino and coding and together we were able to hook up a new performance system.

For us, this was a new direction in our work: a performative sound installation. To date, we have been so concentrated on building the circuits and machines that we haven’t had the proper time to consider how to perform with them as instruments. It was interesting for us to discuss how an installation could be a performance, and what our role in it could be. We liked the idea of the audience watching us set up the

146

DAVID BIRCHALL & VICKY CLARKE A.K.A. NOISE ORCHESTRA

installation, of the sound field evolving and unfolding over time to a point where we are happy to let it play. I also liked to think about how the sculptural set up of the lights would affect the sounds.

We have since used our experiments to apply to the 2017 CTM Radio Lab call out, and we want to further pursue this performance/installation concept. This was something unexpected and inspirational that came directly out of the residency at Q-O2. We felt it was a powerful sound world that we had created and can’t wait to explore this further.

and time to read. The resources of the sound art library at Q-O2 are wonderful and it was a joy to me to take time to reflect on my work. This reading was really important as it enabled me to further contextualise our work with noise and to think more deeply about the motivations for making the work we do. I particularly enjoyed reading chapters from Brandon La Belle’s Background Noise and Paul Hegarty’s Noise Music: A History, and I now have lots of further reading and new departure points for my thinking about our practice.

David: meeting people and ideas

David: location reading

There was also a parallel social element to the residency; speaking about the work with Joris Vercammen who was doing a residency at the same time as we were. Joris pointed out that the triangle shape we had made from lights resembled the Platonic symbol for fire. From this point on, we began to explore some new questions about whether it was possible to use what we had made in a performative way. I tried to make object- and spatialised- improvisations with the light arrangement and we considered inviting others to work with the set up. I worked around simply opening and closing different windows in the building to see how sounds from outside could be mixed in with the sounds of the machines. Finally, Vicky and I worked together using the system as a non-linear rhythm generator with various delays, reverbs, and samples from YouTube self-actualisation videos - pushing the system toward a realm of electronic music. All these areas remain open as places of research for future.

Vicky: noise reading An important element of the residency for me was having the space

147

Another great part of the residency was the chance to explore the excellent library at Q-O2. Michael Vorfeld’s Glühlampenmusik (lightbulb music) was concretely useful and inspiring. Digging deeper in Christina Kubsich’s works with electromagnetism in the Electrical Drawings book was also very useful. Vicky and I had initially been interested in exploring environmental sound in Brussels, so I was pleased to find a text by Jason Kahn in which he describes spending days at a time in various specific sonic locations, including in Galerie Ravenstein just beyond the Brussels Central Station.

This was a location I had wanted to revisit since spending a really nice few hours there some years ago as I waited for a train to the next stop of a tour and where back then my colleagues and I spent a lot of time throwing sounds into the space - voices, claps and so on. Unfortunately I didn’t make it back there, but it was interesting to read about Kahn’s measured, long-form listening exercise in the same space that my colleagues I had activated as performers the last time we were there.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

148

DAVID BIRCHALL & VICKY CLARKE A.K.A. NOISE ORCHESTRA

149

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Binaural/Nodar Micro-Residency

Vougascapes: Around the water dam rurality : change : water dam : holistic sound research

Banks of River Vouga, Municipality of Oliveira de Frades (Portugal) Micro-Residency Period: From 21/08/2016 to 27/08/2016 In the context of a long standing series of artistic interventions around one of the rivers that passes along its region, the river Vouga, Binaural/Nodar hosted a one-week micro-residency where international young artists proposed by SoCCoS partners together with a social researcher developed both individual and collective works influenced the geographical and social impacts of the recently built water dam of Ribeiradio/Ermida. During the residency participants went through different in-the-field workshops about the local geo-ethnographical context, sound recording/editing/mixing techniques, ethical/moral questions of site-specific artistic practices and cooperation methodologies in order to enhance collective artistic work.

Participants: Henry Andersen, Ian Kühling, Jakub Krzewiński, Lucrecia Dalt, Niklas Nybom, Paulina Miu Zielińska, Sebastian Dingens and Kelli Rose Pearson.

150

BINAURAL/NODAR MICRO-RESIDENCY

The Joyful Replacement

by Luís Costa Translated by Kelli Rose Pearson The dam arrives just alongside a village on the edge of the Vouga.

These hinterlands, forgotten since the dawn of time, approach a paradox by accepting all changes with joy.

The burden of memory needs to be released, they say.

And then they speak of poverty, unemployment, and abandonment, in the form of a litany of (under) development.

Novelty comes from everywhere, why not from water, carrying us as we embark on this river of milk and honey?

I don’t know.

Will boats, jet skis, noisy leisure, and frantic shuttles be the light that illuminates our new way?

I don’t know.

Perhaps the joyful replacement of old with new is a curse to which we must become accustomed.

Or is it just a matter of time?

As soon as I am not here anymore, I don’t care what they will decide to do.

Niklas Nybom

151

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

During the micro-residency many improbable connections were established. One of them came after a guided tour to the inside of the Ribeira/ Ermida Dam, where its head Engineer explained the group that the dam belongs to a Portuguese private company, EDP, which ultimate shareholder is a Chinese company called China Three Gorges Corporation, named after the gorges of the Yangtze River where a giant dam was built years after having been imagined

by Mao Tse-Tung on his poem Swimming (1956):

This poem was proposed by Ian Kühling and Niklas Nybom to be read by some tourists visiting the dam, which came to be the basis of their final audiovisual piece.

“I have just drunk the waters of Changsha And come to eat the fish of Wuchang.

Now I am swimming across the great Yangtze, Looking afar to the open sky of Chu. Let the wind blow and waves beat, Better far than idly strolling in a courtyard.

Today I am at ease.

“It was by a stream that the Master said-‘Thus do things flow away!’ “ Sails move with the wind.

Tortoise and Snake are still.

Great plans are afoot: A bridge will fly to span the north and south, Turning a deep chasm into a thoroughfare; Walls of stone will stand upstream to the west To hold back Wushan’s clouds and rain Till a smooth lake rises in the narrow gorges.

The mountain goddess if she is still there Will marvel at a world so changed.”

152

BINAURAL/NODAR MICRO-RESIDENCY

“A lot of farming lands were submersed by the dam.”

“In the 70’s and 80’s all the fields were farmed, the forest was clean as we needed the bushes for the animals, and we would go shepherding sheep to the lands and forest.”

“We would walk barefoot everywhere, without any fear.”

“Boats were used to cross to the other margin of the river, specially by people who had corn to mill… one day the corn would be crossed and on the following day bags with flour would be transported back.”

“When I was a kid I would pick little stones and throw them to make them slide throughout the water, making little jumps.”

“Today I see a desert lagoon with no trees and with many promises yet to fulfil, namely for authorized river beaches that were promised.”

“The dam is very profitable for the hydro-electrical company to produce electricity, and also for boat rides, fishing and many other things that would come in the future to make our place even better.”

[Opinions about the Ribeiradio/Ermida dam collected by Luís Costa & Paulina Miu Zielińska, and later used on Paulina’s final vocal performance]

153

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Ian Kühling

Paulina Miu Zielińska

Paulina Miu Zielińska

Nely Ferreira (Binaural/Nodar)

Kelli Rose Pearson

Jakub Krzewiński

Henry Andersen

Sebastian Dingens

Lucrecia Dalt

154

BINAURAL/NODAR MICRO-RESIDENCY

Paulina Miu Zielińska

Jakub Krzewiński

155

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Hai Art Micro-Residency #2 Sonic Wilderness Camp

augmented wilderness : instrumentality : mushrooms : networks Hailuoto Island, Finland Micro-Residency Period: From 23/08/2016 to 30/08/2016 • sonic wild{er}ness or music outside • instrumentality of mobile sonic interventions • sonification of matter & environment such as earth, stones, vegetation • mycelium - networks underground with: Anja Erdmann, Annie Goh, Darsha Hewitt, Inge Vanden Kronenberg, Jacob Remin, Katharina Hauke, Lee Patterson, Peter Kirn and Till Bovermann

156

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #2

157

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Anja Erdmann

and her piezo - copper experiments can be listened to on soundcloud: Acoustic Diary (Hailuoto, Soccos micro residency 2016).

Darsha Hewitt

”I really had no idea what to expect but the experience will stick with me very strongly. To develop ties to a new group of very interesting artists it has inspired me to incorporate some new methods and techniques into my work. Hai Art has developed something special - the island location is a big part, but the energy and enthusiasm for collaborating and making music together and the unique concept of ‘sonic wilderness’ expands as it continues to gain momentum”.

158

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #2

Keskiniemi light tower by Annie Goh

“One day during the residency we took a day trip to the northwestern shore of Hailuoto. There are two white towers there: the Keskiniemi beacon tower which was wooden, shaped like a long pyramid and 20m high, and the Keskiniemi light tower made of metal and less than 10m high.

Earlier on in the residency I had been experimenting using contact mics and hand-held speakers making feedback on large objects such as a boat, so on the metal tower I was curious how it would sound. Katharina and I began making feedback on the structure, particularly on the oddest part hanging off one side - a strange composition of flat surfaces welded together at various angles, like a modernist or futurist sculpture, we later found out that it is a radar reflector. We played the structure tenderly and it created mournful but beautiful sounds which pierced the landscape and mixed in with the sounds of the wind and sea around us.�

159

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Inge Vanden Kroonenberg

“I came to Hailuoto with a small idea, a little tape recorder and some old speaker cones.

I wanted to listen when sounds become signals and when signals form a composition and make minimal acoustic gestures and experience how it changes the environment.

When I exchanged thoughts with Jacob [Remin] the ‘Sonic Wilderness Mushroom Synth’ was born.

Being in such a remote and unspoiled environment made me feel very present. But is also made me aware that every sound I hear makes a great presence. The long walks and the interventions made me very sensitive to the sound and silence on the island.

The laughs and talks at the table and down by the fire made me feel very fortunate.”

Jacob Remin

and the Sonic Wilderness Mushroom Synth which he developed along with Inge Vanden Kroonenberg.

160

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #2

Anemos Sonore Maaum Siilium: Instrument designed during residency by

Till Boverman and Katharina Hauke

An artificial plant of the wind plant variety. As an inhabitant of the boreal forest and meadows, Maaum Siilium exhibits solid conductive roots and delicate weedlike stems with swinging fruiting bodies.

The plant is sensitive to both aerial flow and soil conditions which it translates into alterations of its sonic behaviour.

Maaum Siilium can be found in the Gulf of Bothnia, where it grows on meadows, along the shore, and in the open forest, occasionally rooting on caps of mushrooms.

161

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

“Hailuoto forest work/walk, south shore”, a retrospective score by

Lee Patterson Soccos/HaiArt Residency, Pöllä, Hailuoto, 25th August 2016.

An acoustic performance for small ensemble using found materials.

A member or members of the group will lead a walk into the forest.

The ensemble should listen intently to their surroundings.

There should be no verbal communication.

Along the way, each member of the ensemble is to select and collect one, two or a few objects that can be played or used to make sounds.

Obvious examples include pine cones, branches, leaves, stones and roots but may also include human detritus, animal bones, leaf litter and the trees themselves.

Upon finding a suitable location within the forest, such as a clearing, a ride, or simply somewhere amongst the trees, stop and distribute yourselves around that area.

Continuing to listen intently, make discrete sounds with your objects, exploring the possibilities of each as instruments - from percussive or rhythmic playing to variations in timbre.

Explore the dynamic and durational possibilities, from short, sharp and loud to longform and subtle playing.

Interact with any resident sounds or those from outside the forest and respond to the sounds of your fellow performers.

Allow space and time to have equal importance in your sound making decisions, moving around to explore and play the spatial and acoustic properties created by the forest canopy.

For the duration of this performance, the ensemble is a sounding mechanism or body within the forest and when it ceases to wish to be so, the performance is over.

Take great care so as to minimise your impact upon the forest.

162

HAI ART MICRO-RESIDENCY #2

Peter Kirn

“The notion of wilderness may be a somewhat romantic construct, but we can at least view it as an opposite to the insular bunkers in which electronic music was first incubated.

Now, thanks to sophisticated mobile recording technology, battery-powered synthesizers, DIY electronics, and mobile sound computation, sound performance can happen anywhere.

It’s an interesting test of how to push live sound exploration to its limits – all the while with self-sufficient objects, no longer tethered to wall warts and power sockets. Being on batteries with portable instruments means the ability to go where you want. Paying attention to the environment means the chance to mine the world around you for inspiration.”

163

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Juan Duarte Regino & Sébastien Piquemal field recordings : fm radio : diy electronics Residency Period: From 09/10/2016 to 29/10/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in the town of Vouzela (Portugal) and proposed by Hai Art Mexican Juan Duarte Regino and French Sébastien Piquemal, both sound artists and technophiles, were invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in October 2016 in the municipality of Vouzela (Portugal) and was developed around a set of children and youth workshops of field recordings, pd language and construction of portable fm transmitters of the recorded sounds, randomly mixed with sounds from radio stations from all over the world.

B

etween 9th and 29th of October 2016, we carried out a series of activities during the SoCCoS Residency at Binaural/Nodar. For us, as sound practitioners, our interest was to begin a practice based research on the use of FM radio transmission as a medium for playful exploration1. The radio medium entails a grassroots technology that invites for appropriation in art. We proposed a project that would include a workshop with the local community of Vouzela, to experiment ‘hands on’ the social, artistic and technical aspects of FM radio transmission. The project also allowed to explore the development of activities related to sound technology and field recording with students from different schools of Vouzela. The

possibility of running a first version of this project as part of the program of Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound, enabled to gather in the same place all elements required to experiment within a transversal action between artists, Binaural/Nodar, and the community of Vouzela.

In the present text we review some starting points of the project, including historical relevance of the FM radio. We also tell about potential engagements as a ludic practice of sonic exploration within a community of participants. In this sense, during the residency we could work out a series of potential interactions with sound transmitting in aerial and aquatic

1 The artistic approach includes sound instrument making and performative aspects (related to games in space) that are created first in the laboratory and then used in the field as instruments for sonic ludic interaction.

164

JUAN DUARTE REGINO & SÉBASTIEN PIQUEMAL

mediums. On the other hand, the format of radio production invited us to create some content for radio broadcast, including organizing workshops with students where they would document the local community through field recordings and interviews.

Radio parasites

Our research started by reviewing cultural uses of FM radio broadcasting. However, rather than studying its history as a mass media, our interest is placed on the cases where radio transmission is used (or misused) as a tool for transgression, like in the case of pirate radio. We therefore started to plan a series of experiments with selfbuilt units for sound transmission that can be placed in public space, in order to bring participants into the dynamics of performance and installation based on FM radio technology. The relevance of this goes further than merely learning about the technology itself, and instead is focused on the sonic experiences coming from re-purposing a medium, participatory art, cultural sonic identities and media empowerment.

Pirate radios emerged in the early twenties as states started to regulate radio broadcasting throughout the world. In most cases, the state would not only rule on assigned frequencies, but also acceptable content. Pirate radios offered an alternative to music and content that were not provided by licensed broadcasters, and thus became an important vector of the counterculture movement in the 60’s. While FM radio as a mass media is slowly disappearing, it is still forbidden in most countries to broadcast without a license. However, low power transmitters are legal almost everywhere. These are aimed at

165

personal use, for example to play music from an mp3 player wirelessly. The fact that these low power radios are allowed constitutes a legal loophole allowing hyperlocal pirate radio broadcasting.

Our initial project during the residency was therefore to design and build a series of low-power portable FM Radio parasites : units which are affordable, compact, and solar-powered.

They would have worked as pervasive units of sound transmission that can be placed in public space, freeloading on the existing infrastructure, while taking control over a particular radio frequency in that space. The FM transmitter is a self made project that can be finished in few hours of work with participants, and it is based on a design that uses simple electronic components. Later on, this device would be used as a tool for art interventions, such as performances and spontaneous sound installations contained in a limited FM spectrum.

Finally, the design would also been open-sourced, with full instructions on how to build the device.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

FM radio as sonic material

Through exploration, we realised that FM radio comprises multiple configurations with a strong potential for artistic use. For example, in a context of live performance we experimented with the physically perceptible manipulation of acoustic events and ethereal radio signals. Another configuration is when simply used for broadcasting audio, while enabling a community to craft media tools and transmit own created contents, as hobbyist approach to enable short length independent radio transmission.

Moreover the multiple configurations, found along the simultaneous study and practice of FM radio, were addressed through an artistic approach to wrap around the many forms of the social and geographical space in Vouzela. The artistic approach includes sound instrument making and performative aspects (related to games in space) that are created first in the laboratory and then used in the field as instruments for sonic ludic interaction.

The games would feature the principles of locative media, in particular geo-cashing where hidden sonic objects in the nature would be discoverable with the help of FM radio transmission / reception.

Workshops and activities carried-out

In an effort to produce audio content that could be broadcast through FM radio, we started with several activities. A first exploratory work used the archive of Binaural/Nodar by

mashing-it up with live streams from Internet radio stations in a generative manner, creating a striking sonic contrast between field recordings from the region around Nodar and pop music and radio shows from around the world. In a second exploratory work, we organized a workshop with students from the middle-school of Vouzela.

The workshop started with a short introduction to field recording, and children were then instructed to choose a set of questions and walk around in the village to interview residents. The goal was then to edit these interviews into a small show, which unfortunately didn’t happen by lack of time. We then planned to edit this material ourselves, but quickly realized that it was meaningless without understanding Portuguese. This prompted us to work on a small sound piece which only makes use of the ‘trash sounds’ of these interviews, i.e. sound that would have been left-out in a proper edit, such as laughs, jokes from the children, sound checks and failed interviews...

Binaural/Nodar offered us the possibility to present a second workshop with students qualified in electronics.

Therefore we were confident to engage directly with participants into building a range of sonic tools: hydrophones, electromagnetic field detectors and contact microphones to be used on the field. The possibility to build a short length FM radio transmitter from simple electronic components helps to understand how radio transmission can operate on a rural environment, as in the case of the geographical location of Vouzela.

This workshop was presented for the first time during the residency in Binaural/Nodar. We prepared a circuit

166

JUAN DUARTE REGINO & SÉBASTIEN PIQUEMAL

that included two main modules. First module is an Amplifier that can adapt to different sound sources, including contact microphones, electromagnetic field sensors, and even hydrophones.

Second module is the FM radio transmitter, which receives input from the amplifier, and then sends the resulting signal to an air antenna. The transmitter can be fine-tuned with a screwdriver and the signal received by any regular radio receiver. The workshop was therefore arranged in two parts to help understanding each process separately (signal amplification, and signal transmission). Despite some final complications on the transmission part of the circuit, which needs further rework, the amplification was successful and most of the participants were able to build and test microphones and hydrophones.

Diagram of the circuit developed for the workshop:

167

Performance with Hydrophones

For the results and presentation day, Juan Duarte Regino prepared a improvisation set with hydrophones and radio transmitter and receivers. Despite the transmitters not being fully functional, the intention was to play with the tangible manipulation of radio signals, as part of a small ecosystem of sound feedbacks between hydrophones, pickups and radio transmission. This performance at Binaural/Nodar was documented with a portable recorder.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

168

JUAN DUARTE REGINO & SÉBASTIEN PIQUEMAL

169

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Marialuisa Capurso field recordings : site-specific : vocal performance Residency Period: From 09/10/2016 to 29/10/2016 Invited by Binaural/Nodar to work in the municipality of Vouzela (Portugal) Italian vocal performer and sound artist Marialuisa Capurso was invited to take part in Playing the Rural Landscape, a series of artist residencies around the theme of visceral/tactile sonic connections with rural landscape, one of which took place in October 2016 in the municipality of Vouzela where she developed a field recordings based score (Rural Tableau) for voice and improvisers, influenced by her personal experiences and recollections in the area, one she will propose to future artistic collaborations.

Excerpts from the diary of a residency in a beautiful place

Black bodies on the same boundary

identities, over-crystallised.

Do the giant lords ask for passport?

Do you smell the animal’s insanity aiming for perfection?

Vouzela/Calvos, Portugal Wednesday 19th October : 15.20 h

Recording at the bridge (the green iron one).

Cars passing under the bridge, trucks, cocks.

Youths from school screaming, talking.

Birds to the left on the roof/antennas.

A guy cycling.

Sheep around the hills.

Un cane abbaia.

This is an old men’s passage, one man asks me what am I doing, he wants to listen with my headphones.

How do we perceive the time?

Through our body or through external effects?

What is nature?

What is the rhythm?

What is truly needed?

What is Rural Tableau?

It’s the observation and its recording of what I see and what I need to perceive.

Re-activation of a path.

170

MARIALUISA CAPURSO

Thursday 20th October Video shooting in three locations near Penoita First place

Do I need to find a comfort zone or not? Am I feeling at home here?

A lot of questions come to my mind before finding the door to get closer to this place. I think I’ve lost my home. I am not sure if a physical place exists where you can easily feel yourself. The viscera of the earth would host my/our body?

No silence in my head, only questions.

The dreams reveal our fears or the place for freedom.

Soft leaves, wet not cold, the hair one by one disposed on this soft carpet, the jelly brown layer is holding me.

My body is made of bones, organs, cerebrospinal fluid. My eyes are connected to my brain, to my hands, to my belly.

The carnal land fuses together with my blood. I leave my feelings to this land.

It’s not easy to stop my brain.

What am I doing? Am I being unnatural?

How am I moving my body? Where am I moving to? The place and me are two different things.

Second place

We now arrived at the most powerful place I have ever seen: a big space made of huge stones, one on top of the other. Silence prevails. No questions anymore. Nothing is more important than the strong connection between my voice and the huge Lords.

I never experienced this strong demand of a place for me to sing a certain song.

171

No choice to change pitch. Loudness is requested. The stones are the Lords.

They shape my voice.

Third place I have been here before, yes, in my dreams.

Saturday 22th October

Reflecting on the soul of this place, on its secret rhythms and memories.

Travelling to the landscapes, I need to perceive the soul of the places where I go. By being here, I get to know another me.

The malaise of not feeling at home anywhere gives me the need of getting in touch with the soul of a place.

The movement and the silence are together. Time and space meet in this moment of reconciliation. My soul feels it. Deep transformation of my instant. When we are out of touch with the place where we are, we loose the connection with ourselves.

Empting my entire being, preparing and immersing myself for the listening and understanding of a new place.

I want to experience of capturing the essence of the place. I want be aware of it.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

RURAL TABLEAU

the lived, the perceived, the present

The need for hearing, the need for listening to the places where we are in order to orient our bodies.

I am landing in a place where I need to recognise myself. I perceive the surrounding space with my body, with my ears, with my touch, with my sense of smell.

The act of listening is interactive with the space. I exchange information with the sound around me. It’s a relation between sound, space, and myself, which brings me to observe that all of these need the conscious presence of the listener. ///

Sound can bring us to our self-consciousness.

The act of listening requires a high level of presence. The acknowledgement can come later.

Desires, fears, ambitions sometimes confuse our existence. We close our ears, we forget our inner voice, we give space to random thoughts coming

from the past, coming from far places.

These obfuscate our present. ///

It seems we have silenced the natural soundscape and replaced it with loud noises.

Sound is in the present which offers itself plenty of rhythms.

The rhythm of sunlight, the smell of rain, the smell of cabbages along the way home. Traces of everyday.

The breath remains. ///

Shall we ask ourselves how does our place sound? Does the soil have a rhythm when I cross it?

How does the wind sound when crossing the rooms of my house?

Movement and silence are together. My soul and me, I reconnect myself with the Universe. I think the forest is the last place where the soul goes to see the sunset.

“The present offers itself in all innocence and cruelty: open, evident, here and there. It can wear a smile, or be tinged with melancholy.”

Henri Lefebvre

172

MARIALUISA CAPURSO

173

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Rima Najdi with Kathy Alberici & Ana Nieves Moya radio : anxiety : control Residency Period: From 24/10/2016 to 07/11/2016 Invited by DISK Berlin / CTM Festival as part of the CTM 2017 Radio Lab Together with musician Kathy Alberici and visual designer Ana Nieves Moya, performance artist Rima Najdi was one of two winners of the CTM 2017 Radio Lab. Developed during a residency in Beirut in October 2016, Najdi’s proposal, Happy New Fear, aims to explore an environment of anxiety and control via a narrative built around Madame Bomba, a persona first created in 2014 when Najdi wore a fake cartoon TNT bomb around her chest while roaming the streets of her hometown Beirut protesting the normalization of death in Lebanon.

Supported by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Radio Drama / Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Ö1 Kunstradio, and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst, the CTM Radio Lab winners premiered their works at the CTM 2017 festival. Rima’s work was subsequently broadcast in its radio version via Deutschlandradio Kultur in March 2017. Happy New Fear was developed in part at the 2016 Sundance Institute, Theatre Lab in MENA, with additional Post-Lab Support funds made possible from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

174

RIMA NAJDI WITH KATHY ALBERICI & ANA NIEVES MOYA

(1) Lebanon, Lebanon, Lebanon…what was I expec5ng? Lebanon. I didn't really….did I have an expecta5on?

I suppose some kind of expecta5on does always exist.

All I know is when I got on the plane, I had this kind of fizzy feeling. The feeling that comes from the an5cipa5on of an adventure. An adventure for which I had no frame of reference at all. Just an ignorant imagina5on of colour and warmth and exo5cism.

(2) "They fall in love with the chaos," they said. That's what they kept telling me. "People come here, and they fall in love with the chaos!" - I don't know why they think that.

(5) Constant honking.

'Toot Toot…Hey! Hey, you! I'm here!! Right behind you!! Hi! Hey! Yeah! Yeah, you! Look! Look in your mirror!! Don't you know I'm here?

Maybe you don't know I'm here. I'm gonna honk again, just in case' More and more. And more and more. And more and more. A cacophony. It's as if without raising the volume, no one is gonna hear you above all of this sta5c.

(6) They ask: 'SO…your first 5me? How do you like it?'

(3) The noise.

I can't explain the intensity of the noise. It's never silent in that city. Never silent. The empty street, the empty living room, the empty night. It is not empty.

I've always associated the sound of ci5es with the sound of people. Hustle and bustle would be the very English way to put it. The noise in Beirut is different. The noise in Beirut is not of people. It is not human. It's mechanical.

(4) Imagine the sound of a generator. Imagine that kind of droning monotony that demands your aSen5on as you walk past. Now imagine it mul5plied, so that the drone copies itself, and con5nues on, and on, and on. Infinite.

Viral. Repe55ve. And it's everywhere. It's everywhere, and you CANNOT escape. It's high-pitched, it's rumbling, it's psychosoma5cally omnipotent. It's like sonic warfare, but a bizarre, warped, domes5cated version. It's the pumping of water to fill up the roof tanks on the buildings.

It's the chugging of diesel. Old motors. It's like having 5nnitus. Chronic 5nnitus. It's invasive. It's helicopters, waking you up in the morning. It's creaking and it's desperate, and you cannot get away. You can never get away. There is no peace.

And you tell them it's wonderful, and everyone is taking such great care of you and you are being fed such great food, and the land is so beau5ful, and the food is so fresh and everything is so fer5le, and they smile.

(7) They ask: 'SO…your first 5me? How do you like it?'

Tension. Tension without bounds, so as you're walking around, with everything and everyone shou5ng louder and louder; the dysfunc5on of the city invading you with droning, difficult frequencies, you just wanna shout 'PLEASE!! Please, stop! Just….SHUT UP!!'

And you want to breathe. You want to breathe unpolluted air, free of the stench of decomposing trash piled up in the streets. You want to listen to the wind, to the ocean. You crave for the gentle rhythms of nature. A nature that is all around, but that is drowned out by the chaos of instability.

A city in a state of emergency. A city with complica5ons.

And then, you admire the people, their resilience, unbounded posi5vity, humor and hospitality.

175

(8) I didn't fall in love with the chaos. I fell in love with the crazy hearts.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

176

RIMA NAJDI WITH KATHY ALBERICI & ANA NIEVES MOYA

177

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Julian Bonequi radio drama : sci-fi movies : humanity Residency Period: From 09/11/2016 to 25/11/2016 Invited by DISK Berlin / CTM Festival as part of the CTM 2017 Radio Lab Hybrid artist Julian Bonequi was one of two winners of the CTM 2017 Radio Lab. Developed during a residency at ZK/U Berlin in November 2016, Bonequi’s The Death of the Anthropocene is a project inspired by radio drama and sci-fi movies. The work imagines a series of one-on-one encounters between ordinary people and mysterious visitors. Mutants, composite human-robotanimals, aliens… these visitors are met with aggression, shock and disbelief as they paint grim pictures of the future of humanity. In the text below, Bonequi layers snapshots of this imaginary world over his daily work, thoughts and unexpected struggle with sciatica while in Berlin.

Supported by Deutschlandradio Kultur – Radio Drama / Klangkunst and CTM Festival, in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut, Ö1 Kunstradio, and ORF musikprotokoll im steirischen herbst.

Simulation of reality and sound incidents

By Julian Bonequi

178

JULIAN BONEQUI

1. Imagining a device for hunting spirits and catching ghosts Cut the wood forming the conceptography of the actions scattered on the ground.

You stack the pieces in columns as if they were scores by drawing the silhouette of a pyramid. The weight and volume of the sound is equivalent to being seated in an imaginary armchair while observing the rippling of the fire’s flames and thinking about how to isolate the doors and windows.

You prepare the space like a box with strings, reflecting on the possibility of an important conversation or any relevant sound event within a resonant space. The studio feels like being upside down inside a contrabass.

A long and continuous note rips the lower vocal cords with a rough and metallic texture that makes your pipe-like throat itch.

The frequencies of a cymbal are altered by the mist of vague dissonance brought by the swaying of deteriorated microphones beating a pendulum. The alienating voice is immersed in vibrated sighs and shivers with the broken polyphony like a note on the edge of a tear.

You stop for a second and you’re silence. The choral from the submerged waters arrives with the astounding winter.

From the bottom of that second, from an even smaller fraction of that time, you arch your body in slow motion as an hourglass and as if someone held your hip up. With a deep gong from the bottom of your belly, you hammer 180 degrees out all the force inside, from the funnel that contains the whole of your skin as liquid presence, as if wanting life to go through you drop by drop.

The second elapses.

A new pause freezes you in the next moment, displacing accents into a new irregular cadence.

Imagine instead, a device to soundproof the anxiety or an analogue machine for teleportation of impossible sounds and emotions.

A landscape of dead letters plagued with living organisms as if they existed in some hidden place of meanings — gurgling through your nerves… glump — glummpt — gllluuummt.

179

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

2. Do we really understand the mystic in music?

Perhaps this will be the intention of a first movement. A simple test of a symphony of the living or a rehearsal on how the interpretation of the end of the world could sound.

Observe the apparent ‘nothing’ and listen to how the silence moves: SHHHH! The whole millennial cascade of concepts will unfortunately not save the human race.

That’s right, you remain sceptical of the future of the world and of what the present tells you, but you prefer to return to the shelter of the listening and pay attention just in case of rebooking faith.

Watch while you drink orange juice or chew a truffle. Stay attuned to how the chamber of your body shakes your lips, teeth, throat, chest and stomach while resonating your skull and your bile. I think you’d better go for a walk before the time machine brings you new appetites from the future.

If music is tied to emotions, whether or not this is true. If humans are stuck in the experience of extremes and perplexed radicalism, or in between, via our bewilderment and lack of trust, our idiocy and arrogance as civilisations, our enmity with the world… bla bla bla bli — stop blabbering please and relax.

Warm up the heat of the throat, and sing a deep ohm (Ω).

Electrical resistance versus analogue insistence.

Repetition is always good for legs.

Music has to move.

Contemplation is cool when you enjoy all your full range of senses.

But what if not?

What if the sensation of feelings stops.

Chimps evolved. Technology evolves. Humans, in a harsh sense, concretely and historically, don’t.

180

JULIAN BONEQUI

3. The absence of the human = silence Yesterday I was crawling on the floor, simply wanting to go from my bed to the floor.

I was speaking with an unexpected visitor about saving the world and what else can’t art do.

There is a tendency towards drama that boils in the blood, a puzzle in the moments of weakness, but nothing is articulated like with the word music. Then I close my eyes and I can teleport my anxiety to reassure myself. The mirror of the living touches the skin dressing each joint. Now a leg is inside the other leg as a trouser.

Now the fingers use the cartilage as gloves, and the music of that body is hosting the nerves exploring distensions.

From the deprivation of human events, from their absence or dilation, in the refreshing state of anthropomorphic experiments, primitive and basic thoughts are lying calmly in the ground while the sun is clouded in fog. Where are the dogs? It’s always cool to have a scene with barking dogs while beings contemplate as simple dust through the light.

Aaaanthroooppooooceene!!!! a brute voice sings.

- What do you see when you look in the mirror?

- _________________________ -

Are you sure?

181

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Francesca Saraullo & Cabiria Chomel movement : audio : portraits Residency Period: From 14/11/2016 to 11/12/2016 Invited by Q-O2 to work in the Flemish village of Buizingen, Belgium Choreographer Francesca Saraullo and sound artist Cabiria Chomel collaborated with the actors of Theater Tartaar on Dancing Auto Portraits, a sonic and choreographic research project. Theater Tartaar is a long standing group of actors who are mentally disabled and are coached by Lotte Spittaels. It is linked to the day centre Zonnelied in Buizingen in the Flemish countryside, about 20 kilometres from Brussels. This project was realised in collaboration with arts lab De School van Gaasbeek.

Interview by Julia Eckhardt Could you just very briefly explain how it has been?

How would you describe this group of people you worked with?

Francesca: I feel that they are people with a really special sensitivity, thanks to their special nature, the handicap. The fact that they have a particular handicap means that they are more open to a kind of sensitive listening, and a sensitive way of entering into relationship with people, sounds, bodies.

Do you think that they are aware of that?

Francesca: I don’t think that all of them are aware of those capacities or abilities that they have due to their handicap. This is the paradox. Some are though. One in particular, a blind girl,

I think that she is aware of her sensibility. The fact that she is blind, forces her to develop other ways to perceive her environment. One thing that really surprises me is that she really knows the space where she is very well. She listens to all the small sounds. I’m curious how she imagines what she listens to because she recognises the people through their voices, through their touch. One day, I stayed close to her to see how she would react to my presence without knowing me. I just went next to her, very discretely and she said, ‘I don’t know who you are, I don’t know you.’ She didn’t recognise me but felt somebody next to her, even though I didn’t say anything.

And so what did she do to perceive you? Did she want to speak to you?

182

FRANCESCA SARAULLO & CABIRIA CHOMEL

Francesca: She just felt a presence. I wanted to play with her a little.

She asked me who I was and I connected by touching and speaking to her. It’s very surprising, very strong and powerful, this sensibility which develops out of necessity.

Was the project also a new experience for you?

Was it the first time you worked with such a theatre group?

Francesca: Yes. I learned to be very patient.. In a process of research or of creation you can project images and forms immediately because you feel the potential of the ideas. With a group like this you need to find a different form to lead them there, another form which can’t be so physically direct. You can be physical, but slowly. I saw that everything went slowly. You have to explain slowly. You also have to touch them softly. They show immediately when they are not content.

Francesca: They are very transparent. In the beginning, I was afraid because people who have worked with handicapped people told me that they can have animal reactions - very direct.

There is no filter with them. When they like you, they like you; when they don’t, they don’t. There is no niceness, no politeness. But that’s also very beautiful. I think this undertaking has been something very true.

Did you feel that some of them liked you less? Or is it rather that if you are honest with them then they like you without judgement?

Francesca: Yes. I think that if you are honest, if you do it with your heart, with humour, with generosity - they feel it. Also to guide them by

183

respecting their time, their way of working, will help them. It was helpful for me and Cabiria to propose a mode of listening to them, without imposition. It was also because of this that we got a positive reaction.

Could you explain how you worked, with what methods and processes?

Did you work for one month?

Francesca: We had six sessions of one day each: six mornings of two hours and six afternoons of two hours.

The time was very tightly implemented into their daily rhythm. They have the habit to work from 10 to 12, and from 2 to 4. Cabiria is more from a domain of sound, and myself from dance and theatre – from choreographic creation.

We decided to play with the possibility of a sound choreography.

What do you mean by sound choreography?

Francesca: An inscription in the space. Bodies in motion which at the same time make sounds with the body only, or with objects.

So each movement is linked to a sound, or to the sound the movement makes?

Francesca: Yes, exactly. The first step to a ‘body-sound’ was to invent a sound produced by the body.

Then naturally the body has to get into a state or a form which produces this sound. This is not a form which is defined beforehand. You can also produce a gesture and this gesture will lead you towards a sound. This was more-or-less it. Then we proposed an imaginary, which was the forest.

SECTION 2 | ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE

Did you go to the forest or did you always stay inside?

Cabiria: We went one afternoon to the forest. It’s not really a forest though, just some trees. But we did have this experience outside.

Did you look for sound which would correspond? What were the steps toward this performance?

Cabiria: We first worked on personal sound signatures. Which means that everyone proposed a sound and an accompanying a gesture. That was a ritual in each encounter. We started each session in a circle with that signature each time. And then once we had staged that, we exchanged the signatures. After this we tried to make a small orchestra with all those small shouts, sounds, and noises that we had chosen. But there were other points of focus which we returned to in each session. For example the ‘single body’, because we wanted to achieve the feeling of unity amongst the group - not to stay individuals. The individual is present in his/her signature, but we try to balance these in the ‘single body’, to fuse the energies and to find a breath...

Francesca: … together. Also, in relation to the rituality which Cabiria mentioned, we started each day with some physical exercise which was functional to what we were planning to do.

It was very simple, just playful ways to make the body available. Mostly we worked on the relations in pairs. We introduced a light element of tango, as a way to get from individuality to a relation with somebody else. But it was important to us to continue to listen to the group and to try to create this ‘single body’ through these undulating movements. In this way we tried

to get the group into a listening mode without imposing it. It’s about working toward cohesion. Once we introduced an element into the space they almost immediately get to this ‘single body’.

To me, they looked very comfortable with the interaction. They know each other very well, have worked as a group for some time. Getting back to the sound signature, how did you explain it to them? This term ‘sound signature’ sounds a little complicated.

Cabiria: We started off with a personal presentation in which each person presented him- or herself with their first name and a gesture. Then we repeated this presentation, but with a sound which the participants chose, and which they presented to the others as something personal, like a signature.

I didn’t anticipate it but each presentation was really singular and nice.

Francesca: Yes I think they integrated really quickly.

Was the communication difficult?

Some have their own language, and as a group they are mostly speaking Flemish.

Cabiria: We had very precious help from Lotte, their usual coach. She was really an intermediate for us- not only between French and Flemish.

She has experience which only years of working with this special group can provide.

184

FRANCESCA SARAULLO & CABIRIA CHOMEL

185

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

SECTION 3 Texts by Invited Researchers

186

MIGRATIONAL LISTENING

Migrational listening

by Annie Goh

Migrating Bodies, Migrating Ears

H

ow do we orient ourselves in the world? How do listening experiences contribute to feelings of placement or displacement? How do past memories overlap with present situations to position us in contradictory complexes of space, place, and time? Sara Ahmed reflects on the experience of migration in her work Strange Encounters (2000) as a process of, “re-inhabiting the skin: the different “impressions” of a new landscape, the air, the smells, the sounds [...]. Such spaces “impress” on the body, involving the mark of unfamiliar impressions, which in turn reshapes the body surface.” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 9). The experience of migration is thus theorised as an embodied process of estrangement, a transition from one register to another.

The memory of what it is to be ‘home’, in comparison to being ‘away’, unfolds along lines of social relations that are specific to the body’s transition from one socio-political and spatio-temporal situation to another.

187

The centrality of sound and listening to bodily experience has, in recent years, led to conceptualisations of the sonic as a vibrational, dynamic, affective force for thinking and knowing (Henriques, 2003) becoming more widely accepted. In his phenomenological investigation into listening, Don Ihde refers to how the Ancient Greek word for theatrical masks, persona, which designate the moment an individual actor assumes a voice and character, would later come to mean ‘per-sona’ or ‘by sound’ (Ihde, 2007, 14). The actor takes on a certain role, or ‘persona’, as known by sound - stemming from the Latin sonus (‘sound or noise’), and sonare (denoting the verb ‘to sound’). Given sound’s etymological proximity to the legal category of ‘person’, it would seem apt to attempt to understand processes of migration as personal, embodied, multi-sensorial experiences in which sound and listening play an integral role.

In the movement of bodies across geographical areas, both nationally and internationally, sonic experience can function multifariously - sometimes grounding the body in

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

familiarity, sometimes exposing it to a feeling of alienation. In discussing the Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound, (SoCCoS) project, what is afforded to us by placing bodies into a context that is ‘foreign’ over one which is familiar?

Do listening experiences lead us to different perspectives or better understandings? Do they open us up to new unknowns?

Masking and Re-masking, Sounding and Re-Sounding

Working with the analogy of actors on a stage, wherein masks as persona each embody both a sound (voice) and a character, we might see the transitions that occur during migration as a multi-layered process of masking, de-masking, and re-masking. Much as it may seem incongruous to conflate masking and listening (the mask which the actors put on to designate their character surely links more easily with the actor’s ‘active’ speaking voice than the supposedly ‘passive’ process of listening), I would suggest that any agent known ‘by sound’ must be conceived as being involved in manifold processes, including both those of listening and producing sound. As Kate Lacey argues, listening has long been unjustly written off as a merely passive process. In fact, the role of listening as a pre-condition for political action has consistently been constructed implicitly, and should thus be considered a crucial category within public life. “[L]istening [...] is at the heart of what it means to be in the world, to be active, to be political.” (Lacey, 2011, 7).

The importance of listening as a communicative and political act can be seen in the conception of the public sphere as an auditorium. The auditorium, rather like the theatrical stage, is a communicative public space. As audience theory has taught us, audiences are not merely passive observers of what is on stage but are actively involved in the construction of meaning. Following from postmodern linguistics, there are multiple interpretations at work in the observation of masked actors on stage, just as there are multiple meanings at play in any active listening experience.

As Lacey states, “the sonic qualities of transmission, resonance, vibration, reverberation and echo emphasise the inter-relationships of objects in space and the possibility of transference, movement, conversion, synaesthesia and transgression of boundaries.” (Lacey, 2011, 17).

Listening is the experience of multiple inter-relationships

Let us imagine the constant masking, de-masking, and re-masking of listening experiences as not only the passive reception of sounds, but rather as a constant oscillation between the reception and projection of ‘meaning’ onto sounds by their listener - a casting of multiple, messy, overlaid masks onto what we hear. As Lacey says, the ear is capable and generally tolerant of perceiving a plurality of signals at once (Lacey, 2011, 17). This continuous exchange of signals and affects between multiple senders and multiple receivers make up our experience of listening.

188

MIGRATIONAL LISTENING

Such experiences become noticeable or remarkable when we move from familiar to unfamiliar places. This is where auditory experiences of migration come to the fore.

Greater and lesser degrees of estrangement

In an age of mass movements of populations under global, neoliberal capitalism, Avtar Brah poses the question, “ is [it] not simply about who travels but when, how, and under what circumstances? What socio-economic, political, and cultural conditions mark the trajectories of these journeys?”

(Brah, 1996, 179). Migrational journeys are experienced variously. Transitions are mapped by and map onto social categories such as race, ethnicity, language, gender, class, sexuality, and ability. To speak of global, migrational listening experiences then, is to encounter great cultural, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socio-economic difference. Focussing on inter-European migration therefore means that much of the scope of these differences is mitigated.

Since its inception, the European Union has tried (with considerable success) to foster a transnational European identity through a variety of directives including ease of crossborder trade, travel, and via arts and cultural initiatives (such as the SoCCoS project). Whilst the focus of this essay is on inter-European migrational listening, it is necessary to acknowledge that inter-European initiatives such as SoCCos have affected the global distribution of wealth and power. In times of severe political unrest in Syria, as well as more largely in the Middle-East, and

189

northern Africa in recent years, the many thousands of deaths annually at European borders makes the effects of such inter-European policies palpable for those on the outside. In these cases of migration outside of Europe, the migrant is too often reduced to an expression of “bare life” (to borrow from Giorgio Agamben’s well-known framework) – unlike within Europe where migration more generally remains within “qualified” ways of political life (Agamben, 1998).

Even given the relative position of privilege and protection from such extreme conditions within Europe, the essentially public nature of listening as a political category still rings as true here as it does in a global context.

Although migration within Europe is less estranged than it is on a global scale, it still involves the bodily impressions of estrangement such as those theorised by Ahmed and Brah (albeit with concepts such as ‘home’ and ‘away’ usually present in less life-threatening forms). In the embodied experience of migration, the range of experiences (including security and danger) depend greatly on gendered, racial, and ethnic categories of both what is considered ‘home’ and ‘away’.

Listening-in, Listening-out, and listening

Migrational listening can engage many forms of listening.

Commonly contrasted with the “merely” physiological process of hearing, conceptions of listening usually focus on the listener’s ability to interpret information (see, for example, Barry

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

Truax’s Acoustic Communication (Truax, 2001)). There have been a number of writers who have sought to categorise modes of listening: Barthes’ three types of listening – “alert” listening, “deciphering” listening, and “intersubjective” listening (Barthes, 1985); Michel Chion’s “causal listening”, “semantic listening”, and “reduced listening” (Chion, 1994, . 24, 25, 28); or Truax’s “listening-in-search”, “listening-in-readiness”, and “background listening” (Truax, 2001, 22) to name but a few. Most of these categories circle around the attention devoted to listening: Truax’s “listening-in-readiness” overlaps with Barthes’ “alert listening” to denote a listening for certain indices; “listeningin-search”, “deciphering”, “semantic”, and “casual” listening all imply active, interpretative, and conscious forms of listening; Chion’s “reduced listening” is bound to specific ideas from modernist avant-garde music. It is perhaps Barthes’ “intersubjective” listening which best characterises migrational listening.

Although Barthes’ reflection on listening and the voice dwells primarily on psychoanalysis, the oscillation in space between discourse and embodied voice describes listening’s unvocalised affects and effects; “what such listening offers, is precisely what the speaking subject does not say” (Barthes, 1985, 255). The in-betweenness of listening functions both as a bridge between a body and its environment and as a space of fluid inter-relationships in and of itself.

As feminist geographers from Gillian Rose to Doreen Massey have theorised, the conceptualisation of space is typically enacted in similar ways to dominant Western modes of conceptualising gender, with public / masculine space often privileged over the familial and traditionally feminised

domestic space. The embodied experience of space is both gendered and racialised, as well as encoded along a number of other vectors. In terms of listening, this could range from noting a peculiar clicking sound at a foreign pedestrian crossing, to the unusual sound of a siren in a foreign country echoing off a particular architecture, to the “alert” listening of a trans-woman for a slow-travelling car as she walks down an unfamiliar street, to the deciphering of a racist slur in a noisy metro.

These auditory situations all serve to reify the out-of-placeness of the body deemed “other”. Depending on the body in question, the results can vary from a simple feeling of amusement and temporary displacement, to a more visceral shift in atmosphere.

Nirmal Puwar speaks of “dissonant bodies” as “space invaders”, cases when “other” bodies occupy spaces implicitly or explicitly reserved for white, masculine bodies (Puwar, 2004).

Women and racial minorities embody this dissonance when they disrupt spaces which have been inscribed as normative and institutional over centuries. As Frantz Fanon describes in Black Skin, White Masks, the colonial gaze is the visual imperative which designates “Otherness” and still serves as the primary method of distinguishing bodies as “other” today (Fanon, 2008, 82). It is the musical metaphor of “dissonance”, however, which best encapsulates the multi-faceted nature of feeling alien within a space - neither as merely a two-dimensional image of difference nor the simple casting of a mask, but instead as the embodied feeling of being “out of harmony” with one’s environment, a multi-directional flux of sounds and auditory signifiers which captures this displacement. The

190

MIGRATIONAL LISTENING

“per-sona” is, crucially, not merely an image, but a lived experience, one that may shift constantly between harmony and disharmony with its environment (or even both at once).

Exile and creativity

Reasons for and experiences of migration are infinitely diverse. It is thus difficult to generalise what the term ‘migrational listening’ might mean over such an incommensurable range of experiences. As Ahmed says, “getting lost still takes us somewhere” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 7) and it remains to be asked how and when experiences of being-alien can lead to novel or personally gratifying realisations.

Vilém Flusser’s writing was formed by his experience as a Czech-German Jew emigrating first to London then to Brazil in the face of the impending Nazi invasion of Prague.

Against personal feelings and amidst a climate of complete desolation, Flusser nevertheless conceives of a hope for creative discovery in an essay on Exile and Creativity, “the expelled has been torn out of his customary surroundings (or else he has done it himself). Habit is a blanket that covers up the facts of the case. [...] In exile, everything is unusual.

Exile is an ocean of chaotic information. [...] One must transform the information whizzing around into meaningful messages, to make it liveable. One must “process” the data. It is a question of survival: if one fails to transform the data, one is engulfed by the waves of exile. [...] The expelled must be creative if he does not want to go to the dogs.”

(Flusser 2002, 104). Flusser describes the often traumatic, uprootedness of exile, and extracts from it the possibility of a

191

dialectical process which can culminate in creative transformation.

Where Flusser speaks of the freedom of the migrant, he seeks to transform feelings of being alien into a creative, productive power, viewing this as a necessity for survival. Given the inter-relational qualities afforded by listening as a crucial communicative and political act, it follows that migrational listening enables the forging of spaces characterised by the forms of freedom Flusser refers to. Within the personal (in the sense of being known by sound) experience, the multiple masks which are cast upon one and which one casts upon one’s experiences in unfamiliar spaces are fundamentally open to the unknown and thereby open to internal and external dialogues of transformative creativity. For Flusser, “the discovery that we are not trees challenges the expelled to struggle constantly against the seduction pleasures of the mud bath. [...Freedom for the expelled means] the freedom to remain a stranger, different from the others. It is the freedom to change oneself and others as well.” (Flusser 2002, 107 & 108).

Being expelled into the unknown, and grasping the feeling of being-alien as an embodied experience gives space to unforeseen realms of possibilities.

Listening’s role in migration, in disorientation, and re-orientation cannot be underestimated as part of a creative praxis.

References: Agamben, G. (1998) Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Ahmed, S. (2000) Strange encounters: embodied others in post-coloniality. London: Routledge.

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer phenomenology: orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

Barthes, R. (1985) ‘Listening’, in Howard, R. (tran.) The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and Representation. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 245–260.

Brah, A. (1996) Cartographies of diaspora: contesting identities. London: Routledge.

Chion, M. (1994) Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Translated by C. Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Fanon, F. (2008) Black skin, white masks. New ed. London: Pluto-Press.

Finger, A. K., Guldin, R. and Bernardo, G. (2011) Vilém Flusser: an introduction. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.

Flusser, V. (2002) Writings. Edited by A. Ströhl. Translated by E. Eisel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Flusser, V. (no date) ‘Die Melodie der Sprache (Unpublished Manuscript)’.

Henriques, J. (2003) ‘Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session’, in Bull, M. and Back, L. (eds) The Auditory Culture Reader.

Oxford, UK and New York: Berg, pp. 451–480.

Ihde, D. (2007) Listening and voice: phenomenologies of sound. 2nd ed. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Lacey, K. (2011) ‘Listening Overlooked: An Audit of Listening as a Category in the Public Sphere’, Javnost - The Public, 18(4), pp. 5–20. doi: 10.1080/13183222.2011.11009064.

Puwar, N. (2004) Space invaders: race, gender and bodies out of place. Oxford: Berg.

Truax, B. (2001) Acoustic communication. 2nd ed. Westport, Conn: Ablex.

192

SOUNDING EUROPE: NATIONALITY AND THE AFFECTS OF LANGUAGE

Sounding Europe: Nationality and the affects of language

by Angharad Closs Stephens

What does Europe sound like?

On the 23rd of June 2016, 17,410,742 people in the UK (51.89%) voted to leave the European Union. It is not yet clear what this might mean – whether it will lead to increased border controls and of what kind, and whether it will lead to greater restrictions on people moving between the UK and other European countries. What is certain is that this was an ugly and noisy referendum campaign, one that included inflammatory and racist slogans, images and gestures. These jostled with the sounds of football match kick-offs as part of the 2016 UEFA European Championships, of crowds, fans and hooligans, and singing, cheering and heckling across French cities. There was also the sound of the gunshot that killed Jo Cox, member of the British Parliament, on the 16th of June 2016, in a far-right misogynistic attack, and the quiet mood of collective shame that followed.

In Sound of Culture – Culture of Sound, specifically in the many artistic residencies documented in this book, the sounds of Europe emerge very differently. The artists speak of traveling to unfamiliar cities and environments and of the effects this has

193

had on the sounds which they produce, compose and record. They describe this process of traversing Europe - crossing from side to side, and establishing connections between two or more lines - from Hailuoto, in northern Finland, to the Gralheira and Caramulo mountain ranges in central Portugal, to the cities of Brussels, Berlin, and Warsaw. In these recordings of streetscapes, lighthouses, radars, and mountain ranges, which I have listened to and followed through the recordings, photographs and blogs featured on the project website (www. soccos.eu), we never get the sense of only one place – or of place as something discrete and separable. Rather, place is here a matter of connecting (Casey, 1997: 48). Several of the artists mention how their residencies brought them into contact with other European languages (often, more than one foreign language). Just as sound is by definition transducive – crossing from antennae to receiver, amplifier to ear, from the lightness of air to the thickness of water (Helmreich, 2016: xix), the places of this project are those in which experiences, dreams, languages, habits, and customs cross. The sounds of these places are the sounds of crossings.

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

In the short history that led to the UK vote to leave the European Union, much noise was made about the ‘sounds’ of foreign languages. The leader of the far right UK Independence Party lamented the fact that he no longer heard English around him and said that he felt uncomfortable hearing mostly ‘foreign’ languages when traveling by train from London to Kent (Sparrow, 2014). It’s curious to think that hearing a foreign language should make some people uncomfortable. In this case, we can also assume it was insincere. As someone who previously worked at the City of London and as a Member of the European Parliament, the leader of UKIP is used to being in multilingual environments. What he was doing with this description was painting a picture of a nation under threat from those who are ‘not like us’, and inviting us to feel rage at those ‘others’ that are deemed to be the source of all that’s unsettling (Ahmed, 2004). This is in marked contrast to the statements of the SoCCos artists in residence, several of whom give accounts of the joy and nourishment found in encountering other languages – and, through these encounters, other ways of living and engaging with the world.

Nevertheless, as Agata Lisiak (2016) argues, xenoglossophobia (the fear or hatred of foreign languages) forms a real part of Europe. According to Lisiak, though it manifests in attacks on Polish speakers in Germany and in the UK, xenoglossophobia is also not an exclusively right wing phenomenon.

For example, in Berlin, Lisiak argues that the sound of English is often associated with gentrification, touristification and the increasing “takeover of public space”. Whilst these two examples of rage against a foreign language carry a very different politics - one against the

movement of people, the other against the privatisation of public space by multinational corporations - in both examples, blaming the presence or the sounds of a foreign language distorts the analysis from the core of the problems facing Europe. These problems include the enormous disparities between the wealthiest and the poorest in Europe; the ways in which mobility is made easy for some whilst others are left to die in pursuit of safe passage; and the rapid growth of a precariat class that has little economic security and for whom, common spaces are increasingly under threat.

Still, why would anyone fear or hate a foreign language? And what counts as a foreign language? Or rather, how does a language come to appear as foreign? Foreign means to come from a country that is not one’s own; it also refers to something strange and unfamiliar (Collins English Dictionary, 2007).

A speaker of English might sound or feel foreign in Berlin or Brussels, but English is not a minority language (in the sense of it being without power). It is not simply a matter of the number of people who speak a language then, but a matter of that language’s histories, transnational geographies, its connection to the state, and to empire. Yet the languages that the leader of the UK Independence Party was hearing on his train are foreign presumably because they are only spoken by a minority within that context. But why fear those who are small in number? Why fear those that are likely to be politically and militarily weak? (Appadurai, 2006) The question of how we distinguish between a ‘native’ and a ‘foreign’ language is ultimately a political one, argues Adam Ramsay (2014). He points to the traveller languages of Romani communities –

194

SOUNDING EUROPE: NATIONALITY AND THE AFFECTS OF LANGUAGE

which are minority languages in the UK but have been spoken in Europe since the Middle Ages. Yet these languages are rarely discussed or cited in arguments for linguistic representation within government. Ramsay also notes that there are around 30,000 speakers of Yiddish in the UK today as well as three main sign languages. All these examples challenge the distinction between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’, in that a language might sound foreign but have longstanding historical connections to this piece of land. A sign language, furthermore, challenges the very ways in which we think about language at all – could anyone fear or hate a sign language? The point to highlight here is that many people today live in a language that is not their own (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 19). European cities are increasingly migrant cities (De Genova, 2015), where more than 25% of the populations of several European cities are foreign born – London, 37%; Geneva, 46%; Lausanne, 40%; Malmo, 30%; Amsterdam, 28%, Brussels, 28%; Frankfurt, 28%; and Rotterdam, 26% (De Genova, 2015: 4, citing figures from the Migration Poliy Institute). Europe is neces-

sarily a multilingual, plural space; it is this reality that seems threatening to the far right.

Language functions as one route through which a nation secures the impression of unity – i.e. the idea that ‘the people’ share something in common (Balibar, 1991: 96). It is used to establish hierarchies, and to exclude and injure those deemed to not to belong. It is scripted as a way of belonging properly to the nation – both in civic and ethnic senses. For example, Yaron Matras (2016) points to the example of the former UK Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, who complained that translating documents

195

into other languages “undermined community cohesion and encouraged segregation”. The UK Labour party, both in government and in opposition, has repeatedly stated that immigrants to England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland need to learn English to guard against segregation. This has been a way of insisting on the necessary homogeneity of the polity. But whilst languages are understood to operate through the medium of representation – as providing access to some meaning and as the essence of a culture and/or territory, there is also the matter of how languages make us feel. Indeed, there is, as Denise Riley puts it, “a forcible affect of language which courses like blood through its speakers” (2005: 1).

Language carries not only a symbolic but a sensory meaning (Houen, 2011: 216; Riley, 2005: 3). It has an affective force.

It is this affective tone that seems to characterise the encounters with foreign languages described by the far right. For in these anecdotes, the subject is not listening to another language but can only hear it. Jean-Luc Nancy distinguishes between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’ by delineating sounds that already have meaning from those in which the meaning is not yet identifiable to us. For example, to hear a siren, a bird, or a drum is already to understand at least the rough outline of a situation; to listen “is to be straining toward a possible meaning, and consequently one that is not immediately accessible” (Jean-Luc Nancy quoted in Bonnett, 2016: 73).

In the process of hearing an unfamiliar (foreign) language – there may be an effort to listen – to strain towards identifying meanings through the distribution of vowels and consonants. Hearing another language might make us more aware of all the parts of the world that

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

we don’t know; it might awaken our interests and our senses but it might also remind us of all the ways in which we are not in control. In all these cases, language stops being representational and is understood affectively (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 23). My aim here is not to prioritise listening over hearing, but to consider the ways in which encounters with something strange and unfamiliar can inform another kind of politics, and this is what we can learn through the arts, through projects such as the Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound.

This is because artists generally work within the idiom of the affective, with what is not yet identifiable or recognisable as having a meaning. To some degree, we might say that artists are always working to listen to foreign languages. Rather than respond to unfamiliar sensations with fear or rage, art grabs them and works with their materials, energies, territories, and subjects in order to offer new framings of the world (Grosz, 2008). In contrast to an approach to music or art that seeks to discover intentionality or arrive at an essential culture, in SoCCoS “art is the art of affect more than representation” (Grosz, 2008: 3). That is to say, the aim of these projects is not only to portray and capture the new scenes that they encounter but to explore what emerges at these crossings. Just as we can feel our way into different languages, art and music borrow from the excesses of languages and cultures to produce new affective sensations (Grosz, 2008: 9).

The materials, atmospheres, recordings, canvasses, sounds, rhythms, and colours in the SoCCos projects are therefore composed of mobile geographies. In these ways, they assert another kind of Europe and hold the promise of an affirmative politics.

References Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Appadurai, A. (2006) Fear of Small Numbers.

Durham: Duke University Press.

Balibar, É. (1991) ‘Racism and Nationalism’ in Immanuel Wallerstein and Étienne Balibar (eds) Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso: 37-67.

Bonnet, F. (2016) The Order of Sounds. A Sonorous Archipelago. Falmouth: Urbanomic.

Casey, ES. (1997) The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University Presses of California.

Collins English Dictionary (2007). Glasgow: Harpercollins.

Deleuze, G and Guattari, F. (1986) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (2008) A Thousand Plateaus. London and New York: Continuum books.

De Genova, N. (2015) ‘Border Struggles in the Migrant Metropolis’, Nordic Journal of Migration Research. 5(1): 3-10.

Houen, A. (2011) ‘Introduction: affecting words’, Textual Practice. 25:2, 215-232.

Grosz, E. (2008) Chaos, Territory, Art. New York: Columbia University Press.

Helmreich, S. (2016) Sounding the Limits of Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lisiak, A. (2016) ‘Fearing the Foreing on Europe’s Streets’, Public Seminar blog, posted 23 September 2016, last visited 20 October 2016, http://www.publicseminar. org/2016/09/fearing-the-foreign-on-europes-streets/#.WAi7yYWf9Ko.

196

SOUNDING EUROPE: NATIONALITY AND THE AFFECTS OF LANGUAGE

Matras, Y (2016) ‘The Case Against Linguphobia’, http://blog.policy.manchester. ac.uk/posts/2016/09/the-case-against-linguaphobia/ ‘Manchester Multilingualism’ project blog, published 29 September 2016.

Ramsay, A. (2014) ‘The many languages native to Britain’, Open Democracy website https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/adam-ramsay/many-languages-native-to-britain 8 January 2014.

Riley, D. (2005) Impersonal Passion.

Language as Affect. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Sparrow, A. (2014) ‘Nigel Farage: parts of Britain are ‘like a foreign land’’, The Guardian 28 February 2014, https://www.theguardian. com/politics/2014/feb/28/nigel-farageukip-immigration-speech. Last visited 20 October 2016.

197

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

198

SOCCOS: CRITICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF SOUND IN EUROPE

SoCCoS: Critical cartographies of sound in Europe

by Leandro Pisano

I

n recent years, practices and discourses on art have increasingly tended to consider sound art - in connection with its politics, its cultural and technological critiques, and its epistemologies - as a relevant part of the theoretical reflections and experiences developed by artists and curators.

Research into agency and materiality, which connects sound art studies with the social sciences, establishes a novel interdisciplinary approach and fosters critical spaces that cut across diverse disciplines – from philosophy to critical geography, gender studies, anthropology, and new media studies. In this way, sound reveals itself as a phenomenological tool, a potent language, and a critical device for the unveiling of other spaces and the construction of other narratives. Sound crosses territories and rediscovers stories, enabling a multiple, critical questioning of the way in which we experience and inhabit post-global spaces and geographies.

Sound, as a powerful aesthetic and phenomenological tool, is a vector that leads to discovery. It reveals what is hidden and precarious in reality, opening different spaces, dissimilar

199

visions, and different approaches to our experience of world. Changes in the perception of space and time in the wake of new communication technologies have modified the concept of ‘territory’ in the post-global age (Farinelli, 2014). This changed conception reveals the emergence of spaces and geographies which until now had remained on the margins of modernity’s narratives.

This process defines a mobile ground on which sound (art) is experienced as a set of methods which enable the critical crossing of territories and reveal invisible or removed layers. Both ephemeral and material, sound invites us to experience rural areas, abandoned places, and urban peripheries as spaces in which to interrogate our approach to history and landscape, our sense of inhabiting a territory and our relationship with it.

The attention of artists to the plurality of ideas generated by such processes, produces new areas of possible intersection and investigation.

Particularly where this attention is oriented towards issues of the community and other social groups, sound art practices can generate unexpected relational

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

and that

epistemological cartographies produce “social knowledge” (Papastergiadis, 2011), building an augmented space in which it becomes possible to experience singularity, alterity, and sharing as forms of ‘being together’ in the context of an “experimental community” (Basualdo and Laddaga, 2009).

As Mark Peter Wright has argued, by extending itself through its resonances and dissonances, sound can be reconfigured as a territory (Wright, cited in Cowley, 2015)1, opening the way to a re-orientation of listening practices.

As an aesthetic approach to listening becomes a political approach, it provides the possibility of other ways to enact the complex experience of crossing territories and inhabiting place in the contemporary era.

Christabel Stirling recently wrote that sonic practices have produced and exposed: the existence of resilient personal, social, and cultural differences as well as institutional milieus, and thereby revealed people as historical. [...] The dissent and negotiation arising between relatively robust individuals and groups as they came into contact with the soundworks itself portended a politics.

Conceptually, then, rather than eradicate social differences and stabilities by advocating an always-emergent social space, it surely makes more sense to sustain and empower those differences. (Stirling, 2015)

Sound confronts us with the “ineradicability” (Mouffe, 2000: 17) of differences and asks us to consider the tension and precariousness emerging between them as the element on which the public space configures itself. If it is true that culture transgresses territorial borders and “must, therefore, be disengaged from cartographic impulse” (Obert, 2006: 2), then auditory space, free of boundaries in a visual sense (McLuhan, 196: 68), thus reveals itself as a productive environment in which to think about cultural identifications and disarticulations - not only in oral and musical discourses, but also in the broader soundscape in which we are immersed.

Overcoming a pure musical approach, a broader culture of sound is one which would empower cross-cultural relation - enhancing encounters and forms of cultural translation; configuring a practice of border crossing; re-routing the discourse on gender, race and difference; and making new sense of concepts such as “identity” and “community” (Pisano, 2015). Projects such as SoCCoS are based on the idea that distinct cultures of sound art and experimental music can be brought into dialogue with one another in a process aimed at “reveal[ing] the culture of Sound” (Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound: A European Sound Art Residency Network). In this framework, sound - as matter necessarily linked with both affect and the public sphere - invites us to deal with new forms of connectedness and multiculturalism. Especially at a time when the notion of Europe is “under fire, both as a result of resurgent

The classic scientific field study would be to throw a quadrant on the ground and analyse that particular area in detail. How do you throw a square around sound and listening? You can’t really, and that’s the beauty of it – sound is always escaping its situation.” (Wright, cited in Cowley, 2015) 1“

200

SOCCOS: CRITICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF SOUND IN EUROPE

nationalism and Euroscepticism that challenge the ideal of supra-nationality and cooperation and as a result of its contested border politics” (Ponzanesi and Leurs, 2014: 4), such an invitation is vital.

Whether we think of Europe as a historical, political, geographical, or emotional concept, there is an urgency now to scrutinize and to re-configure its notion, to listen to the “ruins” that it has produced through the creation of unequal categories and regimes of human rights, citizenship, and hospitality.

By critically crossing the diverse cultures that result from the varied sounds and histories of sound in a European context, we can create the conditions within which to make other positions perceptible - not by adhering to every utopian notion of connectivity and borderlessness, but by highlighting the dis-symmetries and tensions produced by the listening process.

Such a practice can lead us to think and feel, to continue to learn, to produce agonistic tensions that challenge the authorised knowledge. Sound unveils the invisible relations and movements between objects, bodies, and matter.

It invites us to imagine the possibility of other truths, values, and realities.

As an act of affirmation on a number of different levels - social, historical, ecological - the practice of listening can be considered as a political and cultural action that opens up “liminal spaces that disturb the historical stability of the landscape” (Stirling, 2013). The complex archive of soundscapes configures a critical cartography that questions and exceeds the authorised and accepted vision of history, politics, and culture.

At the same time, sound allows for a participation that is unstable and demanding. It introduces a semantic challenge for those elements involved in the associative network that is created by a practice of listening.

Flows, vibrations, and echoes fill the acoustic space with movements between different forces, transforming the sound itself into a shared property and leading to an “associative and relational understanding” (LaBelle, 2010: xxiv). This ‘acoustemological’ (Kanngieser, 2014: 263)2 and affective (Goodman, 2009) approach to a sonic sociality is strictly connected to a critical reassessment of the notions of “community” and “identity”, as well as to an experience of how these notions participate in social and spatial stratifications and how such stratifications may be actively re-configured through sound.

Even as the practice of listening, through its emphasis on presence, determines an affective relationship between space, place, sound, and memory, sound also possesses a latent, spectral counterpart (Toop, 2010: xv) ‘community’ is, similarly, not a coherent and homogeneous entity but rather an “unstable and ‘inoperative’ specter” (Kwon, 2002: 7). In any case, it is a notion that must be re-defined in terms of a fluid and dynamic ‘being in common’ rather than as a static state.

This coupling of concepts (the spectrality of sound and the presence of sound; community as a spectre and as a dynamic being in common) closes its loop by referring ‘being in common’

Careful listening allows us to relate with sound as a mode of knowledge. Anja Kanngieser defines ‘acustemology’ as “the possibility of redefining, through listening, the relationship with space, territories, and geographies in an epistemological (and political) sense.”

2

201

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

to the active and extensive mobility that characterises listening within spaces, places, and territories – a listening that exceeds the borders of global, local, and discrete digital environments. Because of this, it is today impossible to locate a sonic consciousness in a discrete, physical location.

In the uprooted condition of the contemporary soundscape, we could argue that it is no longer possible to infer any kind of “locative” identity from sound because of its constantly transitional nature. As a result, in a historical moment in which mobility is increasing, every “sense of ‘rootedness’” dissolves into a perpetual nomadism by itinerant sonic interaction with semi-unknown and/or unknown places and pseudo-locales perceived in the mind” (Chattopadhyay, 2014). To scrutinise the notions of community and identity through a culturalistic approach to sound leads us to question how it is that Europe defines itself. A practice of cultural listening dispels the idea of Europe as: a concrete notion, a geographical space, a linguistic unity, or a sovereign state. [Europe] is to be intended more as an idea and a project than a coherent entity.

Therefore, unpacking the many possible meanings of Europe and resignifying Europe from different perspectives [...] is crucial for understanding Europe as a contemporary notion in flux.

(Ponzanesi and Leurs, 2014: 6)

By focusing on the plurality of the European sound cultures in all their ‘new’ and experimental forms, SoCCoS implies both the material and immaterial movement of people, thoughts, and ideas

towards sonic practices. It contributes toward a definition of Europe that is not only historical and traditional, but also imaginary and diasporic.

In this project, the idea of connecting places and networks produces a tension on different (affective, aesthetic, and political) levels that develops itself through encounters, differences, and conversations, and gives way to productive acts of individual and collective listening.

The ‘network’ is here not only a bind of different points in space, but rather a constellation of subnodes - a mise en abîme of subnetworks built on smaller scales and linked with the main network through a practice of collective reflection. It allows a focus on all territories connected by the project.

This relational context is structured on a lattice of sonic practices and is developed through the format of the artistic residency – a format that allows for a displacement of thought and of art-making. It is an approach that claims the possibility of taking sound art beyond the walls of museums and galleries. It invites artists to experience different geographies. The movement from an urban environment to a remote or peripheral one, for example, can produce an artistic process enhanced by the dialectics of movement and of difference. The format of the residency draws on the possibility of a slower creative process, one that urges the artist to move away from his or her normal social representation to be displaced into a context far from their everyday practice. It enables a (re-)negotiation of the terms of art and knowledge production, empowering new relations and cross-cultural debates.

202

SOCCOS: CRITICAL CARTOGRAPHIES OF SOUND IN EUROPE

The practices outlined in this book demonstrate how travelling with and inside a culture of sound, through a consolidated network, can testify a new engagement between artists and testifies to the value of travel, movement, and connectivity in Europe.

The SoCCoS project offers a particular point of listening from which to immerse ourselves in the intersecting movements of bodies, ideas, and cultures in the post-global milieu, tracing the many legacies and remains of the past as they are reconfigured in sonic practices. In this way, SoCCoS reveals the sense of a continuous cultural translation, where territories become spaces of passage, shifting terrains of a newly-possible, critical cartography of Europe.

Kanngieser, A., (2014). ‘A Proposition Toward a Politics of Listening (Geographies and Atmospheres)’. In R. Castro & M. Carvalhais, eds., Invisible Places | Sounding Cities. Sound, Urbanism and Sense of Place, Proceedings of the 2014 Invisible Places | Sounding Cities Symposium. Viseu: Jardins Efémeros, pp.

462-468.

Kwon, M., (2002). One Place after Another.

Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity.

Cambridge/London: MIT Press.

LaBelle, B., (2010). Acoustic Territories.

Sound Culture and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Continuum.

McLuhan M., (1960)., ‘Acoustic Space’. In M. McLuhan & E. Carpenter, eds., Explorations in Communication: An Anthology. Boston: Beacon Press.

Bibliography

Möntmann N., (2010). ‘New Communities’.

In N Möntmann, ed., New Communities, pp.

10-19. Toronto: Public/The Power Plant.

Basualdo, C. & Laddaga, R., (2009).

‘Experimental Communities’. In B Hinderliter et al., eds., Communities of Sense – Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics. Durham: Duke University Press pp. 197-214.

Mouffe, C., (2000). ‘Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism’, [online] Available at: https://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/ pw_72.pdf [Accessed 30 October 2016].

Chattopadhyay, B., (2014).

‘Objectdisoriented Sound: Listening in the Postdigital Condition’, [online] Available at: <http://www.aprja.net/?p=1839> [Accessed 30 October 2016].

Cowley, J., (2015). ‘Listening as Territory’, [online] Available at: <http://www. musicworks.ca/featured-article/sound-bite/ listening-territory> [30 October 2016].

Obert J. C., (2006). ‘The Cultural Capital of Sound: Quebecite’s Acoustic Hybridity’.

Postcolonial Text, vol 2, no 4.

Papastergiadis, N., (2011), ‘Collaboration in Art and Society: A Global Pursuit of Democratic Dialogue’. In J. Harris, ed., Globalization and Contemporary Art. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell pp. 275-288.

Farinelli, F., (2014). La crisi della ragione cartografica. Turin: Einaudi.

Pisano, L., (2015). ‘Comunidad acústica y identidad sónica’. Panambí, vol 1, pp.

129-145.

Goodman, S., (2009). Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Pisano, L., (2017) (forthcoming). Nuove geografie del suono. Spazi e territori nell’epoca postdigitale. Milan: Meltemi.

Hardt, M. & Negri, A., (2001). Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Ponzanesi, S. & Leurs, K., (2014). On digital crossings in Europe. Crossings: Journal of Migration and Culture, vol 5, n. 1, pp. 3-22.

203

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

Stirling, C., (2013). ‘Listening in Ruins: Aural Atmospheres of the Historical Present’, [online] Available at: <http://kaganof.com/ kagablog/2013/08/30/christabel-stirlinglistening-in-ruins-aural-atmospheres-of-thehistorical-present/> [Accessed 30 October 2016].

Stirling, C., (2015). ‘Sound Art / Street Life: Tracing the social and political effects of sound installations in London’ [online] Available at: <http://sonicstudies.org/jss11> [Accessed 30 October 2016].

Toop, D., (2010). Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. London/New York: Continuum.

‘Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound: A European Sound Art Residency Network’, [online] Available at: <http:// kreatywna-europa.eu/fundedprojects/ the-sound-of-culture-the-culture-of-sounda-european-sound-art-residency-network/> [Accessed 30 October 2016].

204

CONNECTING FLIGHTS, COMMON SOUNDS

Connecting flights, common sounds

by Elen Flügge

I

Berlin airspace, October 2

For what seems the hundredth time this year, a voice crackles from an overhead intercom telling me to prepare for take-off. Fellow passengers shuffle, clapping tray tables and shutting mobiles.

Settling in the compact plane seat, I remind myself that traveling is a privilege. Lately my ears have visited more places than ever before – often in the name of a sound-related workshop, conference, or event. But each flight, as I look out of the oval window onto the particular urban geography below, I remember that I’m also being heard at this moment; softer or louder, as a different overhead roar in someone else’s ear.

A familiar ‘ding ‘interrupts seatbelt lights off. Sounds of unbuckling.

Being concerned with sound leads to a concern about sound spaces and why they have the auditory qualities they do. This can lead, in turn, to a disconcerting awareness of how I might resound within my surroundings.

We are hearing and being heard in a

205

sonic commons, which sound artists O+A (Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland) describe in their Reflection on the Sonic Commons as “any space where many people share an acoustic environment and can hear the results of each other’s activities, both intentional and unintentional. [...] Just as we share the air we breathe, we are submerged in a sea of shared sound” (O+A, 2009: 64).

A ‘commons’ emphasises that we are sound-making participants, directly and indirectly, and thereby complicit in the character and quality of our sonorous surroundings. We hear fellow passengers or people bustling on public streets, but we also experience indirect sounds produced by traveling and import, such as the trains or lorries bringing goods to local supermarkets.

The resulting sound environment is one we both actively create and passively permit, e.g. through dependency on cars, or accepting that having drink coolers in cafés is more valuable than hearing the person next to you. Even institutionalised noise is something that we might perpetuate or protest.

We think of others as defining our sonic environment at a remove, but most of

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

what we hear is produced by ourselves and others. We continually experience society as audible and how the sounding environment is, in a sense, a social product. As an engaged public, we are responsible for its effect on our lived experience.

In their reflections, O+A style themselves as “sonic thinkers” observing the world from a “hearing perspective” (O+A, 2009: 64). If one assumes that most people involved in sound art residencies are to some degree practicing a sonic thinking, the question becomes: what do we begin to understand about places and people through a hearing perspective, and what wider social or political influence might this enable? Sonic practice, such as diverse sound artwork, may remind us of the wider networks through and in which our experience of sound operates.

Sound opens into discussions of physical, acoustic, emotional, personal, and interpersonal experience.

Considering sound as a means of understanding urban ambiances, sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud suggests that sound grants us “access to what is happening” since it is “not the property of a thing but the result of an action” (Thibaud, 2011). As in the notion of a sonic commons, “when you hear a place you hear a specific social organisation of sound as well as how people interact [because] sound is both the expression and the medium of various modes of social existence[.]”

(Thibaud, 2011). Thibaud suggests that an engagement through sound, with its multifaceted nature, helps us develop “interdisciplinary methods that articulate the sensory within the spatial, the social, and the physical“ (Thibaud, 2011). Sonic approaches, such as practice-

based listening to urban environments, can help us to comprehend a place on various levels simultaneously, as well as be a means toward methods that speak to these facets.

This sense of accessing multiple relations, including social ones, is also in Georgina Born’s description of musical listening, which she frames in terms of mediation. For Born, listening results from, but also produces, this mediation, occurring in an ‘assemblage’ – a “network of relations between musical sounds, human and other subjects, practices, performances, cosmologies, discourses and representations, technologies, spaces, and social relations.” (Born, 2010: 87-88).

Extended to sonic experience, our perception of sound environments occurs in multiple layers, including various social levels from the intimate to the institutional. This is what I am experiencing on the plane, sonically connected to city residents below, murmurs of fellow passengers, and music through headphones.

Sonic thinking – considering things as networks of sound and sounding; in terms of vibrations, resonances, and flows – can emphasise sets of relations alternative to those of a world thought through fixed objects or other materials and modes. Considering a given environment in terms of sound recognises various levels and functions of space – social, physical, and otherwise.

II

Mountains near Brescia, Italy, July 28. Standing on a precipice, holding a loudspeaker playing intercepted sine sweeps, I am taking part in a composition

206

CONNECTING FLIGHTS, COMMON SOUNDS

in the context of a sound workshop with participants from Brussels and the UK. A few of us are positioned on various peaks, almost too far to see. But we hear across the steep drops. In the distance, a rumble approaches. Happily, it is not thunder just a plane. It crescendos, resonating in the valley, and gently fades again over ten minutes.

Like this sine wave piece on a peak, sonic practices can include compositions, installations or performances temporarily altering a particular sound space. Sound art projects can intervene as temporary works of local activism.

Intense collaboration with local communities may uncover and explore an issue relevant to the permanent residents, as well as to the artist. Sound art projects, through collaborative workshops or residencies, can also create concrete, tangible social connections. While this in itself is not so different from other forms of participatory art, auditory practices are perhaps particularly wellsuited to promote connection.

Writing on sound art works engaged in the especially divisive communities of Belfast, Gascia Ouzounian explores how the medium of sound might “bypass or even bridge” a city’s “normal barriers, whether physical, social, political or cultural” (Ouzounian 2013: 48). The works Ouzounian cite take diverse forms, but she suggests that established sonic methods such as “listening, hearing, translation, interpretation and recording”, create a basis for “cultural exchange that confounds traditional barriers[.]” (Ouzounian 2013: 50).

Though Ouzounian is writing in reference to a particular city, her descriptions are more broadly relevant too. Perhaps working with sound - by being rooted in practices that depend on the possibility

207

of listening and being listened to - can create connections between people, place, and even reconnections across social and conceptual barriers that seemed materially divided.

In this context, Ouzounian further suggests that through sound art works, a city can be “newly understood” as a “lived and living composition”, which such works might “recompose” (Ouzounian 2013: 48). Framing the city in this way - giving the sense of malleable work emerging through a shared creativity - is an especially encouraging notion at a time when so many political, social, and material conditions seem fixed - not only for one place, but in diverse urban and rural spaces. It leads to a curiosity about what sound and sounding arts might ‘do’ long term; the ways that social and political engagement, enacted through sonic practices, might change shared spaces in more permanent ways.

One potential is in the reciprocity between sonic approaches and urban planning. There are increasing forums by which sound art practices are in direct exchange with city development processes, and increasing means for sound artists to influence conceptions of the urban. This influence includes concepts deriving from sonic thinking as well as various sonic practices and strategies for understanding and directly influencing sound space and the audible environment.

For example, in Urban Sound Design Process, Caroline Claus presents a collaborative ‘sonic cartography’ of a neighbourhood. Claus frames “urban landscape as a sphere of sonic possibilities”, suggesting “new creative strategies to engage with, critique and shape our sonic environment.” (Claus,

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

2015: 4-5). In looking toward “accommo-

dating future sonic experiences”, she asks: “How can we design public space that encourages listening” and “How can we define the conditions for a participatory tuning of our sound environment?”

(Claus 2015: 17). In some senses, experimental approaches to sonic spaces can be construed as novel methods of urban planning.

III

Athens, September 26

From the Acropolis plateau, city traffic is a humble hum. Even with modern surroundings and tourists swarming around crumbling columns, the area is calm. Reflecting on urban histories and the role of public debate as a political foundation, it occurs to me that in most past democracies, my voice would not have been listened to.

Political conditions, as much as acoustic ones, can be silencing – preventing us from hearing each other or possibly from sounding. Social structures can be physically or metaphorically deafening. In fact, one term for noise induced hearing loss is sociocusis, which gives the sense that the social can be so sonic that we suffer from it (Keizer: 32). As O+A underline, since what we hear is both a sonic event and its shaping by a given surrounding, when we listen to cities we hear underlying cultural, social, and economic interests – mechanisms of power. The built environment is the result of past and present expressions of such power (O+A, 2009: 65). This becomes blaringly obvious the moment I walk into a UK clothing chain in a Greek city and hear an American pop song.

Auditory spaces are, in a very immediate sense, a by-product of the same broader mechanisms that influence

other aspects of culture. Residencies based around exploring a culture of sound give an invitation to investigate places according to their acoustic properties, to uncover the ways in which they shape and are shaped by audible power structures, and to then question how best to respond to this.

Sonic cocooning is one reaction, which can seem a justified response to a densely sonorous world.

The noise-free headphones which I’ve so often seen recently give one more indication of how economic value is tied to the privilege of choosing a desired sound (or lack thereof) – of how sound space can be commodified. We pay to be able to retreat into personalised sensory realms, but addressing undesirable qualities of shared environments by metaphorically ‘fixing’ our ears leaves underlying causes of the situation undiagnosed and untreated.

While we now have an unprecedented ability to control our own personal audio spaces, this can often mean that the issues around interpersonal space get overlooked – or rather over-heard.

The danger of this is not only that we might miss the pleasures of the unexpected, but that we might preclude a social exchange that can come from this very intrusion; interruption can be framed as a call to negotiation and an impetus to social exchange. In his ‘Lecture on Shared Space’, LaBelle considers how noise (in the sense of disruptive sound) might enable “a new sociality”, placing those involved on the “threshold of possible community” (LaBelle, 2014: 94). Noise acts as a peripheral “over here” that demands attention, i.e. something we cannot “over-hear”. This confronts us with the unexpected, characterised by LaBelle

208

CONNECTING FLIGHTS, COMMON SOUNDS

as “the stranger”, widening the social situation into a “fuller negotiation” (LaBelle, 2014: 101-102). In this sense, acoustic disruption becomes a means of expanding our perspective, of provoking a need to contend with the other, and, on an interpersonal level, of initiating social exchange. This is an area in which creation and collaborative work in sound arts might have a positive focus. Working within inter-personal, rather than only personal or impersonal spaces, gives impetus to the idea that shared sound space is not only something to be aware of, but something to celebrate, critique, discuss, and recreate.

IV

Belfast, July 19

Walking with a friend from my residence to the city centre, we cross the Westlink highway divide that wraps around the city core like a semi-circular trench. Inside the sonic mesh of the overpass, our talk pauses. Whether or not the highway was designed as an urban sonic intervention, it certainly was not made for public conversation.

Engaging with urban spaces through sound develops not just a sense of their given sonic qualities, but also how these qualities manifest complex social, political, and material networks.

In their reflection, O+A point out that while city infrastructure is designed, “our ears were not part of the design brief” (O+A, 2009: 68).

Given that in the past, I would likely not have been empowered to influence the construction of cities or their auditory environment, it then seems incumbent that I use whatever means I can currently muster to shape present and future sonic commons.

209

Elsewhere, I’ve suggested ways that approaches found in sound art can offer a counterbalance to conventional analysis tools (such as noise maps or decibel meters) and be used to assess urban sound space in more positive measures.

Creative “artistic investigations and provocations of sound spaces”, along with chances to experience works that transform the sound of the city, should be enabled in order to help find innovative ways to tune into and retune urban space; that is, to influence concepts for future city sound (Flügge, 2014). A sonic thinking, which attends to those underlying dynamics and helps clarify how sound spaces are formed (as well as by and for whom) would add an important foundation for urban sound planning by articulating sonic concerns so that they can be part of the design brief.

Taking a tangible step toward actualising the notion of “recomposing the city” as part of urban design, Ouzounian and architect Sarah Lappin appeal directly to planning practice in Soundspace: A Manifesto, encouraging architects and planners to develop a sonic understanding of the built environment. They too underline the need to “think sonically”– describing it as a “thinking through listening” which, rather than static, “must be alive, open to influence, responsive, aware and connected.” (Ouzounian and Lappin, 2014).

This description is especially apt here because it seems that a particular strength of sonic thinking could be in enabling responsiveness and connectivity in shared space. Their manifesto gives prescriptive weight to the sense that sound art’s approaches can help address city space from a sonic perspective and further a culture of urban sound planning.

SECTION 3 | TEXTS BY INVITED RESEARCHERS

While bringing awareness to sound spaces is a good start, as sonic thinkers and practitioners we might bear a greater responsibility for actively influencing this collective acoustic environment. How can we make responsibility in the sonic commons explicit?

Perhaps in seeking a balance between creating the right conditions to allow good listening and good interruption.

For example by creating more spaces for responding and for civic engagement, rather than just spaces for listening. If we are not actively and cooperatively designing shared sound spaces, then they are left to chance, as by-products of impersonal, rather than interpersonal, concerns.

V

Copenhagen, August 26

Preparing a panel for a conference on culture in urban space, we (panel members) decide to disrupt academic format and begin with a sonic and spatial improvisation. Instead of hellos, we open with violin and electronics. Strings are unravelled. The room devolves momentarily in noisy chaos, from which the theoretical talks emerge.

Working through sonic methods means not only listening and recording, but taking chances to disrupt, abate, and amplify – symbolically or literally carrying new, or normally muted voices to the fore. Sonic methods also mean bringing metaphors and mechanisms of sound to bear on civic and urban situations and, in turn, on urban design.

For example, if making space for each other and each other’s sound could be imagined as an adaptive process, continually shifting over time,

then we might take inspiration from musical improvisation, as Christopher Dell has by relating the urban to an ‘open score’, i.e. a framework for organised improvisational action (Dell 2016: 29). Dell’s parallel between musical practice and city dynamics is not using music as a metaphor for urban sound space, but rather comparing the structural processes of musical improvising, acting, and reacting to an open structure for behaviour - to a social production of the urban. In the sense Dell suggests, the city is not taken as an object, but rather seen in terms of what it does - as contingent on improvised processes. Rethinking urban space through sonic concepts that emphasise different aspects of space than are typically considered (such as its fluidity over time, for example), reconnects to Ouzounian’s notion of the urban as something that may be collectively recomposed. If I relate the small scale ‘recomposing’ of a presentation space to wider shared urban spaces then I wonder: By what actions do we dampen, amplify, improvise, or reconfigure?

What hidden means are there to collaboratively tune our shared spaces?

Writing on public engagement and sound art, Conor McCafferty underlines the importance of curation and funding models, e.g. physical spaces, institutions, and networks, in supporting both creation and dissemination of sonic art (McCafferty, 2015).

Enabling public access to (and involvement with) artistic and theoretical work about sound supports engagement with “civic issues related to sound” and brings a wide range of voices – artists and academics, but also “planners, acousticians [and] architects” – into conversation about urban sound space (McCafferty, 2015). This can “activate the

210

CONNECTING FLIGHTS, COMMON SOUNDS

experience of artists and academics in sonic arts and built environment” and also activate “citizen expertise in local communities” (McCafferty, 2015), both of which are important for enriching approaches to sound space.

Residencies can also enable this kind of co-productive sonic investigation and invention. Rather than being just opportunities for listening, or novel aural experience, they are chances to encourage collaborative sound-making and sound-thinking – where unexpected voices join in the dialogue – and to employ sonic tactics such as amplification, filtration, improvisation, and even distortion as social and acoustic means.

Overall, they can contribute to a multifaceted and polyphonic understanding of rural and urban built environments, as a foundation for shaping the resonant future of our sonic commons.

Bibliography Born, G. 2010 “Listening, Mediation, Event: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives”, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 135:S1, pp. 79-89.

Claus, C. 2015, Urban Sound Design Process, Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle; Warsaw.

Dell, C. 2016, Die Stadt als Offene Partitur, Lars Müller Publishers; Berlin.

Flügge, E. 2014, “Sonic Thinking: How Sound Art Practices Teach us Critical Listening to Space.” Proceedings: Invisible Places, Sounding Cities, July 18-20, 2015; Viseu.

LaBelle, B. 2015, “Lecture on Shared Space” Room Tone, Errant Bodies Press; Berlin, pp.

93-105.

McCafferty, C. 2015 “Sound Art and Public Engagement in the Built Environment: Reflections from an Architecture Center”, Journal of Sonic Studies, 11 [last accessed

211

Oct. 30, 2016].

[O+A] Odland, B. & Auinger, S. 2009, “Reflections on the Sonic Commons”, Leonardo Music Journal, vol. 19, pp. 63-68.

Ouzounian, G. 2013 “Recomposing the City: A Survey of Recent Sound Art in Belfast.”

Leonardo Music Journal vol. 23 pp. 47–54.

Ouzounian, G. and Lappin, S.A., 2014.

Soundspace: A Manifesto. Architecture and Culture, 2(3), pp.305-316.

Ouzounian, G, & Lappin, S.A., 2015 “Editorial: Recomposing the City: New Directions in Urban Sound Art”, Journal of Sonic Studies, volume 1, no. 11 [last accessed Oct. 30, 2016].

Thibaud, JP. 2011 “A sonic paradigm of urban ambiances.” Journal of Sonic Studies. Volume 1, no. 1 [last accessed Oct. 30, 2016].

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

SECTION 4 Biographies

212

I. SOCCOS CURATORS AND MANAGERS

I. SoCCoS curators and managers Antye Greie Antye Greie (a.k.a. as AGF) is a composer, music producer, sound artist & curator, poet, feminist, and activist. She lives and works in Finland. Her artistic tools are language, sound, listening, voice, and communication, which she expresses through mixed media. Since 2011, she is the organizer and co-founder of Hai Art in Hailuoto. Hai Art hosted an international conference on remote art & sound, 10+ artistic residencies, extensive sound programs with children like the iPad Orchestra Hailuoto, built an acoustic sculpture The Hailuoto Organum in public space, facilitated a children MediaLAB and numerous sound art camps. Antye campaigns for diversity in the arts with the women collective female:pressure. She runs her own music publishing label AGF Producktion.

currently for Q-O2. She was the project manager for a number of European projects: SoCCoS (2014-2016, EFFE (2014-2015) and currently manages the Q-O2 partnership in Interfaces (2016-2019).

Ina Čiumakova Ina Čiumakova (1986, LT) is currently doing her MA in Media Arts Cultures and has a background in Classical Philosophy (BA) and Cultural Studies (MA). Ina is particularly curious in performative artistic practices, experiments and installations engaging with sound, light and images. Interested in how different technologies and physical locations change the way we touch, hear and see things, she reflects on it in a poetic and reflective manner.

Jan Rohlf

Caroline Profanter Caroline Profanter, born in 1985 in Bolzano (I), studied Computer Music and Electronic Media at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and holds a Master’s degree in Acousmatic Composition at the Conservatoire Royal de Mons in Belgium. She works in the field of electroacoustic music and sound art as a composer and performer and her focus lies on acousmatic composition for loudspeaker orchestras, sound installations and live electronics. Collaborates with different artists within interdisciplinary projects between video, literature and radio art.

Jan Rohlf studied Experimental Media Design at the Berlin University of Arts (UdK).

Founder and one of the artistic directors of CTM Festival, which runs yearly since 1999, and of DISK Berlin, the umbrella organisation that regroups CTM Festival; DISK – Initiative Bild & Ton e.V.; and DISK Agency. From 2004 – 2014, he was one of the coordinators of the General Public project space and from 2009 – 2011 he was a member of Berlin’s Rat für die Künste (Berlin Council for the Arts). In 2014 he was editor and producer for the weekly Klangkunst show at Deutschlandradio Kultur/Klangkunst, where he continues to work as a freelance programmer.

Christel Simons

Julia Eckhardt

Christel Simons (Belgium 1968). Master in the performing arts (1991, RITS, School of Arts, Brussels) and bachelor in intercultural management (2012, Thomas Moore, Mechelen). Worked as production manager and administrator for several Brussels based cultural players: Kaaitheater, Needcompany, Peeping Tom, EFA and

Julia Eckhardt is a musician and curator in the field of the sounding arts. After her studies she played in different chamber music groups, and a couple of years in the National Orchestra of Belgium. Since 1995 she is a founding member and artistic director of Q-O2 workspace in Brussels, which was first an ensemble for contemporary and improvised music, and became in 2006

213

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

a workspace for experimental music and sound art. For Q-O2 she initiated and curated different thematic projects. She is also part of the group Incidental Music which operates in the field of conceptual music and near to the Wandelweiser composers group. Julia Eckhardt has been teaching and lecturing at Lemmens Institut (conservatory of Leuven), Transmedia and La Cambre, Brussels She grew up in Berlin and lives and works in Brussels.

Krzysztof Marciniak Krzysztof Marciniak is a young Warsaw musicologist, critic and acoustic ecologist, editor of the “Glissando” magazine and various publications regarding contemporary and experimental music, soundscape and sound design; technical coordinator and curator of sound-related projects in ArtistIn-Residence Laboratory programme at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. He believes active listening, organic farming, sound(scape) activism and sound(scape) studies can make the world a better place for all living creatures.

Luís Costa Luís Costa (1968) is a Portuguese economist, sound artist, cultural educator, unorthodox sound anthropologist and archivist, author, publisher, radialist, ruralist, polemist, and main curator and coordinator at Binaural/ Nodar, a sound & media arts cultural organization established in 2004 in the rural context of Lafões, centre Portugal, both where all his family roots are based and where over 150 international sound artists and researchers were hosted so far. Luís Costa is the author of three books+cds published with some of his sound pieces: “Sonata for Clarinet and Nodar (together with Jez riley French)”, “New Rural Listenings” and “Sound Memory of Cork”, and over thirty of his works were presented in the context of sound installations, radio shows and performances in Portugal, Spain, France and Italy.

Manuela Barile Manuela Barile (Bari, Italy, 1978) is an artist living and working in Portugal’s rural region of Lafões since 2006 where she has been developing a dense set of placebased projects in close contact with local communities, taking into account specific

aspects of the territory such as tradition, memory, architecture and symbolic/sacred contexts. Her works combines sound and visual anthropology, documentary, video art, performance art and vocal performance. She presently is co-curator and artistic director at Binaural/Nodar.

Marianna Dobkowska Marianna Dobkowska is a Polish curator of artist residencies, projects and exhibitions.

Since 2004, she’s affiliated with the ArtistIn-Residence Laboratory Programme at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw. She has curated and co-curated numerous projects such as “Rooted Design for Routed Living”, “Public AIR”, “We Are Like Gardens”, “Porthos” and ”Akcja PRL”. Some of these projects were carried out in public spaces and included an active participation of wide audiences.

Dobkowska received her MA in Art History from the University of Warsaw and completed postgraduate studies in Curating at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

Oliver Baurhenn Oliver Baurhenn is a freelance curator, and one of the co-directors of CTM Festival since 2002. He co-founded DISK Berlin, the umbrella organization that groups CTM Festival; DISK – Initiative Bild & Ton e.V.; and DISK Agency, and also co-founded and managed the General Public project space from 2004 – 2014. He is a member of Berlin’s Rat für die Künste since 2013. Since 2010, Oliver is co-host of the ICAS Radio/ Zeit-Ton extended show of the ORF Austrian Broadcasting Service and has held a monthly CTM Radio show on Berlin’s reboot.fm. In 2015 he was Interim Director for the neuen Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (NGBK).

Taïca Replansky A graduate of McGill University (M.Sc. Biology), Taïca Replansky worked with MUTEK festival in Montreal, Canada from 2007 – 2012. Since 2012 she has worked in Germany with DISK Berlin, managing communications and diverse projects within the organisation. Through her work at both MUTEK and DISK Berlin, she has supported and been involved with the ICAS International Cities of Advanced Sound network since its founding in 2009.

214

II. INVITED RESEARCHERS

II. Invited Researchers Angharad Closs Stephens

Elen Flügge

Angharad Closs Stephens is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Swansea University and before that was Senior Lecturer (2015-16) and Lecturer (20072015) in the Geography Department at Durham University. She is specialised in Political and Cultural Geographies and has a PhD and MRes in International Relations from Keele University, a Masters Degree in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics, and BSc in Political Studies from Aberystwyth University. She is the author of The Persistence of Nationalism: from imagined communities to urban encounters (Routledge, 2013), co-editor of Terrorism and the Politics of Response, and has published articles in leading journals including Cultural Geographies, International Political Sociology, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Citizenship Studies and Alternatives: Global, Local, Political.

Elen Flügge (1986, Berlin) is writer and sounding artist. She grew up in New York, where she studied music and philosophy in the Bard College. She lives currently in Berlin.

Master in the Universität der Künste of Berlin, where she has specialized into auditory culture with Sabine Sanio and experimental sound design with Sam Auinger. In addition to her researching about audio-media politics and her independent researching about personal sounding experience, her most recent works include site-specific installations, urban interventions and surrounding audio scenography.

Annie Goh Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working primarily with sound, space, electronic media and generative processes within their social and cultural contexts. She holds degrees in Sound Studies, Generative Art and German & European Studies. Recent exhibitions and performances include Sexing Sound (Chicago, US), Höhlenmediale (Wendelstein, DE), White Building (London, UK), Arthackday at LEAP and transmediale (Berlin, DE) and Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo, JP). She has co-curated the discourse program of CTM Festival since 2013 and has lectured at Berlin University of Arts (Art and Media) and Humboldt University (Media Theory).

215

Leandro Pisano Leandro Pisano is a researcher, curator, writer and new media producer focused on new media, sound and technological arts. He is the director of Interferenze new arts festival, an event taking place in South of Italy since 2003 and frequently he is involved in projects and events in sound and electronic art, as Mediaterrae Vol.1 (2007), E-Artquake (2010), Barsento Mediascape (2013) and Liminaria (2014-2016). Leandro Pisano’s research focuses on a series of themes involving sound through different aesthetics declinations (sound art, radio art, soundscape) and a culturalist perspective, which is engaging different disciplines (geography, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature) and conceptual approaches (post-colonial, post-digital).

This research delves into new geographies of sound, as they are emerging from the reconfiguration of territory related with the post-digital and post-global milieu in which we are immersed.

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

216

III. RESIDENT ARTISTS

III. Resident Artists Ana Nieves Moya Berlin-based visual artist Ana Nieves Moya has an inner passion for live performance, creating visual designs and VJing for many events and collaborating with Caballito Netlabel, AIWA!, Eck Echo Berlin. One of her most consistent inspirations is the mix between the traditional and the modern in music and dance.

Anja Erdmann Anja Erdmann is a media and sound artist.

She is interested in movement processes formed by an interplay of acoustic and visual elements. Sound objects, dynamic lighting as well as electromechanical movement create sensual environment.

Annie Goh Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working primarily with sound, space, electronic media and generative processes within their social and cultural contexts. She holds degrees in Sound Studies, Generative Art and German & European Studies. Recent exhibitions and performances include Sexing Sound (Chicago, US), Höhlenmediale (Wendelstein, DE), White Building (London, UK), Arthackday at LEAP and transmediale (Berlin, DE) and Tokyo Wonder Site (Tokyo, JP). She has co-curated the discourse program of CTM Festival since 2013 and has lectured at Berlin University of Arts (Art and Media) and Humboldt University (Media Theory).

Aurélie Lierman Aurélie Lierman was born in Rwanda and grew up in Belgium. Now, as an adult, she considers Belgium her home country. Lierman fuses radio art, vocal art, and composition. Through her practice, Lierman has amassed a large collection of recordings of unique sounds

217

and soundscapes from rural and urban contemporary Eastern Africa, sculpting them into a work called Afrique Concrète.

Cabiria Chomel Cabiria Chomel was born in Paris (1987) and is an author of radio documentaries.

Graduating with a Masters of History and Political Science from University Sorbonne in 2010, she then developed her skills in radio creation at the ACSR – Radio and Sound Design Lab. She has directed several radio plays including Les mangeurs de hérissons (Hedgehogs Eaters) in 2014, Les habitués de nuit (The Night Regulars) and L’éscamoteur (The Illusionist) in 2015.

Camera Sonora Camera Sonora is a sound art and performance collective formed by Adolfo La Volpe, an Italian guitarist, multiinstrumentalist, improviser, composer and sound artist, Marialuisa Capurso an Italian singer, sound artist, composer and performer and Morten Poulsen, a Danish drummer, composer and sound artist. Camera Sonora combines music, performance art and installation with an aim to explore aspects of time as a method to venture into thoughts and emotions. Camera Sonora uses the surroundings of the performers and the audience as inspiration and stimuli for the subconscious travels

Caroline Claus Caroline Claus holds a master’s degree in sociology, and urban development and spatial planning. Her work concentrates on issues of space, place and culture, the geography of life-worlds, sonic experience and the design of urban acoustic environments. Acoustic ecology theory and the avant-garde output

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

of independent electronic record labels provide a conceptual and methodological basis. Trough participatory soundwalks and geo-acoustic mapping, she investigates sound’s potential for urban development processes in urban areas.

Deena Abdelwahed

Daniel Brozek (Czarny Latawiec) is a Wroclaw based sound art curator and critical writer on modern music. As a producer and sound artist, Brozek works within the fields of sonoristic plunderphonics and sound imperialism. His productions are devoted to the epiphanies of African rhythms’ timelessness and the power of just intonation frequencies.

Issuing from the Tunisian alternative music scene, Deena Abdelwahed works to inject a dose of innovation and experimentation into electronic dance music in Tunisia. Trained in jazz as a singer and performer, Abedlwahed has taken up electronic music production and performing live and as a DJ. She debuted her musical career while accompanying jazzman Fawzi Chekili and the group “So Soulful” as a funk and jazz singer. She joined the World Full of Bass collective in 2011, introduced by Zied Meddeb Hamrouni, one of Tunisia’s first performers of experimental electronic music. She is currently part of the Arabstazy collective.

Darsha Hewitt

Donia Jourabchi

Darsha Hewitt (b. 1982) is a Canadian new media artist and avid technologist and educator known for her examinations of communication technology, DIY aesthetics and practices as an artistic method.

She makes electromechanical sound installations, drawings, how-to videos and experimental performances with handmade audio electronics.

Iranian-Belgian sound explorer born in Brussels in 1986. Her main focus is the movement of sound, body and space. She develops experimental approaches towards a spatial practice of sound: sound states as a potential mechanism to engage the social within the physical space in order to reject aesthetic conformity. The artist questions the place of the body in the lived environment and ways to cultivate community with a shared and dynamic understanding of space and presence. She explores places and situations to activate unknown territories in the sensory common space by designing spatial sonic strategies.

Daniel Brozek a.k.a. Czarny Latawiec

David Birchall & Vicky Clarke Noise Orchestra is sound artists David Birchall and Vicky Clarke, who create Noise Machines which translate light into sound.

The pair combines light, turntables, analogue electronics, and graphical scores to turn images and objects into noise, a process they call graphical sound. David Birchall is an improviser interested in how living things, sounds, and spaces interact. Vicky Clarke is a sound artist interested in sound as material, object, archive, and sculpture.

Davide Tidoni Born in Brescia, Italy, Davide Tidoni is a committed researcher in the field of sound and its relations with space, culture, and human agency. With a particular emphasis on observation, action and participation, he realizes a variety of works that include sitespecific interventions and live performances as well as audio projects and listening workshops.

Francesca Saraullo Francesca Saraullo is an Italian dancer, choreographer and video artist, living in Brussels. She is involved in international projects as author and performer. Her work combines dance, performative installation and video, with a focus on the language of the body. By concentrating on conscious movement and by the use of imagination, Francesca seeks to break through the limits of gravity, reaching into the open space around her. In her dance together with her plastic creativity, Francesca seeks for purity of the gesture and the essentiality of a presence between real and virtual. In search of new forms, she observes the world, the human beings and the spaces between the things with curiosity and a pinch of madness.

218

III. RESIDENT ARTISTS

Frederik Croene

Helena Espvall

Frederik Croene (1973) is a pianist/ composer/teacher based in Ghent, Belgium.

He is perpetually investigating what it means to be a classical pianist in our contemporary context. He founded the concept of Le Piano Démécanisé, a dismantled piano, and since then looks for reinventing his instrument and his relation to its tradition. His latest work involves electronics (Roll over Czerny), visual arts (MarsII with artist Karl Van Welden) and conceptual recitals (MozartKreidlerMozart, Voyages au bout du Piano).

Helena Espvall is a Swedish-born composer and performer, known for her participation in the post-millennial psych-folk and free improvisation scenes. Her main instruments are the cello, guitar and voice. She moved to Philadelphia in 2000, having initially dedicated herself to free improvisation (especially with cello), and later actively involved in the city’s weird-folk circuit. A collaboration with Masaki Batoh (Japanese psych band Santo) produced two albums released by Drag City. The first, “Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh,” included several Swedish folk songs and marked the artist’s first significant vocal appearance. In 2010 she released “Lapidary”, an improvised collaboration with Marcia Bassett, a leading figure of the noise/drone scene

Giorgio Mega Since the beginning of 2000’s he is involved in arts, especially studying engraving in its wider meaning of recording and reproduction, anthropology, phenomenology and installations at Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, experimental cinema and interaction between sound and images at UDK Berlin. As a musician is part of Bologna’s underground net of experimental and noise musicians. His research in sound and in a beyond-of-image art is brought to sound art or sound performances, between writing and its impossibility.

GrawBöckler GrawBöckler is the joint project of Berlinbased artists Ursula Böckler and Georg Graw, who together and independently work across the popular formats of video and still photography. In collaboration since 1997, the pair specialise in making music videos and loops, experimental films, and unauthorised commercials. Both Graw and Böckler are part of the curatorial team of project space General Public, and operate the temporary projection space and DVD label “Raum für Projektion.” Over the past year, the duo has been responsible for the production of music videos for experimental pop acts Donna Regina and Molly Nilsson.

Heimo Lattner Heimo Lattner’s films, audio plays, installations, and texts are reflections of a multifaceted investigation into location and social identity.

219

Inge van den Kroonenberg In 2004 Inge van den Kroonenberg (1982) started her work as a visual artist. Through field recording and composing for film, dance and installation art her work gradually evolved into sound orientated pieces and performances. The sculptural and textural characteristics of sound form the basis of her work. In her vocal practice she explores the material and auditory aspects of the voice in order to perceive new qualities of speech and singing. She achieved her bachelor in Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Art and Media in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (NL) including several residencies in Berlin and studied Cultural Sciences at the Free University in Amsterdam. Currently she develops artistic and educational programs in sound and listening for Ghent based company Aifoon.

Jacob Remin Jacob Remin is an artist and curator based in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is part of the critical new media collective SCIENCE FRICTION and is the curator of CLICK festival, Helsingør. His practice is a critical and poetic meditation over technology as material, often manifested as physical works in the meeting between light, space, composition and interaction.

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf Jacques Gaspard Biberkopf works within the paradoxical relationship between club music and art music. Assembling a collage spanning a vast range of influences from dark ecology, sound studies, architecture, media theory, existentialist movements, post-dramatic theatre, the work of Ryan Trecartin, grime, musique concrète and more, Biberkopf doesn’t miss a chance to provoke. His music spans club, theatre and digital radio contexts.

His recent first EP, titled Ecology, launched the new Knives label created by Kuedo and Joe Shakespeare of Berlin’s Motto Books.

Jarosław Urbański Jarosław Urbański, was born in 1978 and is has a degree in Fine Arts – Sculpture. He currently works in Chojnice (Poland) and deals with large and sculptural forms using different techniques and materials such as ceramics, resins, non-ferrous metals, scrap, recycled materials, wood and stone. He also conducts art workshops for children and adults.

Jaume Ferrete Jaume “Mal” Ferrete Vazquez works with voice and its peripheries, its uses and meanings through formats such as CD, concert, performance, workshop, or website.

He develops his practice in the contexts of visual arts, education, performance art, and music. He co-coordinates the sound pedagogy project Sons de Barcelona and is currently completing a research on masculinities.

Juan Duarte Regino Juan Duarte Regino is a media artist, based in Finland since 2011. Born in Mexico City, with educational background in Audiovisual Media, Humanities and Cultural Studies.

Currently. His work is focused on interactive and generative art using digital and analogue platforms that produce engagement through art and technology artefacts. The process of Juan Duarte’s work combines Interaction Design, User experience and Media Archaeology research: the impressions provoked by his work rely on embodied

and tangible experiences with sound, to be enacted in public spaces for intuitive and playful entertainment of the imaginative self.

Judith Laub Judith Laub is a cultural and political scientist living in Berlin. Her scientific work focuses on questions regarding identity formation in the course of transnational transformation processes.

Julian Bonequi Julian Bonequi specialises in electroacoustic music and 3D production. He has performed with the London Improvisers Orchestra, the Berlin Improvisers Orchestra, Ute Wassermann, Paal Nilssen-Love, Gudrun Gut, and Joachim Irmler among other. He is founder and curator of Audition Records, and has taught new media art in Mexico City and Masters-level animation courses at Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University and the Valencia Polytechnic University. In 2015, Bonequi’s music was launched into space as part of “Forever Now” project, alongside artists such as Pierre Henry and Mats Gustafsson. He is currently working on his first 3D opera.

Kaffe Matthews Kaffe Matthews is a sound artist and composer. She was born in Essex, England and lives and works in London and Berlin.

Since 1990 she has made and performed new electro-acoustic music worldwide with a variety of instruments and performers including violin, theremin, wild salmon, Scottish weather, NASA scientists, bicycles, hammerhead sharks, school children, desert stretched wires, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. She is currently researching interactive composition for outdoor enjoyment with sonic bicycles and live diffusion instruments for spatialized performance.

Katharina Hauke Katharina Hauke is a Berlin based audiovisual artist. She studied Philosophy at Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University,

220

III. RESIDENT ARTISTS

Bonn and Communication Design at University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf where she graduated with her thesis „Darwin’sche Finken suchen“. 2016 she graduated at University of Arts, Berlin with her instrument “MikroKontrolleur”.

Kathy Alberici Kathy Alberici is an experimental musician inhabiting a tingling space between noise, soundscapes and drone. Originating from Brighton, she cut her teeth in the psychedelic kraut-doom outfit Drum Eyes before relocating to Berlin, where she is an active member of the Small But Hard collective.

Lee Patterson Lee Patterson is an artist, sound recorder, field recorder, instrument builder, adventurer and analog performer based in UK.

Lilia Mestre Lilia Mestre (b. 1968) is a Portuguese performing artist living and working in Brussels. In her work she uses choreographic tools to research the social body. She gives special attention to the agency of all things and has been working in assemblages, scores and inter-subjective set ups. Actually she’s involved in two research projects: ‘And what about Virtuosity?’ with Edurne Rubio, Shila Anaraki and Frederik Croene and ‘Choreographic figures - deviation from the line’ initiated by Nikolaus Gansterer. She is curator for projects in Bains Connective Art Laboratory in Brussels and at a.pass (advanced performance & scenography studies in Brussels).

Luka Ivanović a.k.a lukatoyboy Luka Ivanović (lukatoyboy) is a nomad musician, sound artist and educator originally from Belgrade, Serbia. His interventions deal with networks, sound and narrative, site-specific topics, space, chance and structure. Using real-time electroacoustic improvisation, feedback, analogue synthesizers, objects, toys, field recordings, voice often involving walkie-talkies, he creates participatory works questioning exclusivity and authority of an artist.

221

Maciej Kierzkowski Maciej Kierzkowski was born in 1974 and is a musician and ethnomusicologist. He works as composer, music producer and multi-instrumentalist, dealing mainly with folk, world and experimental music. He creates sound tracks for theatre spectacles, movies as well as conducts musical workshops for children. He maintains also ethnomusicological field audio recordings and co-manages art organization Akademia Profil.

Marialuisa Capurso Marialuisa Capurso is an Italian singer, sound artist, composer and performer.

Her work is multidisciplinary and focused on the connection between voice, sound, field recordings, body and improvisation.

She investigates and explores the realm of acoustic sounds and electronic interfaces as extension of human voice. Art and life, sound and movement, having improvisation as a common thread, through which she seeks unbeaten paths and imaginary worlds.

Marija Bozinovska Jones Marija Bozinovska Jones’s practice revolves around the techno-capitalist condition and challenged ontological axiomatics of cognition, affection and memory. Under the alias MBJ Wetware, Jones explores media architectures mimicking biological systems by initiating live immersive performances.

Previous collaborators have included A Guy Called Gerald and Phoebe Kiddo/ Mind:Body:Fitness.

Marta Romaszkan Her main interest concerns the relation between body and sound, as well as pure movement research. She was a scholar at the Alternative Dance Academy by Art Station Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk (Poland). Since 2014, she established Sense of Movement Foundation which mission focuses on unfolding theoretical and practical knowledge of body and of movement, and empowering it in artistic, social and academic contexts.

SECTION 4 | BIOGRAPHIES

Peter Cusack Peter Cusack is a field recordist, musician, and sound artist with a long interest in the sound environment. He is the founder of the Favourite Sounds Project that explores what people find positive about the sounds of the cities - London, Beijing, Chicago, Prague, Birmingham, Berlin - where they live. His project Sounds From Dangerous Places (described as sonic journalism) investigates soundscapes at sites of major environmental damage including the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the Caspian oil fields in Azerbaijan, the Italian city of Taranto, and the Aral Sea.

and representation. She is a recipient of the SUNDANCE Theater Lab grant (MENA region residency, Morocco) and SUNDANCE post-LAB funds grant.

Ryoko Akama Ryoko Akama is a japanese born sound artist living in the UK. She composes text scores and installations. She approaches the aesthetics of silence, time/space through diverse materials including objects, electronics, papers, inks and text. She runs melange edition label and co-runs mumei publishing/reductive journal.

Peter Kirn

Sébastien Piquemal

Peter Kirn is an audiovisual artist, journalist, and technologist. Classically trained in composition and piano, he now focuses on live electronic performance. He is the founder of CDM, a widely-read daily website that explores creative technology. He is based in Berlin and heads the CTM Festival Hacklab.

Sébastien Piquemal is a computer engineer, obsessively exploring the artistic capabilities of machines. After working several years as a full-stack web developer in Helsinki, Finland, he decided to dedicate himself fully to making music. Since then, he has been an active contributor to the opensource software community, leading various projects such as WebPd (Pure Data patches running in the web browser). As a lover of Jazz and improvised music, Sébastien is seeking new ways to place human interaction at the core of live music.

Pierre Berthet Pierre Berthet is a Belgian artist who studied percussion at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Bruxelles and at the Conservatoire Royal de Musique de Liège (improvisation with Garrett List, composition with Frederic Rzewski and music theory with Henri Pousseur). He designs and builds sound objects and installations in natural and built spaces (steel, plastic, water, magnetic fields, etc.) presenting them in exhibitions and in solo or duo performances, with Brigida Romano or Frédéric Le Junter. He played percussion in the Arnold Dreyblatt’s Orchestra of Excited Strings and released three CDs so far: “Un piano cadre prolongé”, “Two pieces continuum” and “Extended loudspeakers”.

Rima Najdi Performance artist Rima Najdi focuses on the body as a tool and map of experiences and on identity politics. Fed by a curiosity to challenge and occupy in-between spaces, she examines the vulnerabilities of one’s body looking at gender politics, safety, mobility

Soundwalk Collective Soundwalk Collective is an international art collective based in New York City and Berlin.

Since 2000 they have been sonic nomads, exploring and documenting places from the desolation of the Rub’ al Khali to the coasts of the Black Sea. Founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, its other core members are Simone Merli, and Kamran Sadeghi. The collective performs live and also creates light/video projections for site-specific performances in order to create unique atmospheres and environments for each presentation. Recent works were shown at Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris); MADRe Museum of Contemporary Art (Napoli); New Museum (New York); National Museum of Singapore; ARMA17 (Moscow) & others.

222

III. RESIDENT ARTISTS

Susana Santos Silva Susana Santos Silva was born in Porto in the year of 1979. She holds a Master Diploma in Jazz Performance ‘2010 from Codarts, Rotterdam, where she worked with Eric Vloeimans, Jarmo Hoogendijk and Wim Both. She holds a Graduate Diploma in Jazz/ Trumpet ‘2008 from the College of Music and Performing Arts in Porto. She is a member of the European Movement Jazz Orchestra, with whom she toured in Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium and Portugal, Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos, LAMA Trio and leads her own Quintet.

Tiina Laurila Tiina Laurila (1982) was born in Mölndal in Sweden but grew up in a small rural village, Lumijoki, located in northern Finland. She is one of Hai Art’s educators where she helped establishing DIY (do-it-yourself) and DIWO (do-it-with-others) sound-based practices.

She studied textile design and manufacture at the Arts and Crafts School of Ilmajoki and has studied sound arts alongside Antye Greie- Ripatti and visiting sound artists at Hai-Art, located in the island of Hailuouto.

Tiina Sainila & Mikko Kanninen Tiina Sainila & Mikko Kanninen are architects living and working on the remote island of Hailuoto. There they have been involved in art projects at HaiArt: architectural education, “sound&movement” -workshops, dance video workshops, snow building etc., with both children and seniors.

Till Bovermann Till Bovermann is an artist and instrument builder, teaching instrument design and sound technology at various international institutions, among others the IMM in Düsseldorf, at Aalto University and at the institute for time-based media of UdK Berlin.

Torbjörn Zetterberg Torbjörn Zetterberg was born in Stockholm, Sweden in the spring of 1976. In 2002, only one year after graduating from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Zetterberg released his debut album on the esteemed

223

Swedish label, Moserobie Music Production.

Since then he has released seven albums and received two Grammy Award nominations for “Förtjänar Mer Uppmärksamhet” and “Krissvit”. Besides his solo projects, Zetterberg has recorded as a co-leader for Moserobie Music Production, Clean Feed and Ayler Records.

Xabier Erkizia Xabier Erkizia (b. 1975) is a Basque Country musician, sound artist, producer and journalist. His work is based on research among different people, sounds and formats in different situations as sound installations, recordings and musical compositions, radio art pieces, and collective improvisations.

Since 2000 he directs ERTZ Festival and has published several essays on the phenomenon of listening, being also one of the coordinators of Audiolab, a Basque sound art organization.

Yannick Guédon Yannick Guédon is a French born composer, singer and performance artist, currently living in Brussels. His work focuses on tiny variations of timbres, the inner pulsation sensations and subjective notions of time, silence and error. He pays particular attention to the place and context in which each musical situation is displayed. In 2011 he initiated the cycle of situations a _ t e m p _ s, which generated five compositions between 2011 and 2014 using a variety of instruments and devices (viola da gamba, electroacoustic settings, sound research on the artist absence, birthday candles, etc.). He has recently collaborated with composers/musicians such as Radu Malfatti, Deborah Walker, Eliane Radigue and Mattieu Delaunay.

This publication is part of SoCCoS: Sound of Culture - Culture of Sound, a project co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission. The project’s lead partner was Q-O2 (BE) and other main partners were DISK Berlin (DE), Hai Art (FI), Binaural/Nodar (PT) and A-I-R Laboratory / CCA Ujazdowski Castle (PL).

General project manager:

Christel Simons (Q-O2)

Teams: Q-O2 Artistic director and curator: Julia Eckhardt Administrator and general project manager: Christel Simons Communication: Eveline Heylen Technician: Ludo Engels Production and documentation:

Ina Čiumakova, Caroline Profanter,

Henry Andersen, Samson Pignot DISK Berlin Artistic and managing director

Oliver Baurhenn Artistic and managing director Jan Rohlf Artistic and managing director Remco Schuurbiers Administration, finance and festival manager Karen Grzemba Communications and project manager Taïca Replansky Production managers

Philip Gann, Lilli Maxine Ebert Administration assistant

Veit Gebhardt Hai Art Direction:

Administration:

Workshops by artists:

Antye Greie (AGF) Nella Nikkilä Tiina Sainila, Tiina Laurila

Binaural/Nodar General coordination and curator: Artistic director and co-curator:

Research and publishing coordinator: Production and technicians:

Documentation:

Administration:

Luís Costa Manuela Barile Rui Costa Susana Rocha, Nely Ferreira, João Farelo Manuela Barile

Soraia Pinto, Diana Silva

A-I-R Laboratory / CCA Ujazdowski Castle Coordination and SoCCoS curators: Krzysztof Marciniak, Marianna Dobkowska CCA Ujazdowski Castle curators:

Agnieszka Sosnowska, Anna Ptak, Marianna Dobkowska, Head: Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka Office manager:

Aleksandra Biedka Cooperators:

Edyta Jarząb, Olga Mikulska Sound technicians: Krzysztof Klósek, Arek Suchecki Translators: Kamila Kijowska, Agata Klichowska,

Sławomir Królak Proofreading:

Darren Durham Design: Krzysztof Bielecki

This book was printed in Viseu (Portugal), December 2016