Special: Curated by RADIA: 100 Words Per Metre by Sarah Washington

The invitation by Kunstradio to produce a series of shows raised the question of a common denominator that could tie the pieces together.

It was suggested to hold a production meeting for Radia artists to share the initial impulse for the creation of the shows. As a location for this meeting Radia managed to secure one of the most imposing exhibition spaces in Europe, the Gasometer in Oberhausen. With a height of 117 meters and a diameter of 68 meters it boasts one of the most extreme acoustics of any public building, with ample of natural reverb and delay.

Eight artists from five countries spent two nights and one day in and around the giant steel cylinder and began to incubate their ideas which were subsequently finalized in their own studios. Radio art is, in this instance, a function of space.

The second part in the series is a work produced by Sarah Washington and entitled “100 Words Per Metre”:

“A dialogue occurs that empties itself into the booming darkness; freely associated text that speaks about the function of words, how they delight and frustrate. Sentences cascade down out of sight whilst others rise up and strive to reach them – in-between lies the mysterious space of their meeting. Two artists interrogate the integrity of words by propelling their voices from top to bottom and bottom to top of the vast metal cylinder of the Gasometer Oberhausen. Conversation ebbs and flows where sense overlaps, where voices merge into the overwhelming reverberation of the building or are lost to storm water streaming down through the towering gloom. Interwoven with this expansive and elongated dialogue is an opposition: the intimate personal musings of artists on the subject of Radio Art. What is Radio Art? Where can you find it? And in the end, can words help us at all?”

Producer: Sarah Washington
Text and voices:  Sarah Washington und Dinah Bird
Recordings:Dinah Bird und Knut Aufermann
Additional voices: International Radio Artists
Languages: English and German

Show 291: Heimkehr by Rinus van Alebeek and Alessandra Eramo

coming home from nowhere to somewhere – or was it the other way round? let´s see. or maybe better: let´s listen…

rinus van alebeek is a sound artist, writer and performer from holland, living and working in berlin and elsewhere. find out more about rinus van alebeek and his work at zeromoon.com/rinus

alessandra eramo a.k.a ezramo is a sound artist, composer and performer from taranto, italy. she’s currently living and working in berlin, germany. further information about alessandra eramo a.k.a ezramo and her work can be found at www.ezramo.com

special thanks to corsica s. for the beautiful radiator sounds!

Special: Curated by RADIA: Don’t measure me by Paulo Raposo

“My approach to the Gasometer in Oberhausen consisted in exploring both its outside and inside. Quite impressed, and almost in vertigo, by its incredible height (120m) and its massive metal structure, I mirrored and  juxtaposed the metal structures and connections which were being heavily provoked through a passing tornado (believe it) with its immensely reverberating “inside” and its everlasting wave of sound. The strong wind outside and the powerful hum inside provided an intriguing affinity to the interplay of both parts. And both invisible, ungraspable, continuously haunting and mesmerizing.
In this sense, I want to suggest the power and density of the huge organic building which, that ceasing its utilitarian purpose, stands nevertheless open to imagination and awareness.”

Recordings: Paulo Raposo
Additional voices and recordings: Other Radio Art camps artists.
Language: English
Production: Paulo Raposo for Kunstradio

Show 290: artist as a wolf by Ralf Wendt

Go with your small radio during the radia show into an exhibition and spread the text without taking contact to the other visitors. Let your radio speak for you. And Christine Oppenheim sing for you.

Ralf Wendt lives and works in Halle/S.- E.Germany. His works surround situations of ill communications – He is trying to deconstruct codes and methods of different languages, spoken, written language and gestures. Wendt is working in the field of performance in public space, istallation in galleries and public, poetry and soundart in radio and gallery. Soundworks for different worldwide radiostations as Kunstradio Vienna, Radia.FM and others. Performances happened in Europe, Asia – such as Vietnam, Phillipines and in the USA. He is an active member of performance-group The Wolf in The Winter.

Special: Curated by RADIA: Radio art is what I think it is by Knut Aufermann

The invitation by Kunstradio to produce a series of shows raised the question of a common denominator that could tie the pieces together. It was suggested to hold a production meeting for Radia artists to share the initial impulse for the creation of the shows.

As a location for this meeting Radia managed to secure one of the most imposing exhibition spaces in Europe, the Gasometer in Oberhausen. With a height of 117 meters and a diameter of 68 meters it boasts one of the most extreme acoustics of any public building, with ample of natural reverb and delay. Eight artists from five countries spent two nights and one day in and around the giant steel cylinder and began to incubate their ideas which were subsequently finalized in their own studios. Radio art is, in this instance, a function of space.

Opening the Curated by series is a radiophonic analysis of the production of radio art by Knut Aufermann of Resonance104.4fm, “Radio art is what I think it is”:

„How is radio art produced? In this case on the computer, where the recordings from the Gasometer Oberhausen are arranged. Verena Kuni’s sonorous voice is set in contrast to the feedback sounds produced in the Gasometer’s giant metal cylinder. My idea is to incorporate thoughts and decisions that went into the piece, rather than presenting it as a finished entity.

An inspiration for this self-experiment was a radio performance by the avantgarde musician Keith Rowe for Resonance104.4fm in 2002. Whilst performing, he all of a sudden demanded a microphone and started explaining to the listeners why and how he was modulating the sounds on his electric guitar in front of him.

The title of the piece refers to Ed Baxter’s ironic statement ‚Radio art is what I say it is‘.“

Show 289: beasty noise by Barbara Kaiser

the show from orange 94.0/vienna produced by barbara kaiser is an atmospheric summary of the reheat festival 2010 at kleylehof, austria. this year’s topic was „monsters“.
it’s a mixture of recordings made before and during the festival: soundcapes, concerts, installations, performances and statements of artists and festival visitors. you can find more information about the festival and its programme at http://reheat.klingt.org. the show includes festival contributions by alfred stohl, lupe, sabine marte, skylla, peter brandlmayr, joerg piringer, monc/ink, doris kern & klaus filip.

Show 288: Circuit 02 Broadcast by Jeroen Vandesande

On invitation of XL AIR, artist Jeroen Vandesande transformed his installation CIRCUIT02 (for pics, see website) in a proper radio broadcast for the Radia LX 2010 festival. Vandesande  (°1986, Turnhout, Belgium) completed his master studies at the Ghent School of Fine Arts Sint-Lucas and has been active as a (sound & visual) artist since 2004. Besides giving performances he also creates sound installations and regularly works together with musicians and performers. For this occasion he worked together with sound technician Martijn Veulemans and the XL Air radiophonic team. Vandesande has performed for audiences in several art centres and concert halls around the globe.

The installation.
CIRCUIT02 is the follow up of Vandesande’s acclaimed CIRCUIT01 where he tried to create an instant communication system for musicians through the use of a no-input mixing panel in which acoustic instruments were connected and modulated with the internal feedback circuits of the mixing board. Circuit 02 extends this prototype system to an infinite number of players. The result is best described as an autonomous society of communicating radio’s.  The idea behind Vandesande’s Circuit 02 is a kind of technical elaboration of the famous Bertolt Brecht idea of two way communicating radio’s:
But quite apart from the dubiousness of its functions, radio is one-sided when it should be two-. It is purely an apparatus for distribution, for mere sharing out. So here is a positive suggestion: change this apparatus over from distribution to communication. The radio would be the finest possible communication apparatus in public life, a vast network of pipes. That is to say, it would be if it knew how to receive as well as to transmit, how to let the listener speak as well as hear, how to bring him into a relationship instead of isolating him.                  (Bertolt Brecht – ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’ – 1932)
In what can be described as a technical perversion of the Brechtian prophecy, neglecting the social and political undertone of this quote, Vandesande build a network of mutual communicating radio’s by providing each transmitter with the possibility to receive and vice versa. He literally changed the apparatus from distribution to communication (or what is generally understood by the use of this word). The result is a crafty and powerful feed-back sphere inspired by 20 (old school) radios. The Brechtian utopic idea, when carried out with technical accuracy, creates a dense cloud of feedback loops, a vast network of pipes indeed. Walking through this cloud of analogue static fog, one can recognise the individual speakers and listen to the different voices of the different radios, finding a subtle beauty in this Babylonian noise. The big challenge for the RadiaLX festival was to translate Vandesande’s idea’s into a classic radio broadcast and to recreate the dynamic spatial qualities of the installation in a flat streaming signal. In order to do so, Vandesande decided to play with the different perspectives one can take in the spatial environment of the installation by recording the radios and feedback loops individually and from different angles with different recording techniques and different gear. Vandesande started out with the recording of two radios communicating with each other,  a broader network of radio’s was then recorded with the modulation of AM-broadcasting on FM-feedbackloops.  These sounds where recorded  through spatial microphone techniques combined with so called close-micing. One rather amusing outcome of these experiments was listening to AM Radio on FM band – could this be a world premiere? What you’ll hear is a 28 minute composition assembled out of the recordings we made during the experiments with the installation Circuit 02. If these experiments can teach us something, it must be that the aesthetic pleasure of the Brechtian utopian symmetric communication system is an ambiguous one. Any prophecy expecting perfection from communication systems or forecasting utopian dimensions in (new) media risks to become another dangerous joke for history. It’s in the nature of communication systems to fail, to be imperfect and to be replaced and complemented by new media. Too smooth or too much communication kills communication. In fact imperfections are exactly what makes communication work. The beauty off course derives from this imperfection and it’s this uncanny pleasure one can hear in the folds of Vandesande’s piece CIRCUIT02 BROADCAST.

INFO
http://www.jeroenvandesande.be/
http://radio.vub.ac.be/xlair/