Show 857: Sambatas Soundings by Red Forest for reboot.fm

Sounding Sambatas
 
Many other walled towns have been razed to the ground by mighty movements of the earth, and many cities, citizens and all, have sunk to the bottom of the sea.

– Titus Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Natura

Sounding Sambatas riffs off of SAMBATAS STAGINGS, an experimental performative project that drew on the imagery of urban ruin to find new ways of using the public space in times of social distancing. It took form as a series of process-oriented, collectively produced performances, readings, rituals, writing sessions and audio transmissions that depart from the poem De Rerum Natura by Titus Lucretius Carus. Opening up the hidden potentials of urban and acoustic space, these practices activated the abandoned ruins in a garden off of Petrivska street in central Kyiv. This process culminated in a public gathering and performance on August 19th, 2021.
 
Sambatas is alleged to be an ancient city that may or may not have existed alongside Kyiv. Sambatas is thought to have been raised to the ground in the first millennium AD. Today, in the second millennium, a similar fate is threatening certain parts of the city of Kyiv, like the area of Petrivska street that fell prey to a number of landslides. Sambatas Stagings takes place at the site of those landslides to make Lucretius’ philosophies of flux present in contemporary Kyiv.
 
Sambatas Stagings was realized by Red Forest together with Maryana Bodnaruk, Sasha Dolgiy, Artem Kanischev, Lyuba Knorozok, Oleksiy Kuchanskyi, Nastya Teor, Ihor Sokolo and Nika Zenova, in and around the abandoned territory of Petrivska Street in Kyiv aka ХАЩІ featuring analog synthesizers, drums, a magnetic harp, alto saxophone, vocals and strange interference.

Sounding Sambatas was produced by Nika Zenova with Red Forest.

Red Forest is a collective that works on the intersections of research, art, political imagination, and social actions. Red Forest are: David Munoz Alcantara, Mijke van der Drift, Diana McCarty and Oleksiy Radynski.  

Sambatas Stagings was organized by the Visual Culture Research Center and ХАЩІ with the support from the International Co-Production Fund / Goethe Institut Ukraine / Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.

Show 856: LOST ORIGINS by GABI SCHAFFNER for radio x

radia season 46 – show #856 (radio x) – LOST ORIGINS – by GABI SCHAFFNER
– playing from August 23 to August 28, 2021 –

LOST ORIGINS
by GABI SCHAFFNER

A journey along the subtle outlines of a fragmented map made up of sounds, signals, songs, chimes and rhythms
From a Buddhist monastery to bird calls to wandering drones, this piece is all about tracking and breaking the kinship between natural and man-made frequencies.
The curtain of time, woven from the thin fabric of oblivion, is sewn together by bumblebees and sewing machines alike, and its hem is embroidered with the song of cicadas and the sound of one hand clapping.

Recordings and composition: Gabi Schaffner 2021
Occasional percussive elements: FX Schroed ‘Air
Folk song: Courtesy / by Romina Casile, 2018 (rominacasile.com)

GABI SCHAFFNER
Gabi Schaffner works as an interdisciplinary sound artist and curator.
Her artistic practice is determined by the methods of poetic ethnography in connection with fluxus-like mise-en-scènes, radio-making and sound art performances. Much of her work originates from journeys. Next to her radiophonic productions, Schaffner creates speculative musical genres and inserts them into music history in order to raise awareness for cultural, gender-related and/or geographical conditions.
Schaffner has been realising award-winning productions with Deutschlandfunk Kultur, radia.fm, Hessian Cultural Radio and ABC Australia. Since 2012 she maintains DATSCHA RADIO, a nomadic transmission project that links the medium of radio to current ecological issues.

Find out more about DATSCHA RADIO at www.datscharadio.de
and about GABI SCHAFFNERs projects in a broader perspective at www.schaffnerin.net

credits:
great many thanks to GABI SCHAFFNER for LOST ORIGINS … and we also say thank you to her artistic collaborators, contributors and donators, especially FX Schroed ‘Air and Romina Casile!

metadata:
LOST ORIGINS by GABI SCHAFFNER
radia production: miss.gunst [GUNST + radiator x]
production date: august 2021
station: radio x, frankfurt am main (germany)
length: 28 min.
licence: (cc-by-nc-nd) GABI SCHAFFNER
www.radiox.de – www.gunst.info – www.datscharadio.de – www.schaffnerin.net

additional info:
includes radia jingles (in/out), station and program info/intro (english)

links:
radio x & radiator x: www.radiox.de – www.radiox.de/radiator-x
GUNSTradio & radiator x: www.gunst.info – www.gunst.info/radiator
Gabi Schaffner: www.datscharadio.de – www.schaffnerin.net

pics: (c) Gabi Schaffner

Show 854: Conditioning Silence: a Sound Recording for the Living and the Dead, by Martin Kay (Radio One 91FM)

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Conditioning Silence: a sound recording for the living and the dead  

“Towards the end of 2020, about a month after our (Melbourne’s) 111-day lockdown, my brother passed away in his single-room apartment in a rooming house for people requiring special care. He was a brilliant, troubled and intense person who had a profound influence on my life. 

In the days following his death, my mother and I went to his apartment to retrieve some of his possessions and finalise his tenancy. Stepping into his room proved to be one of the most intense experiences of my life. His presence lingered on through his strong odour and his highly idiosyncratic and personal selection and assemblage of various objects scattered around the room. The whole experience felt like I was trespassing into someone’s mind and world – a world which would normally demand some sort of invitation and regulation.  

After our initial visit, I had a strong urge to come back to his room alone, with no criteria or time constraints, and just sit and meditate; attempt to experience the space as he arranged it, as he lived it, and in doing so attempt to connect with him on some level one last time.  

Two days later, in 35 degrees heat, I went back to his room and sat down on his red lounge chair; my feet resting on the spot where he most likely took his final breaths. As I fell into a state of meditation, I couldn’t help but drift off and inadvertently focus my attention on the sounds of the busy world emanating from the other side of his window: the passing of traffic, the brakes and compressors of busses and trucks, car doors shutting, sirens, birds, wind in the trees, people going about their daily lives with their own rhythms and objectives.  After focusing on this busyness, I began to develop an appreciation for the contrasting yet interconnected acoustic conditions of his room which possessed a perfect stillness, a serenity, a sense of containership. A sense which spoke of protection, privacy, belonging and home.  

My attention then drifted towards the sounds emanating from his door and walls. The sounds of a semi-private residential rooming house: the faint echo of footsteps, music playing, elevator bells, residents pottering about, conversations, etc,. Whilst subtle and faint, these sounds were charged with a particular level of intimacy, delicacy and vulnerability. 

At this point, I started to become consciously aware of myself listening and realised that this listening was unlike anything I’d experienced before. The outside world appeared to have slowed right down and my auditory perception seemed to be completely defined by the withdrawn and solitary conditions of my dead brother’s room. No longer was I implicated with the world at large, with its rhythms, concerns and demands, but rather I was momentarily enmeshed in a liminal space between the living and the dead. A one way space  in which I could observe without the relational constraints of being observed.  

With this sonic placement in mind, I then started to wonder how such sounds may have presented themselves in the final moments of my brother’s life. What meaning might they have possessed? What weight might they have carried? What stories might they have told?  In pondering these questions, I was suddenly hit with an acute realisation that all these public, semi-private, private and so called ‘mundane’ urban sounds were in fact absolutely extraordinary; possessing all the secrets, knowledge and intricacies of our universe and just as magnificent and precious as anything one could ever imagine. And,  just like the incomprehensible rhythms and actions of my brother’s life, these sounds in no way needed qualifying or explaining. They were perfect as they were and appeared to exist well beyond the boundaries of my own level of comprehension and appreciation.   

The next day I decided to come back and record his room in order to hear what sound the microphone could shed on the situation. I recorded myself both observing a period of silence and recounting out loud these very reflections from a range of different acoustic perspectives in his space. Including, a stereo room recording using two spaced omnis, the sound of my own body using a geophone, the sound of his walls and floor recorded through a contact mic, weighted down by some of his personal possessions.   

These recordings don’t seek to offer a morbid representation of listening in the final stages of one’s life, but rather can be heard ­­ as an exercise in searching for sound in a special place and then reconnecting to that place through the body or prism of written sound.” 

This work is a precomposed iteration of a performance piece first realised as part of Starlings – Inhabitation Spatial Sound Showcase at McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery, Langwarrin, Victoria, 27 February, 2021.

Dedicated to my loving brother Maurice Kay. 

– Martin Kay, 2021. 

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Martin Kay is a Melbourne-based sound artist whose current interests lie in producing environmental sound recordings that can be understood as coming from a type of second person perspective; charged with a degree of emotional resonance and psychological alterity. Through employing a technologically limited (recording focused) approach, he strives to experiment in-situ with a range of recording techniques that produce estranged representations of the environments and situations that he engages with, providing a material body through which to consider and reimagine his surrounds.

Martin’s works have been published through 3LEAVES, AVANTWHATEVER, BCSC, and/OAR, Earwitness, Herbal, MOOZAK and Espaces Sonores.

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Radia Show 853 : FROM Z TO A by Aymeric de Tapol (π-node)

J’étais invité pour une pièce de théâtre afin d’enregistrer ce que vous allez entendre. C’est un plan séquence dans un abattoir d’Anderlecht à Bruxelles. Cette abattoir est loué par une centaine de petit concessionnaire, de petit éleveur d’animaux. Ils n’ abattent pas de poulet.

il y a 2 voix:

la voie hallal

la voie non hallal (porc)

De par sa situation géographique, cet abattoir représente un véritable enjeu social économique car il est situé dans la bordure du centre ville de Bruxelles. Tout le quartier en bénéficie ainsi que les boucherie de la ville.

Nous avons été guidé par une Anthropologue, dont le poste de travaille eu était commissionné par la commune d’ Anderlecht afin de réfléchir à la question du Vivant aux sein d’une ville, car d’habitude tout cela ce fait à l’extérieur des villes, voir très loin de la ville ….

Ce que ces sons ne disent pas, c’ est que les personnes qui y travaillent souffrent de trouble psychologique et physique permanent , des cauchemars liés à la mort et aux sang.

Enregistré par Aymeric de Tapol en 2018

For a theatre play I was invited to record what you are about to hear. It’s a sequence recording in a slaughterhouse in Anderlecht in Brussels. This slaughterhouse is rented by a hundred small dealers, small animal breeders They don’t slaughter chickens.

There are 2 voices:

the hallal way

the non-hallal way (pork)

Due to its geographical location, this slaughterhouse represents a real social and economic issue because it is situated on the edge of the city centre of Brussels. The whole neighbourhood benefits from it, as do the city’s butchers.

We were guided by an anthropologist, whose job was commissioned by the municipality of Anderlecht in order to reflect on these questions because usually all this is done outside the city, even very far from the city ….

What these sounds don’t say is that the people who work there suffer from permanent psychological and physical disorders, nightmares related to death and blood.

Recorded by Aymeric de Tapol in 2018

Aymeric de Tapol is an electronic musician and Sound-recordist, for film, art Video, documentary, radio, Dance performance.
He lives in Brussels. He played in the past in the wall of noise band ” ZOHO”and “Le cable de Feu”

He run the proto techno duo “CANCELLLED” with the Sound Artist Yann leguay.
His music his release by different label, Vlek, Lexi disques, Tanuki, A.V.A, Tanzproceszand Knotwilg record

site : https://aymeridetapol.bandcamp.com/