“Skopje 26th of July” is a radio piece dedicated to the victims 1963 Skopje earthquake. It contains sounds from documentaries about the city made just before and after the earthquake, news from the first Macedonian radio – Radio Skopje and music from the period.
Authors: Joana Risteska, Mihail Dimitrov
Joana and Mihail are from Kanal 103. Risteska is a guitarist, Dimitrov is a film editor.
Ayn Rand’s highly dubious novel ‘The Fountainhead’ has become a source of morbid fascination for us since entering lockdown – forming the basis for a research pathology driven at least in part by an urge to inoculate against certain worlds that could (re)emerge post-Covid. Firmly embedded within the (arguably impoverished) neo-liberal literary canon, ‘The Fountainhead’ is nonetheless something of an embarrassment for many of those who actually live by its values. Even for many of its proponents, the novel is just ‘too much’: Rand does not hold back from not only depicting but outright embracing a brutal vision of sociality governed by self-interest and extreme egotism. The question we ask ourselves is, how can anyone like this? The popularity of the novel seems unabated despite its unbearably didactic tone, flatlining dialogue and overstated rhetoric. In order to at least move towards resolving this deadlock, in our radio broadcast we will be ripping this text to shreds – via absurd electronically affected characterisation, O.T.T sonic scenography and unreliable narration blurring the line between where the (awful) text ends and our possibly unqualified dismantling of it begins. The whole enterprise – if providing no concrete answers regarding where to go from here, might at least provide some indication of what to avoid.
Anna Danielewicz (b. Koszalin, 1991) is an artist and writer based in Glasgow.Coming from a background in performance, her practice is now rooted mostly in writing and the workshop format. Her most recent projects include Lip, Belly, Foot at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop and Voun Town at the Edinburgh Art Festival. Anna is a member of the programming committee of Market Gallery. She is currently working on a prose fiction project to do with the language of teenagers, and the problem of translation.
Max Syedtollan (b. London, 1994) is an artist-composer based in Glasgow. In 2019 he was selected as one of Sound and Music’s ‘New Voices’ and exhibited work in the Venice Biennale, as well as releasing his second album of DIY chamber music on Glasgow label GLARC (supported by the Arts Council). His pieces have been broadcast on BBC Radios 4 and 6, and performed at institutions such as Cafe Oto and Snape Maltings. In 2020 he is working on a new moving image piece exploring the overlap between history and fiction.
This sound piece is created with sounds recorded on the roads of Belgium, the Alps and Lapland.
« Walking is the best way to go slower », says the philosopher Frédéric Gros. We need to find slowness again, to anchor our feet into the ground, to feel its texture, to listen with our toes. At least this is the invitation launched by this sound piece, a geopoetic immersion, an invitation of the paths.
Anne Versailles is a Belgian artist, polymorphic, based in Brussels. She lives on the edge of the Forêt de Soignes which is her creative studio. She is a walker, a geopoeteer, a director and a sound designer. She works on the border between text, image and sound. By training, she is a biologist and has done her PhD on the selection of the lapwing’s nesting habitat (it’s a bird). In 2010, she crossed the Alps, from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, in three months of autonomous walking (www.vialpe.be). Since then, her poetic work explores, between documentary and poetry, the slowness and the crossing of territories and landscapes.
www.anneversailles.be
Adaptation radiophonique du disque vinyle « Sounds of silence » de Matthieu Saladin, Patrice Caillet et Adam David.
(Frac Franche-Comté / Alga Marghen, avec le soutien des éditions Incertain Sens, 2013)
Equipe de réalisation Radio Grenouille-Euphonia :
Jean-Baptiste Imbert, Chloé Despax, Margaux Wartelle, Alex-papi Simonini, Marine-Roya Sahabi Ghomi
Version française :
« Sounds of silence » est une anthologie réunissant certains des plus intriguants morceaux de silence de l’histoire de l’enregistrement et comprend des pièces d’Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Maurice Lemaître, Sly & the Family Stone, Robert Wyatt, John Denver, Whitehouse, Orbital, Crass, Ciccone Youth, Afrika Bambaataa, Yves Klein, etc.
Si tous ces morceaux ont en commun un même et unique matériau, et peuvent en cela paraître au premier abord interchangeables, ils sont en réalité on ne peut plus divers. Ainsi, oscillent-ils entre le performatif, le mémoriel, le politique, la critique, l’abstraction, le poétique, le cynisme, la blague, la technique, la promotion, l’absurde et l’indéterminé. Les morceaux choisis de cette anthologie rendent néanmoins tous compte de la spécificité de silences pensés et produits pour un médium reproductible, jouant de sa matérialité en le mettant à nu. Ils exposent et révèlent leur médium, jusque dans son usure et ses imperfections. Ce sont de simples surfaces, des spirales de sillon tournant sur elles-mêmes. Pour cette même raison, ces plages de silence se distinguent de la rupture conceptuelle opérée par John Cage avec 4’33’’.
Depuis les années 1950, le silence a trouvé une place dans l’économie du disque et a connu d’innombrables appropriations. La plage de silence paraît en effet ne faire exception à aucun courant musical.
« Sounds of silence » rejoue ces silences d’après leur support d’origine, conservant toutes les imperfections liées à leur matérialité propre et leur histoire spécifique, sans toutefois négliger le postulat d’une certaine satisfaction d’écoute chez l’auditeur. Cette approche documentée révèle les motivations effectives ou présumées de ces silences, tout en s’aventurant dans des correspondances ou des interférences inédites.
Un disque « à jouer fort » (ou non), en tout lieu et toute circonstance : une réelle expérience auditive.
English version :
Radio adaptation of the vinyl record « Sounds of silence » by Matthieu Saladin, Patrice Caillet et Adam David.
(Frac Franche-Comté / Alga Marghen, avec le soutien des éditions Incertain Sens, 2013)
Radio Grenouille-Euphonia production team :
Jean-Baptiste Imbert, Chloé Despax, Margaux Wartelle, Alex-papi Simonini, Marine-Roya Sahabi Ghomi
An anthology of silence pieces from the records history.
Sounds of Silence is an anthology of some of the most intriguing silent tracks in recording history and includes rare works, among others, by Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Maurice Lemaître, Sly & the Family Stone, Robert Wyatt, John Denver, Whitehouse, Orbital, Crass, Ciccone Youth, Afrika Bambaataa, Yves Klein, etc. In their own quiet way, these silences speak volumes: they are performative, political, critical, abstract, poetic, cynical, technical, absurd… They can be intended as a memorial or a joke, a special offer, or something entirely undefined.
The carefully chosen silences of this anthology are intrinsically linked to the medium of reproduction itself and reveal it’s nude materiality. They expose their medium in all its facets and imperfections, including the effect of time and wear. At the most basic level, these silences are surfaces. And it is in their materiality that they distinguish themselves from the conceptual experiments of John Cage with 4’33”. From the 1950s silence has found a place in the economic structure of the record industry and since then it would increasingly be appropriated by a vast array of artists in a vast array of contexts. Indeed, the silent tracks seem to know no boundaries.
The LP presents the silences as they were originally recorded, preserving any imperfection that the hardware conferred upon the enterprise, without banning the possibility to satisfying the ear. The liner notes provide historical background for each track, revealing the stated (or presumed) motivations for these silences, while providing novel sound correspondences or interferences.
This album is meant to be played loud (or not), at any time, in any place: a true aural experience.
A Grandmother marvels despite the virus she is able to continue gardening
as she has always done and the birds will always keep singing.
She listens to the distance sounds now.
Isolated voices of people, a child next door.
A fly.
The garden is a sanctuary, vibrant of living and growing, death is not
present.
Occasionally she hears planes overhead, she wonders if they bring PPE.
A long away siren.
A conversation with a passing man, who tells her a women with the same name
as her own was buried this week.
Purerehua the roaring hovering stirs the final lament and farewell.
This show is placed on a guest-slot. Presented by wellington.access.radio 106.1 FM.
As a sound artist living in brazil, i bear in mind the idea of broadcasting. Distances spray along different lines and overlapping spatial identities. but there are fixed spaces which identity and segment this vast space yet multiple.
The piece is composed of three distinct moments & interests that collapse & run in parallel, the saxophone used as machine, the field recordings (here in the sertão, in particular) & the space/time manipulation through diverse fragmentation and aa labour of modification from the sound files themselves provided through a physical process.
Brazil is a complex location. Indeed it crosses through a mobile variation of spaces, continuously shaping and interacting beyond geography stereotypes. The piece attempts thus to reach an imaginary, immediate and simultaneous aural access to various locations, where I was always and now no longer visit. The image is from one of these locations.
Where i live in, up in the northeast, makes me wonder how to pose interrogations and singularities which are kept invisible when thinking of Brazil as a whole. Departing from this, i try to present my work, not only agains this fixed identity, but mainly and obviously as a personal process of sound -making
Thelmo Cristovam, born 1975, lives and works in Olinda, Pernambuco, northeast region of Brazil. Improviser & composer, his academic background is in physics and mathematics, but he is an independent researcher in psychoacoustics. Breath/throat (sax, trumpet, trombone, flute) & electromagnetic waves (satellites/radio) are the main focus on his free improvisation performances and production/recording nowadays. His range of research/poetics includes radio art, noise/drone & field recordings based compositions. Besides his own production, he has given workshops on deep listening, sound art and field recordings, subjects that are the focus of many of his works, besides electroacoustic compositions and free improvisation. He also works as a sound designer for local short films and does research and sound engineering to several projects.