Depleted soil, over-asi: dic seas, polluted atmospheres.
People are haunted by what they have suppressed. They can no longer escape the toxic.
In their long-term art project “Toxic Temple”, Anna Lerchbaumer and Kilian Jörg, approach the beauty of oil streaks, the grandeur of techno scrap, the sublimeness of radioactivity and the tran: scen: dence of extinction.
Building on their previous research for their project “Toxic Temple”, the two young artists acoustically and poetically explore the connections between spiritu: ality and tox: isi: ty.
Toxic Temple by Anna Lerchbaumer and Kilian Jörg
The piece in its whole length can be heard on kunstradio.at
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.
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)
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.
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
The air is full of inaudible sounds that become so thanks to radio receivers.
– John Cage
KIN by Usmaradio / Roberto Paci Dalò is a radio and performative project with workshop sessions of The School of Radio guided by talented and professional radio-makers. The italian town of Santarcangelo di Romagna is “occupied” with the broadcasting of a schedule composed of materials related to Santarcangelo Festival (the 51 years old festival devoted to experimental performing arts), citizens’s voices and original materials created by the working group. All spread in public and private spaces with listening spots, improvisations, electronics, remote collaborative radio activities.
“The undifferentiated mass is expressed with a single voice, with slogans repeated in unison, so that the individualities blend vocally. Plurality, on the other hand, is expressed in a plurisonic way, producing not a single voice and not even a cacophony, but what I call a pluriphony, where each singular voice retains its uniqueness and reverberates with each other. ” (Adriana Cavarero). Texts and guiding voices are those of John Cage and Donna Haraway.
KIN team Benedetta Bronzetti, Teresa Chiauzzi, Irene Dani, Bárbara Ermeti, Sara Guazzarini, Alessandro Mazzoni, Domenico Martinese, Alice Molari, Roberto Paci Dalo, Paolo Petrangolini, Alessandro Renzi, Lorenzo Salvatori, Margherita Wolenski
production Usmaradio, Giardini Pensili in collaboration with Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino, Comune di Pesaro, Radio Papesse, ImperfettoArt , Radio Lada, Scuola comunale di musica G. Faini – Associazione Banda Musicale Città di Santarcangelo, TeamBòta, Ven èulta Santarcangelo, Centro studi e ricerche José Bleger, Fablab Romagna media partner RAI Radio Techete’
radioworks’s excerpts for this Radia programme (running order) 1. “Nino” a live session dedicated to the Italian poet Nino Pedretti (1923-1981); sounds by Riccardo Santalucia, Luca Gallio, Alessandro Mazzoni with the voice of Nicoletta Fabbri joined by Santarcangelo’s citizens 2. “Respiro” (on background) 3. “Chiroptera FM”; voices and sounds by Riccardo Santalucia, Luca Gallio, Dania Grechi, Domenico Martinese, Irene Dani, Alessandro Mazzoni, Vittoria Assembri 4. “Final Jam Session” within all “Kinners”
Pictures by Claudia Borgia, Lisa Capasso, Alice Molari, Domenico Martinese, Roberto Paci Dalò, Alessandro Renzi
Usmaradio – Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale per la Radiofonia (CRIR) / Interdepartmental Research Centre for Radio Studies, a workplace of The School of Radio to develop an innovative radio pedagogy. Workshops, work sessions, meetings, presentations of live performance as sections of the project. Produced by UNIRSM | Università degli Studi della Repubblica di San Marino. usmaradio.org / theschoolofradio.org / unirsm.sm
Radiom-Radiôme, the network of radio artists from the Greater Region located in between France, Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg, formed in Autumn 2020 and started off with two improvised radio concerts in Saarbrücken (Germany) and Luxembourg in Spring 2021, as well as with producing a series of short radio pieces based on recordings made available in a common pool by all the artists involved in the network.
You will now hear a selection of these miniatures. For more information on the network and the complete set of miniatures, please visit https://radiom-radiome.eu/
Artists involved:
Knut Aufermann (DE) Karim Ait Gacem (BE) Katharina Bihler (DE) Elodie Brochier (FR) Sam Erpelding (LU) Sandra Laborier (LU) François Martig (FR) Martha Regueiro (BE) Stefan Scheib (DE) Claire Thill (LU) Sarah Washington (DE)
The launching of the radio art network Radiom-Radiôme has been made possible by the financial support of the European program INTERREG.
Field recordings and sound collages by Vittoria Assembriand Matilde Solbiati.
We are already beaten by the summer heat here in Florence, that’s why we’d love to escape to other landscapes and to linger on other soundscapes.
The Po river is the longest in Italy, flowing through most of northern Italy from west to east across the Padan Plain. And here we go, along the river, with Scivolare il Po, a journey on board of a fishing boat, from Cremona to the delta and back.
We follow Vittoria Assembri and Matilde Solbiati and the mosaics of sounds they recorded: the river banks, the swirling of the water, the boats’ motors, the conversations with the people of the Po whom they met: catfish fishermen, the lighthouse keeper, a former river racer… Scivolare il Po brings our attention back to the river, as a geographical, social, human, real and imaginary space.
Scivolare il Po gives way to Linee di fuga – Echantillons sonores, a sound collage Vittoria Assembri assembled over 10 years of field recordings, collected between 2009 and 2019, across natural and urban landscapes in Italy, France, Germany and Japan: “new sound streams are born, variable lines like images blurring in running water”.
Among the sound fragments, there are the loudspeakers of subway stations and airports in Tokyo, the sirens of Genoa’s harbour, the buzzling voices in the izakayas in Hiroshima, the sounds of stamping in Tuscan post offices, the creaking of the iron bridges of Gare du Nord in Paris, the roaring eruptions of Stromboli’s volcano, the vibrations of power grids in Berlin, a blocked elevator in a condo in San Salvario, Turin, the song of cicadas…
Linee di Fuga was produced in 2019 during a residency in Apricale, at Atelier A. Editing: Beatrice Surano
Vittoria Assembri is a multifaceted artist, based in Paris and Venice. Her practice explores marginal territories: phonography is thus considered as a political act that makes visible what is absent in the official cartography. By sound mapping a territory, she makes the resonant landscape of everyday life audible and she uses field recording not only as a tool, but as a possibility to cross layers of everyday outcrops and as a method and device for investigating the transformations of territories and the cultural changes of the contemporary world.
Matilde Solbiati was born on January 27, 1986 in Milan. She has brown hair, brown eyes. Her dog’s name is Lord. She loves wild and mountain flowers and reading. Most of the time she looks at pictures which she mostly cuts out or scans. The rest of the time Matilde collects things she comes across and thinks.
