Since 2019, the weekend closest to December 13th Radio Papesse turns the volume on LUCIA, a small independent and international festival dedicated to possible forms of audio narratives and shared listenings.

This week should have been LUCIA’s, but starting this year the festival becomes a biennial event and, looking forward to 2024, this RADIA show throws back to the sounds that have been shared.

So here comes Andrius Arutiunian’s Armen as it has been broadcasted during LUCIA 2020 (the transmission-only edition broadcasted in pandemic times).

Enjoy and find you again in 2024!

Armen | Andrius Arutiunian

Armen is a sound work and collection which Andrius Arutiunian has been developing since 2016 related to the diasporic music.

It traces obscure Armenian disco releases from the 80’s, remakes little-known pop songs from different parts of the Armenian diaspora, and navigates this treacherous sonic field in polyphonous, and sometimes contradictive ways.

Armen is also a homage to one of the most common Armenian names.

In 2017 an iteration of Armen was published as a vinyl release. As writer Monika Kalinauskaitė wrote in her text for this publication: “But right now, at this moment, on a rug, in a car, by the monotonous music machine, the only circles you draw are your first ones, spinning the body and thought, breaking the world’s axis into millions of dancing small figures. You may as well hear of those rivers – it’s a miracle, but they reach everywhere, populating the world with gold-headed fish. Only blood and bodies alter their flows, oh look, we are now trapped in an island that was not here before, I believe we are also humming songs we never knew, but somehow remember.”

Bio | Andrius Arutiunian

Andrius Arutiunian is a sound artist and composer based in the Netherlands. He works through sound and hybrid forms of media, with a particular interest in sonic artefacts, aural identities, and digital, automated technologies.

Sonic dissent, alternate modes of political and musical organisation, and playful investigation of esoteric and vernacular histories form Arutiunian’s most recent works.

Using hypnotic and enigmatic forms, Arutiunian’s works often question the notion of musical and political attunement.

In 2022 Andrius Arutiunian represented Armenia at the 59th Venice Art Biennale with a solo show entitled Gharīb. Other recent solo shows include Counterfates (Meduza Vilnius, 2023) Diaphonics (Centrala Birmingham, 2023), and Incantations (CTM and silent green, Berlin, 2021).

Radia Show 924 stems out of Radio Papesse’s long lasting kinship and collaboration with Liminaria Festival and curator Leandro Pisano. Last Summer 2022 Liminaria hosted residencies, workshops, sound installations and guests, among which Joe Sannicandro who worked primarly in Colle Sannita and San Martino Valle Caudina, in Campania, in rural southern Italy.

Radia Show 924 is a collage of two sound pieces he produced during his residency: Ritmi Rurali and Dopo il diluvio.

RITMI RURALI (SUONANO ANCORA)
Ritmi Rurali (suonano ancora) is a 15′ sound collage comprised of ambient soundscapes and interviews recorded in the rural village of Colle Sannita, South Italy.

Sannicandro paternal grandfather’s mother grew up in Colle, and her family had deep roots in the area. Knowing this, Leandro Pisano organized a workshop and talk for him in Colle in the framework of the 2022 edition of the Liminaria sound art residency programme. Sannicandro conducted a multi-day workshop, mostly leading soundwalks with young students. He also interviewed townsfolk of all ages, and made all kinds of recordings of the town based on those conversations.

The resulting work is Ritmi Rurali (suonano ancora). He set the length of the piece to 15 minutes, which is also the interval at which the church bells ring (day or night). The artist was a little surprised at how used to the incessant tolling the people of Colle are. We are increasingly numb to background noise and, even if we hear, we often do not listen. For this reason, he relied heavily on the sound of the bells in Ritmi Rurali.

DOPO IL DILUVIO – PART A
Dopo il diluvio is a bilingual guided soundwalk to San Martino Valle Caudina. Whenever it is possible, we recommend you listening with headphones. The entire 4 part soundwalk, the instructions and map are available here.

Joseph Sannicandro is a writer, researcher and cultural organizer dealing with sound and currently based in Montreal. His research interests concern incorrect communication, (non) popular culture and the work of creativity, with particular interest in analogical humanities. Sannicandro is currently a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. He holds an MA from the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, a BA from SUNY Purchase in History and Philosophy, and also studied Writing, Political Theory and International Relations at The New School and SFSU. His PhD thesis, currently in progress, explores the nature of community activism through a cultural history perspective of aesthetics and politics in post-1968 Italy.

 

Field recordings and sound collages by Vittoria Assembri and 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.

“Breaking news: a severe snow storm is headed this way. There have been multiple closures on I 76 and if you’re headed that way please be safe…”

There’s a snow storm headed your way. From the car speakers, the weather forecast calls for bad weather coming. The driver, whose name we do not know, is returning or heading to or from an undisclosed destination. A night show is aired, it might be a local radio she or he has just tuned in; its show host, while meditatively lingering around big topics like time, nature, human vs nature… acknowledges the driver directly – not to the metaphorical driver out there, the invisible listener – and points out different moments that happen outside of the vehicle for the driver to perceive. 

During this night drive, the weather begins to pick up and change into a snow storm. With it, strange and anonymous voices are heard in the backdrop, bringing back distant sounds and moments in time that don’t seem to add up…

Joe Cimino is an Italian American visual artist, musician and producer living and working between New Jersey (USA), and Florence (Italy). Growing up traveling back and forth from the United States to Italy, he holds on to his dual cultural identity and which remains present in his artistic practice. He holds a BFA in studio art from Rowan University and is currently in the middle of his MFA in studio art at Studio Arts College International, Florence Italy. Besides his visual arts career, Joe works as a producer and electronic musician, with his music located on Soundcloud. He is also the producer and co host of the Podcast, The Uncanny County Museum. 

In the last five months Joe has been working with Radio Papesse and while The Midnight Drive was produced, a specific aesthetic emerged. The central plot builds up expectations that are never fulfilled: what are we listening to? what’s the story? what’s happening and when is it happening? Joe plays around with the language and the tropes of both radio and podcast and but things never sounds how how are expected to.  Something is always off…

It is in what Joe calls the peripheries of The Midnight Drive that the story lies. This is an invitation to not only pay attention to what’s in front, but what is also happening in the background.

The Midnight Drive is a four part series and this Radia Show includes the first two episodes of it. To listen to the piece in its entirety: www.radiopapesse.org

October 2019, Firenze.

The early commuters on the florentine tramway are caught off guard by unusual sounds while at the stops and on the rides. Surprise, weirdness and something unexpected in their daily routine make them look at each other and smile, eventually crack a laugh or exchange puzzled remarks.

It is all Benjamin’s fault. A project by Radio Papesse attempting to transform the waiting time into an imaginary journey and to invite people to get out of the bubble of their own personal devices so to find themselves as part of a moving – even if temporary – community.

This RADIA show is a mix of some of the soundworks that were broadcasted through the tramway speakers from October 3rd to the 6th.

The included sounds are:

• π by Giovanni Corona
• Borgarfiord in spring by Charo Calvo
• A distanza by Pietro Michi
• Affrico. Morte della stagione di mezzo by Maria Pecchioli
• 3 by Katatonic Silentio
• I’ve never heard a Theremin before by Giulio Aldinucci
• Quasi casa by La cosa preziosa
• Attese :: Attesi by Chelidon Frame
• AN by Abo Carcassi
• The Piqué sisters by Valeria Muledda
• Di passaggio by Luana Lunetta
• Notturno by Roberto Paci Dalò
• Bus Imaginario by Felix Blume & Chloé Despax
• Mistery Goats & Mount Vodno by Toni Dimitrov
• Waiting in the wings by Dinah Bird
• DAM 0003 by User form PT
• Amjad Mood by Giacomo Anichini 
• Take me home by Radio Continental Drift

More than 40 artists took part in Benjamin | sounds along the tramway. To know more about the project and to listen to the selected pieces: radiopapesse.org

A symphony for San Donato (Florence, Italy) with Jason Cady and 42 radios.

/ˈsɪmf(ə)ni/ symphony [from Greek sumphōnia, from sumphōnos ‘harmonious’, from sun- ‘together’ + phōnē ‘sound’.]. – An elaborate armonic composition of sounds and voices

February, 22nd 2019 a full orchestra composed of 42 radios and 4 musicians, performed a symphony dedicated to the San Donato district in Firenze. A full scale radio happening to be listened to live and to experience first hand.

Composer Jason Cady created for Radio Papesse a new radio performance: forty-two radios and four musicians interacted with the sounds form the San Donato/Novoli area, bringing front and center acoustic memories and sounds form a rapidly changing neighbourhood.

Radio Symphony Orchestra brings ideas of radio listening together with the harmonies sprung from a collectivity.

Music & synth: Jason Cady
Cello: Alice Chiari
Percussions: Simone Tecla
Guitar: Alessandro Ponzo
Flutes: Francesco Checchini

Production: Radio Papesse

Radio Symphony Orchestra is a project by Radio Papesse and supported by Città di Firenze, Lighton International Artist Exchange Program and Città Metropolitana di Firenze.

The second half of this Radia Show presents two fragments of recent works by Jason Cady: Candy Corn (2018) and The Captives (2015). Two works that combine Cady’s research in possible musical narratives, his mastership in mod-synthesizers and new opera languages.

www.radiopapesse.org || www.jasoncadymusic.com

Enjoy!!

Two soundpieces, multiple languages, one producer.
Chloé Despax is a producer and sonic author able to balance herself in between reality and imagination, documentary and poetry in a multilingual texture that blends voice, electracoustic sounds and soundscaping.
Guided by Chloé Despax’s voice we dive into the listening of Ardesia and El Gat opening a window onto her own production process.

Ardesia [2017-2018, 10’41”]
Ardesia is a piece that brings a tactile, poetic and sensorial approach to the mediterranean landscape.
The listener is taken into a constant movemente between a mineral space – represented by the Slate stone typical of the Ligura region in Italy – and an encounter with the Genius Loci, talking through the natural elements. The ligurian soundscape blends in with its inhabitants’ voices and the black slate stone becomes a vehicle for social interaction and imagination for the whole Mediterranean area.

For months Chloé has travelled with three pieces of ligurian slate stone: one taken from the mountains, one from the beach and one from the sea; she put them in the hands of several people and asked them to give their own personal and tactile reading of the slate. Common thread among these people: they all came from the mediterranean area.
Ardesia puts them together in a voyage where sounds and voices from eastern Liguria, entwine with the Mediterranean languages and imaginations.

Ardesia is thought in several different forms: as and interactive installation, as a polyphonic piece and as a radio piece.

Production, recordings and editing : Chloé Despax
Piece finalized during Phonurgia Nova 2017 residency at Groupe de Recherches Musicales de l’INA, Paris (FR).
Mix : Benoît Bories
The sound installation (2017) has been pruduced by Biennale des Jeunes Créateurs d’Europe et de la Méditerranée (BJCEM).

El Gat [2016, 9’38″]
In the middle of the Rambla del Raval in Barcelona, you will meet El Gat: a monumental bronze sculpture by artist Botero. 
El Gat listens to its surrounding soundscape, the passers-by’s voices, their secrets…and he spills them.

El Gat was conceived as a polyphonic installation, here we can listen to its radiophonic version.

Music creation : Damien Magnette
Mix : Christophe Rault
Produced by Empreinte / ACSR (BE) and Galerie La Place (ESP)

www.chloedespax.com
www.radiopapesse.org

 

This Radia Show is a special edit of the live transmission Radio Papesse presented at Savvy Funk as a carte blanche for Saout Africas.
Thanks to Saout Radio‘s invitation, on June 28th, 2017 we introduced a journey through the sounds and words of Süden Radio featuring fragments of works by Andrius Arutiunian, Valentina Bonizzi, Charo Calvo, Abdellah M. Hassak, Alyssa Moxley, Bartosz Panek, Polisonum and Pablo Sanz.

In our attempt to re-write new and unheard geographies of sound we invited artists and producers to reflect upon the Mediterranean discourse; the personal cartographies as a tool of re-appropriation of places and memories; the use and the circulation of audio archival materials in sound art and experimental audio production. This carte blanche traces some of the answers we got and opens our – the listeners – ears to unexpected latitudes.

Enjoy the listening!