The
Ars Acustica Group of the European Broadcasting Union organised concerts in 20
cities throughout Europe for the 1,000,052nd "Art's Birthday". The
Sound Art Editorial Department of Deutschlandradio Kultur participated in the
event with a night in Berlin's Berghain Club. Traditional and avant-garde sound
cultures came together:
1.
Gilles Aubry & Robert Millis:
Jewel
of the Ear
Length:
30'04
Gilles
Aubry: Field Recordings & Electronics
Robert
Millis: Shellac Record Player & Electronics
The
storage of sounds is a product of euro-American society in the late 19th
century. A whole wave of modern conservation measures spread out from here:
Embalming, memorials, archives, tin cans and, not least, the phonograph. The
export of such technologies to the colonies allowed conflicting ways of
thinking to collide. In India, for example, the principle of fixation
confronted a philosophy of ongoing renewal through the cycle of birth and
death. This understanding of history is also reflected in India's classical
music, in which its improvisational structures were passed on exclusively
orally. Nevertheless the British tried to record and market Indian music from
1902. As a result, Indian musical tradition began to take on more constant
forms.
Gilles
Aubry and Robert Millis question this process in their performance "Jewel
of the Ear". Shellac records of traditional Indian music meet field
recordings of cremation ceremonies in the Manikarnika Temple in Varanasi. The
name of the temple is the inspiration for the title of the audio piece:
"Jewel of the Ear".
2.
Tarek Atoui & Charbel Haber:
The
Mirror Session
Length:
17'24
Tarek
Atoui: Electronics
Charbel
Haber: historic string instruments
The
Lebanese sound artist Tarek Atoui also staged a transcultural and
transhistorical meeting of sound languages. In doing so, he continued a project
which he had begun as part of the 8th Berlin Biennial. With the title "The
Dahlem Sessions", Atoui played the Berlin Phonogram Archive located in the
Dahlem Ethnological Museum. Alongside thousands of musical-ethnoological
recordings, the archive also houses a unique collection of musical instruments
from all over the world. Over the course of several months, Atoui invited a
number of musicians from the Berlin improvisation scene to recording sessions
with the historic instruments.
He
played the resulting material to instrument makers from different countries.
They were to recreate their auditory impressions with the help of modern sound
generators, which were presented in the Mexican Kurimanzutto Galerry in
November under the title "Reverse Sessions". Atoui is bringing the
partial results of this process back to Berlin for Art's Birthday: He uses a
new type of mechanical bow to play string instruments out of the Berlin
Phonogram Archive from Africa, India and South America.
3.
Marcus Schmickler & Hayden Chisholm:
Too
Long in This Condition
Length:
24'16
Marcus
Schmickler: Electronics
Hayden
Chisholm: Bagpipes
Marcus
Schmickler and Hayden Chisholm are continuing their long-standing collaboration
for Art's Birthday. With bagpipes and live electronics they create a
phantasmagorical soundscape.
In
"Too Long in This Condition" Marcus Schmickler and Hayden Chisholm
explore the tradition of Piobaireachd, the Great Music. Piobaireachd (or
Pibroch) is a long-established school of bagpipe music, which emerged in the
Highlands of Scotland between 1500 and 1750 and initially found no form of
notation due to its complex variations. Pibroch pieces were categorized
according to functional and technical aspects: salutes, laments, marches and
gatherings. In the music, a slow musical theme is varied extensively and at the
same time furnished with embellishments. "Too Long in This Condition"
is a specially composed theme, whose variations were also generated using a
computer. In doing so, an indistinguishability developed between the starting
point, structure and expression.