ohrenhoch – the Noise Shop | Weichselstr. 49 | 12045 Berlin-Neukölln
Publication of the manifesto WORDS 2016 – SOUNDACTIVISM – on 14 February 2016:
Since the beginning of 2015 ‘ohrenhoch, the Noise Shop’ has been activating the theme ‘Soundactivism’.
The manifesto WORDS 2016 – SOUNDACTIVISM by Knut Remond (Artistic director ohrenhoch) and Isabella Zamboni (Contributing writer at Mousse Contemporary Art Magazine and art historian) is pinned on the wall at ohrenhoch from Sunday the 14th of February.
To hear on Sunday 14 and 21 February 2016, 2pm – 9pm:
Thinking of you (fragments)
(2010, German Premiere)
by Gaël Segalen
Authors: Gaël Segalen + 8 women
Language: arabic-french
Curator, Loudspeaker installations: Knut Remond / ohrenhoch
Gaël Segalen on ‘Thinking of you (fragments)’:
Creative workshop and audio correspondence with 8 parisian women from North Africa: recordings and meetings from february to may 2010 in the 17th arrondissement (Paris).
Every week, the participants were taking back home a recorder to collect and invent any sound by themselves, in their own privacy (“interiors”) and in the everyday life, alone and with the environment, refining their approach with time.
Receiving those materials on an anonymous mode, here is the audio piece i offered back to them.
Gaël Segalen
20 years in sound, from social sciences, to radio, to on location sound for film, to field recording, to education, to travel the world to collect voices, to audio art / interaction, to composing music, french sound activist, educator and musician Gaël Segalen (aka IhearU) has a very diverse experience in sound and is focused on polylistening, dissonance and new music, as well as create people’s encounter in improvisation spaces. She believes all the noises she has collected or manipulated, can coexist in one inclusive spirit, here and now, and transposes the complexity of the world into soundscapes and DFR compositions (Danceable Field Recording).
A Text by Gaël Segalen to ‘Thinking of you (fragments)’ in relation to ‘Soundactivism’ is available at ohrenhoch.
Links to online presence Gaël Segalen:
https://www.facebook.com/GaelSegalen/
Mousse Contemporary Art Magazine
www.moussemagazine.it
Website ‘compact’ ohrenhoch:
http://www.ohrenhoch.berlin
Website ‘with archive’ ohrenhoch:
http://www.ohrenhoch.org
ohrenhoch on Facebook:
http://facebook.com/ohrenhoch
ohrenhoch on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/ohrenhoch
The ohrenhoch Sundays 2016 are supported by Initiative Neue Musik Berlin e.V. and Konzert des Deutschen Musikrates
ohrenhoch
der Geräuschladen
Weichselstr. 49
D-12045 Berlin-Neukölln
Knut Remond & Katharina Moos
http://www.ohrenhoch.org (with archive)
http://www.ohrenhoch.berlin (compact website)
E-mail: info@ohrenhoch.org
——-
My global project IhearU is about recording the encounter – many groups of people from diverse communities, and any sounds of life – inventing political and vital fictions, questioning destinies by creating situations of dialog or/and chaos and madness, resulting in a eclectic music based on field recording, voices and electronics.
I’m interested in life contained in sound. I invite people to get together, joining from different backgrounds to find a possible meeting point, breaking down the walls, at least, to respect a creative moment of listening. Building disoriented scenes in many languages if possible, i search to express with multiple layers, the complexity of life and the co-existent spirits. To do so, i set up a free expression space, where the open microphone is the conductor, would be the rare (only?) frame… and the objects – manipulated to extract their specific noises – the instruments of communication, as well as can be vocal noises, chants, freestyles, conversations, political fictions, whispers, revelations, descriptions of imaginary landscapes and past and future stories in the wish of accessing different temporalities and inventions.
One day, after meeting lots of people, traveling and exploring places, i realized that i had found my instrument, but also a tool to interact with the others. I felt capable to open myself to the alterity and the understanding of its full capacities. In our days, it might sound common, but it is really about channeling to what might pop up at that exact moment when you set up such a space for free expression. I feel the same when assembling the sounds, its exactly the same process happening with the compositional tools. So yes, the microphone-megaphone stages the possible encounter, and allows the mutual listening and the experimentation : we are safe, protected, free, ready to improvise and invent.
In evocation, interpreters (re)enchant the place and themselves, and build a poetic and possibly strongest identity. Those interpersonal explorations allow to portray perceptions of time, personal myths, beliefs and projections, feelings, rhythms, collective memories as well as desires and potential futures. Its a full experience embodied in sound.
In Thinking of you, it can be perceived as an invitation for the women as listeners to (re)link to their dreams and thus create new forms of creating and socializing maybe. In Inland the act of remembering is a creative process. Trance Prayer is inclusive. Jako illustrates that moment when they lose control, and open the door to a salutary delirium in order to feel good and free.
When i was composing it with the materials i got from them – on an anonymous mode, since i never met them during the workshop process conducted by Collective Mu, that was the game’s rule -, i recreated different situations and from there i suggested new personal and collective visions (set in fragments here for Ohrenhoch’s presentation).
At the final presentation, it would be the only time we would meet in person. Some of the 8 women would listen, accepting my interpretation … some would be more surprised and not reacting much, but to me that was a very touching and engaged moment.
Gaël Segalen, Ohrenhoch presentation, feb.2016
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Notes from Platform Siwa :
“In Thinking of You we worked with women of North African origin usually cut off from the cultural scene and whose relationship with society can be problematic, giving them the opportunity to interact with contemporary artists, here the parisian MU Collective (represented by Gaël Segalen (sound) and Vincent Voillat (visuals) for this project).
By working to involve the women closely and by combining social issues and aesthetic experiences, the project frees art from its usually settings. By developing critical thinking, it both introduces a collective recognition of the necessity of art and attributes political legitimacy to involvement in its creation.
For this artistic experience that lasted three months, women were given a sound recorder to record the sounds of their private sphere (in their homes), and subsequently have others listen to their experiences. The recorded materials was then shared during the experimental workshops the women participate in. A portrait of each woman has been produced by Vincent Voillat, to be filmed in their building stairwell and to last three minutes, which is the length of the electric timer on the light.
Based on this work, a sound and image installation (the women in sounds and images) was produced for audiences.”
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Fragments :
1 : “Inland”, One woman, recorded by herself, edited and processed by GS (02’49)
A woman living in Paris recorded herself in the intimacy of her home, while remembering her favorite native landscape, as a child : the Mediterranean Sea. Its a very strong evocation in a very elegant elocution, a ceremonial expression from the diaspora. I emphasized it in editing.
2 : “Trance Prayer”, One woman, recorded by herself, edited by GS (4’41),
Superposition of 1 sound take in layers. We can hear the woman moving into her apartement, listen to her steps on the plastic or wooden floor, she seems busy while she’s praying to Allah. Its become hallucinatory. The noise (shuffle) and the echo are part of it. The trance is enveloped and unfolded in the listener’s space.
3 : “Jako”, the 8 anonymous women (recordings and voices), edited by GS (7’55)
Jako is the parrot dialoguing here with the women. This piece is like a moment of delirium when they get together, let loose, get free, give up to the inner spirit.