video

Listening Biennial Documentation

event, video

From July 11 to August 5 I stayed in South East Asia to participate in the Listening Biennial as a speaker and workshop facilitator.

July 12 I contributed to the Listening Tambayan (Tagalog for hangout, informal gathering) at the University of the Philippines together with Hasan Hujairi and Kevin Murray with an annotated playlist on noise and silence:

The playlist is also available on Mixcloud:

July 14 to 16 I facilitated a workshop in Alitaptap artist village in the Cavite region of the Philippines, themed on soundscapes in the Anthropocene: a close reading of Bernie Krause’s text Anatomy of the Soundscape with it’s division of soundscapes into geophony, biophony and anthropophony contrasted with McKenzie Wark’s theory of the Anthropocene from Molecular Red. The question of how Krause’s division of the soundscape can be upheld under the conditions of the Anthropocene guided us through a soundwalk and a field recording expedition in the surrounding area that resulted in a collaborative playlist (soon to be published).

From July 21 to 23 I travelled to Bagkok with Nguyen TrinH Ti, Yang Yeung and Dayang Yraola travelled for giving workshops and to participate in a Symposium at Silpakorn University. My talk Noise as Sonic Experience touched on the conflicting definitions that can be given to noise and the ambiguous role it plays in political situations. The script for this presentation will hopefully be published later this year.

A more streamlined version of the talk was also presented at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya, Malaysia on July 29.

During the stay in Manila I also participated in the „Neverending Gig“ on World Listening Day (July 18, audio will be posted soon). I’m still overwhelmed by the generosity and hospitality of the people I encountered. The discussions and informal talks will resonate for a long time. Special thanks to Dayang Yraola for inviting me to the Listening Biennial.

From left to right: Brandon LaBelle, Dayang Yraola, Jett Illgan, DW, Ian Carlo Jaucian, Yang Yeung, Teresa Barrozo

Wilted Valid Space – Let It Burn A Million Times

event, installation, recording, video

Wilted Valid Space– Let It Burn A Million Times is the title of a video installation by Rosh Zeeba, exhibited at Galerie 21/Vorwerkstift in Hamburg on September 5th 2020. The three channel installation was accompanied by sounds specifically assembled for this event. The resulting audio piece consists mainly of loops edited from 1970s Iranian popsongs that were suggested by Rosh Zeeba. These loops were played through a modular synthesizer, creating a ‚hauntological‘ soundscape – the aim of the work being to create an uncanny atmosphere that functions like an anachronistic radio broadcast from pre-revolutionary Iran. The exhibition and accompanying performance by Joscha X Ende (aptly titled Noise Reduction) lasted for four hours. Below you can find a recording of the soundscape, edited down to 48 minutes, videoclips showing the installation and a foto of the performance.

11.06. – Stubnitz – Stream

live, video

First concert since February is coming up – live show plus artist talk with TinTin Patrone at the new Plattenfroster TV by MS Stubnitz in Hamburg, streamed live via twitch/klub_forward on thursday, June 6th at 20:15 (18:15 UTC).

plattenfroster stubnitz

Of course it’s not a real concert. That’s still cancelled. Ambivalent feelings on the whole streaming thing: is noise a good metaphor for social distancing or is it totally pointless to play a noise show without physical presence?

A noise show doesn’t produce a community-vibe like other musical genres do – not much of dancing, sing-along etc. – it tends to isolate the attending persons in their own bodies by excess of volume. Paul Hegarty writes in Noise/Music – A History:

„The listener at a loud noise event is taken out of the subject body to be dumped back into embodiment, lowered into something like ecstatic noise consumption. The mistake would be to imagine any lasting freedom emerging from that ecstasy. It is certainly more ecstatic than pleasant, and closer to the sublime than the beautiful, with which it cannot share anything. Like Kant’s sublime, though, it is also a framing of the moment the self is lost as the rational reflection on the moment the self was lost.“ (p. 147)

But if noise produces this awareness that is centerd on the self in an almost solipsistic way, at the same time it can emphasize that which is the basis of any communal experience: the inbetween, the space of the inter between bodies, persons, individuals. By filling the room with excessive noise, it can create a space where a group can exist without being centered on a sonic or semantic structure like rhythm, melody or lyrics. Imagine a noise show where every single body finds its own rhythm and structure in the chaos – a community without identity.

It could be argued that noise itself creates a paradoxical inter between social distance and community. Watching a live stream of a noise show seems like a metaphorical comment on this paradox.