A project by Adina Popescu in collaboration with PS1 Radio.
Production: Dominikus Müller & Jette Miller
This show was broadcasted June 8, 2007 on the PS1 Radio Boat in Venice at the opening of the Venice biennale.
web:
http://ps1.el.net/web/archive/metafiles/m3u/sbvb07_moscow.m3u
http://ps1.el.net/web/archive/metafiles/ram/sbvb07_moscow.ram
This „curated radio show“, with talks and soundpieces, is the second part of the Saloon Project that took place at this year's Moscow Biennale.
Curatorial Statement:
„All of the pieces have evolved around the investigation of the "future" by exploring new technologies, scientific narrations, fictional thinking and its direct impact on the production of our so called reality. I am interested in Space methods, in the „art“ of reading satellite images and maps which clearly indicate a plan or an action, while a painting does not. Satellite imaging and mapping are clear instructions, performative acts which, once realized, shape the surface of the earth and our society. The general thesis is that mapping and earth engineering are forms of architecture, which are implementing their "futuristic" models into the real world and, in doing so, are making the future present. Every utopia MAKES the present from which it stems, and to which it owes the new (fictitious) future of prolonged ideals, into the past, whereby the author of this utopia is above all the producer of the coming times. In a utopia one finds not only the expression of dissatisfaction with the present, but also the direct and imposing configuration of the future.“
http://saloon-moscow.blogspot.com/
The show includes talks and soundpieces by:
Mircea Cantor
„Unpredictable Future“
produced by Dominikus Müller
Unpredictable Future is a soundpiece which follows the theme of Mircea Cantors last work, keeping the same title. The work consists of a lightbox on which we see a steamed window where the trace of the writing of someone's finger says: „Unpredictable Future“. The piece
broadcasted is to be seen as a variation on this theme, in the realm of sound.
Within the soundpiece a man and a woman are repeating „Unpredictable Future“ in 27 different languages. It is readable in two ways: it can stand in for the fear of an unpredictable future, which in the 1990's still seemed to be so balanced and predictable, whilst at the turn of the century international terrorism, globalisation and global warming became signifiers of a fear, which derives from the loss of the belief that our future is predictable or controllable in any sense.
However, one could also think of another reading. „Unpredictable Future“ can stand for the openess of future possibilities and our responsibility for „shouting out“ the Future. By depicting our Future, by deciding on a certain set of possibilities, we are actually realising our future within our shared present.
Simon Goldin & Jakob Senneby
„One Day We Will All Say The Same Thing“
..is a soundpiece on call centres in Bangalore which was produced for
the Saloon at the Moscow biennale. It deals with new forms of cultural colonisation, as seen by the phenomenon of spreading biennales all over the world. The production of visual culture and communication technology, which export standardized english and a standardized idea of communication, are the new forms of colonisation, which may perhaps affect India even more than British colonialism ever did.
RothStauffenberg
„The Encountershow“
„The Encountershow“ is the centre piece of this show consisting of three parts; an opening, an interlude and a closing section which structure the whole radio-broadcast. It takes up the idea of Steven Spielbergs „Close Encounters of the Third Kind“, by building on the film’s spheric sounds. It brings radio-broadcasting back to its initial idea of „transmission“ and the Utopia of telepathy. It suggests a “space in between” in which the listeners can communicate with absent persons; absence in general.
Wolfgang Staehle
“Davi”
„Jardin De Uslar“
Wolfgang Staehle's contributions to this radio-show are two sound-pieces recorded whilst traveling in South America. They deal with the themes and topics of colonisation, and link them to the opposition of nature and culture, authentic and artificial.
„Davi“ is a field-recording of an evocation by a Yanomami shaman from the Amazonas region.
„Jardin De Uslar“ was recorded in the Garden of the Goethe Institute at Caracas, Venezuela. Johann Freiherr von Uslar * 1779, † 1. April 1866 in Valencia, Venezuela was a Colonel Commander of the Gardegrenadiere Bolívars, and Commanding General of the republic of Venezuela. The piece simply tapes the sounds of frogs which happen to form a totally unconducted concerto, reminiscent of the phase-effects known from the work of minimal-music composers Steve Reich or Philipp Glass.
The soundpieces are interwined with conversations recorded by Adina Popescu in Moscow.
The conversations are with writer and artist Pavel Pepperstein on the difference between the terms „Cosmonauts“ and „Astronauts“, and on the relationship between reality and fiction.
With Mikhail Kotomin, head of the publishing company Ad Marginem, on „Pentagon and Swastika“, the new book by Pavel Pepperstein which looks at archaic symbols without meaning, the Lemonov political party, and the need for „shouting out our future“ and in doing so, making it real.
And with Professor Bartalev Sergey Aleksandrovich from the Space Research Institute in Moscow, on societal and national constructions, earth engineering and how satelite imaging is shaping the view of our world.
Part II of this show, which will be broadcasted in September, will be a collaboration with Peter Fend on the idea of „earth engineering“ by geological modification. The centre focus will be architecture of the planets surface motivated by, amongst other things, national constructions and the economics of resources.