| As curator, it was very important for me to try to reflect a variety of the presentation formats of audio culture, which deals with the production of space and with the construction of society. How can you exhibit an invisible reality that is permanently in flux outside of the exhibition space and within the spaces of the city and its life? How can I make clear the relation between “inside” and “outside” in terms of the exhibition space? Radio technology was one appropriate format to extend the exhibition space spatially, and in terms of time: almost each Sunday in the evening, the exhibition was “On Air” at the public Austrian radio (ORF) on a channel called Kunstradio.
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Ear Appeal – Doreen Mende
As curator, it was very important for me to try to reflect a variety of the presentation formats of audio culture, which deals with the production of space and with the construction of society. How can you exhibit an invisible reality that is permanently in flux outside of the exhibition space and within the spaces of the city and its life? How can I make clear the relation between “inside” and “outside” in terms of the exhibition space? Radio technology was one appropriate format to extend the exhibition space spatially, and in terms of time: almost each Sunday in the evening, the exhibition was “On Air” at the public Austrian radio (ORF) on a channel called Kunstradio. Annette Weisser reflects, within her contribution, upon the very constitutional aspect of radio as a place where cultural identity is produced: in the recording hall of the ORF she produced a video and radio piece with a children’s song melody and changed the lyrics to, “We Know What We Are by What We Are Not.”
Another way for me to break with the static format of an exhibition was to invite artists who work on the basis of process and collaboration. Ultra-red’s contribution was a so-called Encuentro, a kind of discoursive meeting in the Kunsthalle, where cultural and political activists discussed and analyzed the state and understanding of poverty with regard to urban development in Vienna. This is the first step of a longer-running research project planned in Vienna for 2007. Beside the process-related practice, for me it is also extremely interesting to see how sound is understood as an analytical material. Here, I see Ultra-red in a direct tradition of concept art. Paula Roush of msdm, an artist from London, organized a workshop as a part of her “Protest Academy” project. We got 14 sound contributions from her Tactical Audio Archive, i.e. sound that reflects or documents protest, which we discussed and worked with during the workshop. Also, this will go on: Paula is about to produce a CD from the workshop and further stations of the Protest Academy will follow in other places.
I considered the real city (of Vienna) as a matrix through which to look at how our society is represented on an audio level. This is the reason that the connection to the city of Vienna was relevant. Cities have already changed tremendously through modernization and industrialization. Justin Bennett understood the sound of Vienna as a cartographic material for his ongoing project of city portraits. Rashad Becker did interviews with workers who would represent their work (and thus, their idea of work) auditorially. Audio is something that surrounds us all the time—organized, unorganized, functional or entertaining, but it is also seducing and controlling. There is a big industry in sound designing, i.e. corporate sonic branding, but also in other, extremely controlling sonic strategies to influence individual behavior. Genesis P-Orridge or Mika Taanila reflected, on very different levels, upon the function of Muzak as one example of an industrially programmed and socially coded sound strategy.
I was also very happy to have as a contributor the excellent Fluxus artist Arthur Köpcke, who died in 1977, with his Reading/Work Piece #1 (from his manuscript) in the show. Here, he gives the instruction to keep working while listening to music on a scotch-taped record. It relates to a BBC radio program called “Music While You Work” that began during WWII to activate labor productivity.
Elisabeth Grübl and Benjamin Bergmann, both of whom would never consider themselves so-called sound-artists, worked with sound as a sculptural material: the relation between space, material and sound was—physically and spatially—carried to an extreme in their works.
Most of the contributions characterized by a heterogeneity of artists’ approaches and generations, were newly made for “Ear Appeal.” They follow a site-specificity that is consciously connected to space and time through the way that they are presented and structured.
