Perfect speakers on vinyl or cassette wait in long pauses full of crackling and noise for us to repeat after them, and while we remain silent, the empty pauses expand into empty space. Seconds turn into light-years. The grooves of the vinyl resemble orbits of distant planets. Nice people cheerfully call out "Hello!", but there is no response. Yet as the words fall into the void, they speak the language of music. A music that nobody wanted and yet fascinates precisely because of that: peculiar sentence melodies, multifaceted noise, copied sentences that develop a life of their own on the tape, distortions and filtrations, and again and again, "This is..."
Text-sound composition from international language courses - Duration 50 minutes
Additional voices: Gilles Aubry, Nicolai Franke, Marie Goyette, Diane Greenwood, Jens Jarisch, Annette Krebs, Michael Lissek, and Jacqueline Macauly
Strings: Benedikt Bindewald (viola), Cathrin Romeis (cello), and Josa Gerhard (violin)
Organ, harmonium, piano, flute, percussion, electronics, text, and composition: Antje Vowinckel
Thanks to: Alessandro Bosetti, Giorgio Bosetti, Sandrine Castelot, Walter Filz, Giuseppe Lelasi, Eddi Rogers, Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C.
Realization: Antje Vowinckel
Author's production with support from the Filmstiftung NRW for RNE Radio Clásica Madrid/ CDMC (Centro para la Difusión de la Música Contemporánea) 2005
Editor: José Iges
Premiere: Alicante Festival 20.09.2005
First broadcast: RNE Madrid, Radio Clásica 20.09.2005
CD: charhizma 037 (www.metamkine.com)
The author
Antje Vowinckel, born in 1964 in Hagen and raised in Bielefeld, studied literature and music there. Instruments: flute and piano/keyboards. She spent ten years as a flutist in the university orchestra and classical chamber ensemble, while also playing in various rock and jazz bands. From 1990 to 1993, she completed her PhD on "Collages in Radio Plays" (published in 1995); thereafter, she continued to publish on radio play research. Starting in 1994, she began creating her own radio plays. She spent five years at SWR in Baden-Baden as an author, trainee, editor, director, and dramaturge. Since 2000, she has worked as a freelance radio play maker in Berlin. Since 2003, she has also been creating sound compositions and sound installations, including for the Biennale Bonn.
