Turn up the volume and rejoice: The era of combustion engines is coming to an end. And Ms Schaffner’s radio play “Otto Mötö – From the Archives of Martti Mauri” foresaw it all! Feel free to dive into the sound world of Martti Mauri, Finland’s first motor music avantgardist, a forerunner of techno and music of shared origins and a true feminist composer and collaborator. His life ended in a car crash in 2003 – and let us go from there…
Draft for Cover. Schaffner 2012.
Otto Mötö was written and directed by Gabi Schaffner and received the prize “Radio play of the Month” in 2012. Mötö is also a collaborative project involving the following composers from Finland, Germany and Austria:
Lauri Kivelä, Jani Purhonen, Helsinki; „Pink Twins“ (Vesi & Juha Vehviläinen), Helsinki; Tuomo Puranen (Op:l Bastards), Helsinki; Ovro, Finnland Dirk Hülstrunk, Frankfurt; Michaela Schimun, Wien; Gabi Schaffner, Berlin; Martin Moritz, Hamburg Idea/conception „Martti Mauri“: Gabi Schaffner, Martin Moritz 2009 All original sound recordings: Gabi Schaffner 2009 – 2012
Kuunvalo nukahti ja tähdet katosivat taivaalta. Ja maa hengitti hiljaa lumen alla. The moonlight fell asleep and the stars disappeared from the sky. And the earth breathed quietly under the snow.
A radiophonic journey into the (sub)arctic winter.
The term ‘Kaamos’ refers to the lightless period of the year (above the 60th latitude) when the sun lingers below the horizon. Kaamos is the time of darkness, of stillness and quietude and of the arctic light, a time for storytelling, contemplation and of taking a rest. A Sami legend tells us of the ‘Nest days’, because it was believed that the sun rests like an egg in its nest during that time. ‘Kaamos’ also stands for a mental state that is difficult to endure and is also used synonymously for winter depression in Finnish culture.
LOCATION The town of Mäntää-‐Vilppula is located approximatly 180 km northeast of Tampere, on the shores of Lake Melasjärvi. It is surrounded by a sparsely populated landscape made up of forests, lakes and rivers. Temperatures in January and February go from – 20 to -‐2 degrees Celsius. Northern lights occur at times.
KAAMOS RADIO will track both the phenomenon and variations of its inner states -‐ as a local radio sphere -‐ in field recording -‐ in talks with artists and musicians from the area -‐ via congenial guest contributions and radio streams -‐ as an ongoing attempt to respond to the conditions of light and temperature
PLEASE SHARE WITH ME -‐ theme specific compositions -‐ favourite winter‐time stories -‐ poems and spoken word -‐ recordings and investigations Please send your files via wetransfer to kaamos@datscharadio.de. Please provide two or three lines each about the piece and yourself including a website, if possible. Please put Kaamos Radio Contribution as a subject line.
LIVE STREAM As the project is still in its planning stage, the final dates need to be confirmed yet. Scheduled are -‐ Saturday, February 13, 2021 -‐ Saturday, February 20, 2021 The length of the broadcasts is between 2 and 6 hours on the respective days. DEADLINE Please submit your audio pieces until the 3rd of February 2021
KAAMOS RADIO is a temporary radio art project located at the residency studios of the Serlachius Museum in Mänttä/Central Finland. It is initiated and maintained by the Berlin sound artist and performer Gabi Schaffner, in cooperation with Sophea Lerner (Open Radio, Helsinki),Marold Langer-Philippsen (radiolada, Bratislava) and aporee.org (Berlin)
SCHEDULE The program will grow with the flow of the events. There is no fixed time schedule. You’ll find a list of all participating artists on the datscharadio website in due time. KAAMOS RADIO CAN BE HEARD ON ● datscharadio.de ● openradio.in (play.openradio.in/public/openradio) ● in collaboration with other radio stations and projects (if interested, please, let me know) Contact: kaamos@datscharadio.de
Photo: Bernd Förster, 2020. Ms Schaffner at KV Familie Montez
The performance will be bilingual: EN and DE. The zoom link will be published not before the 13th on the channel of @bookymcbooky or on request by writing to: freiraum@mkg-hamburg.de
It was fun and now it’s over: 28th November saw DIY Church DJ Markus Stein and me improvising for 2 hours at Kunstraum D21 in Leipzig on the theme of “Automatenkorridor”.
A re-broadcast of “Automatenkorridor” is planned by Bauhaus.fm, Weimar, at some date in the near future, I will let you know asap.
Pleased to announce that since November 1 Datscha Radio will be broadcast within the frame of the COMMON WAVES festival.
Super pleased also to find ourselves among long-standing friends, colleagues and collaborators. Please have a look at the schedule. My personal thanks to Ute Seitz!
Common Waves is an International Radio Collective launched during Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2020. Along the theme of the Biennial “What do we have in common” we will explore the different layers of common spaces – public, collectively organised or imagined spaces of community.
How do we share spaces? What defines the public areas around us? How are they built and what do they sound and look like? Do they serve the needs of communities or individuals, companies or states? Who decides how we move and act in our cities? How can we design open spaces that allow creativity and diversity?
Our answers to these questions may be artistic, activist, professional, transdisciplinary, historical, local, global, subversive or emotional. We believe in the power of independent radio to voice diverse perspectives and promote experimental approaches – even more so in international cooperations. This is why our collective is formed by various community and artist radios, podcasters and individuals.
The Common Waves Collective will produce and curate interviews, documentaries, sound art and DIY radio formats during Tbilisi Architecture Biennial 2020 and beyond.
It is
unusual enough to broadcast from a garden, creating a studio situation exposed
to the immediate surroundings like weather, temperatures and background sounds.
With “Nightgardening” In 2019, Datscha Radio took its experimental approach to
the garden as a matrix for self-organization, autopoiesis and ecological radio
art, even one step further. How can we approach the audible ecospheres of the
night, what stories can be told, what fragrances turned into frequencies?
The compilation presents a mix of excerpts taken from “Plots & Prophecies” (2017) and “Nightgardening” (2019), followed by palimpsests and passages from Datscha Radio’s 2020 iteration “Listening to the Universe”. This latter event, happening from the 11th to the 13th of August, was dedicated to the Perseides’ meteor showers. Talks and readings, concerts and performances revolved around themes like sonification, storytelling, and cosmic relations in the so-called Anthropocene.
Credits
Datscha Radio:
Nachtgartenkosmos
A radio(art) collage by Gabi Schaffner. Length: 51:48 min A commission for Cashmere Radio
List of participating artists and
titles of their contributions in order of their
appearance
I What happened before
Intros Datscha Radio from the 2017 festival “Plots and Prophecies”
Body Garden Experiment by Kerry Morrison, read by Kate Donovan + Rosanna Lovell in conversation with Gregor Kaspar (Cut up)
Carolina Carubba: Kalimba Rain. Datscha Radio Madrid, 2018
II Nightgardening
Lukatoyboy: 7“ Bird Vinyls
Marold Langer-Philippsen: Maschkera (Excerpts)
Cutup: Niina Lehtonen-Braun: Iltakahvit + Kat Austen: The Beetles’ Harvest Supper
Niki Matita, Walter Schulze: Secret-en-plein-aire (Excerpt)
Kate Donovan: Gratitude Ritual
Peggy Sylopp with Gabi Schaffner: Dämmerungsspaziergang
III Listening to the Universe
Jingle Universe (Helen Thein)
Ally Bishop: Possible Vehicles for Time Travel
Kate Donovan with Sasha Engelmann: Satellite Séance
Tiger Stangl: Milchstraße links unten
Vladimir Kryuchev: Nye Sbylos (Some Dreams Never Come True)
Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Helena Otto „To the Belly and Back: Star Taste“ (Excerpts)
Elo Masing: Day Sky Improvisation +| Gabi Schaffner: Cosmogonic Storytelling I (Mix!)
Tim Schleinitz and Helen Thein: GDR Science Fiction Movies + Niki Matita/Elo Masing: Nativitas (Cutup) + Tiger Stangl: Ein Stern geht auf (Backdrop, modified)
Ela Spalding: Moonrise Reflection / Gabi Schaffner: A Walk between Bamboo and Ghosts (Backdrop)
Marta Zapparoli (and Kate Donovan): Echoes from Outer Space
Sarah Washington: Datscha Owl, Datscha Radio Jingle 2012
Selection,
editing and additional sounds: Gabi Schaffner, 2020
How can we conceive of an expedition in non-territorial terms? Can we read the signals of our ecosphere? What if a reed turns out to be an antenna? Kate Donovan and Gabi Schaffner venture into the water retention basin of the Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin: at times an idyllic lake, sometimes a swampland the size of a football field, this body of water fluctuates between effective area and dreamscape, biomass and place of retreat. Editing and sound design: Gabi Schaffner.
Radia.fm presentation by Verena Kuni, radio x, Frankfurt/Main.
The piece was conceived of during Datscha Radio’s iteration at the Firefly festival on the 30th of August 2020.
Also featured in this #814 show:
RADIO ECOLOGIES … is a Radio Art piece by Kate Donovan, 2020, with narration by Molly Donovan Higham. In this piece, radio is acknowledged as a natural as well as a human-made phenomenon, that is interconnected and active across species and scales. The work asks: How does an expanded perspective impact our imagination of radio in the future?
A radio art festival by Datscha Radio. Realised by Gabi Schaffner, Helen Thein, Kate Donovan and Niki Matita
Every year in August, the Northern Hemisphere’s night sky is graced by meteor showers – the Perseids. Datscha Radio used this astronomical spectacle as the departure point for a 48-hour festival of radio art, from moonset at 2:04 pm on August 11, until 2 pm on August 13, 2020.
Datscha Radio –
a non-commercial, independent, nomadic and interdisciplinary Berlin radio art
initiative – has been engaged in expanding the culture of radio creation since
2012. It aims to create new listening experiences beyond the dichotomies of
culture/nature and sender/receiver. It is transmitted from an allotment garden
in the north of Berlin.
“Listening to the Universe – Radiophonien des Alls“ was dedicated to themes and music inspired by the phenomenon of the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
With a broad spectrum of topics – from cosmogonical myths to the signals of meteor detectors, from starlight-inspired violin improvisations to experimental horoscopes – Datscha Radio traced the path of these ‘falling stars’ to their manifestations in space and matter as the fictions and artistic responses that are bound up with them.
A documentation of our shows will be uploaded on mixcloud in due time.
Pleased to announce my participation in the exhibition “Seance Fiction”, curated by Eva Schwab. The performance “Fazzoletto per un Eternità” will take place on Sunday, Oct 4, 4 pm.
With: Niina Lehtonen-Braun, Mathias Deutsch, Liat Grayver, Zohar Fraiman, Michael Kalmbach, Justine Otto, Heike Kelter, Catherine Lorent, Eva Schwab, Caro Suehrkemper.
Pleased to announce that the German version of my 2019 “10 (S)Cent Poems” has been accepted for production by deutschlandfunk Kultur (German National Radio). Such, a new “Wurfsendung” is coming up. Curated by Julia Tieke.
Duftgesänge Poems, recording & composition: Gabi Schaffner Voice: Hans Kellett Will we manage before the blooming season ends? Ms Schaffner hopes so!
Lavendel Lavendel Lavendel
Ein Duft steigt auf und rundet sich schwebt in der Luft und weitet sich wie ein Ballon… So breit und weit Wie der nächtliche Garten Von einem Winkel Zum anderen.
Oh würziges Amor-Aroma! Du weckst die Damen aus der Ohnmacht Du schöpfst den Trost ins müde Herz Du bringst den Schlaf Vertreibst die Pest. Du wirst geliebt Vom Hummelvolk Und den Bienen.
Lavendel Lavendel
Du wehst davon in Wellen Lavendel-Ballon Du wehst davon in Welten Verschwenderisch veränderlich
Ich atme aromatisches Szenario, veränderlich verschwenderisch…
Rapid(s)Trains, a set of four new compositions, has been selected as one of the sonic artworks to be featured at OPEN GOREY, “Sleepertown”, a mobile art event in Gorey, Ireland.
Sleepertown will utilise mobile technologies (Geo-Fencing) to create a parallel listening world, accessed digitally within the public realm. This world will coexist with our ‘real-world’ geographical landscape and will encourage people to move through the town of Gorey to specific spaces/places. As they move, they will trigger and immerse themselves, in new public installations/sculptures/interventions/artworks via their personal mobile devices.
How does making radio in the garden sound like? Between bugs and beetle bread, under the spell of the moon, in the small hours of the morning. How can the garden and its ecologies resound in radio?
These questions lay at the core of my archival and radiophonic investigations of what “makes” Datscha Radio special. On commission of Kunstradio Vienna a 51 minute sound collage was put together, to be broadcast on – Mai 17 – 23 pm CET – https://oe1.orf.at/programm/20200517/598436/Datscha-Radio-ein-Radiogarten – Produced by: Elisabeth Zimmermann
Includes excerpts of Datscha Radio 2017 and the Nightgardening series 2019 plus additional material. Datscha Radio Berlin is realized with Kate Donovan, Helen Thein and Niki Matita.
Für die Eröffnung des neuen Sendestudios des frbb am 31. März 2020 im Haus der Statistik am Berliner Alexanderplatz hat Datscha Radio die 10-minütige Radioklangkollage „Datscha Radio in a Nutshell“ beigesteuert, die auf datscharadio.de nachgehört werden kann.
Ms Schaffner is pleased to announce that her composition “The Lion Dreams Of Hunting” forms part of EARLID’s latest online exhibition of 12 pieces about dreamscapes, THE DREAM HAD ME: http://www.earlid.org/posts/the-dream-had-me/. Get lured into your favourite lucid state!
Quick update: THE DREAM HAD ME will be broadcast by Wave Farm in May 2020. More info in short notice.
A quick announcement: “The Dog That Licked Up A Star” has been selected by the Radiophrenia team in Glasgow to travel the airwaves of the Borealis Festival’s “Radio Space”. Also featured: “The Journey of the Earthworm” (a widely traveling specimen indeed) and “The Night of the NIghtingales” by Datscha Radio (featuring very wonderful story readings by Kate Donovan, many Berlin nightingales on a rainy predawn morning and the gruesome story of Philomena).
Warum Frankfurts Stadtteil Fechenheim früher 56 Vereine hatte,
weshalb die dortige Hühnerfarm keine ist und was es sonst mit kleineren
Verpuffungen so auf sich hat, das weiß alles Harry Hoppe.
hr 2019 | 35 Min. | Erstsendung [“A Smaller Deflagration”: Translation not available]
1950 zugezogen als “Eingeplackter”, betätigt er sich in Fechenheim seitdem als Berater, Seniorensicherheitsbeauftragter, Blumengießer, Vereinsgründer und vieles mehr. Die in Berlin lebende Performerin und Radiomacherin Gabi Schaffner, 1965 in Frankfurt geboren und in Fechenheim aufgewachsen, lässt in ihrem Hessen-Hören-Stück den Klang ihrer ersten Heimat vor allem durch Harry Hoppe erzählen, ummantelt, über- und untermalt durch Vor-Ort-Geräusche. Der Dank der Autorin gilt: Harald Hoppe, Richard Schaffner, dem Verein Vereinigte Geflügelzüchter 1897 und dem Tierschutzverein Frankfurt und Umgebung von 1841.
Sendung: hr2-kultur, The Artist’s Corner, 11.01.2020, 23:00 Uhr.
With Julia Drouhin (France/Tasmania). A weird story and a weirder sound piece. Based on several failed experiments in the transposition of plant’s chemical ingredients into random melody, lost and found field recordings and the sound and scents of a waffle iron. (Lan: F) 18 min.
“La Lichen Parfumée” was broadcast as part of radia.fm’s # 760 transmission “Of seeds and lichen” (with Kate Donovan) in October 2019. Production: Verena Kuni, radio x, Frankfurt
The night is, far more than the day, a sphere of transmission. Fragrances and odours are perceived more strongly, the ear is sharpened, the superiority of the visual recedes. Since its inception, Datscha Radio has paid special attention to the night. In the three-part event series NACHTGÄRTNERN [NIGHT GARDENING], Datscha Radio intends to fill the living space of the night in a synaesthetic and radiophonic way. Each station is located in a different garden in Berlin. We will broadcast live, from exactly sunset to sunrise. (Depending upon transmission date, the transmitting time will vary).
I The Night of the Nightingales (April 30th) Datscha Radio explores the essence of the night on the first evening with a focus on the nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos). April 30th, 20.32 – 5:33, May 1st, 2019. II Frequencies and Fragrances ( (August 8th) Datscha Radio will take one step further in its radio-sensory exploration of the nightly garden. How may scents translate into radio? August 8th, 20:46 – 5:39, August 9th III Night Walks, Rituals and Ceremonies ( (October) 21st of October, 5:57 pm – 22nd of October 7:45 am. Uneven ground, restricted view, in the truest sense of the word unforeseen obstacles: Walking in the dark activates different abilities of our senses and physics. Body boundaries shift and expand, and with them also thinking and imagination go new ways…
A record player dressed up as a ghost? NEW PANDEMIC MUSIC and the Sneeze Symphonies of Mauricio Pucci finally stepped into the open. The 30 min of lecture performance included the introduction of his (her) life and work as well as the playing of “Fazoletto per un Eternità” and “Moccio Oscuro”. For the first time ever, the mysterious copy of his original shellac disc surfaced.
The performance happened within the frame of “Biegungen im Ausland”, Berlin. 4th of October 2019
In celebration of (more!) women in New Music and composition arts, a silk screen-printed edition of “Pandemic Music” has been published. While the “original copy” is not for sale, this was (sold out):
7″ single 14 compositions Playing time: 8 min Hand-printed cover, inner sleeve and label and handkerchief No. of copies: 4 Art work, printing, manufacturing and everything else: Gabi Schaffner
On the evening of the award ceremony, Datscha Radio will release three radiophonic loops at Humboldthain Club, that can be captured on site with radio receivers.
“Radio Seed Bombs” is an acoustic cross-pollination and
self-fertilization in one, conceived by radio artists Kate Donovan, Niki
Matita and Gabi Schaffner.
“In “Seed Dispersal”, Kate Donovan explores the
sounds and stories of various seeds on their journeys through water,
air, and bodies: a cosmos of dispersal, told in radio snippets and sent
upon a breeze. With sounds and voices from Pablo Juanes; Molly, Hunter
& Scout.
Niki Matita presents “Babosa”: Eine Erkundung der
Welt jener ungeliebten Gartenbewohnerinnen, die in vielen Menschen Ekel
und Unmut hervorrufen. Niki Matita untersucht, ob, und wenn ja wozu,
Nacktschnecken nützlich sein können, welche kulturelle und spirituelle
Bedeutung ihnen zukommt und welche Abhilfe es gegen sie gibt.
With “Gymnospermia”, Gabi Schaffner will broadcast
an illustrious potpourri of Sicilian fruit descriptions, seed sounds,
lawnmower microsymphonies, and tiny garden soundscapes in fourteen
miniature compositions. With the voices of: Paolo Cavarro, Hans Kellet,
Dirk Heiden, Kate Donovan and Margarita (courtesy Romila Casile)
Pleased to announce that there will be a new audio walk especially designed for the Walking Tour Library that is curated by Yael Sherill and Lianne Mol.
NightShadeWalk deals with unforeseen adventures on a (traffic) island and its vegetal inhabitants. Starting from the 6th of September.
Log book
Each artist had a box
Questionnaire after the walk
Compass and owl
Collected comments
The restorative drink
Box NightShadeWalk
In September 2019, The Walking Tour Library will be the hub for a series of urban walking tours, newly conceptualized by contemporary international artists who will guide visitors through the city in an unusual and creative way. The project space* will be the organizational center of the project: here, the participating artists and their newly conceptualized paths through Berlin will be introduced in a group exhibition, and an archive of past tours and materials on the history of the urban walking tour as an artistic medium will be installed.
Originally composed for the Radiophrenia festival in Glasgow in 2019. there exist two different mixes: One for Radiophrenia (broadcast on May 23) and the other one (Orchid mix) for radia.fm’s. Show #733. Hosted by radio x, Frankfurt, Verena Kuni. Length: 27:30 min.
The Dog That Licked Up A Star is a radiophonic suggestion for deceleration. The composition features (among others) a singing dog from the town Hengchun, in the South of Taiwan. While I sat in the patio listening to his voice, a cloud passed. The other afternoon I sat under a tree next to the lake of Luan and recorded short wave radio in the rain. The dog and I also went up to Maokong mountain in a gondola where we met with Mr. Hu and the Orchid Lady. On the way down we noticed something glittering in the mud. It was a tiny star.
Recordings for this piece were made in: Treasure Hill Artist Village, Bamboo Curtain Studio and Maokong mountain in Taipei; Yilan, Yilan District; and in Hengchun and Hengchun Folk Museum, Houbihu and Longluantan, Pingtung District, South Taiwan.
Voices: Mr Hu is the eldest inhabitant of Treasure Hill Village. 93 years old, he likes to study books on the history of China and he loves to sing to the ladies. Translator: Catherine Lee, director of Taipei Artist Village (TAV). Margaret Shiu is the founder and artistic director of the Bamboo Curtain Studio, an ecologic artist residency in Tamsui, New Taipei. Excerpt is taken from our “Plum Tree Talk”, February 2019.
In January 2019 Datscha Radio traveled to Taiwan. As one of the selected artists for the Treasure Hill Artist Residency 2019 I was invited to perform research and radio art on site. Six episodes of Datscha Radio explored, together with local artists and residents, the ecology of Taiwan. Among others I was happy to collaborate with the following artists:
Gabriele de Seta Margaret Shiu Rewat Panpipat Wu Tsan Cheng Christine Muyco Fujiu Wang Lu Yi Hauyu Yang Mark van Tongeren Laila Fan Yannik Dauby Hsu Yenting Lori Huang + Sze-Ting and still many more.
The audio archive of our broadcast can be accessed on: https://www.mixcloud.com/datscharadio17/drt-6-waste-culture-1/
Place: Treasure Hill Artist Village, Taipei
Time: 11th January – 11th March 2019
Neighbourhoods, networks and radio – the thing that they all have in common is that the fine threads of their connections are only visible as temporary events: in celebrations and festivals, in exchange and support. They are organic by nature; they can expand, contract, divide, they need care and pathways… similar to a garden, whose inhabitants make contact above, as well as underneath, the ground. Datscha Radio’s installation “Unearthing the Archive” traces what’s below the surface, and the communality of these networks. For the exhibition at c/o Kunstpunkt, Datscha Radio is earthing and reassembling its archive, and allowing it to resonate.
“Unearthing the Archive” transmits performative pearls, linguistic matter, and music from the micro/macro cosmos of human as well as vegetal neighbours. Between molehills and mobile radios, deck chairs offer visitors the opportunity to make themselves comfortable and listen in to selected shows transmitted from the archive.
The group exhibition RAUMOHNERAUM #3: In the Neighbourhood at c/o Kunstpunkt Berlin was part of an exhibition series organised by the Netzwerk Freier Berliner Projekträume und -initiativen e. V..
Artistic Archivists: Gabi Schaffner, Kate Donovan, Niki Matita, Helen Thein Featured DR artists on Mole Loops: Frieder Butzmann, Carolina Carrubba, Joaquín Diaz, Alberto García, Anna Katarina Martin, Eva Kurly, Ryan McFayden, Plants and Empire, Suetzu Flight Master’s Whistle, Martha Zapparoli
Radio Gardening in Madrid: The residency involved research and documentation work on local (urban) gardens as well as the realisation of a Madrid Datscha Radio off-shoot.The one-day radio station was installed in a geodetic tent in the community garden in Lavapies, “Esta Es Una Plaza”.
All
reports, diaries and observations on Madrid’s urban gardening
communities, its historic parks and a documentation of the Datscha Radio
events staged at „Esta es una Plaze“ are accessible online on datscharadio.de. A publication with Medialab Prado is in preparation.
Participating artists: Alberto García, Anna Katarina Martin, Carolina Carrubba, Eva Kurly, Joaquín Diaz and the gardeners.
The compositions explore the several terms taken from the vocabulary of work environments. From “soft skills” to “expense factors”, from “manpower resources” to “motivation coaches”, I always had the eerie feeling that the anagramatic potential of these weird terms holds a different world of meanings. The melodies for this were computer generated via the P22 letter-to-note music generator, the voices are synthetic as well. Selected field recordings complement the tracks. Ten pieces with a duration of less than 45 seconds. Commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur. Part of the “Wurfsendungen”, online and on air from the 8th of October 2018.
Anagrammatische Landschaften zur Arbeitswelt
Image: Stamped anagrams on paper, ca. 2002. The single words translate into: work station mushroom sensor fissile time snitch mutation heel reptile lightning apart exploding meringue stable trapeze parabel sits
A five-day festival celebrates the future(s) of the garden and broadcasts directly from an allotment garden in the Berlin north. In August 2017 Datscha Radio broadcast again from my garden in Berlin Pankow, with the joint support of Freie Radios Berlin Brandenburg (frbb).
Datscha Radio 17 was realised by: Gabi Schaffner, Kate Donovan, Niki Makita, Helen Thein, Suki Shanti Osman und Verena Kuni.
Studio Support: Studio Ansage, Pi Radio (both FRBB)
With “Plots and Prophecies – Parzellenprognosen” Datscha Radio 17 created an interdisdiplinary program broadcast 24/5 from the 25th – 29th August 2017 – on stream, via micro FM and on selected days on 88.4 (90.7 in Potsdam). Aligned with the length of the festival, the radio makers, artists and guests focused on five subject areas:
Hortus Politicus
Symbioses
Biotopes in Future Perfect
Birds and Bees
Subterranean Meditations
The process of radio making – otherwise quite a hidden event – became
transparent in the Datscha’s winter garden and outside studio
transforming the privacy of the garden into a public space for art and
communication. Datscha Radio 17 was supported by the Pankow Amt für
Weiterbildung und Kultur and the Hans and Charlotte Krull Foundation.
The format “Midday Discussion” was developed in cooperation with the
Heinrich Böll Foundation Berlin. Streaming support came from Udo Noll,
aporee.org.
Complete documentation available here. Press articles can be viewed here.
Handkerchief For An Eternity. New Pandemic Music and the Life of Mauricia/o “Farfalle” Pucci. The compositions explore the musicality of sneezes within the field of New Music. Parallel to the introduction of “pandemic music” an imaginary biography of the composer was developed. Commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and Ars Acustica Group 2017.
Quite a different “walk on the wild side” offers this documentary about the Italian new music composer Mauricio Pucci. Born in 1890 as a girl in a Tuscan village, she ran away and decided to take on the identity of a man. Fate sees her falling in love with New York composer Charles Griffe who later died of influenza. Back in Naples, Pucci founded the world’s first „Sneeze orchestra“ but found a comparatively early end in 1926.
The only surviving set of (longer) compositions, titled „Fazzoletto per un’eternita“ was broadcast with in the frame of an Ars Acustica Project on EBU Concert Season Anniversary in November 2017.
A set of (very much shorter) pieces is available as part of deutschlandfunk’s „Wurfsendungen“ under the title „Sneeze Fantasies“.
„Sneeze Fantasies“ and „Fazzoletto per un’eternita“ form both part of a new biography and music project by Gabi Schaffner aka Sisukas Poronainen.
Stereo installation for 2 mono speakers in 2 birdhouses. “Song for Gretchen” was created within the frame of the Frankfurt “Osterspaziergang”. Contrary to the wide reception of Goethe’s famous “Easterwalk” poem, the attention is directed towards the biography of Susanna Margareta Brandt who was sentenced to death under the accusation of murdering her child.
The 16th of April 2018 found Faust’s poor Gretchen singing in the
garden of the Willemer Häuschen in Frankfurt/Main: On occasion of
Easter celebrations and Goethe’s famous “Easter Walk” poem the curators
Annette Gloser and Robert Bock invited 11 artists to create art works
along a historical parcours of Frankfurt’s Goethian landmarks. In an adaption of the old German kitchen song „Mariechen saß weinend im Garten“ Shanti Suki Osman’s and Ulrike Stoehring’s voices sounded out into the place where Goethe met Marianne von Willemer in 1814.
TRAP (Topographic Radio Art Play). Installation for three radio transmitters camouflaged as bird houses on occasion of the Sound Art Exhibition “Phantasmagoria” in Bogong Village, Australia, 2017. Curated by Madelynne Cornish and Philipp Sarmartzis.
In November 2015 I started first interviews with former inhabitants of Bogong Village, among them Anita Martin who spent almost her entire childhood there. Further conversation partners were a former engineer as well as the current landscape gardener.
Old and new recordings are collaged on-site and combined into a story in three chapters. Each chapter is linked to a specific location . Total length of the story scape: 18-25 Minutes.
The bird boxes were installed near Junction Dam, next to the old tennis court and next to “the uncanny tree” on the other lake side. Analogue to the ancient concept of the Dreaming, the multiple identities of Bogong become only accessible by taking a walk that bridges past and present.
Narrated landscapes in Iceland and Australia Commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur 2016. Composition and text. Phonurgia Nova Fieldrecording Award 2016: Honorable Mention.
Hidden Places is a cluster of 18 compositions centered on the idea of “wilderness” descriptions from Iceland and Australia.
The concept of landscape is manmade, and it is predominantly Western culture that defines our notion of nature. As a free form poetic quest Hidden Places examines the ways how this is done and it does so by asking people for their stories.
Der Tapir im Birkenwald. DLF Kultur. Production: Tina Klopp. “Selfmade Life”, that’s how the Finnish term “ITE” – Itse Tehti Elämä – translates. Erkki Pirtola who died in January 2016, was obsessed with his life-long project to document on the self-taught artists populating the remote corners of Finland. He produced thousands of video tapes. I was told that a person working daily on Pirtola’s archive would need up to 4 years just to catalogue the material.
Erkki died at the age of 65 – and very suddenly. This feature is my homage to this extraordinary artist and friend. Music: FX Schroeder et al.
Based on an interview with the Finnish artist Teuri Haarla about the beneficial qualities of earthworms. Microtonality and theatrical elements are combined into a 20min audio-lsd-trip. Originally created for radia.fm. Show #592. Hosted by radio x Frankfurt, Verena Kuni. The „Earthworm“ was featured within the frame of the Radiophrenia Festival, Glasgow 2016 and at Documenta14 Public Radio, 2017, curated by Knut Aufermann and Sarah Washington. Length: 27 min.
The earthworm travels on radio frequencies, earthy hacks and
conglomerates of audio matter. S/he passes through mosquito clouds (yes,
this earthworm can fly!), bird songs, thunderstorms, attends a Finnish
summer theatre show, listens to a boy and his mother singing, visits the
acoustic remnants of a German garden show, finds happiness in the
ringing of porcelain bells and, finally, merges into silence and is
gone.
Voices:
Teuri Haarla, interview at Galerie Hilbertraum, 16th January 2016,
Berlin, Germany; Unknown but stunningly convincing actors of a
“kesäteatteri” 2010 in Mid Finland;
Gibrain and Virpi Nurmi, Gießen, Germany, 2014.
Supplemented by a series of cartoons. Documenta14 broadcast. Listen on Mixcloud:
Everyone knows trains. They take you from A to B. And possibly back.
The train is a myth, not only as a means of transportation, but also as a reinvention of the concepts of time and speed. A train can also be considered as a narrative – with an open end and an open beginning. In between: a time-stream filled with acoustic imagery.
Kunstfrühling Bremen 2014. Galerie Herold. Gabi Schaffner: Music4Trains – Installation and performance with Ansgar Wilken; Installation and intervention: The Fado Hour Kuratiert von: Marion Bösen Installation: 4 CD players, 64 Speakers in 4 clusters Performance: with Ansgar Wilken (Cello) Vinyl-Edition: 10 copies. Dubplate & handprinted cover. Price 120 Euro (1 left)
10 individually printed silkscreen record covers
Ansgar Wilken. Photos: Jens Weyers
On my way to performing
Unpacking a suitcase
In Music4Trains, the acoustic qualities of environmental, accidental sounds are used as musical elements. In turn, selected samples from the canon of modern composition got freed from their original structure and shred down to fragments of noise. I did so to show my appreciation for work already done in the field of “locomotive music”. At the same time, this rather casual choice reflects the thorough omission of another thousand of musical works done on trains.
The ‘classic’ fragments were spliced, looped, speeded up or down, hacked into, turned over or reversed, until they turned into an acoustic debris not unlike the stuff you find in the trackbeds between the blackish grid and those patches of sturdy, uncompromising vegetation.
Conversations, phone calls on platforms, loudspeaker announcements, children’s screams, the sticky scent of human presence. A violin played at Hauptwache Frankfurt, an opera singer practising in an underpass somewhere in New Zealand, Hamburg’s main station anti-junky classic muzak, freight trains passing through Bremen and Gießen stations, Polish workers taking their leave from Berlin. I have been travelling u-tube videos, sampling away on Hungarian passenger trains and on the archives of freesound.org. And I taped this sad and furious old lady on a train to Vienna.
I am in love with breaches, flaws, mistakes, gaps and of course: noise. All of this connect us to the intangible fleeting beauty of our daily lives that are made up of noises, sounds and an all-pervading music. More unused field recordings of trains and stations rumble about on my hard drives, shifting there like restless sleepers in their digital trackbeds. These four pieces are what came into being for now. Anything more you’ll have to make up yourself.
Research and radio on the premises of the state garden show Giessen with a focus on German garden culture(s). A converted ex-GDR caravan served as our radio and research homestead. Realised with Pit Schultz and Gärtnerpflichten e. V., Gießen. Prize Artist Competition Landengartenschau 2014.
Our aim
was the exploration of local traditions and perspectives of gardening
while using a variety of documentary modes. In the course of our
research a public archive was created consisting of ethnographic field
notes, photographs, protocols, talks and sounds.
Instead of
processing these multitudes of data into scientific knowledge they were
instantly broadcast via the medium of radio. A so-called
“Audiokomposter” developed by Pit Schultz decomposed the material and
turned it into a continually changing soundscape. This process of
composting and decomposition found its poetic counterpoint in the
untamed growth of plants around the caravan. In August, a one-day
festival invited guests and visitors to further discussion and
participation.
Publication: Datscha Radio/Audiokomposter. In: Draussen, pp. 62-71.
Otto Mötö. Into the Universe of Finnish Motor Music. From the Archives of Martti Mauri (1935-2003)
“Otto Mötö” deals with the archives of the fictitious engine researcher and avant-garde composer Martti Mauri (1935-2007), whose tracks were traded among insiders as forerunners of techno and “new media” music. “Otto Möto” is based solely on field recordings / samples of engine noise. The album experiments in composition, textual and pictorial material with the invention of a personality, his artistic work and embedding in the musical history of his country. The original recordings were made during my travels in Finland. Nine artists participated in the creation of Mauri’s compositions. The project received the support of the Finnish Kone Foundation, Finland, in 2011.
The radio play “Otto Möto” received the prize “Radio Play of the Month” of the German Academy of Performing Arts in 2012 and was broadcast internationally.
“To create a garden for listening and
international cooperation which appeals to all of the senses – this is
the aim of Datscha Radio”
Datscha Radio 2012 was an art and culture project conceived of together with net activist Pit Schultz and Verena Kuni (Radio and Visual Media, Goethe University Frankfurt). We broadcast 24/8 around the clock on 24th – 31st of August on stream on datscharadio.de, via micro transmission in the garden and on 24th, 25th and 26th August from 8pm on on reboot.fm/88.4 FM Berlin.
Garden
culture and Berlin culture belong together. The garden colony of the
“Einigkeit” (Unitiy) was established as early as 1915. Less than 200 m
from this garden and until 1989, ran the Berlin Wall that separated the
Eastern “Rosenthal” from the Western “Maerkisches Viertel”.
The “Datscha” (summerhouse) in the allotment garden No 665 was built in
the mid-60s and has a floor space of approx. 60 sq.. The garden has 600
sq.. There are four patches for growing vegetables, two big flower beds,
and several fruit trees on the lawn.
Our radio program integrated local and international protagonists,
artists, musicians, poets and guests.
Datscha Radio’s concept of “A Garden in the Air” extended on a variety of levels and contents: Participation of neighbors, hospitality, “garden kitchen”, sound art, live concerts and events, interviews and talks. Datscha Radio acted both as a meeting place and as a space for productions of art. Participating artists in the garden: More than 50 Berlin and international composers sound artists and radio makers answered Datscha Radio’s open call. Datscha Radio was realized with the support of the Amt für Weiterbildung und Kultur, Pankow. The project was realised in cooperation with the Berlin artist radio reboot.fm.
Original Recordings of modern and traditional Finnish rituals and folk tunes. Vinyl, gruenrekorder 2005.
Recordings of Snow Music are rare, and even more rarely are they presented to a greater public. This may seem curious, considering that the Kalevala, the national epos of the Finnish people, explicitly mentions songs scooped out of the frost. Despite this lack of official presentation, snow tunes and rituals have been performed long before and after the publication of the Kalevala in 1835. This album now lays some of the finest examples of Finnish Snow Music in your hands. Most of the material originates from field recordings made in North Karelia and Lapland. The modern pieces were recorded in Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Snow Music can be performed in a variety of manners: traditional, modernist, eccentric. And a new generation of musicians has taken on the task of evaluating and redefining the older traditions of ritual tunes and word magic. The impact of Snow Music has grown with the increasing need for a musical identity incorporating the poetic universe of snow. With this compilation, Snow Music marks its entry into the 21st century.
“Finnish Snow-walks and Dances” embraces a combination of unaltered field recordings and modern compositions. A short narrative description highlights the particular circumstances of each recording. Number of tracks: 12. Concept, texts, images, music (partly): Gabi Schaffner. “Finnish Snow-walks and Dances” was broadcast by deutschland radio kultur (2005), HR2 (2006) and by ABC Australia (Soundproof, 2015)
Based on the music of one of the tracks a video was made in Hamburg, 2006. Costume and Camera: Cecile Noldus, Dancer: Laila Unger. (Quality is currently quite poor, a better version is in preparation.)
Listen Here: 
