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.
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.
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.)
