Tag Archives: Speculative Ethnography

News, Sound Art Radio

Sneeze Music Performance / Editon

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

  • Cover and handkerchief
  • Inner sleeve
  • Obscure object of desire
  • The record player (really?) at Ausland, Berlin

Open Archives

Gardens and Beyond

Mapping and contextualization of gardens in relation to our changing perceptions of “nature”, techné and “wilderness” form part of my practice since the 90s. With Datscha Radio as an additional platform for exchange and research this strain of work was still intensified.

The use of radio as a first-hand method of ethnographic investigation is unusual (but not wholly unknown). Yet it creates an invaluable output in terms of communicative exchange, archiving possibilities, sustainable artist platforms and self-empowerment. If ethnology can be termed an “actor-network” with hybrid results (Yokes, 2018), free radio (net)work(s) allows for an even wider spectrum in content and actors, from waveforms to humans to non-humans to even unanimated (do we know it?) matter.
A choice of garden mappings is found here: datscharadio/worldgardening.

Classics, Sound Art Radio

Snow-Walks and Dances

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.)