The oldest is Radio No Man’s Land. Commissioned by Kunstradio-Radiokunst, it was performed live in 2009 in an ORF studio in Vienna, on the occasion of the plenary meeting of the EBU’s Ars Acustica group, with the presence of its members in the audience. It was a tribute to the 20th anniversary of the creation of this group, dedicated to the promotion, production and dissemination of sound art and, in particular, of radio art. But as a radio work, it also used the medium’s own resource, the interview: throughout the interview, we incorporated comments from some of the outstanding members of Ars Acustica about the group.
On the other hand, our work behaved like a glass building that reflects those around it, as it linked and mixed, in a clear exercise of appropriationism, all kinds of radio art productions, many of which arose within the group or were produced or even composed by some of its members. And in some cases going as far as self-reference, by incorporating fragments of our own works. That general plan was punctuated or, if you like, interfered with, by other sounds from our intermediate installation Terre di Nessuno, made for the Fundación Telefónica in Madrid in 2002. And if parcheesi was the game space there —to which we applied impossible to follow and certainly bizarre rules— both works and isolated sounds arose in part from the movement of pieces on a virtual parcheesi board displayed on a large screen. And the aforementioned rules sounded from time to time in the total discourse. From a second computer, fragments of other radio plays and various sounds were launched, and the total mix for the radio was made live.
The space alluded to here was, as already mentioned, that of the game of Parcheesi. But the content and the works that made it up belonged to the electronic space of the radio.
The second of the works, Tierras de Nadie: Cartografía Sonora, was composed in 2012, commissioned by the Espacio de Experimentación Sonora (EES) of the MUAC in Mexico. The original work was therefore designed to be broadcast on 22 loudspeakers plus two subwoofers, with which the space was equipped. From these materials, in 2013, in a studio of the ORF in Vienna, we produced a 5.1 reduction of these materials and a stereophonic work, both produced by Kunstradio.
Physical space is the protagonist here, as in its different episodes we enter a prison, a mine, stroll through invented gardens or are dragged along by the noises and slogans of a street meta-demonstration. Joining the five sequences that make up the piece, we listen to a runner who goes through —and with this, measuring— this acoustic space in which the work is inscribed. It is also an element taken from the installation Terre di Nessuno, which also corresponds to the iconography of the Pulcinella that moves through the squares of a stylised parcheesi board, as presented in various visual elements of that installation. As for the sequences, the incorporation of electronic treatments on some sounds or the inclusion of others that are out of context —and, for this very reason, interfere with and problematise the easy reception of the whole— leads us to a No-Man’s Land mapped with the help of sound: hence the title of the piece.
In this case, we stick to our definition of no-man’s-lands as spaces of disorientation and deregulation, which, as can be seen, was also applicable to the meaning of the rules of the game of Parcheesi incorporated into the previous work.
Credits:
Radio No Man’s Land
Edited version of the original recording of the radio performance held in May 2009 at the ORF Funkhaus in Vienna.
Commissioning and production: Kunstradio-Radiokunst
Performers: Concha Jerez, José Iges, voice, laptops.
Computer technician: Pedro López
Editing & mixing: ORF & authors.
Duration: 31’49”
Tierras de nadie: Cartografía Sonora
Commissioning by EES del MUAC, Ciudad de México, 2012
Stereo mix realised at the ORF Funkhaus Vienna in 2013.
Sound engineer: Martin Leitner
Original recordings: Concha Jerez, José Iges.
Stereo Mix: José Iges
Duration: 15’06”
Mastering for platforms by CALATHEA Experimenta.