The following text corresponds to notes taken while analyzing Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”, the book that our radio project bases on.
1967 the society of the spectacle
critique to society – post-WWII consumerism in Europe. “A society organized around such consumption induced boredom while shaping peoples desires in a way that could be fulfilled only through the purchase of consumer goods” (the situationist international)
They wanted to encourage people to live true experiments without the need of recurring to capitalism and consumerism, which fulfills a lie in ourselves. “In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles”. Debord says that capitalist societies make us need (not want) more., but the present stage of capitalism is bringing about a general shift from “having” to appearing” – all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances”. Rather from the desire, we are guided by thinking that it will improve how we appear to others (and it could be subconscious). Being obsessed with appearance and image above all else. Modern advertising largely operates around selling us products based on the effect they might have upon our appearance.
We are all responsible for sustaining the society of the spectacle. Real-life is materially invaded by the contemplation of the spectacle, and ends up absorbing it and aligning itself with it”. The problem is not only the politicians and advertisements but all of us – social media
The version of ourselves that we place online is highly curated and selective: most of us are quite keen to portray ourselves as happy people who are successful in some way and fulfilled in our relationships. We act like advertisers. We are more into appear to be successful rather than actively going out and seeking those experiences.
Recently, I had the opportunity to experience the feeling of being live. In this lecture with Dawn Scarfe, we tested and experimented with the Locus Sonus Platform – also known as LOCUSTREAM, it is a project meant to be used worldwide by all types of users, dedicated to the sharing of local (or current time) soundscapes. It is as accessible as providing your cell phone’s microphone as a sound receiver, and lately, stream by the same source to the world. It comes also with a map which shows all the online microphones around the world.
It was interesting to hear all these different streams from different users around the world, and also to merge them. There was also an interesting, yet unintentional feature that came up the stream, which was the 6-second-delay, that would make your recent past self. The main point of this project was to question ‘traditional’ listening and compositional practices where audio content is pre-determined. My doubts came in this phase. How can this radio experience be so authentical? If it was said that all listenings weren’t live, all the listener’s expectations would disappear, because it was no longer “live”. What makes live be live? Is this the way to explore the full meaning of this type of format? In my opinion, it is interesting to see such a big movement behind streaming homemade soundscapes, but the pre-determined factor is a bit wick, considering that the placement of the microphone is not particularly random and that could be determined what is being listened to. The fact, it was asked to place our cell phones pointing to a window or outdoor is an “artistic” decision. Determinism shouldn’t be used as a way to dissimulate live performance. I didn’t want to fall into a cliché, but everything is determined.
After reading Thomas De Quincey essay “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” two topics appeared to me:
1 – The perspective of an academic friend of mine about sound effects
2- How his idea presented a flaw in sound nature.
De Quincey reflects on his essay a tremendous obsession with a particular sound event in the play. He talks about that sound in a very descriptive and analytic way, trying to relate every aspect of the story with that particular sound and how that influenced the spectator’s mood. This reflection threw me back to a year ago where I was amongst the most relevant “sound intellectuals” in Spain. One of them was my tutor Ricardo Steinberg, the one responsible for the sound of many of Pedro Almodovar and Alejandro Amenabar’s films and collector of one Goya for “Best Sound.”. Every week, I rested 3 hours inside of a sound studio with him and my colleagues discussing the qualities and approaches of our sound projects, non-stop. His perspective was solid for him, having constantly good responses to defend his ideas. He was pro-verisimilitude and anti-sensationalism (which he would refer to this last one as effectivism): being pro-verisimilitude means that he would only accept the paths the most follow the true-like events, refusing sound propositions that didn’t represent truthiness. If the spectator doesn’t believe, then the sound would be unacceptable. Being anti-effectivism signifies strong disbelief with exaggeration of sound effects to approach a particular mood. He believed these could be approached with plain sound, without having to recur to an excess of music or sound effects. One film that most characterizes this idea is “The Others” by Alejandro Amenabar, where he was a sound supervisor. The challenge for him in this film was “How can we reproduce the sound of the world of the dead?”, “How can we pursuit a dead atmosphere”. The solution was simple: “The world of the dead doesn’t have sound. You can only hear voices. There’s is no effects whatsoever.”, and amazingly, it worked. The sound is dead. No life. No nature.
However, Steinberg’s view of sound, in my eyes, has a flaw. He strongly believes in the capability of sound through an enclosed time and space. Sound has to be confined in order to produce verisimilitude. But sound has an immense range of time and also space: Imagine the following example: put on a film, select a scene, pause it. What do you see? You’re looking at a frame of a sequence, or more succinctly, a photograph: it is something planned, there’s a mise-en-scene, a choice of colors and character placement, and framing. Collaterally, the sound of that sequence was meant to be calm, soothing, with atmosphere, you can determine the acoustic qualities of what’s being seen, you can decipher somehow emotive intentionally, but what about the sound of that frame? What does it sound like? It could be similar to a click, a kick, it could now sound metallic, but it’s not metallic? Which materials does this click resemble? Now, compare both experiments: 1 minute of a shot in the image represents the same thing before and after the frame selection, but sound changes completely, showing us to different worlds. Sound can be timeless, Sound can be spaceless.
The following posts on Radio Project are related to the ongoing project about the art of radio. The idea is to get a sound piece to be broadcasted on RESONANCE FM, composed alongside my colleagues. These posts are meant to be reflections made after the sessions taken once a week with Dr. Dawn Scarfe and Dr. Ed Baxter.
The topic being analyzed in the first session is an assertion by Bonny M. Miller – “The Pictures are better on the radio” – concerning a 1997 radio program/documentary broadcasted on BBC R4 called Touching the Elephant. It is a social experience influenced by an Indian parable (Blind men and an elephant), where blind people try to describe an elephant by touching it so they can “picture it”.
Reflection:
The Touching the Elephant experience is rather a very genius idea, as it transfers the listener to the world of the imagination and non-tangible and full of propositional realities. Its broadcast gives the non-blind a sense of momentaneous blindness when deciphering which parts the voices are trying to describe. But the whole experience of listening to the radio gives you that lack of space that your brain tries to fill. In this matter, the program only emphasizes more the sensorial capabilities of radio listening. Pictures are better on the radio – I might agree to some extent. This phrase has a positive connotation to it that sounds imperative, but I disagree. I think there’s a constant battle between sound and image. Sometimes they become one and artists call it audiovisual, and sometimes they act separately and recurring the other to sustain themselves (e.g when photography transmits a lot of sounds and vice versa). In The Emancipated Spectator, a book by Jacques Rancière, it is discussed how the image has a leading role in societies beliefs and opinions, related to the artist’s intuitions, which I agree, but I think the existence of both should be more introduced in our lives than it normally is through more differed artistry content. Pictures aren’t better on the radio. Pictures are good on the radio.
From Spain to the United States. From total noise and ambiguity to aural ambient. Kevin Drumm is our new “guest” for this “podcast”.
Chicago + 90’s + The Art Ensemble Of Chicago + Free Improvisation = 20-year-old Kevin Drumm. He is originally from South Holland, Illinois, relocated to Chicago to work in the city’s Board of Trade. His music career began as a prepared guitar player (a guitar with its timbre altered by the placement of different objects on/or between the strings, also called tabletop guitar) by participating in diverse bands: Brise-Glace, an instrumental Avant-rock supergroup, by invitation of Jim O’Rourke, Gastr del Sol, another O’Rourke band and Ken Vandermark, an American jazz composer. But Kevin was more interested in laptop music, electroacoustic and modular-synthesis, so he came out with his debut album in 1997, Perdition Plastic. His work is also remembered by his duo album with Taku Sugimoto, a Japanese guitarist, Sonoris, and many other projects featuring Axel Dörner, Martin Tètreault, Ralf Wehowsky, Phill Niblock, Tony Conrad, MIMEO, Mats Gustafsson, John Butcher, and Thomas Ankersmit.
The Piece
Kevin has a very diverse work, going from the quieter to the loader. I selected a quieter and entering piece. It belongs to the 2009 single-tracked-album “Imperial Horizon” from Ground Fault Recordings. The name of the track, which differs from its album name, is called Just Lay Down And Forget It, where for me it is one of the best track names I’ve ever seen. It is direct and non-deviant from its content. Kevin is not trying to fool anyone. I indeed did what he asked for – I lay down in my bed and completely forgot where I was after 5 minutes into the track. I immediately was teleported to various emotional memories, that weren’t necessarily morbid, but I was transferred into this calm and soothing body of piece and freedom because of its vast emptiness. I imagined blank colors like tones of white and grey. I also picture some random places and structures. The peaceful faces and voices of beloved ones. The memory of touch. The memory of being young. It felt like the first bath, a baptism, a meditative restart.
In the second term of the Visiting Practitioners series, Kate Hopkins was the first to introduce the year.
Being one of the most knowledgeable sound editors in the UK, working with a lot of genres and broadcasts, specialized in the sounds of nature. Since her home is located in Bristol, and this same place is recon to be also the home for the BBC Natural History Unit. “Blue Planet II” and “Frozen World” are only two titles where Hopkins stars her name in the world of sound. You can also find her in Wildlife on Ones, Natural Worlds, Life in Cold Blood, Life in the Undergrowth for the BBC as well as films in National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. Throughout her career, she managed to collect a Prime Time Emmy for Sound Editing, the Technicolor Creative Technology Award for Women in Film and Television, 3 BAFTAs + 19 nominations, and 4 Emmys and 2 RTS awards. What an amazing career it must have been for Kate.
The lecture
(Hopkins is constipated.)
She started the session by revealing her first steps in the film industry. her first role was being a receptionist in a small film company in Bristol. “Endless cups of tea” (*sniff*).
She then moved to assistant editor and then to sound editor by the pass of the years. Kate fell in love with sound because of “Its capability to give so much power and drama to the image.”.
“The sound of air conditioning, for example, is fun because different tonalities mean different emotional approaches.”.
Then the digital era appeared. Hopkins had never touched a computer till that time. Editing software’s were miserable. She referred to the existence of another editing program apart from Pro Tools which was as simple as a grabbing and cutting tool. There was one of her first projects that were endorsed in Idaho (USA), where she had to work with very “clunky” pro tools on Windows 94 and she was by herself. The difficulties of those works were massive, considering Pro Tools is software for sound engineering made by sound engineers – it is not very intuitive compared to nowadays DAW’s.
Later, she got the opportunity to work with Dolby Atmos and Natural History. Apart from reality documentaries, where the sound that is heard is the representation of what the microphones capture, Natural History takes sound editing to another level, where everything counts because of every sound guides to a different end. The feeling of movement and deepness transcends reality itself, but at the same, it locates the spectator in the same place where the animal stands. ” Dolby Atmos started to come in (…) Surround sound (…) Full range of all frequencies. What the producers wanted to happen was for you to feel in that place”.
Her work is the definition of being totally in charge of the spectator’s feelings. She not only sculpts sound but emotions as well. With that comes a job in which every touch has to be meticulously applied.
“The best thing for sound is getting the best quality to be placed in the right spot.”. I reviewed this to be her principal methodology: Quality + Placement. Without one, you won’t get a good Natural History film.
Another interesting discussion was the workflows between the sound crew in the postproduction development. Kate referred: “There’s always a bit of a fight between the composer and the sound editor. It is always fun to win against them and win a little bit of silence” – both jobs have their art on a big screen like in the band there are roles to accomplish a final product, where sometimes one gets to have a solo and the other not, but Kate referred after that is all a matter of dialogue or, and this last one is more definitive production goal. Sometimes composers win territory in the image by having a full sequence with music, but sometimes the same ones give space to sound editors with silence. Nevertheless, some productions demand the imperative existence of music throughout the whole film. “It’s important to know when the sound editor can have their solo like, for example, a sandstorm. it is important to have a dialogue between both.”.
Finally, she showed us a scene from her work mixed in Atmos, called Dynasties: Meerkat for BBC, by sharing a pro tools project. For me, it wasn’t a surprise to see a lot of tracks because I’ve worked with this type of project in the past – we could say I am still working on a Spanish experimental documentary. In the last few years, I’ve been studying to be a film sound editor in ECAM (Escuela de Cinematografia y del Audiovisual de Madrid), a place focused on the production of films that correspond to industry’s standards. There I found that my preference to work with experimental and documental cineasts because of the production size. My voice as a sound artist has more importance, and teamwork is more intimate. The final result is always more satisfying. I’ve also worked in big productions, but the feeling is different. The figure of the réalisateur is more noticeable than the others, almost like a cult.
Presenting a new section in this blog called “Sound Pick” – self-picked musicians and sound artists for further exploration and analysis.
In the first edition of Sound Pick, I brought you all, sound artist and avant-garde experimental musician (the alternative tag to depict sound artists, just through “experimental” into a wall and it will give you sound-art), Francisco López. He is a Madrilenian born in 1964 and currently holds a big name in the sound art scenario. He is so influential that he produced sound pieces for more than 50 record labels. He is one of the personalities that resonate in the Spanish contemporary art scene. He has been awarded many prizes such as the First Prize for the Sound Art Competitionof the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon, three honorable mentions of the Prix Ars Electronica, and a Qwartz Award for the best sound anthology. I’ve met Francisco on 2 occasions: 1) on the radio program ArsSonora, presented and directed by Miguel Álvarez-Fernández on Radio Clasica operated by Radio Nacional de España 2) on an exhibition in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, which Francisco curated, called Audiosphere: Sound Experimentation1980-2020.
The Piece
Part of the album Absolute Noise Ensemble, released in 2006 by Blossoming Noise, is a 2-side CD: Untitled Sonic Metaorganisms (5 tracks of live staged performances in complete darkness that took place in Barcelona – Sonar 2000; Abaixadors Deu; MACBA – Valencia – Observatori 00 -, and Montreal – Craig Pumping Station) and Untitled Sonic Microorganisms. The piece we are putting our hands in is the second side of the CD: a 57 minute-long track conceived, directed, composed, and recorded by López of digital edits of a vast number of raw sonic materials provided by many artists. For me, it was a journey in different sound atmospheres, where each part goes deeper into the inner sanctum of each one’s brains. I felt immersed in a sea of ambiguous darkness and dead space.
Notes:
28:05 – an amazing crescendo of noise and machinery following a sound drop of organic grotesque noise roaring in different directions.
33:00 – the sound of walking radio static
36:00 – the unexpected feeling of relief. emptiness. fear.
40:00 – a gunshot of static into your years. you’re left dead in a large room of distant noises. suddenly you wake up and realize it was just a dream, although there is another sound reality that follows a deep revisiting to your own fear.
A question often introduced in my mind, which appeals to be very existentialist, working alongside self-improvement to become a better person and following the premise of asking ourselves the right questions, has been chasing me since its acceptance in my philosophical values. My conclusion was devastating. I was not expecting that my empirical logic would be defining my current role in society till the point where I want to quit and stop doing what I have been supporting in the last three years. Perhaps this is my dramatic persona working flawlessly or obsessive behaviorism of mine, but the late motif in this dilemma is the art itself. I stopped interrogating “what art should I do?” and began to question “why should I do art?”. The answer: because I want to express MY feelings, MY ideas, MY knowledge on the living things. All this time I have been producing material to sustain my fears or my mental illnesses overall, my points towards various themes. All this time, I had to feed my ego as I way to exponentiate my self-pithiness. I have been admiring my suffering and my perspectives and painting in with sound and music.
In conclusion, art is, in fact, an egocentric expression, and for now, it seems impossible for me to refute this idea.
Lately, I found myself reading Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness, a book where he writes, in short stories, about his personal experiences where some of which are fictional versions of his reality. Apart from his cutting edge way of writing, which is very dirty, hostile, and drunk, all the tales depict a man decaying in his flaws, till the point you are impressed with the level of indecency that the poor guy has. Along with the reading, you come across descriptions like:
– LISTEN, GUSTAV, THE LAST POET WE WENT TO SEE WAS A TERRIBLE PERSON. WE HADN’T BEEN THERE MUCH MORE THAN A HOUR AND HE STARTED GOT DRUNK AND STARTED THROWING BOTTLES ACROSS THE ROOM AND CUSSING US. – THAT WAS BUKOWSKI. ONLY HE DOESN’T REMEMBER US. – NO WONDER. – BUT HE’S VERY LONELY. WE SHOULD GO SEE HIM.
in Great Poets Die in Steaming Pots of Shit
Artists live this fake reality where they think their products are made for others to appreciate, and perhaps cure or help or relate, where it is only made for the person who created it. Now every time I read interviews to musicians about their new content, they often say something not as literally as I am going to indicate, but very similar – this album was made for those who... The answer: No, it was not. It was made for you, and only you. The only problem is you can see your egocentrism. Jean Piaget, in his theory of “Stages of Cognitive Development”, would say that egocentrism is one of the characteristics of a child in the “Preoperational Stage” (2-7 years) because the subject in this zone cannot see a situation from another’s point of view, assuming that other people see, hear, and feel the same as the child does (Saul McLeod, 2018). I believe that artists lack the same things, which in this case is more complex to understand and to depict. Artists are blind to a deeper understanding.
Venus at the mirror by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1614-1615)
The dark side of being creative and having art motion is that we all look at the mirror in the same way as Narcissus did, but this time we can’t tell that reflection, considering there is nothing wrong with it. On a larger scale, artists are closed into one reality – anthropocentric reality. Our creations are only available for our species, for those who speak and communicate the way we do. Historians focus on our doings in the past, but only for our species. Phylosophers interrogate themselves about problems we, the homo sapiens, have. Even scientists are a bit focused on what we are formed on, even if they are geocentric. The study only what inside this strange blue and green bubble called Earth. We are too closed and too enclosed. Maybe I should focus on the universe. Possibly the right questions are made among the stars and the things that don’t belong to our reality. I don’t to be an artist anymore. I want to avoid anything that resonates with the need to look to myself.
Fortunately, I have a lot of interests. Unfortunately, and the problem of having a considerable amount of interests, I can’t get most of my projects done – there is always something more interesting to think about. Maybe this is a sign of ADHD or simple immaturity or neither. Sometimes it’s fun to fuse the topics I’m interested in together.
birding in the Dunas de S. Jacinto Nature Reserve (24/12/2020)
Today I decided to mix one of my main hobbies – ornithology and birding (a type of wildlife observation) – with the subject that I am studying – sound. It is the same as using the concept of biomimicry (the emulation of nature to solve complex human problems), although I am not solving any issue. I woke up with this question: “How does the world of sound work for birds?”.
One of the aspects that birders need to know is bird vocalization. Its importance embraces such significance that many birders only dedicate their time attempting to identify birds by their call or song (yes, there is a difference between both). Birding Licenses are administrated to those who complete a formal exam which compiles two sections of evaluation: visual identification under various conditions (maturity of the bird, gender, seasonality, weather exposure, and type of lightning) and sound recognition (calls, songs, sonations and the mixture of all of them in a hypothetic situation where there are more than species in a single environment).
As it is possible to notice, the world of sound in this area represents a pillar of knowledge. Without it, it is not possible to execute this practice. Here’s an example of my guide book for birds that I take with me every time I go on an expedition:
in the characteristics of every bird, there is a section dedicated to their vocal sounds. The funniest part is that the heard sound was literally written in words apart from a description followed with adjectives and common verbs related to birds (e.g. sing, tweet, twitter, cheep, chirp, shriek, cry, hoot, caw, cluck, crow, cook-a-doodle-do). The vocalization writing system functions as a code, as every group of letters, represents a specific tonality:
“Collins Bird Guide” by Lars Svensson
This aspect reminds me of one particular lecture with Dr. Louise Marshall, where she discussed a project, from the dutch artist Toine Horvers, called “Chartres one hour of sound in a Gothic Cathedral”, where he described sound without referring to the source. Attempting this sounds complicated, although, and considering the ornithologist way of describing vocalizations, Toine forgot to write sound as it is. This could be a literary centric perspective of a sound.
Definitions on bird vocalizations
There are two types of bird vocals: (1) bird calls (relatively simple vocalizations); (2) bird songs (relatively complex vocalizations). In non-technical use, both are considered to be songs as they sound melodious to the human ear, but in ornithology and birdwatching, the couple differs from one another. Songs tend to be longer, more complex, and are mainly associated with territory/courtship and mating. Calls are more likely to be alarms or a way to keep in contact with other relatives. It is also considered to be songs the non-vocal sounds of woodpeckers drumming and the “winnowing of snipes” according to some ornithologists.
Example of (interesting) songs:
Western Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus)
Examples of (interesting) calls:
Willow ptarmigan (Lagoupus Lagopus) – “Very characteristic calls: “Kuwa -Kuwa -Kuwa” (go back!) Also: “kauw kauwkkkrrrkekekekekeke” with a short pause after first “kauw”, then a decelerating cackle, often followed by the “go back” call.” (Nord University – Bird ID)
Eurasian bittern (Botaurus stellaris) – mating call, or contact call, is audible from a distance of 5km (3 miles) on a calm night.
Common Loon (Gavia immer): resembles the calls of a wolf. “(They are) essentially saying I’m here, where are you?” – Greg Budney
Nevertheless, both types of vocalizations have a deep relation with the geographical and taxonomy context they are inserted. The passerines are the group of birds that are best in vocalization, but some birds are completely voiceless, producing only percussive and rhythmic sounds such as the storks which clatter their bills, or other birds who use other parts of their body to produce noise as a signal – this is called mechanical sound production. Stridulation, on one hand, is a good example of these types of vocalizations, which is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts. Charles Darwin in the Origin of Species described this mechanical sound production as instrumental music. More recently, it was defined as sonation (sounds opposed to the use of the syrinx – birds vocal organ). To sonate is the act of producing non-vocal sounds that are intentionally modulated communicative signals using non-syringeal structures such as the bill, wings, tail, feet, and body feathers.
This is how the ’90s was described for a person in the comment section of an electric indigo video. And this is maybe what it should have been for most of the people that lived in that moment, either in Berlin, Chicago, Detroit, or wherever there was an electronic music night club. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to talk with Susanne Kirchmayr, and throughout the whole conversation, I felt identified with our career beginning stories. she started as an enthusiast of what was called back in the day black music – hip hop, jazz, groove, disco, funk – and she would play music on the radio in Vienna. One day, by scavaging in the record store, she found discovered a 1991 single by the Chicago artist Dj Rush from Saber Records (sub-label of Trax Records – referring to the name given to techno in that time: Beat Trax). She immediately fell in love with its sounds. It was provocative for someone who was used to hip hop or disco. She presented it to the radio where she worked, but unfortunately, they didn’t see the same qualities that she saw, calling it nazi music, because of its marchy pace.
Later, underground resistance enlightened her, but this time it wasn’t only because of its musical capabilities. it was about the message. ur were a group of 3 DJs – Jeff Mills, Mad Mike Banks, and Robert Hoods – from revolution for a change label, and they were often considered “the Public Enemy of techno“. She had the opportunity to meet them and, in a conversation, Mike Banks said “techno for us is a fusion and inspiration from combining George Clinton (funk musician) and Kraftwerk.
From the incomprehensiveness of Vienna radio to gathering friends that would support her new phase in her career was DJ Hell – he was the bridge to the German techno scene and for her first time experiencing the producing methods of techno. she Dj’ed for the first time in Ultraworld club in Munich – “now that I think about it, maybe I wasn’t prepared for it, but in that time I ran out of money; I was constantly hitchhiking for gigs and didn’t have anywhere to practice but the club. The same applies to production. I didn’t know anything about it and back in the day, there wasn’t the accessibility that you have today. I was constantly trying to absorb as much information as possible of all the drum machines and digital devices used”. She showed us her first track made in her room with DJ hell (Wolkenkratzer was the b-side of the Ultraworld ep. vol. 1).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHhyJnQMf8o
In 1993, she moved to Berlin, “the mecca of techno. this phenomenon happened because, after the fall of the wall, there was a lot of space for Berliners to use and create art “. She was apart of the Mayday in Berlin rave:” It was a huge rave that might have thrown techno into the mainstream level”. she would find herself being signed to a label based in New York called Experimental and from there the release of a new track was on sight – “No Headroom”. ” Me and him (a guy from the label) started to produce together in my room and released it”. is that how easy things were? this is something that I am constantly asking myself when producing “how much effort should I give to my pieces?”. sometimes I don’t even finish them because everything just seems saturated. I don’t know what is the production level of her, but it sounded very easy for her, which is not for me.
Mayday in Berlin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L50OeuLe-M&t=10s
In 1997, she was already a busy DJ – “I started to have 3 to 4 gigs in the same week. sometimes in different cities, sometimes even in different continents. I started to become saturated because of all the time spent djing. I couldn’t find time to produce. i also started to feel pressure from more and more people because of the fact of being a woman. they all wanted me to have an opinion about it”. She decided to open that window by creating female:pressure in the same here – a network for gender equality.
By the end of the conversation, and after the explanation of her contemporaneous work, which is based on experimental music and composing for short-films, my idea of one’s artistic career changed. I am not saying that previously I had a deranged view towards the way artistic careers should flow, but was certainly like Susanne’s career. She was never prepared to do whatever came in front of her. She didn’t have the material to practice her djing skills, but she managed to be one of the icons of that era, by practicing in front of a crowd. She didn’t have music production gear as well, but she was labeled and had her tracks running around berlin. I thought one’s career should be supported with a cohesive and solid background in art doing. With her testimonial, my perspective changed to a more free and open. We don’t have to be Macgyver of electronic music to become one. The learning process takes time, patience, dedication, mixed with a little bit of luck and a sense of opportunism.
after the lecture, I was curious to compare techno in the ’90s and contemporaneous techno. this is Fjaak, a group of two guys that I enjoy listening to either performing or just home-listening.
