Sonic Garden #3

River Time and Fog Refrains

Anna Friz, Barbara Benish

Troja Castle, Riding Hall, Prague

13.07.2023

Anna will discuss audio and radio art works that explore earth elements such as fog, the land transformed by fire, and the parallels between human and more-than-human transmissions. Focusing on states of change (such as condensation, evaporation, incineration, recuperation), these works listen across cycles of drought and flood, consider risk and regeneration, and tell a few ghost stories along the way. How can listening, understood as a quality of attention, reflect on the changing land in this time of urgent climate crisis? Together with field recording practices, she composes observation-based scores in response to the real-time movement of the fog or the rhythm of tides at the mouth of a river, and uses an eclectic instrumentation of electronics, voice, found objects such as lung-powered boat horns, and radiophonic instruments. The talk will include excerpts from recent durational radio art works including Fog Refrain and Water Line/Estuary Almanac.

Barbara will present her new installation for (A)Void gallery, where she uses the sounds of the Vltava captured by a hydrophone. The "S.O.S." theme refers to visual and audio communication systems and evokes a sense of tension regarding issues of the environment, people and their interactions with each other. Barbara will accompany the lecture with a recordings of sounds from the Pacific Ocean and the streams of Bohemia.

“The environmental crisis we are experiencing calls for immediate action, as if the ship was sinking. Planet Earth is our home ship, and she needs all citizens to take action to save her. The nautical flags used on ships to communicate symbolize a visual messaging that transcends countries, boundaries, and governments. We need tools to communicate to and with our surrounding nature to understand our role as humans to steward this Ship.“

-prepared in collaboration with Asociace Mlok and Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies. Curated by Miloš Voytechovský

River Time and Fog Refrains

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