SEMI SILENT

An Emotional Encyclopedia of War is a radio art project launched in the summer of 2022 that investigates the transformation that comes with war via the locus of emotional emergency. Trying to get a grip on the new emotional states she had undergone, Anna Kravets still questions the imperceptibility of war experience. Having realized how discordant it is with the life beyond its borders, she tries to invent frameworks that would pass under the framing barriers of mass media coverage.

In her auto-ethnographic radio piece, Anna describes her feelings of living during war, integrating them in a palette of experiences which belong to others, strangers, foreigners. Called out in a time of war, those experiences are featured in her piece together with her desperate attempts of reflection and composing sound in a post-invasion paralysis.

 

The project was born during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES program of SEMI SILENT, made possible together with Q-O2 and ASCR in Brussels, and co-financed by AFCN. In 2023, it traveled to CTM festival as part of its Radio Lab with Deutschlandfunk Kultur (winner of the 2022 edition), ORF musikprotokoll at steirischer herbst festival, Ö1 Kunstradio, The Wire magazine, and Goethe Institut. A new iteration of Emergency Rehearsal took place during Sonic Narratives festival in Timișoara (Romania) in 2023, and the Week of Sound in Brussels and Charleroi in 2024.

 

An Emotional Encyclopedia of War was premiered (in German) in February 2024 at Deutschlandradio Klangkunst.

 

Photo: Udo Siegfriedt, 2023

 

Anna Kravets is a radio and performance artist, journalist and podcast producer. In her work, she uses direct and recorded speech, stages recorded interactions, makes sonic experiments with materials, spaces and soundscape, exploring the experience of the self with its limits and possibilities. Anna studied cultural studies in Kyiv and anthropology in Marseille. In 2017-2022, Anna presented the Art Of Work Talk Show on Radio Ukraine International and Cashmere Radio. In 2017-2018, Anna also produced and organized an experimental media platform called Radio International during the Kyiv Biennial and the Warsaw Under Construction Festival. Anna is based in Kyiv, Ukraine.

 

Voices, contributors, and participants: Aditi Srivastava, Alessandra Prado Soler, Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Amin Behmanesh, Annu Koetter, Carmelo Ianuzzo, Caroline Profanter, Constanze Aka, Diana Duta, Dimitra Kousteridou, Erika Sirola, Golo Föllmer, Greg Kieser, Hanna Sauer, Joachim Glaude, Julia Eckhardt, Juliette Escudé, Kai-Uwe Reinhold, Laetitia Defendini, Mamoru Watanabe, Michel Ivor, Nir Jacob, Sabri Meddeb, Tanya Ringer, Virgile Loiseau, Wouter Hillaert, and Wynona Ringer.

The voices were collected in different places from 2022 onward as part of Emergency Rehearsal series of performative interactions, that became a tool for mutual translation and acknowledgement of complicated experience.

 

Production: SEMI SILENT, Q-O2, ACSR, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, CTM Festival, Goethe-Institut, and ORF

Final mix: Nika Zenova

ANALYTICAL SWIMMING. Left ear under water by Sillyconductor, 2023_____I am floating on one side, one ear submerged, the other relatively dry and pointing to the sky. In my left ear I listen to what’s underneath, underwater, unseen and untouched. My right ear acknowledges the world above. In the midst of it all, there’s me, relatively cold. I am steadily moving downstream, breathing and making involuntary noises. Beneath the surface of the Danube there are mysterious bugs, sizzling crevices, maybe lava, who knows, it’s out of my reach. Above me lies the known world of birds and people and all things visible. And bats, which are something special. I always imagined big ships would generate a lot of low frequencies underwater. I was so wrong. Because now I can finally see it with my right eye and I hear it with my left ear._____*recorded on hydrophones and ultrasonic microphones_____Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022._____Sillyconductor is one of the monikers of Cătălin Matei, a composer and sound artist from Bucharest. His work reflects his different interests, from innovating recording techniques for church organs, creating improvisational instruments and interactive installations to setting up sonic playgrounds for kids or writing music for theatre or games, always trying to blend mathematical rigor with a healthy dose of the absurd. For the past years he has been working with research institutes on different bioart projects looking for means of sonifiying of the unperceivable._____Recordings, composition and mixing by Sillyconductor for SEMI SILENT.

SWINGING DRY WATER. An everlasting ludic space of poetry by Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Veronika Svobodová, 2022_____Using the shore of the Danube as a whole orchestra of sounding and resonating matter, Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Veronika Svobodová make audible an everlasting ludic space of poetry. This geography, where they compose is marked by drought, wetness, scarcity, wealth, silence, noise which in permanent relation with the multiple legends about fountains, ghosts, forests, allows a multi-sensual reading of the space beyond binaries. While ‘swinging dry water’ the two artists played with a blur of polarities of time, space, materiality and perception, verbalized and sounded a multilingual text in the forest, on the water, in empty fountains and in their heads._____Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022, and premiered in R{A}DIO{CUSTICA}, Czech Radio Vltava in November 2022._____Jasmina Al-Qaisi is a writer for voice and paper appearing sometimes in other forms such as a walking scientist, the schnelle musikalische hilfe service, or as the only agent for the self-entitled-self-entitlement-office. Jasmina is as well listening with her hands and makes waves on free, independent, temporary, mobile radios and public radios writing with sound._____Veronika Svobodová is an artist, musician, and scenographer. Her approach to work with sound reveals her relation to stage design, art of installation and performance. In her work she connects the aspects of space, time, and situation, often it is a response to specific places in the landscape or architecture._____Recordings, composition and mixing by Jasmina Al-Qaisi and Veronika Svobodová for SEMI SILENT._____Co-produced by R{A}DIO{CUSTICA}, Czech Radio Vltava.

WE SEE BENEATH. An unfamiliar place by Lloyd Dunn, 2023_____A dry description of the locale will not satisfy the task of describing the place; especially when the experience of it interleaves objective perception, memory, dilated time, and all the other observations that come from being in an unfamiliar place over a period of days. And so we are left with this set of allusions._____Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022.______Lloyd Dunn is a multimedia artist working in machine-based media for 40 years. During the 1980s and 90s he edited and published the graphic arts magazines Photostatic and Retrofuturism, which were circulated worldwide and are collected by many prominent archives. In 1987, Dunn, together with some close friends, co-founded the Tape-beatles, who were among a few early recording experimenters whose work explicitly challenged intellectual property and copyright. Since 2009, Dunn’s main project has been the project nula.cc, the online presence for a series of filecasts initiated to further explore his long-standing interest in machine-based art forms, appropriation and collage, time-based media and design. Dunn currently lives and works in Prague._____Recordings, composition and mixing by Lloyd Dunn for SEMI SILENT.

EBB AND FLOW. Aural encounters in the floodplains by pablo sanz, 2023_____An imaginary day, from dawn to sunset. It meanders through aural spaces based on encounters with human and other-than-human lifeforms and their movements, shaped by the presence of the river._____Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022._____Artist, composer and researcher. The work of pablo sanz includes site-determined and public art projects, immersive spatial audio installations and concerts, and compositions for headphone listening spread through exhibitions, broadcasts and releases. With a focus on the limits and thresholds of perception and attention, his practice investigates listening, sound space, more-than-human vitality, aural energies, and otherness. Listening becomes a political act intended to resist dominant tendencies in contemporary societies, cultivating alternative forms of being and thinking. His work has been experienced internationally in diverse contexts. He has participated in numerous artistic residencies, received commissions and support from multiple organizations, and regularly facilitates talks, seminars and workshops._____Recordings, composition and mixing by pablo sanz for SEMI SILENT.

MAYBE NOTHING. An environmental thriller by Jeanne Debarsy, 2023_____What happened? / We don't know exactly / Of course, there are rumors and echoes / But they are perhaps only reminiscences / Time and space seem out of tune / Behaviors have also changed / But still, the Danube doesn’t stop flowing._____The translation of a precise feeling that cradled the 10-day residency in the small village of Port Cetate, in Romania: a strange feeling of the end of the world, with a historically low water level that prevented navigation on the Danube, a very prevalent animal kingdom, few humans, the impression of evolving either in the past or in the future but certainly not in the present._____Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by Asociația Jumătatea plină and SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022._____Jeanne Debarsy (b. 1986) is a sound artist based in Belgium where she studied to become a sound engineer. She works in various domains of sound and collaborates with many artists in cinema, radio, music, and various arts. She is particularly passionate about radio media because it gives her freedom of action and expression precious to her eyes. She continues to develop her own sound language to refine her personal research and to explore the fields of performance and installation._____Recordings, composition and mixing by Jeanne Debarsy for SEMI SILENT._____Voices: Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Lloyd Dunn, Sillyconductor, pablo sanz, Veronika Svobodová._____Co-produced by Babelfish, 2023.

Nest. A day off

Author: Abby Lee Tee, 2022

The sounds of privileged life in a small, cosy flat while a crisis after another exacerbating in the outside world. Very close encounters with gurgling stomachs, diligent small critters, dishwashers, washing machines, moka pots, tea kettles and a hailstorm on the other side of the windows.

Sound piece commissioned by SEMI SILENT in the frame of SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES 2022.

Abby Lee Tee is an austrian musician, sound designer & field recordist. His fascination for the divisions and crossovers between noise and music, as well as nature and culture, can be seen in his work with installations, sound-walks, sound design for theatre and audiovisual projects, as well as records on labels such as Shash, Czaszka, Never Anything, Vertical Music, Falt, Dinzu Artefacts and Accidental. Since 2020, he’s researching beavers and their vocalizations, winning the “Sound of the Year” Awards in the category “Best Naturally Occuring Sound” as well as the “Boughton Fieldcraft” Award by the Wildlife Sound Recording Society.

https://abbyleetee.com

Recordings and composition by Abby Lee Tee for SEMI SILENT.

Mix & Mastering by Christian Ghahremanian

Ceaușescu's Teeth. A biting collection of sounds from profound Romania (Romanian).

Author: Sillyconductor, 2015

“Related to God”: voice memos as a documenting obsession

Some years ago, my then very young daughter had a funny but pertinent question: was Ceaușescu’s dentist too scared of the dictator to fix his teeth? At that time I was traveling a lot around the country and, as it happens, when you travel by taxi, bus, train or even elevator, people tend to talk to you. I always had my phone ready to record, since I was ready to sacrifice sound quality for the sake of not missing the moment. I recorded for two years, between 2013 and 2015, whatever I found interesting, overbearing, fun or infuriating. Kids, taxi drivers, radios, friends, birds, toilets, they all somehow melted in a collage that had God and family as recurring themes and tells a story that is just as intrusive and fear-driven as Ceaușescu’s dentist.

Sound composition originally presented during Sâmbăta Sonoră in June 2015 at ODD, Bucharest.

Photo: Nicu Ilfoveanu, 2021

*

Sillyconductor is a sound artist from Bucharest. He performs, writes music for theatre, games, or films, builds sound installations or instruments inspired by science and humour. Sometimes he entertains or educates kids with his Sgomot series of sound workshops.

Recording, editing, and mixing by Sillyconductor.

Mar din mar. How I made peace with my garden (Romanian)Author: Maria Balabas, 2021

I started with a recording made in the garden with our little boy. We were getting ready to go to Bucharest, so we planted a few more things and we said goodbye. “The garden looks like our life: the things are mixed, have their own calendars, there are no 3 rows alike” (Vlad). It is a continuum.

While listening to the recording, I made peace with this space filled with different plants, some eatable, others not. Even if this garden asks for more time and soul than I am ready to give, it has a huge contribution not only to our daily food, but to our imaginary.

I dedicate this composition to Vlad, my husband, and to Bogdan, our son (both “words creators”!), and to our garden for the delicious things it gave to our stomachs and ears.

Maria Balabaș

Producer’s note: Maria Balabaș moved to the countryside a few years ago, though she has the heart of a city person.

"Măr din măr" translates as “apple from the apple tree,” but it also recalls the use of metonymy in the folkloric Romanian songs.

Sound piece commissioned by SEMI SILENT in the frame of the 2021 edition of SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES.

Maria Balabaș is a journalist and musician. She is the host of the Dimineața crossover show (Morning Crossover) from Radio România Cultural and has created projects devoted to new forms of radio creation (Generația sonoră/Sound Generation). In 2014 she was nominated for Prix Europa (Berlin) for the documentary Maria Tănase – Urban Soundtrack for a Diva. She initiated musical groups such as Avant’n’Gard and Soare Staniol, inspired by improvisational techniques, electronic music, acoustic music. Creates installations generated by the artistic interest in the form of field-specific auditory memory.

Recording, editing, and mixing by Maria Balabaș for SEMI SILENT.

Applecore. Portrait of an urban garden

Author: Cosmin Nicolae, 2021

There's a garden between the buildings where I live. At first it was probably planned and landscaped. Then the plants (largely bushy, ornamental) grew naturally wild. I guess someone threw an apple core out the window one day. A shy apple tree has grown, nothing more than a handful of twigs. This year it bore fruit: four apples. Usually, not much comes out of apple seeds. Apparently this time it has. It usually takes between five and twelve years for the apple tree sprung from seed to bear fruit. 'Applecore' is the story of the apple seed that sprouted in a wild garden between buildings in Berlin.

Sound piece commissioned by SEMI SILENT in the frame of the 2021 edition of SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES.

Cosmin Nicolae is an anti-disciplinary artist working with image, sound, text to produce works of intimate reflection at the intersection of autoethnography, psychogeography and possible futures. Opening the door on Hessle Audio over a decade ago - an outlet that has gone on to become a defining voice within electronic music in the 21st Century, Nicolae’s list of affiliations reads like a who’s who of top tier contemporary music record labels. Cosmin Nicolae’s work glides between music, film, hyperstitional theory fiction and a mix of media that formulate peripheral points of view. Lives and works in Berlin.

www.cosminnicolae.com

Recording, editing, and mixing by Cosmin Nicolae for SEMI SILENT.