What is special about this episode of The Listening Tide is that curator Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy takes the listener on an audio tour of an audio work by the artist Mario García Torres. Specifically, the LP album 'Um Cabo Lá, Um Porto Cá '(2013), commissioned for the 9 Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, of which she was the artistic director and chief curator.

She speaks about what it means to share resources, like sunlight, music, climate, and cultural networks, then tells how this is woven into this project and others by the artist. As works of collaboration, that resonate from a hotel in Mexico to another on the Virgin Islands. Told in a narrative stretching as far back as the histories of artists such as Takis, David Medalla, and Daniel Buren, and forward into a future of new formats and musical genres.

Note: people whose contribution and impact around the things discussed on The Listening Tide sometimes end up outside of the final edit. Sofia therefore wishes to thank Sarah Demeuse for the incredible research she conducted at the MIT archives as part of the biennial, which helped make this – and other – work possible.

Tracklist

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1. ‘⁠O Mesmo Espaço Solar⁠’ from the album 'Um Cabo Lá, Um Porto Cá '(2013) by Mario Garcia Torres

Commissioned by the 9 Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and co-produced with El Ganzo Hotel in San José del Cabo, Mexico.

Marian Ruzzi: voice

Gustavo H. Hernández [aka Sol O Sel]: percussions

José Gabriel Cárdenas W.: guitar

Marcos Castro: album cover illustration

Maricris Herrero: graphic design

Daniela Pérez: lyric translations from Spanish to Portuguese

Produced by Ernesto García, Gustavo H. Hernández, and Mario García Torres

2. ‘Je ne sais si c'en est la cause’ (2009) by Mario Garcia Torres

Commissioned by the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund in honor of Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy.

Mario López Landa: piano, organ, voiceShantal Leal Krska, voice

Federico Caballero: drums

Jorge ‘Pecas’ Caballero:percussions

Luis Ezequiel Domínguez: bass

Mixed by Gilberto Elguezabal and recorded at DMY Estudios, Monterrey, Mexico.

3. + 4. ‘⁠Yo no Se⁠’ (2023) and ‘⁠Aqui Sigues⁠’ (2023) by Mario Garcia Torres in collaboration with Eme Malafe

For this episode curator and Sonsbeek director Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg brings with her a thirty year old ear-worm. It takes the conversation into the realm of misophonia, or, how our brain deals with the delicate balance between our emotions and our physical fitness. Scratching, creaking, and tapping noises make space for a conversation about our psychological software and neurological hardware, and how these are intricately bound together.

This inherently anthropocentric discussion is then stunningly undermined by feminist poetry on the unique beauty that is marine life, and what we as humans can learn from it. After, this is given a different kind of voice with the sounds of a sperm whale family, yet also takes the conversation back to humanity’s enduring occupation with establishing, classifying and commercializing knowledge and understanding. Often forgetting nature’s own language(s), as an alternative for us all.

Track list:

‘Alabama Song’ by The Doors from the album ‘TheDoors’ (1967)

Excerpts from ‘Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals’ by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (AK Press, 2021)

‘The Sound of Sperm Whales’ by whalezone.tv

‘Eight Hours of Whale Sounds Deep Underwater for Sleep and Relaxation’ by Jason Lewis @MindAmend

DJ and producer Mo Wrights takes us on a musical journey about ‘his self’. About the search for identity online, and the sounds that shaped him growing up vs. his real surroundings. We speak about the significance of little discoveries in this, the role that archiving plays as a compass, and what it means to dig up your own roots. Alone and together with others.

The conversation also reaches his decision to begin doing the work. To start creating and producing music, and about what it means to recognize and accept the agency - and responsibility - that comes with this. As a perpetual task of life.

And all this mixed with notch grooves & beats throughout.

So good.

Tracklist:

1.⁠ ⁠Scene from film ‘Frog River’ (2002)

Mix Kerri Chandler

2.⁠ ⁠⁠Untitled song with LAMSI

3.⁠ ⁠Shahz - Aleng (Mo Wrights Remix)

4.⁠ ⁠⁠Mo Wrights - Mirror

5.⁠ ⁠⁠Audio excerpts from film ‘Soundtrack To A Coup D’etat’(2024)

Cut by Abbey Lincoln Max Roach - WeInsist Freedom Now Suite

Artist and musician Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec brought with him a kind of archaeological approach to sound for this Listening Tide, with recordings of early homo sapiens and the noises of their work. This led to an enveloped conversation on where meaning exists in sound. Is it simply within the speculative setting and context of sound? What does this say about what the actual ‘source’ of sound is? Or can sound actually be an illustration of a specific meaning? In all his thinking and practice, Tao is deeply invested in considering the manifestation of the body in relationship to auditive, and the spatial circumstances that define its measures and tones. For this he shares with us his own experiments and recordings, which additionally offer an insight into how he uses his equipment as instruments to reveal the notion of surroundings, and our place in them as an audience.

‘Benskrapare / Bonescraper’

Casja S. Lund

Musica Svecia (1991)

‘Vinare / Bull-roarers’

Casja S. Lund

Musica Svecia (1991)

‘Slagsteen / Precussion stones’

Casja S. Lund

Musica Svecia (1991)

‘Caressing the Studio (bed, table, window, chair)’ (2012)

Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec

on CD Outlines, Errant Bodies Records, Berlin (2017)

'Inferior Sounds' (2011)

Ryu Hankil: typewriter, snare drum

Hong Chulki: turntable

Choi Joonyong: cd-player

Recorded at STEIM during their residency in 2011. As the title suggests, these are sounds that in general people don’t enjoy hearing. Don’t expect any tunes or melodies and you’ll be alright!

Balloon and Needle / bnn26 (2011)

Artist, curator, researcher Charl Landvreugd brings with him music that traverses the realm of the body and mind, with that of the spirit. And at the center of this stands the question of the cultural hybrid and the self. We end up in conversation on how these realms and this amalgamation affects our daily lives. Affect the ways in which we work, fight, live, die, and play. In theory and in practice, institutionally and individually.

For Charl, here it is important to return to the beginnings of things, in order to understand the narratives we operate in. To see how and where to reimagine, and retell, our stories. For The Listening Tide he does so generously, by reading from new writing on some of his early works as an artist.

___________________________

‘Space is the Place’ (1974)

Writers: Joshua Smith / Sun Ra

Director: John Coney

___________________________

‘Libi Yanga, Suka Yu Gado (Laku)’ Anne Goedhart

Walboomers Music (2005)

___________________________

‘Requiem Mozart: 11 Communio, Lux Aterna’

Performed at the Cathadrale Città di Castello – 07.11.2021

Emanuela Agatoni, soprano

Stefania Cocco, contralto

Federico Savini, tenore

Massimiliano Mandozzi, basso

CORO Schola Cantorum "Anton Maria Abbatini"

ORCHESTRA OIDA - Orchestra Instabile di Arezzo

Direttore Alessandro Bianconi

The Listening Tide with Sing Jantzen Tse

Artist Sing Jantzen Tse introduces us to his immense collection of sounds and recordings of his city Hong Kong, and its surroundings. Compiled over a period of ten years, Sing’s recordings are in fact an archive reflecting the many changes the city has underwent during this period. For this episode he brought with him recordings of playgrounds, particular social-economic environs and a lazy walk through a specific neighborhood in Hong Hong. In the ensuing conversation we talk about the difference between memory and nostalgia, his way of working in the congested surroundings that are this city, and the accountability that comes with actively compiling (and possibly further administering) such an archive.

This is the second and final part of a special two-part edition of The Listening Tide and was graciously hosted by and made in collaboration with Current Plans in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong born and raised curator Eunice Tsang shares with us the carnivalesque, rituals and activism that can come from the sound of beating drums. How this can be an instrument to open informal spaces and occupy them temporarily. As communities and in individual rites. To activate exchange and sharpen our senses.

The conversation also speaks about languages. The tongue of Eunice’s professional past as a journalist, as well as the story of her own family history, which together is also a telling story of Hong Kong itself.

This is a special two-part edition of The Listening Tide and was graciously hosted by and made in collaboration with Current Plans in Hong Kong, of which Eunice Tsang is founder and director, as well as a curator for M+ in Hong Kong.

The Listening Tide with Daniel de Paula

In this episode, artist Daniel de Paula has brought ‘Archeophonics’ (2016) by poet Peter Gizzi to speak about how meaning is held in archives that are obscured from us by our surroundings, and how knowledge(s) within these, also escape language. They can be tuned-in to through sound, image, and spirit, but only if our increasingly accelerated society allows us to afford ourselves this openness.

Daniel also discusses personal antidotes for this demanding acceleration – as well as the solitude it comes with – through the music brought to the program. That of singer *Milton Nascimiento, and the power his sound and lyrics have to take him from his part-time base in Amsterdam and return him to a specific feeling of his native Brazil. As well as the music of North-American post-black-metal band **Agalloch, who offered a proper curve-ball at the end of the show.

As always, good stuff.

(* 'Promeses do Sol' written by Fernando Brandt & Milton Nascimiento, 1976 EMI Records Brasil Ltd.)

(** 'Blood Birds', 2006 The End Records)

The Listening Tide invited director of Marres house for contemporary culture in Maastricht Valentijn Byvanck to the living room. He brought with him audio by Espen Sommer Eide on the historic sound of spaces, a project on Stasi ideology-voice-tapping, and the enigmatic Miles Davis. An hour well spent...