Milton Jordansson Pinto (MJP): One of the most overarching themes in your work as blablabor is the radio, which essentially can be a lot of things: an object; a transmitter of sound, music and information; a tool for communication within a community. What was it that drew you to the radio as a tool for artistic expression?
blablabor (BBB): in the nineties, free radio was new territory. the third category alongside public radio and commercial radio; for us unexpected experimental field for radio art. this is where blablabor started in 2000. blablabor liked the everyday, the ordinary, the subversive, the ephemeral, the multilingualism, the information programmes for minorities. in 2000 blablabor placed its legendary seven-language radio piece 'ungefähre' in this environment.
MJP: In the composition of your pieces there is always an awareness of the phonetical structures of the words, that seem to influence and at times even rule the composition. It makes me think of the statement you’ve published on your website: ”music is our mother tongue”. Phonetics and the
spoken language is usually what first and foremost becomes associated with the musicality of a language, yet, in several of your pieces there is also an exploration of the meaning of the words that you use. What role would you say that semantics play in your music-based language of composition?
BBB: language is illuminated in all its facets. language is sound and rhythm, but also structure: number of letters, number of phonemes, number of syllables of a word. but also meaning or blurring of meaning and origin of words, as well as the arrangement of words in a sentence structure.
we often translate words together with people of a different mother tongue, often far removed from german. in this way we generate an enormously rich vocabulary in terms of both music and semantics. this collaboration usually results in images that serve as compositional sketches.
MJP: Is it possible, or even necessary, for you to differentiate between music and radio/sound art?
BBB: the instruments do not accompany the texts, but translate spoken text material into music, paying attention only to the spoken melody and not to the meaning. so it's all one thing. a whole radio play is made out of a word; unfolded.
we don't differentiate between music, radio play, radio/sound art. for us, the pieces are a conglomerate of everything.
radio art is focused above all in our performances, in which we further develop the radio plays radiophonically, where it is once again about transmitting and receiving. about the peculiarities of the small transmitters, about the sonorities and quirks of the radio sets.
MJP: Today, it could possibly be said that many of the functions that radio used to fill in people’s everyday lives have been partly transferred to other more modern media. You touch upon this topic in a work like ”radio_anja”, where you use Instagram as a plattform for a fictional influencer to distribute radio art. In an introduction to the piece, you claim that an Instagram-radio-play works differently than a regular radio-play. What effect would you say that these digital plattforms have on radio art?
BBB: blablabor likes the pixelated, the fast, unbroken, the spontaneous, the short-lived. Working on short radio plays is very different, 1 idea for 1 piece, when working with forty people (’radio_anja’, ’hörspiel-hacking’)[1] not every piece is equally good. Quantity, continuity, presence, diversity, radius of the influencer are important.
only when we translate this back into the medium of radio do we realise that the approach on instagram and the like is completely different. is completely different to producing 50-minute radio plays for the radio.
MJP: The collection of your works that we’ve published on Radioarts website are all kürzhörstücken, short sound-pieces that are no longer than 6:30 min. What do you feel the short format can offer artistically in contrast to the longer format?
BBB: brevity corresponds to our lives today. no one listens to more than six and a half minutes anyway.
and: the short format gives us the opportunity to spread out a single word, to dig it out, to translate it into space, into time, into sound.
on the other hand, we also like to produce overlong pieces, where the entertaining and the anecdotal give way to the surface, creating a kind of 'land art' of word and sound.
MJP: The final instalment of this summer series brings together works from ”senda da las linguas”, a sound-walk you did in collaboration with Gianna Olinda Cadonau, based on geographical names from the area of Val Müstair in Switzerland. In the pieces you work with the Romansh dialect Jauer, which is almost exclusively spoken by people in that area, and from which the geographical names of the area originate. Just as you in other works open up and explore language, in ”senda da las linguas” you do something similar but with a physical space, through a language. How did you work with the relationship between the names of the geographical spaces and the geographical spaces in themselves, in the creation of the sound-pieces?
BBB: the sound walk continues, for at least ten years you can listen to the local piece of music in jauer and german via qr code at the corresponding places with the names of the fields. the places have inspired us, the benches as possible qr code carriers, also the view of mountains, meadows, flowers. the names inspired us, their stories and the events while hiking through this landscape. there were rabbits playing, a deer gave birth in a mown meadow, cars harassed us in a narrow pass in sta maria, it was hot in summer, and the route of the former ski lift was walked.
all of this was recorded and researched further at home, condensed into text material, which voices and instruments then brought to life.
the sound and rhythm of the spoken idiom jauer and the instruments and musicians, who are at home not only in improvisation but also in cantonal folk music, played a key role.
MJP: Finally, in both your latest long-format sound-piece, ”hörspiel”, as well as in the collection of pieces tied to ”radio”, there is a focus on the future of radio and radio art. Based on the work you’ve done with these pieces, how do you look at the future of radio and radio art?
BBB: radio is an old medium. but old media never disappear completely. there are shifts in emphasis. there are changes. and these changes in the media context interest blablabor; challenge, inspire.
blablabor is also prepared to dive into the radiophonic underground. to appear surprisingly here and there, to resound. to show new words and sounds y means of new, temporary frequencies.
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Links:
[1] ”radio_anja” as well as ”hörspiel-hacking” are both built on collaborations with other artists. More information about the pieces can be found at blablabor.ch
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