#259. Independent sound art, radiophonic projects and other audio non-visual misunderstandings and findings. Radiophonic piece by Dirar Kalash.
Etherground PS by Dirar Kalash.
Produced by Worm/Dr. Klangendum.
This radiocollage work is based on two live radio broadcasts during clashes in Jerusalem in 96 and a massacre in Gaza in 2014, and bits of other radio news from early 90’s up to the present, where announcing names names of victims and describing destruction scenes is taking place, but is recontextualized outside a specific place and time, as happening in a dimension and a state that can not be described in terms of space and time, thus putting the somehow sonic intensity outside the geography and history of Palestine – even to the listener who understands Arabic, they can not tell where and when is the broadcasting coming from, but they can tell its of a catastrophy. Thus the intensity of the sound and its transformation and processing affirms this outside time and space notion of a catastrophic event, in such a way that sound becomes the material and its meaning, rather than just transmitting a news broadcast – almost as if sound itself becomes the catastrophe.
The overlaying of sounds from different times and contexts happens in a parallel Palestine, under siege and restricted movement, where Ether becomes the only Ground, where transmissions comes from improvised stations, and where the news are heard but with no clue of their origin, location, and time: resembling the exposure to the huge amounts of “information” on catastrophes world wide, abstracted through intinsity.
Dirar Kalash is a musician and sound artist whose work spans a wide range of musical and sonic practices within a variety of compositional and improvisational contexts. His performative and compositional approaches to instruments, techniques, and aesthetics are highly political as they challenge dichotomies, hierarchies, and binary logics of new/old and west/east as tools of cultural imperialism and hegemony. The methods he uses are based upon his research into the intersections and relationships of music and sound with other contexts such as language, architecture, mathematics, visual arts and further social and human sciences. His regular solo and collaborative performances include but are not limited to audio-visual performances, free jazz groups, electro-acoustic ensembles, analog electronics (“experimental / noise”), and solo piano and oud projects.
