ohrenhoch presents on Sunday 4 and 11 December 2016, 2pm - 9pm:
Audio-Video Work (2016, Premiere)
by Bernadette Johnson (Switzerland)
Curator, loudspeaker installation: Knut Remond
Bernadette Johnson on 'Je suis in the kitchen':
Oil, water sugar and Mariechen.. the longing is immense. Seen from the middle of the kitchen, perhaps from the stove, a sort of kitchen-scape exists, where pans clatter and soup simmers.
„Je suis in the kitchen“ is derived from fragments of kitchen songs, which used to be sung by servants in bourgeois homes while doing their work. In the composition, I have taken this historical category of folk poems, and spiced it with irritating moments and associative ideas in order to break the sentimental tonal basis. I found the juxtaposition of harmony and disturbing elements to be most interesting. Acoustical as well as visual material gets worked over, ordered and concentrated. „Je suis in the kitchen“ rediscovers the ambivalence between fear and longing, between opinion and feelings.
BJ 2016
Audio Field Report no. 58 / Soundactivism 37: Interview with Bernadette Johnson by Knut Remond. Limited edition audio cassette, 8 copies numbered. Available at 'ohrenhoch, der Geräuschladen' (and heard on headphone in the ohrenhoch archive).
Audio Field Reports nos. 1-57 / soundactivism 1-36: Interviews since January 2014 with the artists, concept and design by Knut Remond.
Bernadette Johnson
*1955 in Saint Gall, now lives in Basel (CH).
Author of acoustical poems and audio pieces for Radio and other listening rooms. For her sound works she was awarded among others the Karl Sczuka Promotion Prize.
In her audio-visual work as well, B.J. leads us through extra-semantic areas. Relations between sounds and visual images are discovered / invented. It's a matter of tracing otherwise parallel and hidden experience spaces.