To hear on Sunday 19 and 26 March 2017, 2pm - 9pm:
(2016) Audioinstallation, 8 Min. Loop
by Albert Raven
Albert Raven on 'Ich Weiss Nicht (I Don't Know):
I think of doubt not as an absence of knowing, but rather as another form of knowing; an un-knowing, or dis-knowledge, a pre-stage of knowing, or maybe even a multi-knowledge (after all, it contains lots of yet unknown knowledge). It is a liminal phase, one you shouldn’t fear or try to fill with certain knowledge as quickly as possible, but one that you can use to get ahead, to get somewhere you would never had gotten to if you had only known, instead of un-known.
(2014) Audioinstallation. Piece for two violinists and Whispering Wall, 7:55 min.
by Albert Raven
Albert Raven on 'Deduction (Deduktion)':
A violin is a very specific instrument. Each violin is different, each note unique. A violin often has one or more notes that sound bad, or need a lot of effort to sound good, called Wolf tones. Violinists have a personal relationship with their instrument and with each note: some notes are dearly loved, others can be truly hated. The piece Deduction consists of just one note, played by two violinists. One of them considers this note to be the absolut favorite. The other however hates this note intensely.
ABOUT THE WHISPERING WALL PROJECT
The WHISPERING WALL is a collective of portable, interactive, individual audio devices. Connected through the internet, these sound-units play audio works, stored in a virtual cloud. Each Whispering Wall performs its own, specific Work. It’s a global, Internet-of-Things work of art.
ABOUT SOUND ACTIVISM
Speculative Activism
Sound Activism is a contradiction in terms. To be able to listen, I have to stop doing things. As long as I am active, I don’t listen. I may think I do, but I don’t. Listening is passive, not active.
Activism in itself is a contradiction as well. When I try to actively change the present into a future, I’m trying to build something new using the material from the old. I’m trying to find a solution from within the parameters of the problem. That won’t work: rethinking the future from the present simply means extending that present, preventing what could be the future from happening. Changing the present and calling it the future does not work either. Future won’t have it. That’s why revolutions devour their children: when future comes, past goes.
Time is relative. But I can only recognize this relativity from outside the system I am in. The same goes for the present: I need to not be in the present to see its relativity. I cannot change the present to make a better future. I cannot change the future either, because I am not in it. If I want a better future, I must stop being in the present.
The only way for change to happen, is to stop doing what I am doing. I have to let go. This is what I do as an artist on a daily basis: leaving the old, finding the new. My work shows what I don’t (or at least didn’t) know. When past goes, future comes.
Albert Raven 2017
Audio Field Report no.60 / Soundactivism 39: Interview with Albert Raven by Knut Remond. Limited edition audio cassette, 8 copies numbered. Available at 'ohrenhoch, der Geräuschladen' (and heard on headphone in the ohrenhoch archive).
Albert Raven
My work is about change and resistance to change, and consequently about time. Driven by the notion that what we call ‘Time’ does not exist, I question this world-without-time, using sound by means of my Whispering Wall project (audio- works, performed by a collective of small interactive internet-of-things devices) and image by the use of photography.
Website Albert Raven
Whispering Wall Project