_new Raudio edition: Raudio #13
No way in, no way out ... Raudio
Graffiti: almost live! is a blind wall crammed with sound tags and pieces.
It's a whirling stream of sounds clicking, clanking, whooshing, hitting,
biting ... of words sung, shouted, whispered, spoken, mainly in dutch and
its more southern dialects, but also in german, french, english, spanish,
arabic ... it's a streaming whirl of music performed as part of the 2008
Maastricht Kunsttour. It is almost radio. It is almost live. With contributions
from our intrepid reporter Timo Alacart, from Arlo Wijnands
(Maastricht Moet Je Horen), and extracts from concerts and performances
by Kaspar König, Ensemble 88, Maja Gehrig, Klaas Hübner,
Simon Berz, Jos Hendriks' band, The Skills, The
Paradogma's, Fischorgie, Sjaak Jöbses, f P c
M, Har$, ookoi (secret and not-so-secret), and many,
many more ... ... Now listen to this ... ]
june 06, 2008.
18 min read 🤓
Sub-cultur(e)-al ex-pression formed the central theme of this year's - the ninth - Kunsttour in Maastricht. It put a proud spotlight on the Landbouwbelang and its impressive graffiti wall. Landbouwbelang is a voluminous former industrial complex - it used to be a grain factory and storage space (the graansilo) - in the very center of the city of Maastricht, on the riverside. The abandoned complex was squatted by a group of artists and students in 2002 and has since developed into an important autonomous center for independent (non-profit and anti-commercial) artistic activity.
As part of the 2008 Kunsttour ookoi, in the best of DIY-traditions
built its own mobile streaming studio: we installed a laptop running Nicecast
on top of a cardboard box (een 'gemaksbak') mounted on a trolley.
Thus equipped we tramped from venue to venue, pulling and steering our trolley
through the streets and up and off the pavements of the old city center
of Maastricht, where much is covered by cobblestones. (Click the pictures
to enlarge ...) Using the Kunsttour's mobile internet connection, we could
have cast it live on the web, on the go and all the way ...
Wherever we landed, the Radio Raudio Mobile recorded what was going
on, and we webcast live and on-the-spot the ongoing happenings and performances,
moving our trolley from stage to stage. We did
so for example at the Landbouwbelang, where on saturday afternoon we arrived
just in time to catch Sjaak Jöbses performing.
Somewhere sometimes also ookoi performed. Secretly, or-not-so secretly. Un-announced or announced. Sometimes we were there and announced, but did not perform. Or did we? ... It is thus that, over the weekend of the 9th Maastricht Kunsttour, we built the 13th edition of Raudio's mainstream: "Raudio Graffiti: almost live!".
And all that time our independent Radio Raudio Kunsttour reporter Timo Alacart went around Maastricht interviewing artists and visitors. His intrepid reports were continuously added to the stream, which during the event steadily expanded into a collection of over two hundred and eighty sound files with a total duration of more than seven-and-a-half hours, randomly playing back without beginning, without end ... 24/7 ...
The Timmerfabriek, where this picture was taken, is part of another former industrial complex in the center of town, which used to be home to the Sphinx factories, producers of - principally sanitary - ceramics: urinals, toilet pots, wash basins, and so on ... The city of Maastricht has big plans with this heritage from her troubled industrial past, and intends over the coming years to concentrate within the confines of the former factory buildings a large part of its main cultural activities. Overground, not underground ... The only recently renovated Timmerfabriek (workers applied the finishing touch to the newly laid wooden floor mere hours before kick-off) was this year's Kunsttour's 'center of action'. It is where on the evening of friday may 23rd the opening took place.
The picture above shows the set-up for ookoi's unplugged performance at the Kunsttour's opening, against a cardboard box wall (erected for use in a performance by MAASTERCLASS), with furniture provided by Artifort, celebrating this year's 80/60/50 jubilee of designer Pierre Paulin. Har$ and f P c M sit on his Little Tulips (1965), while our portable battery powered amplifiers (fltr: a Pignose, a green Danelectro Honeytone) and custom modified washing board are supported by Mushroom Pouffes (1960) ...
Even considered that 'curious' and 'peculiar' are among the adjectives to that what ookoi intends to be about, our acte de présence at this Kunsttour did score pretty high in terms of strangeness ( * ) ... Recorded extracts from our live interventions are part of the Raudio Graffiti: almost live! stream, and form the bulk of the four minutes short 40th Raudio Podcast, that is appropriately entitled "ookoi live @ Kunsttour 2008".
And while of course we were far more mobile than last year (when we had a wonderful, but fixed set-up in the Brandweerkazerne), also on foot and pulling a trolley our range of action remained limited. Though ookoi themselves could rely upon f P c M's unsurpassed mastery in hi-speed art-(peep)ing, and hence managed to work itself through quite a decent piece of the Kunsttour pie, we were far from able to taste by ourselves all of its 70 different parts... Without the expansive dynamics of our special reporter Alacart, and the supplementary audio reports contributed by Arlo Wijnands (who does the Maastricht Moet Je Horen website ** ), it would have been impossible indeed to properly audio-cover this Kunsttour in Raudio Graffiti.
ookoi started its little sub-tour on may 24th, the saturday morning after the opening, when - admittedly foremost in search of a bite and lots of coffee - we pulled our trolley across the threshold of the so-called Eiffel building, the heart of what remains of the former Sphinx factory complex, as monumental as it is abandoned. The Eiffel building is situated also on the Boschstraat, just across the road from the Timmerfabriek. It had been the subject of something of a row earlier on, when mere hours before the opening of this Kunsttour, functionaries from the Maastricht council came by, and shut down about half of the immense hall because they declared it to be un-safe ... Therefore, unless trespassing, part of the art there could be viewed only from a distance:
One of ookoi's original ideas for this Radio Raudio Kunsttour,
was to go around town all weekend long as organ grinders, with or without monkey,
but definitely with a genuine mechanical street organ,
playing a custom made ookoi organ book ( ***
) ...
It therefore was a pleasant surprise to come upon a small street organ first
thing saturday morning may 24th, when we entered the Eiffel building.
The organ is part of MoNUment, a work by dutch artist Natascha Waeyen. A couple of years ago, at the turn of the century and millennium, Natascha used a dot-code to list in order the first 2000 numbered years of our western ac (as opposed to bc) era, in a large b/w painting. She noticed that the list of dotted number-codes looked like a picture of an organ book, and therefore decided to have the list made into an actual organ book, to hear what it would sound like ... Natascha oddly enough from the very start did her utmost to convince us of the a-musicality of the re-sounding of her data-book. "There is nothing, like a, say ... melody ... to it," she told me, and I of course knew what she meant. But why even mention it? It was as if she apologized ... I couldn't help to retort that she should not be so harsh on her time-piece. "Would melody be what I want, then melody be'll what I hear ...," I told her. Pretty much any sound has melody, for melody is but the jump-wise change of pitch over time. Even more so in case of a street organ, which can but produce sounds that are tuned according to our traditional western scales ... Will not just about anything blown into its pipes come out melody? Or did Natascha mean that the result somehow was too non-repetitive? (I often find that people call something 'unmusical', because the sounds they are hearing lack easily discernible 'repetitions' ...)
But when f P c M had a go at cranking the organ wheel, he quickly proved her wrong. It sounded absolutely fabulous. By applying ad lib vari-speed- and reverse-play to Natascha's millennium book, he drew a wealth of amazing puffings and other sonic marvel from the little street organ ... "Hey, ho, let's go!" ... [ You will find several recorded extracts from the early saturday morning organ crankings included in Raudio Graffiti, as well as at the end of the 40th Raudio podcast ... ]
What else? The Radio Raudio Kunsttour mobile that saturday morning left the Eiffel building charged by coffee, rolls, sweets and the sounds of Natascha Waeyen's rocking street organ. It passed the Huis Met Het Handje, turned left and held for a while on the steps of of Jonas van de Vosse's studio. We then passed Lumière, and headed for Intro / In Situ in de Capucijnengang. There we interacted with Paul Devens' Pavilion installation. We sat down, and let it happen, while Paul here and there lend his cylindrical walls a hand. They are meant to be turning by themselves along a circular rail, but as Intro's floor is not completely waterproof, they did not always do so. Here's a uTube showing the installation ...
From Intro we went to Marres, where we dragged the Radio Raudio Kunsttour mobile through André van Bergen en Michiel Kluiters' thoughtful transformation of the in-side of the historical building that houses this Centrum voor Contemporaine Cultuur. It is part of "A l'extérieur. Rites de passages", an exploration, curated by José Teunissen and Eric de Kuyper, of the notion of flaneur (lounger, idler, flâneur ...) as it has come to us - mainly - through the corpus of 19th and early 20th century western literature. The installation includes a re-make of a passage earlier installed by Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol (City Oasis, 2002). It leads visitors from Marres' front door directly into its back garden, disconnecting the central corridor running through the building from the rest of the house.
"Doing nothing is no longer subversive - because it is no longer useless," Bik/Van der Pol observe in their program notes to City Oasis. Now that is a fascinating, though somewhat enigmatic, statement. The more I thought about it and the less that it seemed to make sense, the more it made me feel subversive ... Good enough reason for ookoi to, shortly after leaving Marres, park its trolley somewhat further on in the Capucijnenstraat to do nothing for a while. Nothing. Instead of persisting in our utter subversiveness we had a coffee in the large project space 't Brandweer. [ The "flaneur" installation remains at Marres until july 12th, 2008. Open wednesday through sunday, from 12h till 17h. ]
The pictures above - including the one of ookoi doing nothing
- were shot by Ab König on saturday evening, during the big Detour event
in Kaspar König's
Artspace Rondeel. The ArtSpace is (again) a former industrial
space (far less 'monumental' though than Landbouwbelang or the Eiffel building)
with a large front garden. It is crammed with curious vintage and 'found'
stuff, instruments, machinery, toys, tools, artworks and installations (finished
or in some stage of progress), which give it the appearance of a mad scientist's
laboratory. And, in a way, of course that is what it is ... or should become
:-) ... Viewers in the habit of frequenting european 'art squats'
will feel at home immediately. And probably will be surprised to learn that
actually it is not. Not a squat, I mean.
Though moving 'on the edge', the ArtSpace's all legal, and intends
to become a new center for alternative, independent culture, (wo)manned by artists from about everywhere.
Now would not that be fantastic?
Radio Raudio web-streamed the first part of the Rondeel Detour
event non-stop, on the evening of saturday may 24th, from 21 hours until just after
midnight. Our intrepid reporter Alacarte then took over, and continued
his on/off reporting from the Rondeel until far beyond sunrise the next
morning.
It was a huge party with a great many visitors, of persuasions as mixed
as the evening's program was eclectic. Before midnight it included musicians
from the Ensemble
88 performing work by the russian composers Maria Boulgakova and Sofia
Gubaidulina, as well as an ArtSpace-brewn duet for violoncello
and dancer Vasiliki Tsagari, which saw cello player Jos Kamp (more
or less) dancing on stage and - to arguably better effect - had Vasiliki
co-bowing the instrument ... There was an audiovisual shadowplay prepared
by Kate Donovan and Ryan Hardman, video projections by Berto Aussems and
René ter Horst, an electric toothbrush and circuit bent toys duet by Maja
Gehrig and Kaspar König, crooner Joost Maaskant doing a selection
of dutch populars, accompanied by Bart Rademakers on clavier, and
an electric trio consisting in, once again, Kaspar König, but now inter-acting
with Simon
Berz and Klaas Hübner (Switzerland).
A great many extracts from the evening's live webstream, as well as Timo Alacarte's Radio Raudio Kunsttour special reports, are to be heard as part of Raudio Graffiti.
Also in a very literal sense the Rondeel ArtSpace staff served a great
soup from their well-equipped kitchen, and they came up with delicious and
huge falafels ... On and off they rushed here and there to keep
the stock of beer from falling below mark.
Meanwhile Kaspar courted a couple of visiting council functionaries that
had suddenly popped in. Did they come around to check upon security issues?
The obligatory Nooduitgang ('emergency exit') signs that Kunsttour
director Bert Lemmens had brought along earlier that evening were lying
around on the floor next to a pile of cables and modified electronic toys
...
But it did not
seem to matter ...
The volume of in between performance chatter continued to go up, as did
the sound of installations and that of musicians installing; and
some seemed to have an awful lot of fun making an awful lot of noise with
an awful lot of celluloid from an awful lot of unspooled 16 mm film reels
...
One of the girl-artists (performing before helping out at the bar - or vice
versa) poured us a, well ... passable ... scotch in a plastic cup,
out of a bottle still filled to the rim ... Then someone ran his fingers
through the folds of the back of my green coat and told me that the moon
was almost full: here and there he'd heard weird howlings ...
At midnight it started to rain.
There must have been werewolves abound.
But nobody cared.
Read about the ookoi elsewhere:
ANNUAL, 1, december 2023 (Korm Plastics) - Green-tainted hyperbole, quailish quirks and summer-flies. The inscrutable genius of the ookoi.
eContact! 21.2, july 2023 - Towards an Unhearable Music. Conceptualism in the ookoi's art.
Gonzo #88, september/october 2008 - Zelfcomponerende Klankstukken
Read about the ookoi and Raudio and Stduio on the SoundBlog:
(2024, december 24) - The « ookoide » (Awesome Foursomes (xxii) - No. 131)
(2024, september 10) - Home is my Rome (Awesome Foursomes (xix, xxi) - No. 506, 507)
(2024, june 17) - Long live ookoi! (Leve ookoi!): a b.ookoipera / een tehoorspel
(2024, march 04+) - The « ot-o ki do ki » (Awesome Foursomes (xviii) - No. 624)
(2023, december 31) - d.ookoi writes b.ookoi (ii) - A Year in the Rear (2023)
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (xi) - No. 178
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (x) - No. 789
(2023, december 16+) - Awesome Foursomes (ix) - No. 329
(2023, august 20) - Three days of residency at Les Ateliers Claus, Brussels
(2022, april 25) - Awesome Foursomes (viii) - No. 664
(2022, march 31) - Awesome Foursomes (vii) - No. 138
(2022, february 20) - Awesome Foursomes (vi) - No. 419
(2021, november 01) - Awesome Foursomes (v) - No. 954
(2021, august 20) - Awesome Foursomes (iv) - No. 793
(2021, july 18) - Awesome Foursomes (iii) - No. 562
(2021, july 09) - Awesome Foursomes (ii)- No. 284
(2021, june 21) - Awesome Foursomes (i) - No. 019
(2021, may 31) - d.ookoi writes b.ookoi (i)
(2020, january 26) - STDUIO Arti: aLife @Hal-fIve
(2020, january 25) - STDUIO Arti: The LⒶst Weekend
(2019, march 03) - ookoi 2.0: the remake of a spect[r]al b[r]and
(2017, april 12) - 1024
(2015, march 07) - The men once in green are now writing a book!
(2014, may 09) - You are NOT Hier!
(2013, july 03) - How to keep devils away
(2013, may 06) - Next Numbr!
(2012, june 24) - Ninja Fruit Plus Instruments
(2012, may 06) - Y.3 = Yltra !
(2012, may 06) - Our final gig / Ons laatste optreden
(2010, may 23) - 'Raise the trumpet, sound the drum'
(2010, april 02) - [Second Life and WudyWudy]
(2010, january 05) - ookoi: onderood
(2009, november 17) - Soli Deo Gloria !
(2009, october 10) - Project Icarus OST
(2009, august 24) - ookoi ShakeNRoll
(2009, july 18) - Pure . Reactive . Music . Hack Day
(2009, april 07) - "Blood and Bottom" (Raudi0GaGa)
(2009, february 21) - Insular arithmetic (ookoi toont)
(2009, january 31) - A glimpse of Heesbeen
(2009, january 15) - Rien à voir
(2008, october 02) - The right to be slow
(2008, june 06) - Raudio Graffiti: almost live !
(2008, february 24) - The Great Washing
(2007, december 04) - I'm an island
(2007, november 20) - Live Beyond the Paradiso, Amsterdam
(2007, september 04) - leve ookoi! (3)
(2007, august 22) - leve ookoi! (2)
(2007, august 12) - leve ookoi! (1)
(2007, april 12) - Back to Berlin [Raudio 11/15]
(2007, march 24) - Vicky, Killers and Avatars
(2007, february 15) - Every presentation is a premiere
(2007, january 25) - 1024 Waarden, by ookoi
(2007, january 19) - Preparations for a Second Life
(2006, november 05) - Cellarlar Heroes
(2006, october 20) - Funky shit
(2006, august 14) - placard : la générale
(2006, july 07) - de-'tails of lite house keeping'
(2006, may 06) - jam karet?
(2006, april 04) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [3] [Raudio 07]
(2006, march 20) - raudio @cosman's
(2006, march 12) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [2] [Raudio 07]
(2006, march 03) - 100+ new (r)audio philes ... [1] [Raudio 07]
(2005, october 12) - Raudio #06 [Raudio 06]
(2005, september 25) - 0 OK, 0:1, life on ze road
(2005, july 31) - Outside - Inside Paradiso
(2005, june 18) - Sand-Y da-Y #5-7 [Raudio 05]
(2005, june 05) - Sand-Y :: da-Y #04 - da birds
(2005, may 26-24) - Sand-Y :: da-Y #03, #02, #01 - Crew cut ; "The truth is out here" ; ::
(2005, may 14) - 9 Beet Stretch [Raudio Special]
(2005, march 31) - Raudio #04 :: "GespRek 1982-2005" [Raudio 04]
(2005, february 10) - raudio #3 (drie/three) [Raudio 03]
(2004, december 08) - pure sound [Raudio 02]
(2004, november 24) - other, and good news! [Raudio 01]
(2004, october 10) - raudio launched
(2004, september 24) - made in ameland
(2004, june 09) - boyzz buzz # listen!global corpus
(2004, may 20-31) - >∞-îl_o_tré
Read some of the ookoi's papers in pdf:
(2014) - Localized Sounds, Sounding Locations.
Presented at the International Symposium "Locative Media and Sound Art", Kortrijk (be)
(2007) - ookoi - Uptime Publishing Demonstration. (With Jay Needham.)
ookoi - The works:
(2015—now) :: writing b.ookoi: pick a number!
(2017) Weekly, 10'24" :: ookoi dooki podcast
(2014) HIER - iPhone app, 4 track album of localized Future Popp
(2013) Y ¬ Y.1024 (HTML5 web app)
(2013) Wandelzand - iPhone app, soundwalk for the Dutch isle of Ameland
(2012) Palm Top Theatre V2
(2010) WudyWudy, machina movie, filmed in Second Life by Evo Szuyuan (trailer)
(2009) ookoi_@_E@rport, Amsterdam - channel 19 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2009) ShakeNRoll, Project Icarus OST - scenes for the RJDJ reactive music iPhone platform
(2009) iRingg®, iPhone ringtones
(2009) 2525 (video)
(2008) L'Ecoute - public space screen video
(2008) Jam Karet I & Jam Karet IV - pocket movies
(2007) Live beyond the Paradiso (USB-stick data-dump)
(2007) Leve ookoi! - channel 16 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2007) 1024 (DVD)
(2007) 1024 Waarden - flash animation
(2006) "Roam Stroam" - channel 12 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2006) Tijdrekken - flash animation
(2005) Sand-Y (Zandoog) - channel 7 of the RAUDIO IIIII streaming audio art iThing app
(2004) Muziektafel-Tafelmuziek (CD)
...
(1980) Signs and Symptoms
...
SoundBlog entries about the yearly Kunsttour in Maastricht, the Netherlands:
(june 06, 2013) - A Carcassonne Yodel in Blue [Kunsttour 2013]
(july 03, 2011) - Life is a Color Wire 3 - table version [KT2011]
(june 17, 2010) - Sunny soundy days [KT2010, iii]
(june 10, 2010) - A kitchen table and a game of cards [KT2010, ii]
(may 30, 2010) - Auto*noom en un*titled [KT2010, i]
(june 13, 2009) - More Best Before [KT2009, v]
(june 01, 2009) - Playing The Popular Classics [KT2009, iv]
(may 30, 2009) - "Also high bridges over the river" [KT2009, iii]
(may 28, 2009) - A sound is a sound that sounds [KT2009, ii]
(may 23, 2009) - It feels like summer in the city [KT2009, i]
(june 06, 2008) - Raudio Graffiti: almost live ! [KT2008]
(september 04, 2007) - "leve ookoi!" - iii. ... under scare vogel crow vlucht score down ... [KT2007, iii]
(august 22, 2007) - "leve ookoi!" - ii. OK. Let's Dance... [KT2007, ii]
(august 12, 2007) - "leve ookoi!" - i. Certified Reconditioned [KT2007, i]
(june 04, 2006) - Sonofakunsttoer [KT2006]
Read more about Artspace Rondeel Maastricht (ARM) on the SoundBlog:
(june 28, 2011) - the end of an arm, the end of an era
(may 30, 2010) - Auto*noom
en un*titled
(february 24, 2010) - "Zonder
Vreesch, want immer Dapper, gaan wij des Zondags naar den Kapper..."
(november 11, 2009) - Waiting
in the Wings, often
(july 09, 2009)- Cover
thyself
(june 01, 2009) - Playing
The Popular Classics
(april 01, 2009) - A
Block with a Name
(june 06, 2008) - Raudio
Graffiti: almost live !
notes __ ::
(*) In particle collision experiments certain of the
manifold of subatomic particles observed, like kaons (K-mesons),
always appear to be created as a duo, in pairs. Strangeness
is a postulated quality preserved during such a duo's creation, but not
in its decay ... [ ^ ]
(**) In the Raudio
Graffiti stream you will find extracts of interviews conducted by Arlo
at Marres, the Huis
Met Het Handje, the Jan
van Eyck Academy, and with people who attended a screening of Martijn
Hendriks's Give Us Today Our Daily Terror, which is a frame-by-frame
copy of Alfred
Hitchcock's The Birds from which all the birds have been removed
(Which reminded me of Tammuz
Binshtock's kadooregel - a one minute extract of a football
match from which Tammuz, frame by frame, removed the ball - that I knew
from the eenminuten dvd (one minute dvd) edited by the Sandberg
Institute in 2002.) The full versions of Arlo Wijnands' interviews are
available at the Maastricht
Moet Je Horen web site. [ ^ ]
(***) The ookoi organ grinders and the ookoi
street organ book remain high on our upcoming and to do
lists, so stay tuned ... As in most other cases btw,
there is nothing much original in the use of a street organ per se.
I recall a whole list of - all of them dutch - artists that have been using
street organs in more or less unconventional (musical) ways over the past
forty, fifty years, from Willem Breuker to Rob Goorhuis and Piet Kee ...
Apart from the obvious formal challenge, part of ookoi's interest comes
from the fact that organ grinding actually - still! - runs in f
P c M's family ... Watching him handle the machine in the Eiffel building,
there could be little doubt about this ... [
^ ]
tags: ookoi, kunsttour, Maastricht, raudio, strangeness, street organ, subversive
# .263.
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