EXPERIMENTS & CONVERSATION

Audio Recording (Tape 12)
May 1994

In this cassette, we again explored the possibilities of transforming language in a continuation of the processes employed with the détournement strategies of the Miracle Filter recordings. This is evident in the first segment of the tape, which features the voices of Barry, Horsburgh, Samkelo Matoti and Rhett Martyn, and in the final portion, which contains a ‘one sided conversation’ piece that I produced.
Martyn and Matoti were both sculpture students at the Technikon, who frequently visited the FLAT. Here, both joined Barry and Horsburgh in reading ‘found texts’ with random changes in accent and language. Barry, for example, would adopt at times a very heavy Afrikaans accent and would even break into Afrikaans occasionally. Horsburgh sometimes simulated the accent of a ‘B-movie’ Nazi German, while Matoti spoke in both English and Xhosa.
Much of the conversation is disjointed, as the languages and accents shift constantly, though Martyn appears in one segment to be ‘dueling’ with Horsburgh, to a noisy backdrop of music by Rage Against The Machine.
It was significant, that the language was ultimately indecipherable. At some point, we began to manipulate the tape speed and when slowed down, our words, particularly Matoti’s spoken Xhosa (as it was less familiar to us) became like ‘pure sound’; they moved in and out of signification to become abstract. Indeed the formal experimentation did not stop here. The work that followed marked the introduction and manipulation of ‘found sounds’ hence a kind of musique concréte was employed.

The term musique concréte is mentioned by Michael Chanan in Repeated Takes, a book on the history of recording and its effects on music. Here he speaks about the new genre of audio art calling it, “sonic montage, something like a cross between experimental radio and musique concréte”.[1] He points out that, “musique concréte came of age with the introduction of the tape recorder, which allowed precise control over…techniques,” [2] and defines musique concréte through a discussion of the work of Pierre Schaeffer:

Pierre Schaeffer, a sound radio technician from Paris began experiments with ‘scratching’ records during the war and by 1948 had formulated a method of composition which freed the sonic material from association with its origins. Taking sounds from different sources, from pianos to railway trains, he produced a series of short pieces by playing them at different speeds, forwards or in reverse. Isolating fragments and superimposing them. This was music concréte, concrete music as opposed to music made by putting notes on paper…[3]

On the FLAT tapes, a formal experimentation with the use of recordings not connected to language, followed our multi-voiced conversation segments, and led to the creation of what might even be considered to be ‘music’. Though it was, of course, created from the recording of what would not be ‘conventional instruments’. Examples included the manipulation of electronic feed‑back, the placement of a microphone into a fan, the slowing of a tape to half speed, and the recording of an ordinary clock‑alarm. The idea was to ‘compose’ by creating sounds through a variety of means.
Indeed the composer, John Cage had experimented with ‘found sounds’ and created works with non-musical instruments, as well as the element of chance. In his book Experimental Music, Cage and Beyond, Michael Nyman writes about Cage’s first tape piece, Williams Mix, made in 1952:

[it] cut through the concrete/electronic distinction - a distinction which hinged on sound origins and technical methods - by building up a vast library of sounds and using chance techniques to dictate how the tape should be cut, spliced together and combined. He divided the available sounds into six categories: city sounds, country sounds, electronic sounds, manually produced sounds, ‘including the literature of the winds’, wind-produced sounds ‘including songs’ and small sounds ‘requiring amplification to be heard by others’. The comprehensiveness of the sound sources of Williams Mix and the potential presence of sounds in a performance of 4’33’’ make these pieces, if viewed symbolically, as demonstrations of the availability of all sounds to the composer of the future.[4]

Nyman also writes about the use of “ordinary sounds from the world” through a description of Schaeffer’s work:

In the late 40s, Pierre Schaeffer was beginning to listen to common sounds - trains, bells, humming tops - and to experiment with these sounds with a curiosity and pragmatism not surprising in an ex-sound effects man. He recorded sounds on disc loops (tape not being available to him at that time) cut off the attack and decay of sounds, ran things backwards and at different speeds.[5]

Chanan, again in Repeated Takes, elaborates on earlier compositions of these and other composers working with manipulated recorded sound:

In the 1930s composers as diverse as Milhaud, Hindesmith, Varese and Cage had all experimented with discs played on variable speed turntables to create striking, though limited, transformations of sound. [In] Imaginary Landscapes (1939 and 52), Cage used combinations of turn-tables playing frequency test records and contact microphones made from electric guitar pickups. The most notorious was No.4 for twelve radios.[6]

The lines between what defines an ‘avant-garde’ musician, a sound artist or an audio artist become blurred. Chanan defines the term of ‘audio artist’ in this way:

‘Audio artist’ is a term that signifies a new movement in phonographic culture, a new kind of artistic endeavour, belonging to the 1980s alongside the rise of performance art and installation art: in fact it is one of the links between the two, since audio technology allows sound signals to be incorporated into both.[7]

He talks about what he calls the use of ‘raw sound’ in the production of ‘sound art’ and comments on Cage’s contribution in defining it as ‘avant-garde music’:

Raw sound too, which interests the audio artist for a variety of reasons, is also musically alien. It seems inescapable that if non-musical sounds were to acquire the potential of becoming artistic symbols, then by the same count they became music - unless music were to change. Kahn considers audio art, though composed, as something different from music, but it needed the work of composers like John Cage, who did things with noise, to challenge the ingrained habits of musical hearing and open up our ears. In this the relationship with noise is critical.[8]

The sound work on this FLAT tape came out of an experimental urge to first manipulate speaking voices to create pure sound unhinged from meaning, and led to the recording of various sources to make ‘music’. This work, which began with my making moaning sounds and putting the microphone into the fan could be seen as the appropriation of ‘noise’ and an investigation into a kind of ‘audio art’. The origins of a ‘new attitude’ towards noise could be traced back to the Italian Futurists and Russolo’s noise instruments according to Chanan, but as Nymans claims, it is Cage who opened up the “availability of all sounds to the composer of the future”.

The final section of the tape was an idea to record a conversation where only one side is heard. I was initially inspired by a Patti Smith album in which she appears to be talking to her father or boyfriend, but at no point in the conversation does he speak. This struck me as being very psychologically loaded. In this monologue, hypothetically set in a club or at the FLAT, I created a nervous conversation with someone of the opposite sex, who did not exist.
In this way, I sought to capture a sense of alienation through male sexual insecurity. The lack of a female voice on the tape not only recorded the lack of a female sexual presence, but seemed to reference masturbation through the notion of ‘talking to oneself’. This notion of the alienated voice was also explored through the use of the ‘exit line’.
The ‘exit line’ was used as a means to break with a conversation and referred to the awkward means by which one might sever social communication. Such phrases as, “Excuse me, I just have to quickly go to the toilet,” abruptly breaks a tie with whom one is speaking. In the case of this ‘conversation with myself’, there is an irony in the fact that there is none there. I am in a sense refusing to talk to myself.

Hi, how’re you? How’ya doing? I’m fine thanks...and yourself? Hmph...hmph...Whatcha gonna do later? Ya, I don’t know. I haven’t...I haven’t really thought about it or anything...but...I might, I might...ya...l might go...l supp...ya...OK [nervous laughter]...um...I think...I think I’m gonna go get another drink. Do you want anything? OK, I.ll see you later maybe. OK...bye...[9]

 

SHAFT/FLAT
Audio Recording (Tape 13)
May 1994

To create the Shaft/FLAT sound work, Horsburgh used previously recorded works from earlier FLAT tapes and fused these with ‘found’ commercial Funk music, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, as well as Kenyan and Tanzanian Witchcraft Music. Using very direct, low tech methods, he constructed this ‘fusion’ by playing the FLAT tapes and the music simultaneously on a double tape deck and then recording this live in the room with a second deck. For example, Horsburgh, manipulated the ‘Funky Music’ tape by starting and stopping it while also playing excerpts from the Miracle Filter – Heaven (Tape 11) and The First Time (Tape 1) tapes, recorded previously. Significant is the fact that the entire tape is ‘live’ and yet all the sound heard is previously recorded. In the background, on the tape, one can hear Barry and myself, and so it would be difficult to determine whether we were in fact actually present for the recording, or just ‘present’ through our recorded voices.

Funky Music:                 If you need a one day lover…
                                       Just call 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 day lover.
                                       I'm a love machine in town, the best you can get…
                                       fifty miles around. [Super Max]
Horsburgh:                     A revolutionary who preachers about love...It’s got a damn nice ring to it! We are about people talking.

Horsburgh:                      We should write poetry, Gabriel, you and me.
                                        We can be poets!
                                        Gabriel, you’ve done what!?
                                        What are cut‑ups, Gabriel?
                                        I’m, I’m thinking about, like about Shakespeare.
                                        You know? Like bad verse.
                                        You’re talking about cut‑ups?
                                        God, you’re in anti‑art already, Gabriel ?
                                        Gabriel should be running this show.[10]

BREAD & PLIERS
Audio Recording (Tape 14)
May 1994

Bread and Pliers was a recording made with Nkosinathi Gumede, Barry and myself. Gumede, who had been living and working in the studio of Andries Botha, recorded this as a kind of ‘audio-letter’ to Botha, who was in America at the time. In this correspondence, Gumede describes amoung other news, an incident which led to the title, Bread and Pliers.
He had sold one of his sculptures, a constructed truck, with a pair of Botha’s pliers and a loaf of bread accidentally left inside. Our plan was to making a short 3 minute tape and mail it overseas to Botha. In the tape, Nkosinathi expressed his doubt as to whether Botha would return and relayed the details of an unfortunate situation in which he was mistakenly accused of stealing from a vending machine on campus.

EXPERIMENTS
Audio Recording (Tape 15)
May 1994

At this time I was experimenting with placing a microphone inside a Spanish guitar and amplifying bad playing and noises. This recorded material would later be overlapped onto Zulu for Medics thus making a highly clear and audible language tape almost inaudible. It was in part an experiment without any ‘thematic intention’ and in part a humorous work equating the difficulty of learning a new language with that of learning to play the guitar. The wrenching sound of my unskilled guitar playing gave the tape an uncomfortable mood.
BIENNALE PROPOSAL
Audio Recording (Tape 16, Side B)
May 1994

On side B of the this tape are experiments with feedback and the first version of I Knew These People, a soliloquy I sampled from the Wender’s film Paris Texas. The film deals with a man's obsessive relationship with his wife, and here I listened to the original soundtrack on earphones and then recorded myself reciting the text out aloud. This along with Zulu for Medics was my first individual audio work and was exhibited on that year’s Volkskas Atelier.
Unlike my audio performance for the Internotional with Elmin, made at the same time, in both these pieces I utilized the actual sound equipment as a found‑object in the final presentation in the gallery. I installed the piece by hanging a small cassette recorder from the ceiling which played the ten minute recording.
The idea of presenting the hi‑fi as a found‑object appealed to me, because it was a continuation of my exploration of the notion of displaying the ‘consumer icons’ of middle class male youth. The year before I had begun to make display case sculptures with such personal items as my Hardy Boys books, Doc Martens and a logo T-shirt. The Hardy Boys (1993) and Shirt and Boots (1993) were works that came out of this interest, as well as in Songs for Nella where the speakers became a part of the ‘sound installation’.

At the end of the tape is a conversation between Barry and myself where we discuss ideas for a funding proposal for the 1st Johannesburg Biennale fringe. The fringe was to be a group of exhibitions/projects that were to happen in Johannesburg at the time of the Biennale, but not take place in the ‘official’ venues. Our plan was to propose to the Biennale committee that they fund our FLAT activities up in Johannesburg to coincide with the Biennale, and that we would run it virtually as we had in Durban.
Inadequate time prevented the proposal from ever being submitted. However, this recording captured a slice of the dialogue in which we were engaged. At that time, Barry was also working on another fringe proposal for what would become Emerging from the Kingdom, co-curated with Terry‑Anne Stevenson. Which was realised at the Biennale.

Allen:               It is about decolonizing as opposed to ‘doing something about’ decolonizing, like trying to make an artwork about decolonization.
Barry:              It’s more about creating a space, a decolonized space, than about presenting work that is preoccupied with decolonization. I'm sure that they have unwritten rules. In a way our only saving grace or redeeming factor is that we have applied and we’ve got a gallery and that is that. It’s not a national gallery, it’s an alternative gallery. We are dealing with contemporary issues. We are dealing definitely with those issues. We aren’t dealing with money. Non‑profit. In terms of that, there should be no question. We are basically marginalized. We are dealing in a marginalized area and in terms of that it would be odd if we were snubbed totally. It would be a contradiction in a way. Fuck, if they getting 50 000 international curators and all the national galleries and shit. There’s this tiny, little fart‑arse gallery which is doing relatively dynamic stuff and is managing to survive without making any profit and without pilfering the pockets of people who are producing profound pieces of…
Allen:               …potatoes!

Barry:            …Basically we will be looking for accommodation and a dynamic space for interaction where people do show work and we do whatever from installations to anything.
Allen:               You know another thing that we must consider, is the fact that it is going to be living, it is going to be happening all the time. The Biennale itself is probably only going to happen in the first week and then after that it’s going to die down. It’s just going to be a continuous show for two months and we are going to be living there for that whole time, we are going to be active, so people… The art is actually going to be continuous. We are going to be always active; the other people’s exhibitions are going to be static.
Barry:              Well we will sleep sometimes.
Allen:               At the end of the Biennale when people come to take their work down, we are still going to be having exhibitions.
Barry:              Ja, that’s nice.
Allen:               Like a living art work.[11]

CONVERSATION

Audio Recording (Tape 16, Side A)
May 1994

On side A of this tape is a scripted conversation that I recorded between Elmin [Engelbrecht], a well-known fashion-designer, and myself; which was to be used in our performance Conversation at the Internotional (described below in the Internotional section). This recording also provided raw material for many future audio experiments including Especially the Fact that I Don't Have a Car, Conversation 2, and my audio performance at the FLAT, Songs for Nella.
In this recording, we were trying to self‑consciously manufacture a typical dead‑pan, banal conversation between a Durban man and woman. We were in a sense critiquing the banality or lack of substance in general conversation that we felt was epidemic amoung our peers. This critique included ourselves. We wanted to confront what we saw as a crisis in our generation and to address the non-confrontational, politically-detached intellectual laziness of white middle class youth in Durban. But we sought not only to address a broad critique of what we saw as a kind of moral ambiguity in our generation, but also reveal the banality in conversations between men and women, over sexual boundaries. We wanted to capture the nervousness of both and/or the psycho‑sexual complexities in male and female conversation.
We chose to ‘set’ our scripted exchange at a gallery opening or club, and to recreate a situation where two people, meet, and partake in a conversation that is formal and unimaginative. Hoping to expose the ‘ritual’ aspect of exchanges where all the questions and answers are predictable and disallow any substantive connection, we wanted to expose conversations of this kind as being not just lazy, but disingenuous. Not only did this address our concerns with the lack of honesty in communication between men and women, but the disturbing implications of a communication so disconnected from the political realities around us.
Elmin also addressed the notion of ‘rupture’. She talks about how she deals with people who ask her how she is and are not really expecting an answer. If instead of saying: “Ja, I’m fine,” she says “No, I’m not well…” When this causes a ‘splice’ or rupture in the banal flow of general conversation, she observes that it often leads to the quick insertion of the oldest small talk convention - the weather. It was fitting that our critique of communication would be staged at the First Internotional Theater of Communication, which followed in May 1994.

EXCERPTS from CONVERSATION.
Below are two takes of artificial conversation which Elmin & I fabricated for the Internotional. Take 2 was used at the Internotional while Take 1 was used in later sound works of mine.

Take 1
Allen: Hi, how are you?
Elmin: Hello, how’re you?
Allen: I'm OK and yourself?
Elmin: Ja, ja I'm alive.
Allen: Well, what'ya doing?
Elmin:   I’m talking to you over a microphone…
Allen: No, man, don't be silly.
[Laughter]
Elmin: Joke, joke.
Allen: So, so how ya doing?
Elmin: I’m well, ja.
Allen: Well that's great
Elmin: And you?
Allen: I’m OK… I’m just er… hanging around, just doing my own thing
Elmin: Ja, me to
Allen: So have you done anything interesting lately?
Elmin: Ja, ja I actually have
Allen: Like what?
Elmin: Ar… just like a lot of things.

Take 2

Allen: Hi, how are you?
Elmin: Hello, I’m very well and you?
Allen: I'm OK and yourself
Elmin: Groovy, groovy.
Allen: What’ya doing?
Elmin: Oh, Just hanging around
Allen: Ja, me to. Nice paintings these aren’t they?
Elmin: Ja, well I can only see one.
Allen: I hate coming to these exhibitions… They’re really terrible [false laughter]
Elmin: I don’t know it’s the first time I've been to one like this.
Allen: Is it? Ja, so… um…
Elmin: But I’m not there yet.
Allen: Is it. What do you mean?
Elmin: I don’t know, I’m still going to the exhibition, I think. Are you there already?
Allen: Um… I don’t know, I'm not really sure.
Elmin: It feels as though we’ve had this conversation before
Allen: Ja I know what you mean I think. We probably have I guess.
Elmin: I think we did. But how are you?
Allen: I’m OK
Elmin: Have you been up to a lot of good?
Allen: Um well, I’ve been doing work mainly I haven’t done any artwork for ages. I’ve only been doing like making money and shit like that. I guess um… um… So what’ya doing later?
Elmin: I thought I might go to the Rift.
Allen: Oh ja, I haven’t been there in ages
Elmin: Ja, neither have I.
Allen: Is it nice? [Laughter] No, I know what it’s like I’m talking shit I guess
Elmin: No well I think it changes, you know. Sometimes it’s really nice at the Rift and sometimes it’s really kuck. Normally when its really bad I don’t go there for quite a long time. Then I go there to see what its like.
Allen: Ja, for sure
Elmin: The last time I’ve been there was actually very nice
Allen: I actually wouldn’t mind going there tonight, seriously.
Elmin: Really?
Allen: Ja
Elmin: It’s actually quite a good idea. Should we go?
Allen: Maybe
Elmin: See are you in the mood now? Cause earlier you didn’t really feel like going
Allen: Ja, I don't know um… I’m in the mood, I'm mean, I'm just in the mood to just have a good time, I guess.
Elmin: I guess you’re on your 2nd glass of wine, that’s why.
Allen: Second? [Laughter]

After we had attempted a number of our ‘self-conscious’ takes, we did manage to get into some substantive conversation. Indeed, although unintentionally, some of these words would later be used in other sound projects for example ESPECIALLY THE FACT THAT I DON’T HAVE A CAR.

Allen: OK. Well now that the conversation has ended, should we talk about things that we wouldn’t normally talk about on tape?
Elmin: OK. It could be dangerous though.
Allen: What do you want to talk about?
Elmin: I don't know
Allen: Here endith the recording. What do you want to talk about? This will be totally edited.
Elmin: It's quite nice because it’s like it’s a bit of a risk. It sounds good and then you leave it on. So it’s a risk to me because you're doing the editing.

Elmin: My childhood dream has always been to fly.
Allen: Really?
Elmin: Ja, my body flying and not my mind flying or being in… in something that makes me fly. You know… just physically being able to fly without any help. That’s always been my childhood dream. And sometimes when I feel… feel really trapped, I often get this… this… I don't even know how to describe this feeling I get inside of my stomach. There’s someone scratching from inside me. And I get really frustrated, and I feel as though I am a wild animal trapped and all I want to do then is just to fly. Just want to fly. And sometimes I get so bad that I want to escape from my body and I just start scratching my body trying to break through it. And eventually it just exhausts me so much that I… that I just… just become numb and fall asleep.
Allen: That’s fine.
Elmin: I would still like to know what to do in situations like… that I… I’m still not able to… I'm still not able to actually know what to do with myself in situations like that. Let alone other people. They… they know less than I do what to do with me. Do you sometimes feel like that?
Allen: I feel… I feel… Often like I’ve gotta be on my own, you know. And I’ve created this kind of studio for myself which is… it’s more like a room. It is a room… OK… where I can just go. I have the only key to it. But… um… it's a room where I keep some sort of private stuff. Not really but stuff where I can go to and be on my own and private and kind of safe you know… um… as opposed to this place which is totally always, kind of… um… moved in upon. Its kind of like this place is always open.
Elmin: It’s always a gallery?
Allen: Ja, its always kind of vibrant. It’s always penetrated, you know. This place is permanently penetrated like permanently fucked. I suppose I can use that as a metaphor. But, not really, it just a place.
Elmin: I know what you mean. Ja, I do… You see I understand completely what you are saying and I used to be like that when I was a little girl I had this special place where I had this… um… this plant growing in our garden. I guess it’s not a plant, its more like a eh… don’t know what you call it in English
Allen: Say it in Afrikaans.
Elmin: Struik [shrub] It’s… It’s like… um a small little tree, you know, and it grows really dense and people use it for um… to put around there homes. Anyway but this place it was really dense and very green and made the most amazing tunnels inside. And it had these beautiful yellow flowers growing on it and if you crawl inside of it it’s like crawling into a new world. And no one knew you could actually crawl underneath this um… this plant or tree or hedge or whatever. So I could crawl in there and no one would know I was there. I was all by myself. It was like my secret place and think that’s, that’s more or less like the place you are… It’s where I can be alone and could be myself. But now… now I'm really lucky. I can actually be by myself while I'm here, while I'm now in the room with you, while I’m in the room with a lot of people. I can be totally on my own and l’ve actually perfected it where I can even make them believe that I'm with them but I'm not. Where I’m in my own world by myself in my little space and they actually not even aware of it. I think it took me 22 years to perfect that. It works really well for me.
Allen: Ja
Elmin: So whenever I need it, I can escape into it. I never even physically have to move or change… change venue. Just change the state of mind and soul. It’s really convenient. Especially the fact that I don’t have a car.

This fragment of conversation was used on CONVERSATION II, where I edited out my voice to make as if Elmin was talking to herself. [On FLAT CD 1]

Elmin: Ja, got three brothers. My brothers are great. It was so strange when I was a little girl I always thought you had to choose to have a favourite brother. But my favorite brother’s my oldest brother cause he always read me storys.
Allen: Why was he your favourite brother?
Elmin: Cause he read me storys. I always took out children’s books and then he would read them to me. But I always thought it’s because he’s being nice to read it to me but actually he… actually liked the storys. He enjoyed reading them for himself.
[Laughter]
Allen: Which was… Which was the brother that had… that had the motor-bike accident?
Elmin: That’s my youngest brother. Anyway so my oldest brother was my favouritest brother and I thought he is the most intelligent person in the world and there’s nothing that he doesn’t know and he can answer anything. Whenever I read a book and I didn’t understand a word, I would go and ask him and he would always know. He would always know what… what the answer is. What it means. And I, I don't know, I guess he was like my hero. But then one day… one day I wanted him to read a story to me and I think he was tired. He was in Angola [Border War] at that time in the army and he came home for the weekend and he hadn’t slept for two days. So he was home and I
Allen: How old were you?
Elmin: I was very young I think about five or six years old. And I wanted him to read a story to me… and he was so irritable with me and I kept on asking him and I guess I was being irritating. And then he slapt me. And from that day on he was not my favourite brother anymore.