Series Invisible – Collection 2 | Christoph Korn & Lasse-Marc Riek
Gruen 099 | BOOK > [order]
Collection 2
The book contains a detailed list of recordings and a detailed list of date and location of the erasure of these recodings!
The sound of selected locations or specific sound phenomena have been recorded using a digital audio recording device. Later on these recordings were deleted. This process of finding a location, recording and deleting is then captured textually. The result is an audio-event noted and transformed into script. The choice of the locations is purely subjective and does not follow any systematic interest.
( Korn / Riek )
Introduction by Georg Imdahl
In photography, Roland Barthes writes, »it cannot be denied that the thing existed«. In Austerlitz, W.G. Sebald has his protagonist report that something dissolves exactly where he »makes the effort to remember« − »the darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind, how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself, in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power of memory is never heard, never described or passed on«.
The logs of recording and deletion of »series invisible« testify with very little data – location, recording, deletion, duration – that something happened. They are sounds that were recorded and deleted, not images. And yet does the invisible in the series title come full circle toward photography ? Concretely, the notes remind us of locations, persons, events, not least of the self-emptying of the world, of life annihilated, oblivion, which, partially and paradigmatically, is snatched from itself, of the process of recording and deleting, of memory itself.
© 2013 Christoph Korn / Lasse-Marc Riek & RADIX
All rights reserved. Reprints, including excerpts, are permitted only with the express permission of the publisher.
Phonurgia Nova Award, distinction, in the category Intermedia, Paris 2008.
„Series Invisible“ is an ongoing project. Collection 3 is planned to be released in autumn 2015.
Graphic Design: U9 visuelle Allianz
Translation: Bruce Carnevale
Produced by Gruenrekorder, RADIX and Christoph Korn / Lasse-Marc Riek
Published by RADIX and Gruenrekorder
Thanks to the kind assistance of U9 visuelle Allianz
RADIX Kunstbuch / imprint bei onomato Verlag KG
ISBN 978-3-942864-24-4
50 Tracks (0′00″) / Book (500 copies)
Sound Art Series by Gruenrekorder
Germany / 2013 / Gruen 099 / LC 09488
IDWAL FISHER – an antimacassar for the hearing
The black square you see above is in fact a small booklet containing a list of locations where Lasse-Marc Riek and Christoph Korn captured a series of 50 field recordings. Dates, times, location and notes such as ‘recorded from a row of bushes’ are dutifully reproduced. More importantly they also note the date and time these recordings were deleted. For these recordings now exist only as words on pages and nothing else. The Roland Barthes quote ‘it cannot be denied that the thing existed’ as reproduced courtesy of Georg Imdahl’s introduction says it all.
Thankfully for the rest of us, and my aching brain, the remaining releases haven’t been deleted. […]
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Ian Holloway | Quiet World & Wonderful Wooden Reasons
Booklet
Location Swansea (UK). Typed on an out of date PC on a sideboard masquerading as a desk. Written 02.05.14, 1.23 PM Deleted 02.05.14 6.10 PM Duration 193 words
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Aurelio Cianciotta | Neural
In almost twenty years of reviewing audio art and experimental music for Neural I have run into several extremely ‘tough’ projects that cross a broad range of styles, formats and media. In the newsroom was the prevailing belief that we were ready for anything. It seems we were not – in fact, we never imagined we could encounter an album such as this – one that cannot but produce a wry grin in response. The project consists of only descriptions of the locations and times of the recordings captured, their duration and information regarding their subsequent deletion. Over time we have come across many very odd projects (some perhaps more terrifying and radical than this one). What remains here is an elegant booklet, proof of the procedure of recording certain spatio-temporal locations and the destruction of audio material ultimately transmuted into script. The authors point out that the choice of locations was purely personal and did not follow any systematic interests. In light of this, the stressing of the correct name of Franz Kafka as opposed to Frank Kafka on the paper of rectification, seems to us a bit suspicious and cryptic, seemingly referring to some extreme and paradoxical situation. In the introduction notes Georg Imdahl underlines that “something has happened” and concretely the “logs” of Series Invisible remind us of the places, people, events, “not last the self-emptying of the world and of the defeated life”: a kind of oblivion that is in some part detached from existence.
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Guillaume Belhomme | Le son du grisli
A leur collection de field recordings inaudibles mais quand même retranscrits sur papiers (date d’enregistrement et localisation, date d’effacement et localisation, enfin, durée de la chose effacée), Christoph Korn et Lasse-Marc Riek ajoutent aujourd’hui un second tome : Series Invisible Collection 2.
Comme hier – le premier volume peut être consulté ici –, un petit livre noir atteste la brève existence d’une cinquantaine de captations interdites de conservation : un CD, qui aurait pu être vierge, aurait-il donné la preuve qu’il n’y avait désormais là – c’est-à-dire près de la mer à Cascais ou à la Baie des Trépassés, dans un appartement privé de Düsseldorf ou sur la tombe de Kafka à Prague… – plus rien à entendre, même pas la preuve de ce rien-là ?
Alors, les traces de ces sons perdus sont d’encre, et si Barthes et Sebald servent au duo à expliquer son geste, on osera, pour excuser leurs vains transports, le Beckett de Cap au pire : « A force de long vouloir / Tout vouloir envolé ».
link – pictures
Tina Manske | Musikmag
Postmoderne Field Recordings
Und zum Schluss noch eine ganz besonders schöne Idee: in der „Series Invisible“ haben sich Christoph Korn und Lasse-Marc Riek zum zweiten Mal den Spaß gemacht, eigene Feldaufnahmen schriftlich zu kartografieren, um sie danach zu löschen und auch das Löschdatum mit in den Karteikarteneintrag hineinzuschreiben. Man liest in diesem schön schwarz gehaltenen Booklet also Dinge wie: „Location: Train Station, Record: 03.09.12, 2:15 PM, Bad Kleinen (D), Delete 03.09.12, 8:56 PM, Duration: 4’40”“ (die politische Konnotation des Ortes ist beabsichtigt).
Und es funktioniert tatsächlich, man beginnt als Nichthörer, sich die Szenerie selbst im Kopf und im Gehörgang auszumalen, ebenso wie Sounds der British Library in London kurz vor Mittag oder am Grab von Franz Kafka in Prag. Postmoderner geht’s wohl nimmer.
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Brian Olewnick | Just outside
Track 31 – Location- Grave of Franz Kafka; Record- 28.03.11, 3.54 PM, New Jewish Cemetery, Prague (CZ) Delete- 01.04.11, 12.21 PM, Duration- 2’15“
One of fifty entries in this collection, made up of similarly formatted descriptions of site recordings realized by Korn and Riek from 2005 to 2012, subsequently erased. The CD-sized book devotes two pages to the procedure and some of the ideas behind it (notes by Georg Imdahl), then lists each recording, in blue text, one per page, in chronological order. The reader (the would-be listener) forms a mental image, visual certainly, perhaps aural, even olfactory of the place and time and imagines what the pair experienced. This is the second such collection, the first, published in 2007, follows the same structure, though with more notes.
It’s a bit akin to Manfred Werder’s works, I think, of which I’ve questioned the need to actually record them rather than „doing it yourself“ and experiencing them directly. Here again, you’re at a remove from the action, simply thinking about what Korn and Riek heard and felt on these occasions and then chose to hide. There’s something magical about that. I dont suppose you’d want everyone doing it, but I’m very happy someone has. I like it a lot.
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Frans de Waard | VITAL WEEKLY
The other release by Gruenrekorder is an odd ball. It’s a small booklet, roughly CD sized and it contains a list of recordings made by Christoph Korn and Gruenrekorder boss Lasse-Marc Riek and a list when these recordings were erased. Yes, exactly, I was thinking the same thing. „The sound of selected locations or specific sound phenomena have been recorded using a digital audio recording device. Later on these recordings were deleted. This process of finding a location, recording and deleting is then captured textually. The result is an audio-event noted and transformed into script. The choice of the locations is purely subjective and does not follow any systematic interest.“ Apparently this is number two in a series, collection 3 „is planned to be released in autumn 2015“. Yes, I failed to see the relevance here too.
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Series Invisible | Christoph Korn & Lasse-Marc Riek
@ Curt Cuisine | skug – Journal für Musik
Hail to the Sound!
Eine kurze Würdigung des deutschen Gruenrekorder-Labels.