Radio broadcast: Living Room – Rehearsals Towards Placemaking, episode 1
de Appel’s COOP Study Group at the Dutch Art Institute, Living Room: Rehearsals towards Place-making, explores collectively the question of communal space and its potential in resistance. The outcomes of their collective study is airs as podcasts on Radio Alhara. The first episode of this year's Study Group airs on Friday 28 March at noon (CET).
The first episode, “Doormat Echoes,” of the new study year of the Living Room: Rehearsals Towards Placemaking radio series departs from the question of media resonance via the literary technique of “in medias res”—beginning in the middle of things—and extends that concept to include resonance as a starting point. An object resonates according to its natural frequency, but that resonation can only take place when, and if, it’s energetically enacted. We are, therefore, surrounded by dormant echoes waiting to be awakened. It’s time to start listening—and playing.
Together with artist and researcher Emiddio Vasquez, the study group explored possibilities and places through various field-recording techniques—listening to the hurried whispers of the waves and the abstracted electromagnetic synths emanating from electrically charged objects in and around Nida Art Colony, an art and residency space located at the Curonian Spit in Lithuania.
The study group writes: “After reviewing and reflecting on the material, the question emerged: how do we continue from here? The silent screams of a geography weighed down by a nearby border—by systems of human control, care, and stewardship of sandy, mossy pine and birch communities—permeated our thoughts and actions. The result is an attempt to create a place through sound that harnesses the potential of both individual and collective imaginations and holds memory through sound. By collaging and modifying these recordings, we have created a living room where the window is open, the air smells of oranges and black tea, the radio is playing, and the doormat is echoing the visitor, comrade, friend.”