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For Lia Dalò
HA is a sound forest created from the real voice of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) intertwined with instrumental and electronic sounds. A sensorial journey in her phonetics where words are transformed into cartographical sonic materials. A cinematic and experimental approach where, however, even complex materials are organized in a radio composition accessible to all audiences.
A long and laborious work of composition and editing has transformed Arendt's voice into a grid, a map, an acoustic immersive architecture made up of many micro cells of a few seconds each. Every one with its own parameters (volume, reverb, spatialisation, etc.) in order to create an always moving dynamic multi layers radio composition.
The reference book of the whole project is her most seminal work ‘The Human Condition’ (1958) and its three human activities (labor, work, action) create sections of the radiowork.
Together with Arendt’s own texts, those of the Italian philosopher Adriana Cavarero and Elias Canetti were utterly important for the project.
"The voice as an element that frees language from the constraint of the symbolic order" (Canetti)
“Canetti himself claims to be a listener rather than an observer. This predilection for sound matter, far from presenting itself as a curious trait, is claimed by him as a cognitive specialty, particularly prolific and original.(...) A specific term would have to be found to designate this sonority of plural voices that utter different words simultaneously, yet do not produce a cacophony. And, of course, this term should be so flexible that it could also include the harmonic sound of a plurality that recites or sings in unison, yet it is not a harmony. Many elements suggest calling it pluriphony. " (Adriana Cavarero
The soundscapes in the piece were recorded by the artist on the 27th January 2018 at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Roberto Paci Dalò considers HA to be a seminal work for him: here he reflects on his career as radio-maker by putting back into play early actions and methodologies together with his peculiar today’s practice combining avant-garde, popular culture and technology. Roberto grew up alongside friends like Robert Adrian and Heidi Grundmann who helped him to forge his own radio methodology – and true passion – that has been able to develop in over thirty years of international radio projects among the most adventurous and dedicated to of the continuous encounter between languages and territories for a real media dramaturgy (a term he coined in the mid-Nineties to define his work).
HA has been initially developed in 2018 at the JRC Joint Research Center - European Commission in Ispra (Italy). The collaboration with the European Commission engineer and philosopher Nicole Dewandre played a key role in its development leading to an investigation throughout Hannah Arendt's thought.
Roberto Paci Dalò has been working in collaboration with scientists at laboratories and the Centers for Advanced Studies of the JRC on topics such as Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, Text Mining, Demolinguistics. During the first part of the project he created and premiered live in performance at JRC the piece ‘Space Is the Place’ for radio telescope sounds and modular synth.
The project went on with ‘Radio Arendt’ (a series of radio and philosophy workshops conducted by Roberto Paci Dalò and Nicole Dewandre in Barcelona, Sarajevo and Trieste); HA ARENDTRIESTE, interactive sound-video installation created for the "Both Ways" exhibition presented within Trieste ESOF 2020 and produced together with Trieste Contemporanea; HANNAH, live radio performance presented on Radio India - Teatro di Roma as part of the ‘Atlas of Transitions’ Biennale’s program.
Thanks to Adriana Cavarero, Nicole Dewandre, Giuliana Carbi Jesurun, Marina Lutmann, Adriaan Eeckels, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Heidi Mancino.
HA was completed during Hanukkah 2020.
It is suggested to listen to the piece with headphones in order to fully experience the movements and spatialization of the sound.
Links:
Projekt HA arendtrieste
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PLAY