Ö1 Kunstradio, being itself an important node in the world-wide Art's Birthday network, presents further excerpts from the Art's Birthday celebrations and gifts, among others from Belgrade, Freiburg, Stockholm and Zagreb.

Art's Birthday goes back to a concept of the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou (1926-1987), who set January 17, 1963 as the one millionth birthday of art.

Art was born when an unknown person dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Artists celebrate this moment and art by organizing interconnected birthday parties.

Art was honored with performances and concerts, serenades and gifts, sparklers and lots of cakes.

Apparitions
by Mirjam Tally

Apparitions has nearly a religious title for several reasons. The music conveys the spiritual world in the form of soundscapes with ghostly moods. Prolonged dark sounds are lightened by choir-like flashes of light and overtones. Pop-like rhythms are mixed with hissing, whispers and multitones, Rubber balls run along strings, the double bass screaming loudly and the bassoon hissing like a teapot with boiling water. Blowing sounds roll in like the waves on the beach and the voices inhale like asthmatics do. In my work I use a whole palette of different advanced playing techniques on several instruments combined with voices and electronic material. For several years I have been collecting sounds, mostly in Sweden and Iceland. Recorded sounds of harpsichord (Guðrún Óskarsdóttir), double bass (Jonas Nilsson), voice (Matilda Andersson and Mirjam Tally) and bassoon (Anders Matell).

Between the Waves
by LP Duo

Between the Waves is a musical collage that represents the search for the unknown through the creation of a new authentic sound on Duality Portable Hybrid Pianos, specially designed instruments by Sonja and Andrija during the pioneering Quantum Music project. As composers and performers, there are no boundaries between genres for the LP Duo. They explore a world where realities coexist without conflict. In that world, humanity and technology live in harmony despite all the challenges facing humans today. Hence together people, pianos, synthesizers and artificial intelligence, embraced in the musical dance of LP Duo.

Chickens: hatching to farmed
by Ella Kay & Hugh Jones (as part of Matthew Herbert and The New Radiophonic Workshop)

Futuristic music in the best sense: that was the trademark of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. For 40 years, artists like Daphne Oram and Delia Derbishire set standards for work with electronic sounds, noises and instruments.

Now the Radiophonic Institute has taken on the legacy of the workshop. Since 2012, it has been creating, connecting and promoting innovations in sound and music. Led by composer, artist and curator Matthew Herbert, the Institute aims to inspire a new generation of creatives to collaborate and challenge the conventions of music and sound design.

As part of Art’s Birthday, Matthew Herbert and The New Radiophonic Workshop played two concerts at E-Werk Freiburg.

TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It)
by students of the University Zagreb – Croatian Radio

This year’s Art’s Birthday Party took place at the Academy of Music in Zagreb from 6 p.m. to midnight, bringing together young artists from Zagreb University’s all three art academies – Academy of Music, Academy of Dramatic Art and Academy of Fine Arts.

From the very beginnings of civilization, or at least its written traces in preserved literary texts, the human imagination has been haunted by images of the end of the world. From ancient myths about a great flood that struck those who had opposed the gods, through images of the judgment day in monotheistic religions, all the way to speculative fiction and science fiction of the 20th century and Hollywood blockbusters, scenarios of ecological disasters, conflicts with artificial intelligence or alien races, we have imagined endless possibilities of the end of the world. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” Mark Fisher stated in his work Capitalist Realism, citing Frederick Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. Today, disasters can no longer surprise us – they have become a part of our everyday life. Thanks to the Internet and social networks, we learn about new pandemics, natural disasters, traffic accidents and all other imaginable or unimaginable disasters minute by minute, almost in real time.

The first known radio dramas, made between the two world wars, were disaster radio dramas – short works presenting shipwrecks, mining accidents, fires… Ten years later, Orson Welles terrified America with his War of the Worlds. However, we follow in different footsteps, those of Zvonimir Bajsić, a legend of the Croatian radio, on a path that leads us to a mountain covered with deep, soft snow. In his text Silence – A Synopsis for a Sound Essay, he imagined an experimental radio program of the future.

Joining the international celebration of the Birthday of Art, and following Bajsić’s thoughts, we imagine an experimental radio program for – the end of the world.

Compositions by young Croatian composers, students of composition, Sara Jakopović, Tin Ujević and Lovro Stipčević, will be performed during the broadcast in participation with acting students of the Academy of Dramatic Art Lovro Rimac, Lana Ujević and Dora Dimić Rakar. Visual art made by students of Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Project Management: Hrvoje Korbar

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