KUNSTRADIO - RADIOKUNST

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you" (Trotsky)

"Other Voices: Echoes From a Warzone" was conceived soon after the military operation "Allied Force" began, and was performed live on air, on line and on site as a KUNSTRADIO program on April 29 1999 at the Vienna studios of the ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corp.). It was aimed to strongly support and emphasise the sounds of reason coming from the other side of the war-coin.

"Mainstream media, following guidelines from political establishments on both sides, transformed the reality into a huge propaganda stageset. Beyond the Potemkin villages of the big TV networks , there was another life going on - a life of people who spent years and decades fighting totalitarianism and nationalistic hatred with the power of their expression and creation. Writers, sound artists, radio personalities, media workers, journalists and musicians, suddenly became collateral damage of the war in Yugoslavia.

However, they were not just another victim of geography. They became god-forgotten people, "second-rate citizens", those whose opinions have never been politically-current or media-attractive enough to deserve to be heard and shown in public loudly and on time - neither in Yugoslavia nor in Europe. Anyway, they have never asked for that - they have just continued to live and create - while preserving sanity in a warzone. Some of their earlier works were reborn in the war, while at the same time giving birth to new original war-zone artefacts: diaries on living and dying, destruction-soundscapes, messages to the outside world.

Above all, they have continued to resist everything they have always resisted. It is now up to the world to listen to that sound.

"Other Voices..." is about them, and for them."

Gordan Paunovic, Budapest, June 1999

For his live mix and the mix for this CD Gordan Paunovic also used the following sources:

From the KUNSTRADIO archive:

• Arsenije Jovanovic: Concerto Grosso Balcanico (1993, Kunstradio CD)
• Arsenije Jovanovic - La Parata, 1997 (radio-piece)
• Ivana Stefanovic: Lacrimosa (1993, Kunstradio CD)
• Gordan Paunovic: Last Few Words (produced 1998/1999 in Belgrade, broadcast and webcast by Kunstradio January 1999)
• Messages to Belgrade by various artists (1994, broadcast by Kunstradio)
• Agnieszka Waligorska/Pekka Sirén: Chimera in Kosovo (snail mail to Kunstradio, April 1999)
• Dimitriy Nikolaev: Words on Yugoslavia (snail mail to Kunstradio, April 1999)
• Brian Conley - War (snail mail April 1999)

From the archive of B92:

• Svetlana Vukovic / Svetlana Lukic - The Only Love Song In My Language (radio-feature, B 92,1998)
• Music by Ferus Mustafov - Orient Cocek (Ring Ring 96, B92 CD)
• Music by Floridis/Petrovic/Papa Nik - Megali Sirtis (Ring Ring 96, B92 CD)
• Music by Lajko Felix - String Quartet (Koncert 98, B92 CD)

Other sources:

• An original recording of 1 minute air raid alarm from Belgrade (received via Internet from Belgrade, April 1999) - used as a recurring motive throughout the live-piece.
• Aleksandar Vasiljevic: It's going to rain..I hope not! (From the CD "HOPE", a collection of Minute Soundworks, Liverpool Arts School, 1998)
• Aleksandar Vasiljevic: Probe 1 (received via Internet from Belgrade, April 29th 1999)
• Excerpts from the Internet Diary of Jasmina Tesanovic, March/April 1999 (read by Lidija Popovic)
• Excerpts from the e-mails by Slobodan Markovic, March/April 1999 (translated into
• German and read by Christian Scheib)

During the whole program one of Gordan Paunovic's sources was a Real Audio Live Stream from Belgrade, created and encoded by Robert Klajn. This Real Audio Live Stream included sounds picked up by a microfone hanging out of a window in Belgrade, while the city was being bombed, as well as loops of different sounds recorded during the bombing.