1) „The Little Faust“by Arsenije Jovanovic
With
this short radio piece, drawing on passages from Goethe's Faust, the
renowned artist, director and composer Arsenije Jovanovic recently
participated at the Prix Marulic. Organised by the Croatian Radio, the
competition focuses on radio drama and art dealing with old literature.
Arsenije Jovanovic provides a user guide for „The Little Faust“:
„In the sphere of art, explanations and interpretations can only cause damage sometimes.
The hard logic of rational analysts more often than not annihilates the hidden essence of poetry, music, abstract painting...
Deciphering metaphors is not recommended. If a poet intended his poems to be clearer he would have made them so.
The
understanding of music is not the same as the comprehension of
Archimedes' Principle. Much would have been given for Beckett's
explanation of his "Waiting for Godot" but it would surely have
lessened the impact of the work, it would never have achieved the same
success. Hamlet’s ambiguity, to be or not to be, is as meaningful
as the many hidden or unhidden meanings in his monologues.
Once,
I had a nightmarish experience with an actor who repeatedly demanded I
explain some absurd relations between the character in the play where
the very absurdity was the author’s essential goal. He was an
intelligent educated guy but he was missing the most elemental thing
for an artist – the gift to understand what is not
understandable.
The
Little Faust is not hiding any big secrets – by the way, my
belief is that there are no big secrets even in Godot or in Hamlet. The
vagueness and inscrutability work in the function of the drama’s
mechanism.
Isn’t this the case with understanding of God?
This
little piece of sound art, name it whatever you like, is composed from
excerpted fragments of Goethe’s pyramid, not to become any kind
of little pyramid by itself afterward. Rather, more like a tiny little
grain of sand, rolled out from the large stone to make it’s own
life in the darkness of a catacomb space where the author spent hours
playing with a handful of verses and words, their echoes, sounds of
one's steps and drops of water.
These were multiplied endlessly, creating enigmatic new contents.
It’s
left up to the audience, to each listener separately, to develop
his/her own story - If she or he does want this mental conversion from
the cryptic to the obvious to occur - producing re-experienced images
in pictures or acoustic appearances or inevitably both.
Synaesthesia
experience is not exclusive privilege of extreme synaesthetes, The
Little Faust could also be regarded as a movie miniature with sound or
even a silent film.“
2) „Les petits riens“by Chantal Dumas (33‘21‘‘)
„Les
petits riens are those subtle sounds, songs too soft to catch our
attention, or so mundane that we no longer perceive them. They are also
the sounds of microcosms, such as the insect world, and of our
high-tech work environments. They are perhaps also the sounds of
reminiscences, mental loops of melodic fragments audible to ourselves
alone, or the caress of sounds past, presenting themselves now and
again.“
Produced by Deutschlandradio Kultur, the
piece by Chantal Dumas, a Canadian artist and composer, received the
Prix Bohemia in 2010 in the category „Radio art – Sound
Composition by a Radio“. The Prix Bohemia is a radio award,
presented by the Czech Radio. The jury decided to award Dumas for her
musical languages, which bears evidence of alternative use of acoustic
means in combination with known and well-established radio genres.
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