|
In January 2023, at the invitation of the Goethe Institute Bangalore and the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, the Berlin-based artist katrinem visited the Indian mega-city Bangalore and explored it - with a broom. For the artistic-acoustic urban research, the broom served as a musical instrument, but also for the metaphorical "cleaning up of impressions", and finally, katrinem also came into contact with people through sweeping - so she got her brushwood broom, which is not for sale in stores, but is self-made, as a gift from a street sweeper who happened to have two, katrinem reported, and: "The broomsticks always remain the same and are decorated quite individually (as you can see on mine), the sweeping part, the bamboo twigs, is changed more often. It is twisted in a special way and tied to the stick with a string. This holds amazingly well! My broom flew back to Berlin with me," says katrinem, and there, in the streets of Berlin, the broom will now be used.
The audio material recorded during the five weeks of her stay feeds the art radio piece "BangloreKehren", which katrinem has divided into two parts. The first part is called "Walking my Bangalore broom through Malleswharam" - here we accompany katrinem as she walks through her residential area in Bangalore playing with her bamboo broom. In the rich soundscape of Malleswharam, the broom sound is a recurring and rhythmic motif.
The second part are "Broom Songs", together with Sam Auinger. The many recordings from Bangalore were selected by katrinem and Auinger according to musical criteria such as rhythm and timbre. In the five-minute piece "Quartet in the city with Broom, Shehnai, Cow and Dog," four voices meet: a street musician with his shehnai, an excited dog, the tinkling of a cow walking around, and the broom. Apparently they communicate with each other. These sounds are part of the soundscape of Malleswharam and can be found there again and again.
About "Broom Meditations in Cubbon Park" katrinem writes: "In the middle of the city lies Cubbon Park. There is also a subway station there. Brooms are forbidden in the subways. So my journey to the park was by rickshaws, which never refused to transport me with my broom. The park is like a large sound space without traffic sound in the near field. This dominates the Great Space and surrounds the park like a wall."
„Broom & the City" is about traffic-intensive moving space. The noise of the broom repeatedly mixes beyond recognition with the noise of the motorized city. Passing motorcycles provide the deep voices in the piece. Animal and human voices are clearly audible only sporadically. The space is sonically defined by the moving sounds of traffic.
The last oft he „Broom Songs“, "Sam's Broom Memory from Benares" is a find from Sam Auinger's audio archive: "While working on and listening through katrinem's recordings from Bangalore, I remembered one of my 1996 recordings made in Benares, in which the sweeping sound of a broom takes on a musical role, in the interplay of all audible voices and sounds."
|
