‚Sound and Public Space‘- Our Symposium Part III
Raul Keller is a young Estonian artist whose works can currently be seen in Kumu’s exhibition ‘Out of Sync – Looking back at the History of Sound Art’ (until January 12, 2014). Right at the beginning of his talk he informs us that he does not actively consider himself a sound artist:
‘I work predominantly with sound but also with photography, the fine arts and text. I think John used a very nice term: ‘auditory culture’ – the contemporary field which embraces music and sound art approaches and somehow blends them with popular culture and different practices.’
You decide the soundtrack of the world
‘When I went to school in the 80s, we had one of those huge Soviet megaphones at the entrance of the school building. Also during the May parade event, the whole town was covered with propaganda slogans which were sonically distributed from a very authoritarian perspective and the whole environment seemed to be filled with this merry marching sound and slogans that we did not quite understand. So I had this very nice switch off when the eighties Walkman culture entered and the first notion of private and public auditory sphere came to my knowledge. I remember the revelation of having this personal intimate soundtrack in a public space. It was also the first experience of stereophonic sound because most of these tape recorders in those days were monophonic.’
It was a new experience for Raul and one that really left an impression on him: ‘You could actually have the world going to your soundtrack’. He realized that music was a very strong vehicle of identity: people who particularly enjoyed a certain band or piece of music felt some kind of missionary attitude towards other people and wanted them to also like it. These experiences led Raul to start noticing what he calls the ‘social sound environment’.
The invention of the ‘Reflector’
In 2007 Raul developed a megaphone that he called ‘Reflector’. He wanted to invent something that ‘would actually be reflective, that would gather its information, the sound that would be taken from the environment and just reflect it back.’
- Raul Keller at the Symposium
The sounds that Raul was interested in were the ‘little sounds’ which you wouldn’t normally recognize outside: rain or running water or the sound of pedestrians walking. Three weeks before his installation was erected, he went to record the sounds at different times of the day and made a 24 hour loop out of them. And then something happened:
‘Just before this exhibition opened, there were the Bronze Night riots in Tallinn. And during these riots – they happened on the night before the opening and on the opening day – I recorded the sounds that happened in close proximity to these reflectors. The reflectors played them back for a few weeks. And it was shocking since the riots were really shocking to the Tallinners because nothing like that had ever happened here: something this violent, noisy, loud and aggressive. And every time it was played back, just a couple of minutes around six or ten at night, I actually went there to see the response and people really responded to hearing it again: helicopters, people screaming on the streets and it really sort of played back the social tension of that night and worked every time.’
Listen in to what these riots sounded like:
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Want to know more about Raul Keller? Check out his website!
So what is next for us? We are looking forward to our satellite exhibitions in Thessaloniki, Prague and Sarajevo and will keep you updated regularly!
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