Week 8

Verite Narrative

Listening:

* Scott Carrier / The West Desert (1991) - length: 21:00
http://www.transom.org/shows/2002/200209.westdesert.html

*  Alan Hall / Still Points, Turning Worlds (2010) - length: 27:30
originally aired on BBC Radio 4, May 31, 2010, repeat broadcast Jan. 8, 2011
http://theunobserved.com/culture/still_points_turning_worlds/

*  David Weinberg / One for the Commandant (2010) - podcast length: 9:10 [actual piece is 5:50]
winning entry, Big Shed verite + 1 competition
http://podcast.bigshed.org/2011/03/22/one-for-the-commandant


Reading:

-Dan Lander / "Radiocasting: Musings on Radio and Art"
http://cec.concordia.ca/econtact/Radiophonic/Radiocasting.htm
(posted online 1999; originally published in Radio Rethink: Art, Sound and Transmission, eds. Daina Augatis and Dan Lander, 1994)

-Scott Carrier / Transom Review (2001)
http://www.transom.org/guests/review/200104.review.scarrier.html


Related Future Reading
Helen Thorington / Radio, Art, Life: New Contexts (2008)
[A discussion about radio art's history and contemporary 'socially networked' radiophonic artistry.]
http://www2.tate.org.uk/intermediaart/radio_art_text.shtm

The West Desert

This piece inspires me because it demonstrates ways in which, through sound alone, an ethnographer can create a sense of both a vast physical landscape and an ethnographic study of complex cultural relationships.

Simultaneously grounding us with a Mark Twain quote and opening up the space of the desert with abstract sounds, Carrier paints a picture of a land where government, farmers, Native Americans and religious pilgrims have viewed each other cautiously and coexisted relatively peacefully in isolation. All are there for the same reason: because the land is not considered to be valuable except for its isolation, which occurs because there is no monetary value that can be bled from its veins.

At the same time, I admire the way that Carrier maintains his own distinct personality within the piece. Carrier’s role is that of instigator, humorist, sardonic muse. Something that I struggle with is wanting to erase myself completely from every work that I create. Carrier shows us that it is possible to be painterly with sound and still give the subject its due.

One for the Commandant

A true work of verite, Weinberg allows his subjects the leeway to perform, to wander, and to expose the emptiness behind the mask. Having worked for years with the homeless population in the Northwest, this piece feels bittersweet to me. Sometimes works about or created with the homeless seems to be about our own longing for authenticity, and the verite method highlights this facet even more.

Still, having tried myself to create verite works, I know how difficult that it can be. Especially in the space of silence. I have only every done verite with a camera, which seems to have a kind of invigorating cycle. The eye of the camera always watches, and the show must go on.

Verite audio is different. The silence can go on and on, the recording device drinking in the whole silence of the world. While the homeless men in Weinberg’s space continue to perform, there is the distinct impression that there have been multiple cuts to create this effect. What would happen to the subject, and more importantly, to the audience, if we allowed the silence to play on?

Still Points, Turning Worlds

Hall’s piece is about that fear, really, that we have of silence and death. An extremely creative work, at times I wasn’t sure if I appreciated the focus on structure. But would we be able to listen to such a quiet, meditative piece without the cycles of music and counting?

Carrier asks a rhetorical question at the halfway point in his recording that comments on all these pieces overall, "It (the West Desert) offered open space and absolute silence. What better place to drop bombs, and spread disease and poison?" The West Desert physically symbolizes our too often antagonistic relationship to silence. One of the narrators in Hall's piece touches on this same idea, more strongly suggesting that we work to avoid the experience of silence so that we may escape thinking about death.

Pieces like these, where neither the interviewee nor the narrator jumps in to resolve our confusion or discomfort make for dangerous listening. I think we have all  felt a tension or a thrill from certain kinds of silence, from which threats to our world view eventually emerge. It takes a special
skill to allow for and to accept danger in the interview process and in the composed piece.