Looking for inspirational quotes to begin another year on the planet.
This from composer, acccordionist and deep listener Pauline Oliveros (1932 – 2016) fit the bill:
“Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening”.
Two legitimate responses to the excesses of 21st century capitalist imperialism and its attendant populist gaslighting include contemplative withdrawal or confrontational fury. The music by the artists at the 15th edition of the three day Transmissions festival (Tagline: “Exploring the sound”) in Ravenna, Italy provided potent examples of both.
In the foyer of Teatro Rasi, the festival venue, was a small exhibition of mobile phone photos taken by Adriano Zanni. These are shots of the petrochemical plant in Ravenna’s Piallassa Valley which Michelangelo Antonioni used as the setting for his celebrated film ‘Red Desert’ (Il Desert Rosso) in 1964. Writing about this film for The Village Voice in 2017, Bilge Ebiri states that Antonioni’s vision “can never be reduced to simple laments for the spiritual pollution of the world.” Zanni quotes the Italian director as saying that “even factories can be equipped with great beauty” and his ‘ Red Desert Chronicles’ portfolio is presented in romanticized terms as “a theatre of dreams and hopes, toil and work, a stage of majestic grandeur.”
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On May 30th 2012, Pauline Olveros will be 80. To mark this occasion Important Records are releasing a massive 12 CD box set entitle Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970; a collection of mostly unreleased works along with essays by Oliveros, Alex Chechile, Ramon Sender, David Bernstein, and Cory Arcangel.
Oliveros is one of the key figures in experimental electronic music. I first encountered her work through the album she made with Stuart Dempster & Panaiotis in 1989 called Deep Listening.
I wrote a piece about this a few years back and I’m posting this article by way of tribute to her innovative and inspirational work. Continue reading
In a career, spanning more than 50 years, Pauline Oliveros has kept true to the principle that we need to be continually aware of sounds that surround us in our daily lives. She advocates disciplining our response so that you “listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are listening”.
Oliveros’ preferred instrument – the accordion – is an unorthodox one since it is more commonly associated with traditional folk or ethnic music. She plays neither.
She is a classically trained musician who believes that recording is not always best served by the relatively sterile environment of concert halls or recording studios. Take for example the album ‘Deep Listening’ recorded in a vast disused cistern (‘the cistern chapel’) at a former army base in Fort Worden, Washington, This record, made in collaboration with Stuart Dempster and Panaiotos, features the pure, untreated acoustic instrumentation combined with the remarkable reverb in the ‘chapel’.
Deep Listening is also the name she gave to her band as well as the institute she founded which “promotes innovation among artists and audiences in creating, performing, recording, and educating
with a global perspective”.
Oliveros’ belief is that sound has the potential to touch our inner selves ,or psyche, even to affect the way we see the world – “creative music”, she says, “or music that is newly composed or improvised can influence change by challenging habitual thought patterns” (Breaking The Silence – January 1998).
She shows that music can, and should, be so much more than simply establishing a pleasant ambience or creating a light diversion.
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