SEMI SILENT.RO
A playlist curated by Anamaria Pravicencu and Ana Teodora Popa
SANTÉ
The sounds from inside
Author: Ana Teodora Popa
6’26”, 2018
A non-verbal sound design piece that translates the struggle of living a normal life, while dealing with the memory of a past trauma and its triggers. Its purpose is to describe, without using any words, the pain and loneliness of being hurt, acknowledging the reality of mental suffering as something as serious and debilitating as any other type of physical pain. By using binaural sound, it suggests a better understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, from the sufferer’s mind’s point of view.
The character’s mind gets overwhelmed by the constant stimuli, shuts off or filters the outside world in defence, and tries to cope with the uncontrollable urge to revisit the memory of the traumatic event. Sound triggers pull the character’s perspective away from the present moment into snippets of her memory. By choosing what to hear and process, her mind seems to have its own voice.
Santé is an auto production awarded at Grand Prix Nova 2018, Bucharest.
Recorded, edited, and mixed by Ana Teodora Popa.
Ana Teodora Popa (b.1988) is a sound engineer and composer from Iași, Romania. She studied at Ontario Institute of Audio Recording Technology and worked as a live sound engineer for the London City Music Theatre. In 2013, she started her dream job at the National Theatre in Iași, Romania, and later became the Sound and Video Department leader. To stay involved in more creative projects, in 2017 she become a freelancer. In 2018, she won third place in the Grand Prix Nova competition with a nonverbal binaural piece, created using only mono/stereo files and a unique editing method. She takes part in innovative and challenging independent projects, including theater plays, experimental performances, sound installations and films. She worked with Regenerator and Descentrat projects, and she participated to Sonic Future Residencies, Romanian Creative Week, and Sonic Narratives (Simultan, Timișoara). She currently writes music and works on her own binaural audio research and technique. Her artistic goal is to reach the listeners at a level where they can relate and be moved by what is already inside them. She lives in Iași, Romania.
ÎNSPRE
A focus on the inwardness of sound
Author: Laurențiu Coțac
11’12”, Octobre 2019 (fragment)
Înspre is a musical composition which evolved slowly during the making of Dinspre. It took quite a while to write and perform, but it’s rare to prepare and experiment with a bunch of instruments, all available from a local music high school. It’s about things collapsing around us and then growing back up. An existential piece.
Înspre is the second part of a composition representing an intimate study of the peripheral and the insular, the open and confined, the controlled and the impromptu.
Musical composition created during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by SEMI SILENT in Iași, Romania, in May 2019.
Recorded, edited, and mixed by Laurențiu Coțac for SEMI SILENT.
Laurențiu Coțac is a double bassist and sound artist based in Bucharest. He works within the avant-garde music scene, collaborating with punk, noise, and free improvisation groups, serves as a sound engineer for documentary films, and creates sound installations displayed in galleries and museums. He has collaborated with the Hyperion Ensemble, led by Ana Maria Avram and Iancu Dumitrescu, and performs in various European venues.
His practice centers on both composition and free improvisation, aiming to spark an intimate response through irregular impulses and carefully chosen sounds, assembled and manipulated in a way akin to tectonic shifts. Combining acoustic and electronic sources and drawing inspiration from the intensity of a full symphonic ensemble, Laurențiu Coțac seeks to deliver a sculpted, exploratory sound experience rich in spatiality and textures. His work continually builds a sense of siege and peak intensity, immersing listeners in an impactful auditory landscape.
ABOUT THE FUTURE
A poem by V. Leac (Englih, Română, Deutsch)
Author: Cristian Fierbințeanu
8’20”, October 2020
about the future (V. Leac)
it is undoubtable that the giant wave
will wash through the dryland with an amazing speed.
it is difficult to imagine such a speed…
the flish are hidden somewhere in the wave, right on the tip of the wave, they are helpless, so they just sit there…
the wave crashes into a mountain – boom!
and the flish are thrown into the desert.
everyone thinks they are dead;
it’s just an illusion, a false illusion.
now, please, pay attention:
– look carefully at this spot.
do you notice something very very fast is moving and getting thicker?
well, gentlemen, it’s the double-jawed worm.
it is born inside the flish and then it eats it from within –
did you see? it’s very easy.
then, by scent, the kangaroo-snail comes –
you can see it in this picture;
it’s got one leg, and this leg was once a tail.
life is extremely tough in the desert.
everything happens very very fast –
and when you least expect it out comes the dragonfly-lizard
that runs/flies with over 115 km per hour.
it grabs the snail and devours it ultra-rapidly.
the dragonfly-lizard is chocked by a trapping flower.
everything happens…life is extremely tough…
now we’re entering the giant super-forest:
– see how the canopy moves?
you’re scared, aren’t you? don’t worry.
it’s just an eight-legged mammoth, it’s vegetarian.
– see this green spot on the tree?
it crawls after the mammoth
and makes it so that the mammoth steps in it;
it is highly intelligent: it has set up house inside the mammoth.
can you believe that this spot currently unknown to us
can bring the mammoth on the brink of despair?
at first we were also amazed.
it all happens very fast.
in two million years from now, life will be extremely tough…
we have showed you these images to get an idea
about how life on earth is going to be.
it all happens very very fast.
Translated from Romanian to English by Alexandra M. Păun and to German by Gabriela Fierbințeanu.
The piece is composed by Cristian Fierbințeanu with a poem by V. Leac in the frame of POLYPHONIC ECHOES, a project organized by SEMI SILENT. Partners: Czech Center and the National Museum of Romanian Literature.
All sounds (recorded, composed, edited) by Cristian Fierbințeanu for SEMI SILENT
Voices: Cristian Fierbințeanu and Gabriela Fierbințeanu
Cristian Fierbințeanu is an independent artist, member of art-pop group Fierbințeanu, active in music, sound & video art. As part of Fierbințeanu, he has performed on European scenes, including Berlin Konzerthaus, and released records via independent labels. The works of Fierbinteanu have been presented and awarded in international festivals: RVK Fringe Fest (Reykjavik – Iceland 2021), Seasoning Spring (United Cowboys/Eindhoven 2021), Phonurgia Nova (Paris 2020), Grand Prix Nova (Bucharest 2020), Nuit de la fiction sonore à Arles (France 2019), Arts and Science days (St. Etienne/France 2019), 60 Seconds Radio (Canada 2019), Dvorak Marathon (Berlin Konzerthaus), Dvorak remix (The Czech Cultural Center/Bucharest). “Un auteur à suivre” – Phonurgia Nova; “An artistic duo that sincerely deserves total fascination” – Art7; “One of the most eccentric creatures of the independent music made in Romania” – DILEMA veche; “The oddest and most experimental duo of the Romanian electronic music” – VICE Romania.
Poet and obscure researcher of the vanished territories of the present geography, V. Leac has published several volumes of poems in various publishers (Seymour: sonată pentru cornet de hârtie, 2005, 2006, 2013; Dicționar de vine, 2006, Lucian – un experiment, 2009; Toți sunt îngrijorați, 2010; Unchiul este încântat, 2013; M o n o i d e a l, 2018; Toți sunt îngrijorați, 2024, anthology).
Coordinator of thematic poetry anthologies: Why cats don’t have tails, 2017; Hotel Cosmos – SF Romanian poetry, 2019; The Golden Generation, 2020; Ongoing Disruptions. An Anthology of the Present, 2021.
Founding member of the literary group Celebrul animal and of the Ca și Cum magazine. In 2012, together with Bianca Băilă, he founded MOI in Timișoara; co-author of events waiting has something in common with the high collar of the coat with which you go to the meeting and what you can see until you get there. Participates in the Spaces in waiting platform – 2013 with the Sugar Factory Oven project. Curator of the event W.A.D. Arad, 2014; Co-author of the feature-length eco-horror film Bodrog, 2019. Author of several short films and video-poems.
“I’ve always wanted to write poems for two or three astronauts who are slightly distracted, in which life barely flickers; they sail like that, without a precise destination. I want you to imagine the smile of the astronaut sitting there, by the porthole, at a table; sipping a drink – what would it be like to drink? After reading you should have the impression that the poem rises (from the page) on tiptoe; kisses you on the cheek; then runs away; stops; turns around and laughs in your nose, like a clever child who you feel knows the secret of happiness.”
MAYBE NOTHING
An environmental thriller
Author: Jeanne Debarsy
14’15”, April 2023
What happened?
We don’t know exactly
Of course, there are rumours and echoes
But they are perhaps only reminiscences
Time and space seem out of tune
Behaviours have also changed
But still, the Danube doesn’t stop flowing.
The translation of a precise feeling that cradled the 10-day residency in the small village of Port Cetate, in Romania: a strange feeling of the end of the world, with a historically low water level that prevented navigation on the Danube, a very prevalent animal kingdom, few humans, the impression of evolving either in the past or in the future but certainly not in the present.
Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022.
Recordings, composition, and mixing by Jeanne Debarsy for SEMI SILENT. Co-produced by Babelfish.
Voices: Jasmina Al-Qaisi, Lloyd Dunn, Sillyconductor, pablo sanz, and Veronika Svobodová
Selected at Grand Prix Nova 2023, Bucharest, Short Form category.
Honourable mention at Phonurgia Nova 2023, Paris, Sound Art category.
Jeanne Debarsy (b. 1986) is a sound artist based in Belgium where she studied to become a sound engineer. She works in various domains of sound and collaborates with many artists in cinema, radio, music, and various arts. She is particularly passionate about radio media because it gives her freedom of action and expression precious to her eyes. She continues to develop her own sound language to refine her personal research and to explore the fields of performance and installation.
www.jeannedebarsy.com
WE SEE BENEATH
An unfamiliar place
Author: Lloyd Dunn
11’26”, January 2023
A dry description of the locale will not satisfy the task of describing the place; especially when the experience of it interleaves objective perception, memory, dilated time, and all the other observations that come from being in an unfamiliar place over a period of days. And so, we are left with this set of allusions.
Sound piece composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by SEMI SILENT at Port Cetate, Dolj county, Romania, in September 2022.
Recordings, composition and mixing by Lloyd Dunn for SEMI SILENT.
Lloyd Dunn is a multimedia artist working in machine-based media for 40 years. During the 1980s and 90s he edited and published the graphic arts magazines Photostatic and Retrofuturism, which were circulated worldwide and are collected by many prominent archives. In 1987, Dunn, together with some close friends, co-founded the Tape-beatles, who were among a few early recording experimenters whose work explicitly challenged intellectual property and copyright. Since 2009, Dunn’s main project has been the project nula.cc, the online presence for a series of filecasts initiated to further explore his long-standing interest in machine-based art forms, appropriation and collage, time-based media and design. Dunn currently lives and works in Prague.
www.nula.cc
SEMI SILENT is an organization from Bucharest dedicated to the production, promotion, and education in the fields of sound art and radio art. Created in 2016, the podcast platform www.semisilent.ro produced, co-produced, and hosted over 80 sound works by Romanian and international artists, and in 2018 generated the sound art residencies program SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES (5 editions). The SEMI SILENT radio art productions were selected, nominated, or awarded at international competitions such as Phonurgia Nova (FR), Grand Prix Nova (RO), or UK Radio Drama Festival, and presented at Radiophrenia (UK), Longueur d’ondes (FR), Rien à voir (FR), Lucia Festival (IT), Art’s Birthday by EBU, Radiocustica by Český rozhlas Vltava (CZ) etc.
Complementary to the production activities and the residencies programs, SEMI SILENT is developing a variety of educational formats for initiation and advanced studies in sound art, radio art and field recording.
Directed by Anamaria Pravicencu.