Unit, by Marc Behrens

Unit

by Marc Behrens

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Unit (CD version) 42:20

about

The sound installation “Unit” and a series of photographs called “Cutting Qinghai” resulted from a journey to the Chinese Qinghai province/Tibetan culture region of Amdo in July 2008. They were presented at The Third Guangzhou Triennial, subtitled “Farewell to Post-Colonialism”, Guangdong Museum of Art/Time Museum, Guangzhou, September 6, 2008—November 18, 2008. The book “Cutting Qinghai” is included in the download of this edition as a bonus item.

“Unit” consists of five pairs of floor-mounted frame drums and hanging loudspeakers. The frame drum resonates, depending on the sound pressure level from the speaker, which hovers a few centimeters above it, suspended from the ceiling. There are four sound elements used in the composition for this setup:

Stones—recordings of various actions performed with stones: mostly stoning, but also grinding. The sudden, abrupt sounds of falling and crashing stones contrast the installation’s harmonious visual composition.
Crickets—various generations of edits from a single recording of crickets encountered at an elevation of ca. 2600 meters on a mountain road out of Tongren/Repkong. These insects emitted rather loud clicking sounds that seemed to come from the tarmac. Instead, when finally stepping away from the road and into the grass and small shrubs, I noticed the crickets made sounds only in flight, and that previously I was actually listening to the reflections of their clicking, which is why it took me a while to locate them. They were much bigger than imagined, probably camel crickets.
Cymbals—a pair of 20 cm rol mo cymbals bought in Huangzhong/Tsongkha, played with bare hands until pain ensues, without making the cymbals touch.
Drums—the frame drums built for the installation resonate with some of the sounds projected onto them (mainly the stone sounds with short attacks) in a mix of acousmatic and instrumental sound sources.

The 5-channel audio composition for the installation consists of 57 figures of varying duration, which would be automatically selected by an aleatoric script on a multichannel DVD that feeds the audio into the installation. In 2009 the installation was set up in a silent warehouse space in Germany in order to record it. This recording was composed into one of the many possible combinations and mixed down to the stereo version on this release.

credits

released February 1, 2024

Acknowledgements: Guo Xiaoyan, Emma Guo, Goethe-Institut China, in particular Qiao Cui, Egon Kurth, Günter Matten and Bernhard Göbel (hardware), Hong Zheng, Petra Schwindt at the Stadt Frankfurt am Main (Referat für Internationale Angelegenheiten), Dale Lloyd, Vanessa Zheng, Puntsok Tsering Duechung, and to all those people of Qinghai who pointed out the way.
Design by Ana Carvalho.
Originally released on CD by and/OAR, USA, in 2012 (cat. no. and/41a) and-oar.org/and_41.html.
Digital edition 2024. Availabel ala019.

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about

Marc Behrens

Marc Behrens works with electronic and concrete music, installation, performance, photography, text and video. He exhibited artworks or performed in many European countries, in South Africa, Chile, USA, Japan, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Australia, Israel and Palestine. Since 1989 Behrens has released more than 30 music albums. He founded Availabel in 2014. ... more

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