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1000 Words Per Metre (Audio)

Jan 14, 2011
Edited and produced by Sarah Washington.

Two artists interrogate the integrity of language by projecting their voices from top to bottom of the vast metal cylinder of the Gasometer Oberhausen. A dialogue occurs that empties itself into the booming darkness; free-association that speaks about the function of words; how they delight and frustrate. Sentences cascade down out of sight whilst others rise up and strive to reach them: in-between lies the mysterious place of their meeting - where only microphones can receive them. Sense overlaps, voices merge into the overwhelming reverberation of the building and are lost to storm water streaming down through the towering gloom. Interwoven with the formal localised wordplay is an opposition: the intimate personal musings of artists on the subject of radio art, recorded in the no-man's-space of the internet. What is 'Radio Art'? Where can you find it? And in the end, can words help us at all?

Editing and production: Sarah Washington, text and gasometer voices: Sarah Washington and Dinah Bird, recordings: Dinah Bird and Knut Aufermann, internet voices: Jörg Köppl, Anna Friz, Felix Kubin, Pit Schultz. Produced for ORF Kunstradio, Austria in cooperation with WDR3 Germany.