Various - Longform Visions For Earminded People

Sometimes you just stop and the space in front of you appears as one frame for a long time. You might be gazing or observing or staring or simply looking. But with a soundtrack.

I look out of the window and hear:
The ambulance, always.
A trumpet or a trombone, sustained.
Water trickling down a metal pipe, maybe rusty.
Just one chirp from a bird.
The trombone starts to play scales, slowly. It could become a melody.
Car drones like Morton Feldman pieces.

To think with your ears.
To see with your ears.
To move, to dance... with your ears.
To speak with your ears.
How long does it take to become an earminded person?

This release brings together short fragments of Longform Visions for Earminded People, an event that took place in the summer of 2022 at Roodkapje, Rotterdam.

These sonic stories emerged from a gathering of artists concerned with alternative uses of everyday objects, subversive anti-aesthetics, sensual-absent poetry, moving optical discs, and echoes of activities occurring in the Earth’s orbit. It was a performative celebration of entangled audio-visual events that enabled us to learn once again how to tune in to a place: with our eyes, with our ears, with our minds.

While listening to the record, I remember what it sounded like in the space. I remember monologues of chairs that were given voice, phones eavesdropping and speaking back to us, cassettes falling on the floor (intentionally): some visions unfolding in front of our very eyes and others in our minds.

Try to imagine all that these short pieces might still contain. As Peter Fengler exclaims in his chorus: it will all work out. Just choose a bicycle, low on emissions and also better for the tummy and the legs!

— Lucija Gregov