'a private swamp / was where this tree grew feathers once' : a radio memorial in four movements.

"It seems to me then as if all the moments of our life occupy the same space, as if future events already existed and were only waiting for us to find our way to them at last, just as when we have accepted an invitation we duly arrive in a certain house at a given time.”

- W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz

"In my beginning is my end. In succession / Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, / Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place / Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. [...] Houses live and die: there is a time for building / And a time for living and generation / And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane / And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots / And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto."

- T. S. Eliot, East Coker (from 'Four Quartets')

"dear friends who have died are all talking to me tonight / all at once..." : a late-night transmission at rice & beans

continuing the series of programmes which spatially sonifies gallery spaces via small-scale transmission, radio cegeste set up a radio show after midnight in the empty room of artist run space rice & beans, located in inner city dunedin and run throughout 2011 by a small collective, on the final day of the space's lease by its current occupiers, a few days after the final show (dan bell's 'alluvial atomiser') had closed.

narrowcasting back a sound library of 5 minute recordings i had collected during a single day (the 18th march 2009) spent wandering around galleries in central christchurch, "dear friends who have died are all talking to me tonight / all at once..." became a meta-reflection on the afterlife of small-scale, independent art spaces and groups, with the re-spatialisation and layering of a series of spaces which now literally do not exist, after the february 2011 eathquake decimated the gallery sector of inner city christchurch.

the regent theatre 24hour booksale

the regent theatre 24 hour booksale is a bit of an institution in Dunedin. set in the grand environs of the centrally located old proscenium palace, it seems like the whole city comes out for the event. the live music played here in the past has included such under-appreciated milestones as the set by Alastair Galbraith committed to tape and released by Bruce Russell on Xpressway in 1987 as side A of 'Hurry on Down', Alastair's first solo release after The Rip. Alastair has this to say about that release on the website of his label, Emperor Jones:

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"One side of it was recorded live at a gig to benefit the Regent Theatre, a large theatre in Dunedin that the owners never stopped doing up. They would get musicians to play for nothing for 24 hours over a Friday and Saturday. It was a chance to play to a horribly mainstream audience of people browsing through second hand books that had also been donated to the theatre. I really stupidly agreed to do a 3am performance and went to sleep and woke up at 2:30am and went down there with Bruce. He recorded the whole thing, but I was under the influence of something very strange, I can't remember what, and when I listen to it I can tell that I wasn't fully awake. The other side was a result of Bruce coming to the warehouse where I was living at that time and asking me if I'd written any songs. I said I'd written about eight or nine and he said 'play them all to me'. I played them one after the other for him and he recorded them on a walkman. I honestly thought he was recording them for personal listening, but he released it! It was good of him, but within a few months of it being out I said to him that I never really knew at the time it was recorded that he was going to release it, and that I would quite like a go at giving him something slightly better, and so there was a first and second edition. Just prior to this, a friend who was an elderly woman I used to do gardening for (and I had known since I was twelve) had asked me out of the blue what I would most like materialistically, and I thought for a while and said 'a four-track recording machine'. Later, she came back into the room with a cheque that was almost enough to buy a second hand one. So I was learning how to record myself at that point and was able to give Bruce slightly better versions of some of the songs."

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wandering around making location recordings of this year's booksale I was able to capture, if not a Galbraith in the making, at least the odd aural spectacle of an elderly female voice reading a medical textbook section about the eye, and a briefly sketched out history of the booksale's cultural import by the woman who wrapped my finds in newspaper, as well as a slightly earlier conversation with the poet David Howard, which ended with him being asked, and refusing, to read to the collected silently browsing audience, and nominating me as a likely alternative.

thanks, David...

(species of spaces, 00:1)*

a radio cegeste programme was performed / transmitted as a 5min acousmatic / radiophonic event score, as part of the marsupial gallery project PRANK ETUDES WRONG PETCHERA KTCUTCHHA, at Maca’s burger bar, High Street, Christchurch, Saturday 21 March 2009, 8pm-9pm.

transmitted material was comprised of 8 discrete 5min field recordings collected while doing the rounds of Christchurch’s gallery spaces between 2:45 and 5:05 on Wednesday 18th March 2009. these recordings were then layered / arranged as a new conglomeration in a 5min performance for Mini FM transmitter and two small receivers.

a fairly bad quality recording of the live performance, complete with crowd noise, stand up comedy, and recognisable laughter / heckling from certain christchurch experimental music scene stalwarts, is here

the PR read as follows:

radio cegeste reflects on questions of gallery spectatorship, the temporal attention given to art in the era of the preset, and the general notion of art as sound-byte entertainment, with a radio programme designed for marsupial gallery’s peripatetic project series. for this programme, a series of field recordings of empty gallery spaces in the city in question, christchurch, recorded in the days before the event, will be layered in the five minute time span of the set and combined with the live radio waves present in the space itself, which is located close to the original location of the first manifestation of the high street project, christchurch’s longest running project space. in this way, radio cegeste hopes to overhear some ghosts as she reflects on the changes in new zealand project-space culture since the early 1990s.

the evening’s performers (in Progressive Order as 5 minute sets) are: 1 HEAVY TURKEY 2 MIRK 3 CRECHE 4 SATANIC TEA TOWEL 5 RADIO CEGESTE 6 I DON’T SPOOK EASY 7 TRAINING 8 RICHARD NEAVE

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* featuring the sounds of:

1. (18 March 2009, 2:45 – 2:50pm) / SoFA Gallery. group show ‘Masters 08’ : Kim Lowe, Marie Le Lievre, Robin Neate, Cristina Silaghi

2. (18 March 2009, 3:02 – 3:07pm) / Christchurch Art Gallery car park entranceway. Subsonic series : Campbell Kneale : ‘First Titan’ 2009, (15:59)

3. (18 March 2009, 3:10 – 3:15pm) / Christchurch Art Gallery foyer.

4. (18 March 2009, 3:20 – 3:25pm) / The Physics Room. main space : between-show installation; side space : the vestiges of Tony Delatour : ‘B sides and Demos’

5. (18 March 2009, 3:55 – 4:00pm) / Jonathan Smart Gallery. group show ‘Optimism’ : Judy Darragh, Robert Hood, Nathan Pohio, John Pule, Neil Dawson, Anne Noble, Michael Parekowhai, Leigh Martin, Peter Peryer, Andrew Drummond, Anton Parsons, Hannah & Aaron Beehre, et al

6. (18 March 2009, 4:40 – 4:45pm) / The Brooke Gifford Gallery. Peter Ireland : ‘Cultural Studies 101’, and Darren George : ‘Whare Puka Puka’

7. (18 March 2009, 4:50 – 4:55pm) / Paintlust. foyer space, outside gallery opening hours.

8. (18 March 2009, 5:00 – 5:05pm) / The High Street Project. Robert Hood : ‘The Wrecked Kilometre’