(English version below)
Ho collaborato diversi anni con la RAI; abbastanza da conoscerne bene i pregi (molti) e i difetti (altrettanti, alcuni davvero spettacolari). Uno di questi è la mancanza di memoria, benché poi l’azienda faccia della memoria nazionale una delle sue ragioni di esistere. A volte questo difetto, accomunato a una certa auto-importanza, produce dei risultati spettacolari.
Pare il caso di Materadio, La festa di Radio3, che si terrà appunto a Matera dal 23 al 25 Settembre prossimi. “Per tre giorni tra i Sassi risuoneranno le voci e la musica di Radio3”: questo è l’incipit del messaggio di Marino Sinibaldi, che dirige la rete. Un’iniziativa encomiabile, anche in vista della candidatura della città lucana a capitale europea della Cultura 2019. Curiosamente però è andato perso un dato non esattamente irrilevante:
Matera in passato ha già risuonato di voci radiofoniche e musica. E’ accaduto alla fine degli anni ’80, e in particolare nel 1990, anno in cui si è tenuta l’ultima, epica edizione della Rassegna Internazionale di Ricerca Sonora AudioBox, intitolata La Città Risonante e curata da Pinotto Fava. Questo festival nasce dall’omonimo programma radiofonico, che dal ’78 al ’98 è stato l’unico, fondamentale spazio per la ricerca sonora della radio pubblica italiana. In particolare l’edizione ’90 del festival fu speciale per diversi motivi: decine di performance dal vivo distribuite in altrettanti luoghi nei Sassi, un cartellone ricchissimo (anche grazie alle molte co-produzioni con emittenti pubbliche internazionali attraverso l’EBU, che patrocinava), e alcuni spettacoli che restano nella storia della ricerca sonora. AudioBox è stato tra i primi festival basati sul concetto di site-specific performance al mondo, e certamente uno tra i più complessi. Non solo: il festival del ’90 rimane nella storia della Radio arte europea come uno standard difficilmente superabile, e molti eventi accaduti successivamente nel mondo si sono ispirati a quello. Esistono tesi di laurea su AudioBox, anche di studenti stranieri. Potrei andare avanti per molte pagine: io c’ero, lavoravo per AudioBox e ho collaborato (insieme a molti altri) a farlo succedere.
Per la città quello fu un evento di cui si è parlato per anni: all’epoca Matera era completamente fuori da qualsiasi mappa, i Sassi non erano stati ancora dichiarati dall’UNESCO Patrimonio dell’Umanità, e le centinaia di persone arrivate in città da ogni parte del globo erano davvero una novità. Esiste naturalmente un’ampia documentazione del festival (nell’archivio della RAI), a partire dalle registrazioni integrali delle performance.
Ecco: è davvero triste verificare come Materadio e la città di Matera abbiano scelto di dimenticare questo importante precedente, la cui memoria andrebbe a gloria della RAI e degli amministratori locali. E’ veramente bizzarro leggere: “Per tre giorni tra i Sassi risuoneranno voci e musica” e non trovare da nessuna parte la parola AudioBox. Sorvolo sui probabili motivi di questa omissione. Registro semplicemente un dato: la RAI ha eliminato la sperimentazione radiofonica nel ’98. Mi pare comprensibile che eviti di nominarla: non sia mai che qualcuno poi dovesse chiedersi cosa le è successo.
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I’ve worked several years for RAI, enough to know its many pros and sometime spectacular cons. One of these is the lack of memory, although being the national memory should be one of the company’s missions. At times this deficiency, and a certain self importance, produces spectacular effects.
It seems to be the case with Materadio (link in italian), a celebration of Radio3 (the cultural radio channel of RAI), that will happen in Matera at the end of the month. “For three days the Sassi (the fabulous historic area of the city) will resonate with the voices and music of Radio3”; it’s the beginning of Radio3 director Marino Sinibaldi’s statement. It also seems an appropriate launch for Matera’s candidacy as 2019 Europe culture capital. But something is missing, and not exactly something irrelevant.
Matera has resonated with voices and music before. It happened in 1990, the year of the last, epic edition of the international radio art festival AudioBox, entitled “The resonating city”, produced by RAI and directed by Pinotto Fava. The festival was originated from a radio program by the same name, started by Fava in 1978 and shut by RAI 20 years later. The 1990 edition of AudioBox festival (its fifth) was very special for many reasons: it featured dozens of performances (by very amazing international artists) set in as many different locations within the Sassi, several of which co-produced with other national stations (the festival was an EBU event); some of these performances belong to the history of experimental radio. That festival set a standard for years to come, and it’s somewhat revered by some as the best radio event ever produced. It has been one of the first entirely site-specific festivals (and certainly one of the more complex). There are essays that discuss and analyze both the radio program and the festival. I could go on for pages: I was there, working with Pinotto (and many other people) to make it happen.
This was a huge event for the city of Matera, and it was discussed for many years afterwards: at the time Matera was outside the maps, UNESCO hadn’t declared it World Heritage site yet, and the hundreds of foreign visitors were a novelty. In the RAI archives there is of course ample documentation of all the events, including recordings of the performances.
It’s very sad to see how Materadio and the city of Matera have chosen to forget AudioBox: after all it was a RAI event, one that it should be proud to have produced. It’s really bizarre to read “For three days the Sassi will resonate with voices and music”, and don’t find the word AudioBox anywhere. But I have a theory: RAI killed experimental radio in 1998. I can see why it wouldn’t want to mention it: maybe someone could wonder what happened to it.
Stavo pensando esattamente le stesse cose quando ieri ho ascoltato per la prima volta l’annuncio di Materadio. Infatti: dov’è Audiobox in tutto questo? Dov’è la memoria (parola abusata in radio e in particolare nel flusso di Radiotre) di tutto il lavoro portato avanti per anni e anni che proprio a Matera creò qualcosa di importante per la radio e la creazione internazionale?
Sono stupefatto e particolarmente triste per queste consuete modalità che sistematicamente lavorano sulla rimozione del proprio vissuto e della propria storia mentre allo stesso tempo incessantemente e paradossalmente saturano l’etere di slogan basati proprio su parole chiave come “memoria”, “storia”, “ricerca”.
È un dato di fatto la morte della sperimentazione radiofonica nell’anno domini 1998. Morte decisa a tavolino proprio dal politburo Rai dell’epoca. Veramente imbarazzante come a qualche anno di distanza si persegua questa sistematica rimozione della storia di un pensiero radiofonico innovativo e condiviso che proprio nella Rai (e nei suoi straordinari network internazionali) era nato. Ma, mi domando, è proprio difficle da capire una cosa del genere da parte degli apparati aziendali? Dov’è la difficoltà vera?
I’ve published some references to Pinotto Fava an Audiobox in our site http://radioartnet.net
But I let you know my commentaries (sorry, in Spanish) that will be published in a book we are doing about 25 years of Ars Sonora:
¿Qué episodio trascendente tiene lugar en 1986 para el devenir de Ars Sonora? Pues bien: en noviembre de 1986 tiene lugar en la ciudad italiana de Matera la 3ª Rassegna Internazionale di Sperimentazione Sonora AUDIOBOX, organizada por la RAI y dirigida por Pinotto Fava. En representación de RNE asisto a esas sesiones con algunas piezas realizadas junto a diversos colegas en formato audioclip, y entro en contacto con profesionales como Ilana Zuckerman, Dante Raiteri, Brian Hodgson, Sergio Messina, Nicola Sani, Pekka Sirén, Alvin Curran o el citado Pinotto Fava, una figura clave en el origen del grupo Ars Acustica.
En junio de 1988 tiene lugar la 4ª Rassegna AUDIOBOX, y con ella se llega a una participación de Ars Sonora más madura en contenidos. Por ejemplo, con la versión radiofónica de una de las primeras obras de Llorenç Barber para campanas: Vivos Voco; su difusión desde los incomparables “sassi” materanos resulta un hermoso acontecimiento. Pero además ese año se ponen las bases para lo que luego cristalizaría como el grupo Ars Acustica. Heidi Grundmann (ORF, Viena), Klaus Schöning (WDR, Colonia) -dos nombres de referencia en la evolución del arte radiofónico en Europa-, Ivana Stefanovic (JRT, Belgrado) y el propio Pinotto Fava (RAI) van, entre otros, siendo protagonistas de ese proceso, en el cual la creación de nuestro país estaría en el sitio preciso y representada en el momento adecuado, lo que no siempre ha sucedido en nuestra historia cultural reciente.
Es la 5ª (y última, por desgracia) Rassegna AUDIOBOX, celebrada de nuevo en Matera, la que sirve ya abiertamente como punto de encuentro de productores y autores vinculados a Ars Acustica. Dentro de esas jornadas, celebradas entre el 4 y el 8 de octubre de 1990, Ars Sonora está representada por la radioperformance en vivo Labirinto di linguaggi (Concha Jerez – José Iges), por una selección de obras integrada por piezas del Festival Internacional de Radio Arte (FIRA) en su edición 1990, y por dos piezas de la serie “Derivas”, de Pedro Elías.
When I look back at my numerous encounters and experiences at and with international exhibitions and festivals of sound art and radio art the most outstanding one was the “Rassegna Internazionale di Ricerca Sonora AudioBox” in Matera curated by Pinotto Fava and organised by him and his team under the title “La Città Risonante” in1990.
The event filled the notion of site-specific art with sound and images never seen and heard in quite this way. Among the ones which I will never forget were Alvin Curran’s performance in the deep space of a Matera quarry, and the Koinè group’s marvellously complex event with its performers distributed in the small streets, on the balconies and squares greeting the rising sun with sounds and words risounding within and all over the old city.
Because I have these strong memories of RAIs Audiobox event in 1990 it is very difficult for me to understand that the same RAI, from which this unforgettable event emanated (and which must have also been an achievement of RAI’s technical staff), is not proudly referred to when one of RAIs channels returns to Matera so many years later with another festival in which “the Sassi risuoneranno”.
The company you knew formerly is no more. Hordes of SB’s satraps and sycophants have occupied it militarily to downgrade Italy’s I.Q. in order to keep its citizens happy and content. And brainwashed.
“E sempre allegri bisogna stare/che il nostro piangere fa male al re/fa male al ricco e al cardinale/diventan tristi se noi piangiam…”
Cari Amici:
For me, the memory of the Audiobox Festivals of 1986, 1988, and 1990 are inextricably linked with a small group of artists and friends including Charlie Morrow, Jeanne Lee, Butch Morris, Alvin Curran, Sabina Sacchi, Paola Scalercio, Gianfranco Salvatore, Sergio Messina, and above all, Pinotto Fava. Before the scourge of Berlusconi, Audiobox occupied a valued place at RAI RadioUno where a group of enlightened people committed to radio as an art form were offered a play ground in which to experiment, research, discover and celebrate broadcast sound in its many permutations; from German hørspiel, mystical Finnish romance, Austrian electronica (before the term was popular), Italiano critique of pop fantasia at the edge of the western empire, and the best of American improvisation at the nexus of extended musical technique and live sound technology. Rising from humble beginnings, the AudioBox festival grew from a place to gather and share our work before the ubiquity of the internet to the locus of ambitious events with an audience, intended to be both recorded multi-track and mixed for subsequent broadcast distribution as well as experienced in the sassi dal vivo.
What was always paramount for me, as a creative producer, was that Pinotto, whose own origins were in the sassi, expressly used the FACT of the uniqueness of the location as a metaphor for the art of radio: that in the same way that architects, visual artists, school teachers, musicians, and other artists were squatting in the sassi following the Matera population’s forced evacuation, and reinvigorating the special character of the town, it was incumbent upon radio producers to occupy and reinvigorate the medium of radio to bring back to life the experience of listening as an art form. Heady stuff, to be sure, but a sincere, heartfelt commitment for all involved, particularly from the heart and mind of Pinotto Fava and his perch at RAI in Roma. There are two examples of how formidable was the benevolence of Fava and RAI’s patrimony through the means of the Audiobox Festival.
My own project, a non-profit enterprise that RAI funded in toto, was called SPIRIT MATERANI and involved my coming to Matera with an audio crew some months in advance of the festival, and interviewing people who had lived in the sassi, before their forced removal, about the world of Matera when the sassi were fully inhabited. As well, we captured the living sounds of Matera as it was in 1989/’90, with the uproar of children getting out of school, the sounds of the various bells from the campanile, the torrente Gravina, the sonority of simply walking along the main drag above the sassi. After a wonderful trip to gather this targeted audio, I returned to NYC and shared the sounds with the composer/cornetist Butch Morris (with whom I had worked extensively in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and elsewhere), who sampled liberally based solely on the actual sonority – not their content – of the voices and other sources. We then returned to Matera at the time of Festival and rehearsed using the pre-produced sounds, live sampling which was toyed with on keyboard synthesizers by Morris’s brilliant cohorts, keyboardist Wayne Horvitz and trombonist J. A. Deane, who had invented an array of fascinating and expressive electronics that resonated uniquely in the early years of the digital revolution in sound. For the live performance we chose a twelve room cave complex in the sassi. In the first room, the three musicians were playing and sampling the preproduced bank of sounds as well as live musical motifs inspired by the surrounding sassi and the people at the event. We had a live mix of the improvised sound in that first room but each musician had an audio mixer of his own where he could choose by design or at random to send his own live sound to three separate locations elsewhere in the twelve rooms, each of which was wired with audio monitors for the audience to experience as they walked through the entire complex. The whole project – conceived as an audio event – was FILMED on multiple 16mm cameras by a crew led by the filmmaker Mary Perillo, including the talented director Zack Winestine.
Heidi Grundmann mentioned the memorable Alvin Curran event which took place in the quarry that had served as a source of the tufa rock that built Matera – wonderful moment. There were many others from all over the world. But for me, the most unforgettable production was accomplished by the boisterous Finnish artist Pekka Laitinen and his Polish collaborator Agnieszka Waligorska from the Finnish Proton Group, who inspired by two separate groups of writing, projected sound between the Murgia facing the sassi and the terrace of the Palazzo Lanfranchi. The sound travelled over the canyon and allowed the natural gorge and the city structures old and new to sculkpt and articulate the sound spectrum as it diffused around the open spaces. The unquestionable highlight was when at the climax of the second piece, inspired by letters written during the Finnish winter war against the Russians in 1939-’40 by unkown soldiers to their lovers, the full moon rose against the far side of the canyon, seeming to carry the sound of desperate words up into the sky in a flabbergasting spectacle of voices, music, human sound and planetary light.
The contemporary politics of RAI may seek to rewrite or erase the history of Audiobox’s ricerca sonora a Matera, but the current regime can never take away such glorious memories – thank you Pinotto Fava!