LITTLE FRIEDEL… CAN YOU HEAR ME?

Image: spectrogram, the usual way of cleaning soundtracks of noises that get into recordings and which are detected on the basis of colours of different intensity and place on the spectrum.

In the summer of 1959 the Estonian non-fiction film producer and opera singer Friedrich Jürgenson and his partner tried to record the birdsong of a finch in order to use it in one of their documentaries. In the forest near their home Friedrich placed a tape recorder and remained silent as he tried to record the birdsong. On returning home, he played back what he had recorded.

The sound was clean and clear, the wind, the leaves as they moved, the song of the finch, but... there was something else. On the recording he could also hear a human voice imitating the sound of the finch which then started talking in Norwegian, commenting on the birdsong. Jürgenson supposed that it must have been someone who was also in the forest at the time who he had not been aware of. So, the following day he returned to the forest, but first checking the area to ensure that there was nobody about, and once again he placed the tape recorder beside the finch’s nest. When he returned home satisfied, Friedrich played back the recording. This time there was no one whistling but there was a voice. A voice which he recognized as his own dead mother calling him. Friedel … my little Friedel …. Can you hear me?

In this two-day workshop we will experiment with the boundaries between art and magic in order to defy the logic of our surrounding world.

A workshop led by Raisa Maudit, a multidisciplinary artist whose work is defined by representations of individual and collective desires, needs and expectations in conflict with socio-political standards, generating experiences that are transformed into little acts of subversion.