Launch event: 25/26th April 2006 @ The Marble Church, Copenhagen
Released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster
Sample Track #3: Swimming Pool
Jacob Kirkegaard - 4 ROOMS
This is Jacob Kirkegaard's 2nd CD for Touch, after Eldfjall [Touch # T33.20]. Born in Denmark, now living and working in Germany, here he explores the sonic legacy of one of the worst man-made disasters in human history.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded on April 26, 1986; clouds of radioactive particles were released, and the severely damaged containment vessel started leaking radioactive matter. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the city and other affected areas. Despite the fact that radiation is still being emitted from the nuclear disaster site, the 900-year-old city of Chernobyl survives, although barely. As of 2004, government workers still police the zone, trying to clean up radioactive material. Many — mostly the elderly — have decided to live with the dangers and have returned to their homes in the zone's towns and villages. Their population was highest in 1987, when there were more than 1200 people. In 2003, there were about 400 and now 350 are registered. The effects on the environment were catastrophic: huge areas of northern europe were dosed with radioactivity.
4 ROOMS - empty memorials
This work is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the 'Zone of Alienation' in Chernobyl, Ukraine, recorded in October 2005.
Jacob Kirkegaard deliberately picked rooms that once were active meeting points for people.
The rooms he found and recorded were abandoned abruptly, urgently, and for good. Their inhabitants were evacuated by Soviet military and were forced to leave all their belongings behind. On April 26th, 1986, the explosion of Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had removed all possibilities of human survival in the vicinity.
Two decades after the event, Kirkegaard explores the phenomenon of radiation with the medium of sound. By listening to the silence of four radiating spaces he aims to unlock a fragment of the time existing inside the zone.
SILENCE - unfolding in space
The sound of each room was evoked by an elaborate method: Kirkegaard made a recording of 10 minutes and then played the recording back into the room, recording it again. This process was repeated up to ten times. As the layers got denser, each room slowly began to unfold a drone with various overtones.
From a technical point of view, Kirkegaard's "sonic time layering" refers back to Alvin Lucier's work "I am sitting in a room" [1970]. He recorded his voice in a space and repeatedly played this recording back into that same space. In Kirkegaard's work, however, no voice is being projected into the rooms: during the recordings he left the four spaces to wait for whatever might evolve from the silence.
Track listing:
1. Church
2. Auditorium
3. Swimming Pool
4. Gymnasium
A Flickr slideshow of photos about Pripyat, now a ghost town - except for the few elderly who have returned and refuse to leave). Pripyat has been ransacked and looted many times over for building materials, wood and metals (especially copper tubing and wires). However, apart from this, most of the town rests in the original state after being evacuated in 1986. {Wikipedia: Pripyat}
About Jacob Kirkegaard
Jacob Kirkegaard is a Danish artist with an interest in the scientific and aesthetic aspects of resonance, time and hearing. His performances, audio/visual installations and compositions deal with acoustic spaces and phenomena that usually remain inaccessible to sense perception. With the help of unorthodox recording tools such as accelerometers, hydrophones or home-built electromagnetic receivers, Kirkegaard manages to capture and explore "secret sounds" - distortions, interferences, vibrations, ambiences - from within a variety of environments: volcanic earth, a nuclear power plant, an empty room, a TV tower, crystals, ice... and the human inner ear itself.
A graduate of the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne, Germany, Kirkegaard has given workshops and lectures in academic institutions such as the Royal Academy of Architecture in Copenhagen and the Art Institute of Chicago. During the last ten years, he has been presenting exhibitions and touring festivals and conferences throughout the world. He has released five albums (mostly on the British label "Touch"). Among his numerous collaborators are JG Thirlwell, CM von Hausswolff, Lydia Lunch and Philip Jeck.
Links
http://fonik.dk - Homepage of Jacob Kirkegaard
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