CATEGORII
scris de Catalin Rulea
Rooly: Dear Bernard, you started the work for feld-records in 2004. Since then you published 6 authors. What are your criteria of selection and how do you perceive the term experimental in music and sound design?
Bernard: We (Heike Schleper and I) have been organizing experimental concerts at that time in a space called Atelierfrankfurt, basically a big house with lots of artist studios and a so called “club”. The label started with the idea of documenting these concert series, we didn’t have the plan to release every concert we did there but the ones that where most interesting to us. Very soon (actually instantly after the first release by Carlos Giffoni) it became clear that we would go different ways as well. Carlos’ CD is a worked over and shortened version of the recording of his concert in
In the end it was pretty different with every artist we released till now. Pure played here as well but his CD presents carefully worked over and edited versions of live concerts he did in other places.
We are close friends with CM von Hausswolff and also collaborated on different projects and LPs that were produced together with the
It’s hard to say something (short) about the second part of your question, obviously there could (and should) be books being written about this question. I guess we choose more or less intuitively by listening, sometimes also because I know the artists personally and appreciate their way of working with sound, their method of production, their history, etc
I’m not interested into sound design that much. We are releasing music in my point of view.
Rooly: From your point of view, even if I will talk now about some artificial classifying, what difference is between sound art and experimental music? Or to say it different how do you refer to your published work?
Bernard: Like I said: In my point of view we are mainly releasing music. I say mainly because I had the vision of also releasing sound art, even video art, etc. on different mediums (not necessarily just CDs and DVDs) in a smaller very limited kind of sub-label edition called feldEditions. I hope this goes on sometimes as well, till now I just released a small edition of one of my works which was presented as part of a group show at the art fair here in
But one that you could also just listen too otherwise I would not have released it. It has to make sense on a CD as well in order to be released and not just be half of documentation with essential parts missing.
In general there is a great text by Douglas Kahn on the subject (sound art / music) called “The sound of music” which is really recommendable even though the situation that he was writing about in this text from the 1980s has quite changed since then. (All of Kahn’s writings are highly recommended anyways, there is this great one on drugs and sound from 2001 …, etc)
Being a visual artist myself and having studied film (well experimental film), I have a relation to both spheres sound art and music - but it is not always important to me to make a distinction between the two, it is interesting in theory, no doubt and there should be debate about that, but within my work it kind of happens by itself, just by decision. Sometimes it’s more music to me; sometimes it’s clearly sound-art, depending mainly on my thoughts and concepts, the situation, context, etc.
By the way experimental is not a good term in general to me, it may fit for some productions or ways of working but not for a genre, or let’s say: not to make up a genre.
Unfortunately I can’t come up with a better fitting term at the moment, maybe there is only more detailed terms to use (but they would have to be used very carefully and that may not serve the problem at all).
Rooly: Could you tell us about some problems that you meet when starting an experimental project like feld-records in
Bernard: Well, of course the main problem is money and in our case time as well.
Since we don’t run the label in the first place, but are doing many other things from my own art production till curating different events and concerts, not to forget some money jobs, etc. The label work proceeds pretty slowly. We had some money from Hessische Kulturstiftung to start the label and pay for the first releases, originally part of a grant that I received for my artist work. Since that money is gone we pay for the releases ourselves and never sold enough to be able to pay for the next release - but that’s all usual problems, nothing that’s special to
But still: I think
I don’t know the scene in
I think the scene is a very important factor and we tried to kind of build up a local scene here in Frankfurt by inviting artists to play live for almost 2 years but it never really worked here in Frankfurt. For a label though it does not seem to be so important where it is located. It is important to get through to people and that has to happen internationally anyways, through mail-orders, distributors, magazines, blogs like yours, etc.
Rooly: What is your future plan Bernard, regarding not only the label but also your performance?
Bernard: In terms of the label: Try to get money together to be able to do more releases and try to get the feldEditions going. More concrete: we have to release one work that we promised to do long ago and I really want to do this one, it’s just the old money/time thing. After that I will work on the first regular release for feld by myself �
My performances have always been quite rare, at some point I stopped completely playing live for about a year or more. Just recently I started playing live in
Another project is the quiet band a duo with Sergej Jensen. We will do more recordings but already have been to the studio often during the last years and will release at least a 7 inch soon.
Rooly: I wish you a good and prolific year, thank you!
Bernard: Thanks.
Interview with Bernard Schreiner (
05.02.2008
http://www.last.fm/music/vitor+joaquim
http://www.ffss.info/kouhei/main.htm
feld is a Frankfurt-based label for experimental productions run by Bernhard Schreiner and Heike Schleper, established in 2004.
Nici un comentariu | Print This Post | Email This Post