Lecture "Ausgewählte Kapitel Neuer Musik mit Thomas Gardner" | Audio Testimony (host Klien) | Koordination Hannes Löschel

This lecture with workshop considers the place of Audio Testimony in artistic practice, and will explore the ways in which artists use sound to enable new forms of testimony, and create new artistic configurations which engage public consciousness.
After an introduction into practices and concerns of Audio Testimony we will examine, through a shared and collaborative practice, the consequences of treating sound as form of testimony and explore questions such as:
The imagined, hoped for, and potential effects of the testimony - What consequences may flow from the making of the work?
What is the relationship of the maker of the work to the people/materials that are testifying, and what form does the work take (both as an ongoing process and as a final form)?
To what extent does the testimony alter, question or pose difficulties for the mode of artistic representation?
Two texts are proposed for this workshop, and are attached. One of them focuses on a still unresolved historical crisis in musical representation, the other on a sonic engagement with the current ecological crisis.

Thomas Gardner is a sound artist and musician whose interest is in the links between music, field recording and speech. These are explored particularly in the context of post war art-music and the increasingly political understanding of sound art, and lead to the making of work which attempts to mediate the legacy of trauma and search for new forms of representation. The research context for this is the developing field of ‘Audio Testimony’, which links disciplinary and community groups in the exploration of sound as a creative medium through which to engage with complex, traumatic and contested memory.
A recent example is the piece “Scored Out”, A project to research, realise and publicly stage a sonic performance environment inspired by the complex memories of the town Vasilishok, a Jewish shtetl in Belarus which was erased in 1942.
This work has become the starting point for collaboration with civil-society organisations (EIHR, ForumZFD) dealing with post-conflict education, researching ways in which sound can play a part in classes for children and young adults which address the legacy of conflict.
Thomas is course director of the MA Sound Art at the University of the Arts London, and a member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice).

Themen: Vortrag, Workshop