The Topography
of Chance
by Stewart Lee, Curator
Sonic Arts Network, London, 2006
Audio CD with 28 pp. booklet, illus. £15.00
SAN autumn 2006
Distributors
website: http://www.sonicartsnetwork.org/.
Reviewed by Stefaan Van Ryssen
Hogeschool Gent
Belgium
stefaan.vanryssen@hogent.be
Three times a year, the members of the
Sonic Arts Network receive a limited edition
CD, curated by a guest artist. The
Topography of Chance is the eighth
installment in this series. It is curated
by Stewart Lee, a stand-up comedian, writer
and director who co-wrote and directed
the stage show Jerry SpringerThe
Opera.
At the origin of this collection of 17
widely different tracks is an anecdote.
Stewart Lee met a group of Fluxus fans
who were floating a large portrait of
the late Fluxus performer Emmett Williams
down a river in Cardiff. Intrigued, Stewart
bought Williams book An Anecdoted
Topography of Chance, which documents
in detail objects left at random at the
desk of artist Daniel Spoerri. The book
inspired him to bring together a series
of seemingly randomly chosen sound fragments,
each connected to a specific place and
involving some element of chance. The
collection is absolutely hilarious and
thought provoking at the same time. In
the best tradition of John Cage and Luc
Ferrari, some of the fragments are just
recordings of some naturally occurring
sound, commented on by a musician or a
local character. But there are also two
small fragments of found recordings,
pieces of tape that were lost and found
in the street or on the bank of a river.
Other tracks include improvisations by
legendary musicians Evan Parker and Derek
Bailey.
Maybe the most unsettling fragment is
a short recording of a conversation at
the Golan Height between Syria and Israel.
A fence and a 200-metre wide strip of
no-mansland split a little Druze village
neatly in two so the villagers have to
use megaphones to exchange news and shout
small talk at each other. The recording
was taken from the 1996 album, The
Fence, by Australian sound artist,
Jon Rose. In this case, the word soundscape
definitely rings with political overtones.
Not only does the fencea material
sign of aggression, discord and deep-rooted
hatesplit families and lives
but it also literally changes the voice
of the affected villagers. Their privately
whispered daily communications are transformed
into lo-fi public statements, their privacy
as well as the sound of their voice is
shattered and spilt acrossof
all placesa no-mansland. What
normally keeps people together is now
sown onto barren soil and stripped of
its individuality. It is heart breaking
and comical at the same time. My sense
of shame for being caught at listening
in on these private conversations is lessened
because Im not familiar with Arab.
I can only imagine what it would be like
if it was in English or in Dutch.
Like the above, each track has its own
anecdote; its precise location and its
measure of unexpectedness and everything
is perfectly clearly documented in the
booklet, which makes one wonder if this
is a book accompanied by a CD, or vice
versa. Anyway, a visit to www.sonicartsnetwork.org
will give you an impression and more details
about this collectors item and if
you really want to know what Man United
did in its football match on 19/11/2005,
you can listen to Mark E Smith of The
Fall reading out that days score
for BBC on track 16.