Radio Papesse

This sound piece has been shortlisted in the context of the Süden Radio open call for soundworks.

Pre-recorded radio program
Voices: Jhon Handal, Michael Rishmawi, Said Murad, Valentina Bonizzi

Remote Orchestra is, on first glance, relatively simple: is the attempt to bring musicians living in different cities together using free, off-the-shelf telepresent technology and internet connectivity to affect real-time collaborations. To nurture these collaborations, I coordinate and facilitate online meetings, discussions, practice sessions, and public concerts among musicians. Building on these collaborations, I will work towards researching the challenges of bringing Remote Orchestra musicians together into the same physical space, and get a sense of how much efforts it takes today to play in real- time without the requirement of technological mediation. The simplicity of this proposition belies the challenging social, political, and economic conditions that make the realisation of a physical meeting possible. In working towards developing extended and on-going collaborations, Remote Orchestra musicians have to negotiate with timezone and linguistic differences, technological delays, poor sound quality, bad connections, etc.. In working towards looking at how to bring them together in one geographical location, we will encounter a host of challenges regarding funding and visa restrictions.

Remote Orchestra challenges the quotidian relationship we have with technology and the politics of mobility that are made invisible by their very banality. Identifying, documenting, and exposing these complexities and the consequences that they have on social mis/conceptions of mobility and migration are fundamental to this project. Maintaining what Grant Kester deems the quasi-autonomy of art allows for Remote Orchestra to effect dynamic engagement with the real-world challenges and implications that this process exposes.

Valentina Bonizzi (1982, Glasgow/Tirana) is an artist working with the image in all its expanded forms, sound and archives. Her works highlights issues of social justice in relation to hybridity, cartography and history. She holds a PhD (AHRC) from the Visual Research Centre, Dundee and among others she presented her work at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Fondazione Fotografia Modena, Stills Gallery in Edinburgh, British School and the Media Art Festival in MAXXI, Rome and soon amongst the special projects at the Mediterranean Biennia in Tirana. She published with the Journal for Flusser Studies, the Mauritius Catalogue of the Venice Biennial.