Barry Echo by Mollin+Voegelin

The work for 4.33 in Bregenz, entitled The Barry Echo, is a sound piece made for the Pfänder Gondola. It is played through the existing tanoy system of the gondola, continually as it makes its passage up and down the mountain.

The piece consists of 104 stories from the current editions of the Barry Gem and South Wales Echo, read in the lounge area of Cardiff Airport by one of the artists to his mother, who is registered blind. For her part, the artist’s mother corrects any bad pronunciation of place names whenever they occur during the reading of the texts. While the various news articles were read without a break in real time, they are split in to 104 components during the editing process through a simple series of plain and abrupt cuts. After each cut the following text will be introduced by its allotted number in German.

The piece is loosely based on the book by the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard, entitled The Voice Imitator: 104 Short Stories. In this book the author writes 104 parable-type stories based on newspaper reports and hearsay. The work for Bregenz both plays tribute to this work but at the same time drains the original idea of its weight, allowing the stories to create their own parable-type status through their context of hearing; the gondola’s repetitive passage up and down the side of an Austrian mountain. The receptor of the mathematically calculated stories from her own local newspaper, the artist’s blind mother, becomes a personification of John Cage’s own vision of his audience, while also acknowledging/reminding us of Bernhard’s own resentment–filled wish, stated in his last will and testament: to refuse publication of his works in Austria. Bernhard’s wish appears a futile attempt to silence his own homeland audience but remains present as an echo after each page is turned.

David Mollin & Salomé Voegelin