// economics

This excellent work by Gabriela Loeffel gets the Schweizer Kunstpreis today. Congrats and it was a pleasure to compose and to produce the title melody for it:

I did the title music for a thrilling work by Gabriela Löffel. She filmed the final of a lawyer’s contest hosted by the WTO and screens a insight in her installation „The Case“. The work is shown in Geneva, Montreal and Athens. View a trailer and more news about THE CASE here.

A wonderful new year to everyone and THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT.

And finally, the Lump is @ Bandcamp:

Lump200: coincracker (© desalmand/stauffer)

This is the day of the first show of our 2011 Africa Tour. We are in Maputo, Mozambique. The follow-up: two spots at HIFA festival, Harare, a show in front of the proud crowd at Social Thesis Jamsession in Soweto, Johannesburg and last and least: Swinger’s Jazz Club in Cape Town – sometimes the spirit of a place is inversely proportional to its reputation.
The Tour is presented by Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council. Thanks.

As I write these lines after the tour I conclude that we played two excellent shows (HIFA II and Soweto), two good shows, one bad show and, last but not least, one show that runs out of concurrence because it was a TV show, the sunday morning news show at SABC. And like too often in TV nothing was of any importance but to keep in schedule and to be meaningless while talking and miming meaningfully. And sometimes I wonder why people who work for TV swallow broomsticks before they perform.

But maybe it is worh more talking about local excitement than about global boredom: Southern Africa is hot, it is different, even from itself. I attended the party of the year (so far) in a kitchen in Kensington, Johannesburg. The first person I met yelled at me: „Listen, I am completely fucked up.“ I think he wasn’t – he was just alive.

Wäre ein Tun, je mehr Aufmerksamkeit es erhält, desto besser, müsste man Stockhausen recht geben, der die Anschläge vom 11. September als das grösste Kunstwerk bezeichnet hat.

Der Refrain geht so:
Es gibt keinen Zusammenhang zwischen erreichter Aufmerksamkeit und Qualität.

Staatliche Subventionstechniker dürfen den Refrain jeden Morgen auf dem Arbeitsweg singen. Eine Strophe könnte so gehen:
Es gibt gute erfolgreiche Arbeit.
Es gibt gute erfolglose Arbeit.
Es gibt schlechte erfolglose Arbeit.
Es gbit schlechte erfolgreiche Arbeit.

Wer das Thema vertiefen will, lese z. B. Black Swan von Nassim Nicholas Taleb oder Fachliteratur zu Public Relation.

In several steps Michael Stauffer and me produce the radio play Haengt disc tilge. We got some money from Stadt and Kanton Bern. I start with a recording in which I squeeze the speaker Karin Eckes according to my chart while she is reading a non-semantic text of Michael. I think it is a (de)constructed phonetic transcription of a Robbie Williams text.
We use mateial of a x-mas session in Worpswede for the music. We record further material. The actors Christine Groß and Christian Ahlers join us for a session. Michael and me finish the 50 minutes piece ping-pong-wise.

It will take 8 years for Haengt disc tilge to find it’s first radio broadcasting performance. I had some interesting discussions with programme directors about the piece.
Here is an excerpt from the play:

Desalmand/Stauffer: excerpt from Haengt disc tilge

Weil es lange dauert, bis die Kartoffeln gar sind, mache ich eine weitere Rauminstallation.

Wenn die, die mich beschenken, wüssten, wieviel ich von dem mir Geschenkten weiterverschenke, würden sie mir noch viel mehr schenken.

Der Wunsch nach Frieden übertönt das Gerassel des Geldes nicht.