PURE MINOR (2024)
sound installation
PURE MINOR is a sound installation project inspired by the traditional Swiss "Alpsegen," reinterpreted with electronic sounds and processed vocals. The project explores the intersections of sound, ritual, and technology, focusing on how protective rituals using sound can be adapted for contemporary urban settings.
The “Alpsegen” is a kind of request to God, Christ, the Mother of God, the Trinity and to individual saints, which vary depending on the version of the text, in which the protection of the Alp and everything that belongs to it is implored from the possible dangers of the coming night; musically, the “Alpsegen” is a recitation made up of lines and sections of lines. As a rule, it is the head dairyman of an Alpine community who calls the “Alpsegen” loudly over his Alp every evening at or after nightfall; he likes to stand on a nearby hill and, to increase the volume, uses his hands held in front of his mouth or, even more frequently, the so-called "Folle", i.e. the milk funnel, which, when held upside down in front of the mouth, is used as a kind of megaphone. This creates an imaginary protective space around the Alpine farm that lasts all night. The protection extends as far as the sound of the prayer call or “Alpsegen” reaches.
Using such kind of wooden megaphones as central acoustic devices for the installation, the project aims to combine tradition and new technologies, deconstruct pastoral ideals and investigate the friction between rural voice based rituals contemporary urban soundscapes.
installation/performance view, Skanu Mesz festival, Smilga gallery, Riga, Latvia
funnels realised by Nils Knott, robot legs by alles blinkt
