echoe-S.htm

"echoe/S"
An audio-visual installation by Werner Puntigam (photos & space) & Klaus Hollinetz (sounds)

The Austrian artists Werner Puntigam (acoustics & visuals) and Klaus Hollinetz (electro-acoustic compositions) have collected quite a lot of experiences in interdisciplinary and intercultural activities. Both of them were invited as highly individual composers among others by the Austria Zimbabwe Friendship Association to Zimbabwe in 1997 to reflect the extraordinary music of the Tonga people by their own compositions. Since that time they have been involved in several collaborations in cultural exchange projects. For example the sound/video/photo-installation Gwenyambira - A Tribute To Simon Mashoko, which they conceived and realized together with the cinematic artist Michael Pilz as a homage to one of the masters of mbira music in Zimbabwe. Or the brandnew mbirations project founded by Werner Puntigam with the participation of Adam Chisvo, a great mbira player from Harare. This trio with the unconventional line up of trombone / conch shell / mbira / vocals / electronics / samples creates and performs a "rural-urban chamber music" which should get a widest range of musical ideas between African and European, traditional and contemporary, composed and improvised and acoustic and electronic musics which can be also listened to on their 2 CDs (mp3 demos).

In "echoe/S" ("S" means Siachilaba, a small village of the Tonga people in the Binga area of Zimbabwe) they recover several acoustic and visual material which they collected during the last years at their visits of this place and remix it for a new complex multimedia space installation. The audience can dive into an audiovisual cloud and will get a very special sensitive experience: During their walking through the two rooms and watching the two super-sized black and white sujets printed on a crystal-clear foil (each 3,30 x 1,30 m) and which divides the sqare rooms diagonally, the views and perspectives are changing permanently. And also the soundscapes which are created out of recordings of Ngoma Buntibe Music of the Valley Tonga, plus several additional sounds of human voices, animal sounds and everyday life noises, are sounding from two independent CD players equiped with two different soundtracks which guarantees a permanent and highly dynamic change of the acoustic atmosphere.

The first presentation has been realized at the HMH Gallery in Linz/Austria (September 3-14, 2004) as part of the mulonga.net station at the ARS ELECTRONICA festival "timeshift" (special thanks to Peter Kuthan / Austria Zimbabwe Friendship Association and Gerald Hanisch / HMH Gallery Kunstereignisse, who made this project possible, and to Gernot Sommerfeld for his technical advice and support!). The project was also presented successfully at the Museum of African Art in Belgrade/Serbia (November 24-28, 2005) and at Galerie Habari in Vienna/Austria (Oct. 23 - Nov. 12, 2008). further presentations at home and abroad will follow soon (i.e. at Galerie Zauner in Linz, June 8 - July 8).