workshops 2017


#07
Extended interviews
a new Workshop by Alessandro Bosetti

From 22th to 25th of july 2017 (4 days)
Where ? Arles
Students : 200 euros
Others : 400 euros
Langage : french and english


Sound and radio artist Alessandro Bosetti has been drawing the main materials for many of his pieces from "extended interviews". He has interviewed people in languages he can't speak, constructed narratives just out of unexpected revelations, used headphones and collective feedback games to create stories and misunderstandings, created a machine to "interview oneself" and conducted entire radio pieces by letting people talk just and only about "the first thing that come to your mind". He is fascinated by the idea that any encounter and conversation can be negotiated as a "constructed situation" and has been interrogating several issues linked to the appropriation of other people voices as part of radio, music and art projects.

PUBLIC
This new workshop is address to beginner and professional radio makers, radio journalists, sound artist, sociologists, anthropologists an writers interested in "sound writing". Settings will span from a classic "question and answer" scheme up to collective and generative experimental role plays.

CONTENT
Many radio pieces are built around "interviews" where the act of recording people's stories, reactions and conversations substitutes the writing of a script. But, what is an audio interview? And how do we generate our "O-Tone", the original tones radio pieces can be made of ad that have not been written before?
There are so much more ways to approach people with a microphone as we expect.  Many have been already tried out while many others are still waiting to be experimented with.
The plain interview schema of questions and answers can be turned upside down in a number of ways, become a collective play, a game, a social sculpture, a brainstorming, a divination session, a shy landscape full of beautiful pauses, a fight, a confession booth, a therapy and so on. Can the interview be transformed into a performance process where instead of chasing answers to our pre-made questions we start doing something together, possibly more surprising and more fun?
Whatever we do when we press "rec" and start taping, we also start sculpting a situation. Even if we will eventually cut out all our interventions the situations will always carry the blueprint of our presence and ideas as reflected in the answers and reactions people will show us. No matter how genuinely motivated by the search of authenticity we are, we always change the situation by the only fact of being there asking something with a recorder at hand.
So, why not trying to construct those situations anew and try to play with the notion of what is real and what is fiction?

PEDAGOCICAL OBJECTIVES 
Learning how to approach someone for an audio interview. What to ask? What not to ask? What gear works better? How can we build a situation without a script? Reflections and exercises on how to conduct a "classic" interview. Learning on how to deconstruct a classic interview. Learning how to turn the interviewee into the interviewer. Learning to build collective situations and modulated conversations. Learning to use recordings and interviews as brainstorming tools for creative, artistic and organizational processes. Generating performative interviews.

PROGRAM
Workshop will be mainly practical, equally divided in trying out many different interview settings among each other and heading out the classroom to experiment on the field with all sort of approaches. A number of practical exercises will be given and participants will be prompted to produce a short audio piece to be presented at the end of the workshop.
- Generative exercises: experimenting with a number of classic and unusual interview settings, real and simulated, in the classroom.
- Field work: approaching approaches with people, from getting in touch with someone (on the phone, in the street, in official situations) till the actual interview.  We will discuss ethical aspects of appropriating other people’s voices for an audio piece and technical solution to record voices of individuals and groups.
- Analysis: We will also explore several radio works built around unscripted interviews and O-tones. We will also analyze each participant's interview's approach pro and cons. What are you good at and what aren't you good at?  (There's no good for all approach, it's a very personal matter…)
- Audio works: we will produce one or more audio/radio works to be presented at the end of the stage. Piece/s will be done with  no script but exclusively built around interviews and real time interactions used as materials for "sound writing".


Alessandro Bosetti (Born Milano, Italy, 1973) is a composer, performer and sound artist currently based in Berlin.
Most of his works delve on musicality of spoken language and sonorous aspects of verbal communication. He utilizes misunderstandings, translations and interviews as compositional tools. He has been presenting pieces for voice and electronics blurring the line between electro acoustic composition, aural writing and performance in leading venues as the GRM/Presences Electroniques festival in Paris, Roulette in NYC, The Stone in NYC and Cafe OTO in London among many more all over Europe, Asia and the United States.
Most recently he was awarded the Phonurgia Nova prize 2012 for his composition “636≤ (RTBF 2010) and the IDAF prize 2013 for his performance “Mask Mirror” an instrument and software that reorganizes speech for musical purposes enacting an electronic ventriloquism.
Since 2009 he started exploring repetitive speech-loop forms with his ensemble Trophies with drummer Tony Buck and fretless guitarist Kenta Nagai. Trophies has released three CDs and tours regularly. Further ongoing collaborations are with pianist Chris Abrahams (The Necks), composer vocalist Jennifer Walshe and vocalists Tomomi Adachi and Amelia Cuni.
Although being known in recent years mostly as a solo performer  past and present collaborations include musicians as Sophie Agnel, Serge Bagdassarians, Boris Baltschun, Günter Christman, Rhodri Davies, Michel Doneda, Axel Dörner, Annette Krebs, Peter Kowald, Giuseppe Ielasi, Phil Niblock, Enrico Malatesta, Renato Rinaldi, Christian Kesten, Bhob Rainey, Hankil Ryu, Otomo Yoshihide, Ches Smith, Taku Sugimoto, Taku Unami along with writers Charles Pennequin and Kim T’ae Yong and typographers Indre Kilimaite and Annette Stahmer.
Bosetti has published more than ten CD’s under his own name on labels as Errant Bodies Press, Monotype, Rossbin and Sedimental and many others in different collaborative settings. Blow Up magazine has called Bosetti “One of the most anomalous and fascinating figures in the contemporary scene“. Bosetti’s  Cd Zwolfzüngen has been listed as one of The Wire’s best 15  outer limits cd’s of 2010.


more infos, registration, accomodation

+ 33 4 90 93 79 79 or info[at]phonurgia.org