artists
WAR! A Live Interactive Sound Performance between
WBAI (New York) and B2-92 (Belgrade)
This project was conceived by Brian Conley and co-produced by Brian
Conley & Sina Najafi of Immaterial Incorporated in New York with
the help of Gordon Paunovic & Robert Klajn of Radio B2-92 in Belgrade,
and Matthew Finch & Hesu Coue of WBAI in New York.
WAR! occurred on November 14, 1999 and was broadcast in New York on
WBAI and in Belgrade on Radio B2-92, a key voice of opposition inside
Serbia throughout the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. The event, an imaginary
theater of conflict between Serbia and the United States just after
the NATO bombing of Belgrade, was a two-hour interactive live performance
between two teams of sound artists gathered at the two radio stations
and connected via the internet. For this performance the teams read
classic books of war strategy (Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz for example)
and each devised a strategy for waging war on the other using cartoon
sound effects as the primary sound material. Just as the broadcast
employed both new and old technologies of the internet and the radio,
the participants were allowed to employ any technology from home-made
instruments and the human voice to samplers and computers in order
to manipulate and organize the cartoon sound effects. By using the
stereo divide, each team was broadcast on a separate speaker so that
the audience could easily distinguish between them. The teams did
not meet their opponent until the moment of broadcast. At that moment
they were involved in a relentless struggle for domination and drive
towards victory over the other in the domain of the audio. This public
event was a satirical reflection on the violent political conflict
in Serbia as one recent episode of 'civilized' humanity's capacity
for collective acts of aggression.
The U.S. participants were: Scott Arford, Gracien Challenger, Bill
Chesley, David Cunningham, Michael DeMurga, Thomas Dimuzio, Brian
Dewan, David Dixon, Joshua Fried, Rob Gould, Dan Illian, Nina Katchadourian,
Peter Lew, Pam MacKinnon, Akio Mokuno, Sean Moore, Daphna Naftali,
blaat, Barry Conley, Marcin Ramocki, Maria Striar, Clubbed Thumb,
Shane Valentino, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Trevor Williams, and Jay
Worthington. The Serbian participants have never been identified publicly.
The WAR! radio broadcast was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York, as part of the "Bitstreams" exhibition, March
20-June 10, 2001.
WAR! was also part of the exhibition "Carnival in the Eye of
the Storm: War/ Art/ New Technologies in KOSOV@" at Pacific NW
College of Art's Philip Feldman Gallery, Swigert Commons and New Media
Arts Gallery, April 6-29, 2000.
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