forms of minutiae presents 'live at kwia’, a fragment of a recorded electroacoustic performance by field recordist and artist Pablo Diserens.

Amid winter, on one of the last nights of 2021, a group of people gather in the welcoming womb of a listening bar. Bordered by tiled walls and embraced by a simulated fog, cradled listeners soon forgo outer fluctuations. From a distance, dogs’ barks and bats’ calls reverberate into the space, Pablo Diserens’ concert has begun. What unfolds next is a weaving of biophonic field recordings with hums of blown and stroke glass bottles. The emerging electroacoustic ecoscape oscillates between animal stridulations and Helmholtz resonances. Wavering wind pulses and mirroring clangs intertwine with ultrasonic drones bringing the audience into oneiric realms. Ants, grasshoppers, and crickets infuse the room with vespertine warmth. Windows ooze with condensation. Winter seems far, as if morphed into a balmy summer night. A new landscape materializes, birthed by the set of frequencies at play. Buccal air gently throbs in and out of the glass vessels in glistening gestures. Pablo blows into their empty bottles one last time before handing the stage to a sizzling underwater mixture of rain drops and insectean accents.

The recorded fragment stops here, yet, that night, the formed sonic window into this temporary landscape pursued its course. The auditory encounters that followed now only exist in the hazy memories of wintertide listeners.

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Pablo Diserens (they/she) is a field recordist, musician and artist devoted to non-human realities, attentive listening, and possible forms of interspecies coexistence. In solidarity with a wounded planet, their practice invites people to attune to the present moment in an attempt at rethinking caring strategies and our relationship with the world and its biotic communities.

→ pablodiserens.studio


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The Wire — Issue 462 (review) :

“'live at kwia' suspends: its own brittle equilibrium, an attentive observer's breathing rhythms, time itself. Recorded live in December 2021 by Berlin sound artist Pablo Diserens, this 34 minute piece weighs the natural and the artificial, then tilts into the sublime. Diserens has made magic from glass before, memorably on 2020's for scarpa's fountains, but slides into a deeper gear here, sidelining somewhat their established field recordist mode.'live at kwia' begins as a duet for diced [bats] calls and a distant dog's barking, looped and echoing; a river splashes between them. [...] The great outdoors gives way to something more interior, with audience chatter sluiced gently under a sustained, glassine ringing, a churning quaver pregnant with tension. It swells up, contracts and then flutters while the sounds of glass tentatively touching glass trickle out like candies from a burst pinata. The effect is eerie and luxurious, shelves of haunted champagne flutes and carafes and dessert plates caught in the hesitant act of mingling. [...] Diserens summons a sonic solar eclipse."

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Musique Machine (review) :

"Heterotopia is a philosophical concept used by Michel Foucault, in order to describe places functioning in nonhegemonic conditions and are simultaneously physical and mental. By his definition, a heterotopia is a physical approximation of an imaginary utopia or a parallel space that makes utopia possible somewhere else or a space within a space. That last notion describes "live at kwia" and as such, a heterotopia is unfolding in my ears! [live at kwia] is captured in a rather peculiar way- as the “space” brought in by the field recordings, is transmitted inside a room, a space (a sonic field) within a space, a perfect example of heterotopia. Deep listening sessions, the practice proposed by Pauline Oliveros, are an essential key in evaluating and understanding the album, because music creates a cathartic condition in which the script of its sonic identity is re-written, with each listening yielding different results. "live at kwia" starts as a pure and untouched field recording, but rapidly evolves into something more complex, more sonically charged. It is maximal, yet stunningly minimal in some parts. A sound walk orchestrated and directed by Pablo Diserens, without giving a map or hint along the way. Organic and electronic sounds appear and disappear progressively; the atmosphere is colourful, blooming and natural, smelling soil and moisture. An enigmatic diary of an excursion to an unknown forest. A pilgrimage, Zen, clear and absolute!!"

→ www.musiquemachine.com/reviews/reviews_template.php?id=9181

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