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"Heimat
& Antarktis" (i.e. "Home & Antarctica")is
a sound-play consisting of electronic sounds, recorded noises,
interview-voices and radio-clippings. Little and big stories
at the borderline between the immediate vicinity and the
greatest distance are tied together to form a fascinating
flow of acoustic impressions.
Pictures from historical industry and mining photographies
in the booklet accompany the stream of voices and sounds
like a melancholy undertone: what happens?
Well, there is the empress, the ill child, an aeroplane
in the snow, seven girls and of course the end of the world
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Over
many years Frank Niehusmann has recorded and filed a great
variety of voices, sounds and environmental noises. Most
of the recordings of this work were made somewhere in the
Ruhr-Area, but have been isolated from their original contexts
for this work. Noises and voices, which actually are very
familiar to us ("Heimat" - "Home"),
suddenly strike us as being utterly strange, unsual and
distant ("Antarktis" - "Antarctica"),
because they have been isolated from the known context.
With this combination of electronic music and sound-collage,
Frank Niehusmann has created a unique symphonic sound-opus:
a sound-play. The texts (nearly all in german) are original
sounds of living or historic, anonymous or prominent persons.
Frank Niehusmann shows the unknown in the known, the far
in the close, the "Antarctica" in the "Home"
and "Home" as "Antarctica". |
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In
1995 the acoustic work "Heimat & Antarktis"
has been developed into a sound- and picture-composition.
About 380 slides have been animated as a fluid series of
pictures, and were then - together with the soundtrack -
published as a video (VHS-PAL, 45 min., stereo-sound). Most
of the photos are historic industry-photos from the collection
of photos of the "Deutsches Bergbau-Archiv in Bochum"
(German Mining Industry Archive in Bochum). Impressive coloured
views of powerful industrial ruins, people living in this
industrial area, machines and bizzare horizons - accompanied
by that thunderous sound-track: a sweep of sounds and pictures
like a low-altitude-flight over the industrial Ruhr-area:
"Home" and "Antarctica" ... |
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Press-Reviews
about the CD HEIMAT & ANTARKTIS:
Sounds
from Home and the Antarctica
Pounding drum-rythms and scraps of conversation, machine-noises,
... On the borderline between radio-play and sound-collage
...
(GW in: Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung,
Essen/Gerrmany, 17.11.1994)
At the
South Pole
With "Heimat & Antarktis" Frank Niehusmann
has created an opus, that has no equal in the advantgarde
of music.
(TM/D.W./TS in: Coolibri, Bochum/Germany,
November 1994)
The
miner's world of labour ...
... landscapes and sound-collage - gaps and bridges in
one's imagination ... often bizarre effects ...
(Petra Riederer-Sitte in: Rheinische
Post, Moers/Germany, 7.3.1995)
Where
is Home, where is Antarctica?
... an uneasy suspense is built up ... and every pit,
that is driven into the depth, is appaling and thrilling
at the same time. The end of the world, that's what Antarctica
is, but it is also here where we are: on the wasteland
of closed mines, in the inner cities. -
(Achim Prossek, in: Foyer, Essen/Germany,
Dezember 1994) |
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Press-Reviews
about the video HEIMAT & ANTARKTIS: My
home, Antarctica
Music-Film by Frank Niehusmann
Associations, intensified by film-pictures, decompose
"Home" as a known and comprehensable element.
What do the people talk about? ... The answer: You've
come too close to see clearly anymore ... again the artistic
work turns out to be singular, seems to be abstract. However
this opus is the evidence of a deep understanding, conveyed
from the darkness and depth by the art of such sounds
and pictures ... In other words: nowhere else "tristesse"
is painted in such marvellous colours ...
(in: Festival-Magazine of the World
Music Days 1995)
A breath-taking
flood of pictures
Film presents the Ruhr-area
Pictures of men, houses and landscapes overlap on the
screen in a confusing way. Frank Niehusmann presents unusal
prospects with his music ... when an off-voice talks about
the ice in the Antarctica, the beholder feels more at
home there than in the pictures of the familiar environement.
Exactly this discrepancy between sounds and pictures evokes
the suggestive effect.
(Jens Reinhardt in: Westdeutsche Allgemeine
Zeitung, Essen/Germany, 6.12.1994)
World
Music Days 1995
- Heimat & Antarktis -
The film "Heimat & Antarktis" is based on
the book of plates and CD of the same name ... the impression
of motion is given by the quick fading of motives. Motorway
signs localize the cross-section of the Ruhr-Area. Scraps
of conversation from the Ruhr-Area suggest stories. Electronic
sounds correspond with black-and-white pictures of the
past: Children in a sterile doctor's surgery, miners with
gas masks and again and again monuments of transitoriness,
gravestones, closed coal-pits ... Exactly this discrepancy
between sounds and pictures evokes the suggestive effect.
(in: Programme-Magazine of "Essener
Filmkunsttheater", Essen/Germany 1995). |
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