Ute Wassermann
“imaginary habitats”
TX: Saturday, 19th April – 6:00 – 6:30pm / Sunday, 20th April – 12:00 – 12:30pm BST
Ute Wassermann interweaves her voice with field recordings of birds, insects, frogs – of creatures that move across the boundaries between air, water and earth and finds new and different resonance places far away from their original environment. Fragile, seemingly natural sounds, such as the buzzing of bees under water, can be transformed into technoid drones. Snippets of soundscapes ghost through objects. Does the singer retain her identity or does she become the ‘other’? The boundary between self and environment becomes fluid, so that the latter itself becomes an illusion in favour of a more complex reality. The binaries of animal and human, object and human, nature and technology are turned upside down in favour of interwoven relationships based on reciprocity.
Ute Wassermann: voice, bird whistles
Felix Blume: field recordings
Ute Wassermann is one of the outstanding contemporary vocal artists of our time. She combines composition, improvisation and performance art to create her own form of Gesamtkunst, in which environmentally relevant themes play an essential role. At the centre of her research is the continuous and uncompromising exploration of her voice. Ute Wassermann’s singing goes far beyond the human voice and manifests itself in multidimensional sculptural sounds that oscillate between electronic, animal, inorganic and human qualities. She takes this to the extreme by creating a visceral sound space through the use of different types of microphones. In addition, she expands and alienates her voice through the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, field recordings and objects.
She has been touring the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music for many years. In the last ten years, she has increasingly realised audiovisual performances, installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles.
“Imaginary Habitats” is a co-commission between Goethe-Institut Glasgow and Radiophrenia. We are grateful for their support.
Photo credits: Cristina Marx/Photomusix
