Poltergeist or some scene else

At 7:30pm today — Poltergeist or some scene else by Yulia Carolin Kothe.

This essayistic radio work explores Glasgow’s Barras Market’s syntax of artefacts as a starting point for creating an expanding and ever-evolving tableau of intense, uneasy acousmatic atmospheres.

The conspicuous and omniscient narrator takes the listener on a rambling walk through the Barras entering private and public spaces, a remote cottage and various ambivalent territories home to disembodied voices and close up traces of life like a wet ring of a coffee cup just plucked from the scene.

Kothe’s own electronic compositions are juxtaposed with re-articulated oral histories, chopping up DIY recordings on cassettes purchased from the Barras Market, and combining with avantgarde German poems by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927), Thekla Lingen (1866-1931), Karoline von Günderrode (1780-1806) and Anna Ritter (1865–1921).

Text by Caitlin Merrett King