Raw Materials by KOENRAAD ECKER

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Belgian sound artist Koenraad Ecker returns to LINE with a new collection of works, Raw Materials. This is his second release on LINE after 2015's 'Sleepwalkers in a Cold Circus' (LINE_070).


1. Transparent Bodies, Submarine Roots

.(...)
At night, liquid voices rose up from the depths of the ocean.
They had sunk from the womb, straight into the pitch-black belly of the ocean, bird in hand. To survive the weight of the sea, their
limbs had grown to tentacles,
entangling the seaweed, their mouths transforming into gills to breathe the water. Transparent bodies, submarine roots extending in
all directions.
(...)

The sound material used in this composition was recorded at the Belgian North Sea and in & around Berlin, July-October 2018, using
a variety of microphones, piezos & hydrophones.

This version released on LINE is a 2023 stereo re-mix of the 2019 Ambisonics mix, originally commissioned by Cristian Vogel for
Audiorama Stockholm


2. Furniture Rebellion
a short story / a foley-study composed in March 2020


3. Heart of a Stone

“(...) and the vitals hardened to rock,
but still she weeps, and she is carried,
Caught up in a whirlwind, to her native mountains,
Where, on a summit, a queen deposed, she rests,
Still weeping : even to this day, the marble
Trickles with tears (...)“
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book VI, 295-323)

A stone : a metaphor for the most mundane of things-deaf, cold, inanimate matter. Yet, is it really? Never inert, a stone is in a state
of constant transformation, a historical witness, inscribed with the traces of successive ecologies.

What if a stone could speak–would we listen?

Special thanks to the Studio für Elektroakustische Musik at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, where the sound material used in
this composition was recorded in October 2018.

This version released on LINE is a 2023 stereo re-mix of the 2018 multichannel mix, originally commissioned by Cristian Vogel for
Sentralen Oslo.


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Koenraad Ecker is a belgian sound artist based in Berlin. He is fascinated by the dialectic interplay between the acoustic environment and the social relations contained within it;by the magic of the ordinary and the ordinariness of magic. Characterised by an unorthodox use of foley, extensive field recording and a love for electro-acoustic hybrids, his work attempts to make the empty spaces in between things heard & felt, and to find a delicate balance between the fragile and the visceral.

As a composer and sound designer, his work has been heard at leading music festivals (CTM Berlin, MUTEK Mexico & Montreal); in squats and techno temples; at renowned art institutions such as ZKM (Karlsruhe) and Akademie der Künste (Berlin); in series like Black Mirror (Netflix), on music labels like Subtext & Opal Tapes; and during residencies in Kampala (Nyege Nyege), Beijing (Sivenlu Media Studios), Oslo (Zero Visibility Dance Corp) and Brussels (iMal).

His work has been nominated for the Ars Electronica prize (2016) and won the Radiophrenia Prize for Radio Works (2021).

He has taught or given workshops at the Universität der Künste (Berlin), Liszt Academy (Hungary), Nyege Nyege Studios (Kampala) and KHM (Köln).

Since 2021, his work has been moving towards an artistic practice that combines oral history, field recording and archival research. Together with Haldi Okudheyo, he is working intensively on a long-term artistic research project focusing on the vernacular oral history and archival sound-artifacts of the Belgian colonisation of north-east Congo, in collaboration with the MRAC (Africa Museum, BE), INMC (Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo, DRC) and Nyege Nyege (Kampala, UG).

koenraadecker.com

Richard Chartier's LINE publishes editions documenting compositional & installation works by international sound artists & composers exploring the aesthetics of minimalism.

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