5 December 2024 19:30
John Duncan solo shortwave
Video teaser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_y-ijGtEhA
Full video: https://www.ursss.com/2024/12/john-duncan-optimistic-search-for-the-living-unabashed/
Teatro San Leonardo, Bologna
Produced for AngelicA by Walter Rovere
Photos by Massimo Golfieri
Meticulously recorded every night for months between midnight and 6 a.m., OPTIMISTIC SEARCH FOR THE LIVING, UNABASHED is a blend of pure shortwave signals originally designed and broadcast to locate, attract, calm, influence with propaganda, interrupt, ignore and dominate, making listening so irritating as to be mind-numbing or impossible altogether. Launched into the atmosphere from points all over the planet, these signals repeatedly reflect between the ionosphere and the Earth’s surface, distorted by countless cosmic forces far beyond the range of predictability, finally reaching a radio antenna tuned to their frequency range and picking them up while they are in the shadow of the Sun, for as chaotic as they are, they are also ephemeral, easily destroyed by solar radiation. Each signal is chosen for its physical, psychological and psychic effects on me as a human listener, then composed, refined, into a deliberately elaborate cocktail that evokes a labyrinth of memories, images, sensations that make description irrelevant, a form of impalpable seduction that encourages attention to the present moment. –John Duncan