On and On and Off

(2024)

With Marla Hlady

Commissioned by Kunstradio, ORF, Vienna.

This project continues with the idea of working with choirs that began with the Swan Song project from 2019 (installation and publication).

A piece about commuting.

From home to work. From work to home. You get on the bus, train, plane, bike. You get off the bus, train, plane, bike. Even your feet are a mode of transport.

Transportation gets you from one place to another. From point A to point B. Arrivals and Departures. Movement with purpose. Kinetics with intent.

But sometimes you get on and it goes on and on and on and on and on. It feels like you might never get off.

You are destined to destinations. A life in transit, a life on transit. The trip can sometimes seem interminable, then you reach the terminus.

These are not conventional choirs that follow a score in unison, and all are singing at the same time and in the same space. This unusual choir asked each participant to interpret the set of instructions listed below in their own way.

The focus is on commutes from home to work and back. More broadly stated, it’s about the relationship between life and work, about work-life balance.

From the typical scenario involving traffic congestion to the transition from bedroom to home office, work is a mindset. In order to examine this condition from a playful perspective we searched for both differences and commonalities in everyday individual experiences.

We searched for the underlying rhythms that drive us—drive us to work, drive us home, drive us mad.

Participants: Christa Eder, Hans Groiss, Claudia Gschweitl, Monika Kalcsics, Ulrike Leitner, Karin Linortner, Susanna Niedermayr, Ursula Scheidle, Anna Soucek, Alexander Tschernek, Mia Kirsty Weisz, Elisabeth Zimmermann, Stefanie Zussner

 
 
 

INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE

12 people doing 12 things

Prompts:

1 – v1: If you have a home office, set a recorder on your desk and start recording, then walk back and forth from your bed to your desk for as long as it would take you to walk from home to the ORF at Küniglberg, each time you reach your desk say ‘O’; v2: Record yourself saying ‘O’ the moment you leave your home (for example: when you lock your front door), and again the moment you come back at the end of a day at work (for example: when you unlock your front door); v3: Record yourself repeating the letter ‘O’ to equal the amount of years you have worked at the ORF (so: 5 years = 5 ‘O’s). This can be done anywhere, but ideally at the ORF.


2 – Say 12 words starting with the letter ‘R’ and try to stay on the ‘Rrrrrrr’ for as long as possible. Stretch it until you almost forget what they word is.*

3 – Repeat the letter ‘F’ as fast as possible for one minute.*

4 – On your commute to the ORF try to remember all of your thoughts, once you arrive at the studio try to vocalize them without words in the order you thought them.* Maximum 3 minutes.

5 – If you usually read during your commute, the day you go to the recording studio, try to remember what you read that morning and summarize what you read using only 12 verbs.*

6 – If you usually listen to music during your commute this time don’t listen to music, instead hum any and all melodies that come to mind. Duration variable.*

7 – If you usually listen to podcasts during your commute this time don’t listen to a podcast, instead pretend you are a podcaster hosting your first show, but you can only say every second word, the words you skip should be left as pauses.*

8 – If you usually scroll on social media during your commute roll a ball on the ground alongside you just outside the door of your apartment and just inside the door of the ORF. The ball can be of any material, any size. The distance is up to you. Try to record it with the microphone close to the ball as it rolls along.

9 – During your commute put a recording device (can be your phone) into a glass container, close the lid, and put it in your bag (it can last for all of the commute or just part of it).

10 – Count the steps between your apartment’s front door and your building’s front door and record yourself saying the number in how ever many languages you speak.

11 – Record your commute in one direction, on the next day off you have, at the same time as you would have gone to work (or come home from work), stay in bed and listen back to the recording on headphones and record yourself narrating the route you took in whatever style you choose. It should last as long as your recording, you do not need to always speak, silences are ok.

12 – Make one sound that you think says it all about how you feel about your commute. Do it twice, once as loud as you can, the other as quiet as you can, both as close the mic as possible. And twice again, but this time as far from the mic as possible (but still within the same room).*


* if possible, to do in the ORF studio with a recording engineer

Notes:

– You can do just one, or several, or all of these.
– You can do one more than once.
– Feel free to contact us if you have any questions (but, rest assured, there is no right or wrong way to do these, we’ll appreciate anything you send us!).

Questionnaire:

– what is your position at the ORF?
– how long have you worked there?
– how far do you live from the ORF in distance (approximation is ok)
– how far do you live from the ORF in time (using your usual mode of transportation)