Die Gärten von Gyumri – Resumé
Datscha Radio’s day started with our arrival at the academy at sharp 11 am, meeting its director Vahagn Ghukasyan who had already put tables and stools on standby. Food and drinks were nicely arranged on their plates by Annette Gloser (FrankfurterSportundKunstkasino) who also assisted enthusiastically with setting up the radio station in the part-shade of two pinetrees. Testing went well, supervised by Marold Langer-Philippsen who has been maintaining our streaming activities since 2021.
A flock of art students arrived, Xenia, Susanna, Ani, Hasmik, Jane, curious about radio making and eager to contribute. Consequently, after a bit of music being played and Datscha Radio’s greetings to the listeners, the show started with their introductions.
Afterwards, our first radio guest Vahagn, explained about the academy’s artistic branches and goals in art education. As the listeners might have noticed, a short glitch with cable connections caused the fallback to become activated. In case you have wondered: It was a visit to a garden close to our home in the Mush II district in Gyumri when I was ‘kidnapped’ by two elderly ladies and taken to the kitchen to drink coffee
Meanwhile still more students arrived and gathered around or seated themselves comfortably on the benches in shade and sun. Co-founder of Art Basis, Mary Mikaelyan, joined the show via telephone and explained the work and aims of this artist platform dedicated to new and communal approaches in the Armenian art scene. More songs of the Armenian folk band “Tchamich” (“Raisins”) completed this first garden session.
With great joy we welcomed Ani Petrs-Bartsumian who had arrived with her two sisters, Janie Petrosyan and Vanessa.
Titled “The Song and Poetry Field”, our second part of the programme involved spoken word and prose readings. It opened with a jingle spoken by Christina and Maria, quickly having been improvised (because of a power cut and because it was raining) in the smithy located on the grounds of the garden. We also listened to the piece “Grace”, created by Indentity Runners, a cross-continental trio of women sound and media artists. Ani personally introduced her project “The Female Composer’s choir”. She is also the voice behind Datscha Radio’s ‘official’ announcement jingle and several short poems and rhymes which enriched the NightLoop. While being on location she also helped a lot with translations in conversations and in the acquisition of new radio guests, as you will see.
The “Poetry Field” continued with a reading of “Where ever I go, I am already there”, an ethnographic-poetic text by Gabi Schaffner put to paper in Gyumri. Originally written in English, the text had been translated into Armenian by Mary Mikaelyan and was consequently read in Armenian language by the academy’s students Hasmik and Ani. Anton Smirnov‘s piece “Crystals” and “Amplitudes and Frequencies” accompanied our talks.
Meanwhile, on over-hearing the sounds of cello and violins wafting from the main building, Annette and Ani Petrs-Bartsumian sneaked in and persuaded the musicians to come out into the garden. Such, we were granted with a stunning concert of 4 members of the Gyumri Branch of Yerevan State Conservatory, playing for us several works by Komitas and more Armenian composers: A great thanks to Armen Kartshyan (1st violin), Sasha Atanyan (2nd violin), Julieta Harutyunyan (viola) and Azat Karutyunyan (cello).
With our broadcast scheduled for three hours altogether, the time frame for our third theme “Into the Wild” had melted down quite a bit: Live guests rule! Field recording snippets interchanged with Joan Schuman’s (USA) empathic piece “Ghosts Wolves” and InHer Interior (AUS) sound walk “Coral Air Land” until it was time for another live phone talk, this time with with Marold about his upcoming show on the 4th of October in the garden of Getamej on the outskirts of Yerevan. Last piece of the broadcast was again “Armenian Folk Impro” by Love Hospital (Berlin), which had been swallowed up by the cable glitch at the beginning.
And already the time had come to say our goodbyes and to announce Datscha Radio’s nightloop! Datscha Radio hereby expressed its happy thanks to Art Basis for the invitation to work and do research in Yerevan and Gyumi, to Vahagn of the Academy of Fine Arts in Gyumri for hosting us and helping with all practical issues (from electricity, furniture to last-minute-SIMcard-activation!), to all our charming guests and contributors and, most definitely to all representatives of the Botanic Institute of Botanical Garden, Yervan, and all artists of the open call, who repleted this broadcast with so many different radiophonic colours!
After closing the show, we still had more fun, playing a field recording featuring an audio snippet called “vodka offering” to the security warden who came out for a chat. Despite sunshine, a cold breeze started tearing at our clothes… We wrapped up everything, including ourselves and finally said goodbye to the academy.
In a nutshell, this was it. Datscha Radio expresses its greatest thank to everybody involved, and especially to all contributors of the Open Call! As live radio always creates its own time flow with respective eddies, whirls and surprise guests while on, we were not able to play all works during the show. All of them were featured though in our NightLoop running from 8pm to 9 am Armenian time!
For the archive edit of the whole show we will put them in as originally intended. Thank you for bearing with us until then, and once again, thank you all!!!
Specials and Current Extended Activities
Archival special to look forward too: ALL interviews about ARMENIAN BOTANICS AND ECOLOGY will be summed up in a separate audio documentation. Date: by 12 of October
The NIGHTLOOP will presumably run again on the 3rd-4th of October.
Starting on 4pm (Armenian time/ 2pm CET), radio artist Marold Langer-Philippsen will be streaming live his radiophonic expedition “Getamej’s Hanging Gardens”. While we will hang out in that garden, frolicking with food and drink and hopefully a true Armenian barbeque.
This post is also available in: Englisch