Christina Ertl-Shirley focuses on a particular half-felled corkscrew willow. Passing walkers mourn around this once-beautiful tree, but are also amused by its current state of unruliness. Its biological processes are sonified, and facts, anecdotes, songs, poems, dreams, and conversations interwoven into a multidimensional narrative.
22 hours with the recalcitrant corkscrew willow A plot of land near Berlin on which stands a half-felled corkscrew willow (Salix matsudana Tortuosa). The tree, which was many meters tall before being cut back and often attracted attention with its "curly" branches, was planted in 1974 and had to be cut down to a 90cm trunk two years ago due to city regulations. Passing walkers always mourn around this beautiful tree, but are also amused by its unruliness: The remaining trunk sprouts again and again and countless red-green shoots grow out of it in the most diverse variations, which then must be trimmed again immediately so that no real branches form. The trimmed tree seems more active than ever and has become a favorite habitat for insects, birds and tree fungi and perhaps other species. Its sawed-off jagged branches, which have been converted to fences, are also beginning to sprout regularly. For Radio Art Zone, this corkscrew willow becomes a sound producer itself for 22 hours, as I sonify its biological processes, and capture the sounds of its inhabitants and environment. In this soundscape, facts, anecdotes, songs, poems, dreams, and conversations around the tree interweave and become a multidimensional narrative. For this I use material from archives, realize my own willow compositions and invite musicians, people out for a walk, poets and tree experts to stay next to the tree trunk and listen to what they have to share with me inspired by the recalcitrant corkscrew willow.
THANKS TO
the colleagues and friends who have shared their thoughts, poetry, and recordings; who allowed me to interweave them with my corkscrew willow sonic associations:
(The times in brackets are the start times of their contributions in the 22 hour piece)
Katharina Ludwig „Trauerweideda“ (1hour 20min)
Mauro Pandolfino „transvait“ (2hours 17min)
Andrea Ermke „Totes Holz“ (2hours 45min)
Mauro Pandolfino „Tiresia“ (5hours 21min)
Adam Asnan (gong), Bryan Eubanks (seeds) „ Gong / Seeds“ (6hours 43min)
Derek Shirley (7hours 35min)
EdelWe (Paul Lubitz und Sascha Wohlfahrt) „Beat Noir1“ (11hours 50min)
Mauro Pandolfino „Prelude“ (14hours 37min)
Rexe Kenn „Wohin“ (15hours 00Min)
EdelWe (Paul Lubitz & Sascha Wohlfahrt) „Beat Noir 16“ (16Std 09Min)
Johnny Chang for Johnny Chang & Christina Ertl-Shirley „Bushwalk in Berlin-Whangaparaoa“ (17hours 45min)
Anaïs Tuerlinckx „“Souvenirs éphémères pour bois trouvés le long de cordes flottants” (18hours 55min)
Derek Shirley (20hours 55min)
Special thanks to Julia Saragosa as speaker of the sound story „Combed, throbbed and loving mulm“. ( 6 Std 58 Min)
I would also like to thank everyone whose voices, thoughts and sounds inspired and found their way into this program: Abigail Shirley, Mauro Pandolfino, Sea Oba Smith, Lena Mahler, the birds, insects, the wonderful carpenters bee, the gardeners in the garden colony and their tools, the passing walkers and of course the one and only corkscrew willow.
Christina Ertl-Shirley creates audio*visual narratives in the form of sound installations, radio plays, drawings, radio features, short stories, and compositions (based on field recordings and analog synthesizers). She sees her works as transmedia explorations with experimental approaches to the sharing of knowledge. She is particularly concerned with the interweaving of nature, art, and technology, immersing herself in the respective microcosms, such as the world of the animal "paper nautilus", the cultural history of the elevator, the environment of wooden beetles in the Berlin forest or the discipline of moss research. The starting point for her work is traveling these niches through scientific, historical, and subjective material. She draws on the suggestive possibilities of these elements and comments on them through her own acoustic, visual and haptic investigations, realizing artistic narratives from them.