Sound Development City Artist Expedition 2016 � Madrid–CasablancaSeptember 6–25, 2016

Brent MeistreDraad Trek (Pull Wire)

Documentation

land. The expedition format was developed in collabora-tion with Heller Enterprises, a Swiss agency for cultural projects. Sound Development City is financed by Sound Development and put into practice by Heller Enterprises.

Artist Expedition 2016

On September 6, 2016, a group of twelve artists from ten countries, four team members, one expedition writer and one radio editor embarked on an expedition to Madrid and Casablanca. For the first time in its five-year history, the Sound Development City expedition ventured be-yond the confines of Europe and into Africa. The artists were selected out of a total of 424 appli-cants from 66 countries by an international jury consisting of Hassan Darsi (La Source du Lion, Casablanca), Esther Eppstein (Message Salon, Zurich), Martin Heller (Hel-ler Enterprises, Zurich), Gianmarco Marchetta (Sound Development, Zurich) and Gema Melgar (Matadero Ma-drid/El Ranchito, Madrid). The evaluation was based on artistic quality and originality, feasibility of realisation as well as the research-based approach of the project propos-als. The applicants’ inquisitive personality was also taken into consideration. The twelve artists formed a heterogeneous group, coming from such diverse disciplines as animation film, dance, intermedia art, sound art and music. During Sound Development City, they worked on ten projects that fol-lowed a wide range of subjects and narrative lines.

About Sound Development City

Sound Development City is a three-week artist expedi-tion to two annually changing cities. The expedition crew consists of a dozen artists coming from different geograph-ical, cultural and artistic backgrounds. They are selected through an open call for projects that is geared towards artists who distinguish themselves through a process- oriented approach to their work, their curiosity and an ex-plorative mindset. Sound Development City is a place for artistic re-search and concepts which benefit from being on the road and probe urban environments as sites of both playfulness and social involvement. Here, working theses can be exam-ined, new project ideas or forms of expression can be tried out and bold visions can be put into practice. The expedi-tion offers freedom of choice and action, without the pres-sure of measurable results — a strong focus is placed on process and on daring ideas. While the expedition’s target cities serve as reso-nating urban space, as work material, sources of inspira-tion and playgrounds for public presentations, the expe-dition creates a fertile soil for exchange, reflection and cooperation. Sound Development City is also an inward journey to personal thought and work patterns, which are challenged and maybe even realigned through the expe-rience of the unknown and the unpredictable. Sound Development City is a project by Sound Development, a non-commercial, independent and pri-vately funded cultural initiative based in Zurich, Switzer-

and the unfamiliar working situation, and especially to-wards each other. They arrived with verve, curiosity and a readiness to take risks, and they preserved this spirit until the last moment. They engaged with the previously un-known cities and their inhabitants, looking for a breeding ground for their projects and research, which they found again and again in various forms. And they endured the unknown and the “not knowing” and adapted their con-cepts to become reality step by step by coming up with new ideas, sensoria and tools. Through it all, the expedition grew organically to become a dense experiential space and a shared creative journey. The agenda, which had purposely been left blank from the beginning, was steadily filled with spontaneous public as well as internal activities that peaked on the second last day in Casablanca: during the Expedition Dis-coveries, all participants presented insights into their working processes. On September 26, Sound Development City end-ed on the rooftop terrace of La Parallèle in Casablanca in a comfortable temperature and with emotional words. A group of unknown individuals that had started a jour-ney on an extremely hot day in Madrid had become a com-munity of like-minded people saying goodbye with heavy hearts.

The first seven days were spent in Madrid, the last eight in Casablanca. The journey in-between, which the artists undertook individually by land and by sea, from one continent to the other, was an integral part of the ex-pedition; it served as a shift in the working process and of-fered time for reflection and further research. In Madrid, the expedition set up its headquarters at the artist-run space Nadie, Nunca, Nada, No. — re-ferred to as NNNN — and in Casablanca at the school and art space La Parallèle. In Madrid, two of the artists had the chance to make use of a gallery space, La Juan; the expedition’s participants also worked with the infrastruc-ture of the self-managed cultural centre Tabacalera. These venues served as workspaces and places for presentations, rehearsals and workshops but also — especially in Casa-blanca — as oases in the midst of foreign lands. In both cities, the expedition was supported by dedicated local teams — fairy godmothers — that provid-ed access to the local art scene, collaborators, hidden cor-ners and vibrant spots. Through them, the group was wel-comed with open arms, was immediately introduced to cultural peculiarities and had access to the cities’ rough edges and abysses, sweet spots and beauty. Sound Development City 2016 was strongly impacted by the paralyzing heat of Madrid and the pow-erful cultural diversity of Casablanca. But more than that, it was each artist’s single-minded dedication that formed the expedition and made it a rich, unforgettable and suc-cessful adventure. From the very beginning the twelve participants overwhelmed us with their openness towards the format

The content found in the following pages comes mostly from these sources, while certain reflections, Uwe Lützen’s essay and Andreas Oskar Hirsch’s travelogue were added after the fact.

Participants & Projects

Dan Allon IL

Visiting the Ghosts of Mrs SwissaVincent Charlebois CA

NodesBernadette La Hengst DE

Café EuropaSasha Kurmaz UA

Untitled Ari-Pekka Leinonen FI

I Am Helping My Friend to Think — My Friend Is Helping Me to IdleLuka & Jela RS

We’ll Leave Pieces of Madrid on Our Road to CasablancaBrent Meistre ZA

Draad Trek (Pull Wire)Agnieszka Pędziwiatr & Rafał Pierzyński PL

DIVAS Youmna Saba LB

1.2 Seconds Ago — Travelling NotesChris Wood UK

Walking with Satellites

Documentation

To document these — sometimes fleeting — moments, thoughts and artistic experiments, the Sound Develop-ment City website served as a multi-voiced logbook by channelling content from various authors and sources: texts, sketches, snippets, photos, sound pieces, radio inter-views and videos added up to become a collective expedi-tion diary. The artists documented their work, their expe-riences and reflections and offered insight into ongoing processes. Author Uwe Lützen accompanied the group as an expedition writer. His mission was to watch and listen, to travel with the group and to document the artists’ work. During the expedition he published notes, articles and personal observations on the Sound Development City website, which after the journey he processed into an essay that can be read in this book. The Sound Development City team created a daily photo journal. Radio interviews with the artists and with local cultural activists were produced together with artist and 2014 expedition participant Andreas Oskar Hirsch. These were broadcast on the expedition’s online 24/7 web radio, the Gap Station. Last but not least, the expedition was accompa-nied by local photographers Jonay PMatos in Madrid and Zakaria Wakrim in Casablanca, both of whom captured the expedition’s atmosphere and the artists’ work through their lenses.

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Draad Trek (Pull Wire)

Brent Meistre

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“Draad trek” is a term used when you’re building fences, wire fences. So you’re basically stretching and pulling the wire across the landscape, connecting it to a pole. So it’s usually a term that is related to landscape and vast expanses. For me here, I’m using those kinds of signifiers around the city, around the bullring, as wire, as the thing that encompasses. It controls, contains, it con-tains the bull, it contains the city, it contains trees and … broad-er, as it kind of goes out, we’re talking about Europe, we’re talk-ing about Africa, we’re talking about bigger borders and fences. So, it’s about kind of access and control.Excerpt Gap Station interview

Draad Trek (pull wire) is a term used to describe the process of erecting fences. In its Afrikaans language form, “draad trek” has a deeper significance, evoking remote landscapes, being stranded alone in a vast and empty terrain. Borders that keep shifting or are being erected begin with a single strand of meshed, razor, barbed or welded wire. The signifier of a single strand of wire is very powerful. Tethering, tying, binding — wire is also a very pragmatic material used to fix many things. For Draad Trek, Brent Meistre works with stop-motion animation, video and sound to create works that deal critically and playfully with various sites and spaces. The distance, prox-imity and connectedness between Europe and Africa is explored through tensions, bindings and strands, as the impossible task of pulling one end of a land/landscape closer to the other.

BM Hi. My name is Brent Meistre. I am a photographer and film-maker from South Africa. — — SDC So, what would be your priority? Are you a filmmaker and/or a photographer, or …? —— BM I think, actually, I am a musician. Everything for me revolves around music. Music sets the tempo, pace for my life, for my work, for my animations, for my films, for my photography. So I think I’m a musician who works visually. Excerpt Gap Station interview

Posted 4.8.2016

SDC What are you bringing to the expedition? —— BM Wire, rope, string and hope. —— SDC What will you leave in the cities? —— BM After-images, phantoms and fugitives. —— SDC What are you hoping to take back from the expedition? —— BM The fire.Artist Q&A

I’m working on a three-part film, with three different songs. All these will connect … and also allow things to happen. But the master plan is a triptych of films. Excerpt Gap Station interview

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Continual repetition as a way of processing but never coming to resolution, always an impossibility. And that’s what I’m inter-ested in. Impossibility of representing — it’s always trying to get close to it but never getting there.Excerpt Gap Station interview

Posted 7.9.2016

In Madrid, the first thing I’m looking for is Africa. And I find Africa. I’m looking for bulls. I’m finding bulls. And I’m pulling things, connections, together. So it’s names, it’s visuals, it’s sig-nifiers, it’s roads, it’s paths and those kinds of things. It’s kind of loose, I’m looking for signifiers, and that’s how I work.Excerpt Gap Station interview

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La Tabacalera fumer. Posted 12.9.2016

I’m always the “Stranger” character. And the stranger is a stranger to myself, a stranger to the space. Because I’m the photographer and the performer, I’m also the — I use the word — perpetrator, and the victim. So there is something implied in that relationship: photographing, which is about control and capturing and steal-ing images, and the thing that’s being the object of the camera. Excerpt Gap Station interview

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The interest in the still photograph is that — what it doesn’t say. What the photograph doesn’t say and the limits of the photo-graph, what’s outside the borders of the frame of the photograph or the viewfinder. And then the gaps between photographs. So for me, animation, take a shot, and there’s always something missing between the one frame and the next frame. And there is a loss and a melancholia in the photographic moment, because the photograph always documents a time. So all the camera can do is record that moment, and then it’s gone. But we have a re-cord of it. Music can be the same thing. … it’s all about gaps and time and memory and those kinds of things. Being in this place in Madrid and going to Casablanca, it’s always about this long-ing, because that moment is now gone. So the idea of the lost moment is very important. And that’s what brought me to pho-tography and animation. Loss — let’s call it that. Excerpt Gap Station interview

Morocco pop-up studioPosted 21.9.2016

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I’m trying to tell stories about the place. I think, with traveling and moving and being in different spaces continually it becomes a challenge; the excitement is in responding to a new place. I’m walking around a corner this morning, seeing something, think I want to do something here because this is what I see, and this is how I can engage with it. So it’s about the possibilities of space and place, and I’m not really trying to predetermine what I’m going to see. But being there, I’m very aware of what’s happen-ing around me.Excerpt Gap Station interview

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I’m in disguise. I’m a tourist, I have a camera, I’m walking around, la-la-la-la-la, and then I switch on my head into being a photo-grapher animator. I see a moment, and I watch the world move. Or I put it on a tripod, and I move in front of the camera.Excerpt Gap Station interview

Extracts of a three-part series made during the Sound Develop-ment City expedition between Madrid and Casablanca 2016. Terror/Torres, HD stop-motion animation, 00:05:42� vimeo.com/brentmeistre/torres

Goodbye Horses, HD stop-motion animation, 00:04:06� vimeo.com/brentmeistre/goodbyehorses

Amazigh/Amadoda, HD stop-motion animation, 00:06:20� vimeo.com/brentmeistre/amazigh

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Biography Brent Meistre ZA

*1975Brent Meistre is a South African photo-grapher, curator and filmmaker based in the small rural Eastern Cape town of Gra-hamstown/Rhini. Throughout his varied body of work are the cyclical motifs of journeying, movement and migration within the historical context of Africa and how traces and remnants of these con-tinue to constitute and speak to the lived experience of people on the continent.� vimeo.com/brentmeistre

We now intend to bring the project to an end with the 2016 Sound Develop-ment City expedition to Madrid and Casablanca. We can look back on a rewarding time, great encounters and remarkable projects, and we thank all the participants who have contributed to the character and lasting success of Sound Develop-ment City. Special thanks go to Heller Enter-prises, in particular Martin Heller, Gesa Schneider, Andalus, Nicholas Schärer — and the project director and producer, Duscha Kistler, without whose commit-ment the project in this form would not have been possible.� sound-development.com

Sound Development Sound Development is an independent cultural initiative based in Zurich. It was founded by Nia Schmidheiny in 2002. She thus extended the definition of how her family had been supporting the arts for generations. Sound Development’s general ob-jective has been to inspire and support art-ists through practical experience, to pro-vide knowledge and contacts as well as to connect people and artists. The pro-motional efforts were based on different projects, such as Music Apartment or LofiDogma, realised as in-house and co- productions. Sound Development has also been interested in alternative forms of art and cultural promotion. The combination of non-commer-cial orientation and private funding has allowed the freedom and flexibility need-ed for an uncompromising implementa-tion, independent from formal concepts and with an open mind for new methods and strategies.

Sound Development City was one of Sound Development’s major projects and was created in collaboration with Heller Enterprises. Sound Development want-ed to give selected international artists a platform and the opportunity to realise trans-disciplinary projects. Personal en-counters and collaborative work played a key role in developing new ideas — away from academic or institutional settings. The artist expedition format offered exact-ly the space and time to do research and to develop a project — without necessarily targeting a final product. Over five years and five expeditions, Heller Enterprises and Sound Develop-ment have supported international artists to discover new directions and establish new contacts.

Gema Melgar Matadero Madrid/El Ranchito, Madrid

Expedition WriterUwe Lützen

HeadquartersNadie, Nunca, Nada, No.Calle Amparo 94, MadridLa Parallèle1 Rue Abou Al Mahassine Royani, Casablanca

Local Partners MadridTabacalera, Centro SocialLa Juan GalleryLa Casa EncendidaFantompower

Local Partners CasablancaAssociation CasamémoireBoultek & EAC L’BoulevartGoethe InstitutHotel CentralInstitut français de CasablancaRacinestlbb MagazineLe Vertigo

Project ManagementDuscha Kistler Project Director & ProducerAndalusProject Director Nicholas Schärer Communications Andreas Oskar HirschRadio Editor & Mothership PilotAnna Katharina ThalerIntern

Production Partners Hubertus DesignDesignAstrom/ZimmerWebsite Cristina AngladaAna Martínez Production & Communication — Madrid Imane BarakatSofiane Benkhassala Production & Communication — Casablanca Jonay PMatos Photographer — Madrid Zakaria Wakrim Photographer — Casablanca

Imprint PublicationHeller EnterprisesConcept Duscha KistlerEditor Nicholas Schärer Editorial Assistant Hubertus DesignDesignCaslon SDCTypefaceGobi Design Recycling MattSirio Color SabbiaHolmen TRND 2.0PaperMarjeta MorincLithographyMartin della Valle (Textmax GmbH)Translator & Copy Editor (except “Expedition Observations”)Druckerei Odermatt AG PrintingAn der Reuss AGBinding

Imprint Sound Development CityIdea & ConceptSound DevelopmentHeller Enterprises

RealisationHeller Enterprises Responsible: Martin Heller

Sound Development City 2016Participants & ProjectsDan Allon IL

Visiting the Ghosts of Mrs SwissaVincent Charlebois CA NodesBernadette La Hengst DE

Café EuropaSasha Kurmaz UA

Untitled Ari-Pekka Leinonen FI

I Am Helping My Friend to Think — My Friend Is Helping Me to IdleLuka & Jela RS

We’ll Leave Pieces of Madrid on Our Road to CasablancaBrent Meistre ZA

Draad Trek (Pull Wire)Agnieszka Pędziwiatr & Rafał Pierzyński PL

DIVAS Youmna Saba LB

1.2 Seconds Ago — Travelling NotesChris Wood UK

Walking with Satellites

JuryHassan DarsiLa Source du Lion, CasablancaEsther Eppstein Message Salon, ZurichMartin Heller Heller Enterprises, ZurichGianmarco Marchetta Sound Development, Zurich

Index of ImagesBrent Meistre10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 Zakaria Wakrim29, 30

Thank youJuan Gómez AlemánShimon AllonMiryam AllonAna AraHicham BahouFred BenWalid BendraIbrahim BennaniChedouane BensalmiaDounia BenslimaneEnrique BorrajerosAriel BustamanteLucia Casani FraileJulio CubillosFriedrich DahlhausFanny DalmauFlorence DarsiLaura FernándezZony GómezAbdellah M. HassakGhassan El HakimNadir HouboubPekka LeinonenFlorence Jardin-LorigAbdellah El KhaljaniMehdi Filali KhessouaneLukatoyboyTarek El MaarifMoisés MartinClara Martin GascoChus MartinezPablo MartinezRamón MateosRaisa MauditMss AtiAgent P

Judith PalaciosMarta RincónMaria SantosRosmery Schoenborn Manuel Segade LodeiroYassine SkhounSamba SoumbounouJulia StrebelowSoufiane TotoSharon TovalAlonzo VasquezSaï YaCineMohcine ZouitinaAll workshop participants, collaborators, guests and newly found friends

Special ThanksNia SchmidheinyGabriel BachmannEveryone in the Sound Development team

Linkssound-development-city.comProject Website sound-development.comSound Development hellerenter.chHeller Enterprises

© 2017 Sound Development and the authors

Dan AllonVincent CharleboisBernadette La HengstSasha KurmazAri-Pekka LeinonenLuka & JelaBrent MeistreAgnieszka Pędziwiatr & Rafał PierzyńskiYoumna SabaChris Wood