An audio time-travelogue… A found sound road trip… A vicarious vacation…
At the heart of this piece is a reel-to-reel tape discovered at a Brussels flea market over twenty years ago – the typewriter printed label sellotaped to the reel reading: ‘Voyage Grèce en 1972’. As the title suggests, it documents a Belgian family’s camping holiday to Greece. One side of the tape contains an audio diary – an unfiltered chronicle of the journey, recorded moment by moment, often from inside the car as the family travels between destinations. Running for nearly three hours on long play, it unfolds with an epic, unhurried intimacy.
The reverse side presents a different format: a two-hour slide-show commentary set against a backdrop of traditional Greek music. Although it soon becomes clear that a wife – referred to only as “bobonne” – and a child are part of the travelling party, we hear only the father’s voice throughout. They never enter the soundscape, not even in passing. Whether microphone-shy, disinterested, or simply denied the floor. Either way their absence on the tape is perplexing.
In the summer of 2020 I had been invited to Brussels to create a new radio work for Radio Picnic’s Musica per la radio series. Over that same summer, I had also planned a family holiday to Greece. Due to the lockdown restrictions in force neither journey took place. This tape I had half forgotten about somehow connected both destinations I was denied. Out of necessity the production of this radiophonic excursion became my way of taking a holiday without travelling anywhere – a sonic souvenir from a vicarious vacation.
In composing the piece, excerpts from the 1972 tape were interwoven with my own field recordings made during later trips to Greece in 2005 and 2015. Holiday memories of different eras are layered atop one another, overlapping and dissolving, until temporal boundaries blur. The past and the more recent past intermingle and become confused.
Alongside these recordings, I incorporated improvisations performed on a collection of objects selected for their sound making properties – also sourced from the same Brussels flea market on the day the tape was found. Chosen for their resonant qualities, these objects extend the archive into the present moment, creating a dialogue between found memories and newly made sounds.
Special thanks to everyone who helped me with translations: Elina Bry, Selene Mauvis, Jonathan Frigeri, DinahBird, Anne-Louise Kieran, Sonia Dermience, Inès Guffroy and Meryll Hardt.
Extra thanks to Elina Bry for additional Athens field recordings.
A project by Radio Picnic with the kind support of the Swiss Foundation for Radio and Culture and Pro Helvetia. First broadcast on Freie Radio Berlin, 18th August, 2020.