Tracing A-7063 is a radiophonic impression of a new documentary film in progress (working title A-7063) by the young Polish director Maciek Klich. It grew out of a conversation with Maciek: in Auschwitz last year he met survivor Eva Mozes Tor and interviewed her concerning her experiences at the hands of the infamous Doctor Joseph Mengele. 
Maciek has set out to tell Eva Mozes Tors’ story in documentary film and animation for the memory sequences of her experience in the Holocaust.

I was intrigued and inspired by what he told me and set out to render such a dual style of narrating a story in sound. I divided my sources into old and new, black and white. I dipped into archive interview audio of concentration camp survivors Roman Halter, Ruth Foster and Maria Ossowski (for me bleached out memory pieces) and also used some of Maciek’s present day interview with Eva Mozes Tor (for me this is black, a stereo present, but also black haunted memory). 

I did the same with the music: the opening of Mozart’s Requiem (in a recording as approved by the Nazi regime made in 1941, with all references to Christianity’s Jewish roots excised: “Te decet hymnus, Deus in Sion” was replaced by “Deus in coelis”; whilst “in Jerusalem” was replaced by “hic in terra”) with its whish and crackles and pops-I used these very surface noises to generate (through additive and granular synthesis) a lot of the sounds that follow.
I also transformed the shouts of Sieg Heil Sieg Heil and then used the results to generate the soundscaping of the various music (s) that “frame” the voices.

The greatest challenge I faced was the risk of sensationalizing the material: alas, there is what is now called a “Holocaust Industry” particularly in print, so what was uppermost in my mind was respecting the voices, keeping them as the primary sonic material and letting them tell their tales. That said I also wanted these voices and sounds to work sometimes in opposition and sometimes in complimenting each other.

To do this I turned some of my new soundscapes to traces of themselves (blacks to grey’s): for instance the sound beneath Eva Mozes Tor’s tale of her being tattooed is a stereo rendering bleached out and scratched up to suggest vinyl and also the burning of the pen and ink that will mark her forever: A-7063.  

The first version of this won Best Audio (Yamaha Música award) at this years Black & White International Festival in Porto, Portugal

Credits
 
Voices

Eva Mozes Tor, interview with Maciek Klich, Auschwitz, 2013.

Roman Halter, Ruth Foster, Maria Ossowski 
-Imperial War Museum, London, 
Random House Audio
RC 918

“Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil”
Entartete Musik A Documentation in Sound
EINE Pool Musikproduktion, Berlin
65023 AV

Music

Mozart Requiem
Bruno Kittel Chor/Berlin Philharmonic/Bruno Kittel 
Deutsche Grammophon 
459 004-2


Tracing A - 7063

Human Shields is the second part of a diptych, both parts collectively titled as the savage bull. Tracing A-7063 is the first part (here):
 
https://soundcloud.com/bernard-clarke/tracing-a-7063

After Sami Moukkadem's opening narration we listen to Palestinian Doctor Izzeldin Abuelaish on the phone to Israeli broadcaster Shlomi Eldar, Channel 10, Israel. The conversation is in Hebrew and within the terrible terrible distress is
“My God, my God. What have we done? What have we done?”

He had just lost his three daughters and that sets the tone for all that follows.

Script and stuff are by yours truly.

Sami Moukaddem, narrator

Music
Traditional Palestinian Lullaby 
Ya lel ma atwalak (This never ending night)
Rim Banna/Kari Bremen's
Lullabies from the Axis of Evil

Musically I also used a sampler instrument from 8dio.com

Radio Archives
I drew on many sources between 2012-2014 (some 98 programmes) mainly current affairs/news: Morning Ireland, Drivetime with Mary Wilson, The Late Debate, Today with Pat Kenny, Today with Sean O’Rourke, News at One, The John Murray Show
 
Documentaries 
“CUAIRT AR GHAZA”  
RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta, Eibhlín Ní Chonghaile  
 
“How Can We Solve The Palestinian Israeli Problem”
(Director Sami Moukaddem)
http://www.palestine-israel-problem.com

I borrowed the title from playwright Neville Carlyle-Style
 
Special thanks to Sami Moukaddem, Rob Canning (RTÉ archivist), Neville Carlyle-Style, and Aodán O’Dubhghaill (commissioning editor and director of RTÉ lyric fm).
 




Human Shields

This is a documentary feature that is also a drama – it constantly plays between the lines of documentary and drama (docu-drama). Ostensibly it is concerned with the phenomenon of Dracula, the Bram Stoker character that it seems everyone in the world knows, no matter what colour or creed they be.
It traces the author’s roots in Marino, Dublin; his early days in Trinity College, Dublin; and his fateful meeting with the great actor Henry Irving (perhaps the human model for Dracula) at the Shelbourne Hotel, also in Dublin.
Then it switches countries, as did Stoker himself, and visits London, England. Along the way it meets various experts on aspects of the phenomenon of Dracula: Veronica Dunne on the technological innovations within the novel; Amanda Harder on the first Dracula’s to make a huge impression in the cinema (Nosferatu and then Dracula). It switches continents again and visits radio artist Christian Bulwer in Bremen, Germany to talk about the audio only Dracula and particularly the script for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater on the Air radio production.
Then it contacts Natasha Robson through Skype in New York, America to hear what she has to say about Hammer films and its versions of Dracula; and then Frank Keane on the telephone in Paris, France, to talk about Dracula in television -particularly in the world of the Munsters and Sesame Street.
Finally at a games arcade in Dublin, Ireland things take a turn and the initial play between the worlds of documentary and drama is turned on its head. It seems it was a gigantic leg pull all along. Or was it: with the story of the stranger outside of the Irish town; the voice of a woman coming and going and often telling the magpie rhyme (One for Sorrow…); experts suddenly becoming storytellers as the piece develops; choices of experts -now a man, now a woman, no, a woman will do; doors opening mysteriously; people developing sudden chills…
You know much, Van Helsing is the quote from the book; You know too much, Van Helsing is a Hollywood fabrication that just about sums it up

You Know Too Much, Van Helsing

A Setting of sorts of Arthur Rimbaud's Départ from his Illuminations.

Départ
Assez vu. La vision s'est rencontrée à tous les airs. Assez eu. Rumeurs des villes, le soir, et au soleil, et toujours. Assez connu. Les arrêts de la vie.  — Ô Rumeurs et Visions! Départ dans l'affection et le bruit neufs!

Seen enough. The vision appeared in all atmospheres.
Heard enough. Uproars of cities. In the evening, in the sun, and always.
Known enough. The impasses of life. -O Uproars and Visions!
Departure into new affections and new clamour!

Départ

Made Back In 2014 -but Sums It Up

A radio drama made for RTE lyric fm, first broadcast 29/12/2016 as part of the Lyric Feature.

The original document is “From the Bureau of Military History 1913-21. Statement by Witness. Document No. W.S. 1511” by Gerald Doyle. The document is online and available here:
http://www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie/reels/bmh/BMH.WS1511.pdf

Script adaptation, sound design and narration by Bernard Clarke

Commissioning editor, Aodán Ó’Dubhghaill

Archive Voices
Margaret Skinnider (1892 – 1971)  On Stephen’s Street, Dublin in 1916 “I Was There” RTÉ Tape AA016791, RTÉ Sound Archives Library, Dublin
Joe Guilfoyle ( 1897-19730 On fighting in 1916, Bolands Flour Mills, Dublin) “I Was There” RTÉ Tape AA016791, RTÉ Sound Archives Library, Dublin
Leslie Bean de Barra (1893 – 1984) On her memories of Easter Monday 1916 “Women of the Rising” RTÉ Tape AA160463, RTÉ Sound Archives Library, Dublin

Other Voices 
Zoe Crawford, Emer Byrden, Ian McGlynn, Michael O’Kane, Colin Barker, Darryl Lucas, Alan Dunn, Sean O’Brien, Paul Herriot, Dennis Waterman

Music: Brendan Behan Who Fears to Speak of Easter Week?

Special thanks to all above for time, favours and talent. Also special thanks to Rob Canning (RTE Archives), Olga Buckley, Eoin O'Kelly (producers RTE Lyric FM) and Aodán Ó'Dubhghaill

This programme is dedicated to the memory of Gerald Doyle

Terrible Beauty won the Grand Prix Marulić 2017

Bernard Clarke

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