‚Drifting through the haze, one might decide to focus on the garden’s shed’ is a 56-minute radiophonic piece in which the listener can encounter an assemblage of tools in a shed or an analysis of a square metre's vegetation.
 
As guests in this evolving sonic landscape, we navigate through deconstructed moods, personal memories, fractured voices, and field recordings harvested during a residency stay in a private garden somewhere in West Cork. Each step unveils a new facet of the garden's array as we meander amidst the lush lawn and traverse the acoustic tunnel system.
 
Yulia’s collaboration with the local gardeners – Ralph Ferguson, Johann Gardener, Chris Mac Mahan, Bruv James Slash&Burn – informs the exploration, as they dig out, cultivate and display stories ranging from the eerie to the tender, the space between presence and absence, engine sounds, poems and coffee-filled cups.

… with special thanks to the gardeners Ralph Ferguson, Johann Gardener, Chris Mac Mahan, Bruv James Slash&Burn, radiophrenia, the Crespo Foundation (Ulrike Crespo), Maria Kothe, Wolfgang Kothe, Lisa Fabian for joint jam sessions and to Marcus Maeder for providing me with soil recordings of the garden.

©2023, Yulia Carolin Kothe, Drifting through the haze, one might decide to focus on the garden’s shed, commissioned by radiophrenia and developed during the Glenkeen Garden Residency of the Crespo Foundation.

Photo: Felix Erben

Drifting through the haze, one might decide to focus on the garden’s shed

With my window half open, Glasgow's streets are filled with the sound of clatter, shouting, the laughter of teenagers lingering with slushee ice cream. On the grassy patch opposite, the dogs barking mixes with the background noise of the M8 motorway. The publication "M Dokumente" lays on the nightstand next to me. 

I'm reading about the working processes of the punk bands in West Berlin during the 70s and 80s: Mania D., Malaria!, Matador, who played concerts, improvised together, wrote songs and produced records in various constellations and loose collectives. In the publication, I find documents that trace negotiations with labels and the music industry of that time. The question of a free and solidary way of working, the self-determined appearance of all female bands and the emancipation movement in the music industry unfold through letters, photographs, posters, covers and drawings in front of me. The bands around Beate Bartel, Bettina Köster and Gudrun Gut jointly decide to start their band projects, performing in various constellations, with the letter "M":

In the warmth of the radiator 
Under still' rays of happiness
In the sun of the screens
This is where I love you, this is where I love you, this is where I love you
Mania D. - Radiator (Zossener Straße Cute Version), Monika Enterprise, MOABIT23, 2021 

The production of my artistic work is tightly linked to my curiosity about the work and thinking of others. In this work, I gather and navigate what surrounds me - excerpts, moods, fragments from the work and processes of my friends* and peers* in the visual arts. People I have met along the way, whose work and thinking accompany me regardless of location. For this sound piece, I have selected various states of acoustic fragments that I put in relation to each other. With the idea that the sum of these sounds, words, ideas, suggests something that each part alone could not. I’m interested in the multiplicity of voices and navigating through them. I work by spending time with the material I encounter. In this work, connecting the individual contributions thematically, in which sound appears as a physical element, medium and material. The multiple voices and sounds, whether conceptual, intuitive, research-based or coincidental, are part of the process of thinking through and developing work. Perhaps this is the beginning of a working method that works as it speaks: whereby the relationships and bonds between fragments, people and myself collectively create something that embodies a sense of friendship.

A group of FLINTA* artists* and the feminist metalworking collective "Slaghammers" (Glasgow) provide their sound fragments and experiments produced and recorded in and outside their workshops and studios. The contributions are a collective approach to sound and voice as physical material as well as a shared passion for experimental sound from a multidimensional world. In the original live performance for radiophrenia (2022) at the Creative Lab (CCA Glasgow), Debbie Young and Yulia follow the process of making and constructing together while sampling the contributions, both as acoustic backdrop and as communication material in their live performance. The acoustic relocation of the sound installation to a production hall on the former Rasselstein site as part of the exhibition "sofort so fort" invites the audience to actively listen and linger — in the midst of the acoustic overlay of various production landscapes.

A sound installation in a kind of sculptural setting with sound contributions by MV Brown, Ella CB, Fionn Duffy, Lotte Meret Effinger, Lisa Fabian, Julia Gerke, Anne-Louise Hoffmann, Theresa Lawrenz, Aga Paulina Młyńczak, Sarah Reva Mohr, Susanne Schmitt, Katerina Sidorova, Mira Siering, Emilie Peyre Smith, Slaghammers, Catharina Szonn, Joëlle Pidoux, Kate Theodore and Yulia Carolin Kothe.

YULIA

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