Sound Out
An essay by Enrico Bettinello, October 2019
Being involved in a creative environment is such a unique experience. Being an artist or a mentor, a curator, a professional, it’s like entering a ‘zone’, an area where dreams, mutations, as well as unexpected turns of events are not only allowed but even welcome. The Sound Out project provides such a space: a platform where creative musicians can let their everyday shoes out of the door and try to imagine new perspectives for their work.
One day at the end of a laborious summer I found myself immersed in the bright bottle green of the Polish mountains in the shadows of a ruined sanatorium in Sokołowsko, - once frequented as a cure for tuberculosis, now partially converted into a cultural centre - breathing fresh air and surrounded by a warm buzz of creativity.
Eight musicians, different countries, different instruments, different styles. Open to a more meaningful way of networking, ready to imagine their projects differently, yearning to break the boundaries of categorisation.
Yes. Even in the undefinable, blurred area of “creative” or “adventurous” music, the risk of being categorised (under a definition or another, sometimes just being wrapped by the glittering film of your own uniqueness) is always behind the corner, with its reassuring allure of identity.
A bunch of ardent and generous professionals, different countries, different backgrounds, different skills. Open to support and feedback ideas and questions.
What happened in Sokołowsko, during workshop sessions, one-to-one meetings, free networking, long candlelit dinners around a wooden table in the garden, night walks in the dark, has triggered the possibility to learn from each other, to scrutinise new ways of creating and performing, to see things with new eyes and to hear with new ears.
Diversity. As a condition to encourage transformative encounters across disciplinary, cultural, stylistic and geographical boundaries. All together in the eye of the quiet storm: dancing where the lines that connect home and elsewhere, the private and the public, the temporary and the permanent meet.
Searching is always a good combination of prophetical attitudes and the result of arts and society caught in the act of becoming, but most of all, as someone wisely stated, cannot exist without an external view. That’s why platforms like Sound Out are so precious.
Insufficient industry awareness is a limiting factor creative artists often want to be eradicated, but sometimes musicians may think that meeting a curator, a producer or a marketing manager can disclose tricks or shortcuts or reveal a magic formula that could pave the way to planetary success (or get just another couple of gigs here and there, when a bird in the hand seems worth two in the bush)…
Within a platform like Sound Out musicians can acquire strategic tools and can immerse their work in a flow of energies and specialisms that are the best conditions to realise challenging projects.
Access to and sustainable relationships with industry infrastructure is necessary to know how and where to find the best support for creative ideas. It’s a process that usually takes time and perseverance (during festivals or trade-fairs even the most open and friendly programmer has hardly more than a few minutes to talk to artists). But with Sound Out everybody has enough time to build relationships: working together or sharing ideas in the more intimate format of the one-to-one “surgeries” helps to bring the discourse around creativity to a higher level.
I found myself talking about wolves and men or reflecting on how an unusual instrument can open new sonic perspectives. I found myself laughing on a wooden boat stranded on a hill and sharing the tender bashfulness of a professional blind date, hugging musicians I have booked in the past but, for some reason, I’ve never met before, or talking about funny performances with ping pong balls in a clarinet bell…
Everybody has something to put on the table, and even if not to your own taste, we were all there to share the widest number of ideas that are sure to percolate and metabolise into new ideas and concepts sooner or later. Sound Out is an ongoing process that encourages intricate articulation of a system that deserves to be questioned, provoked and adventurously moved by the energy of any artist.
What emerged from workshops and informal chats is the yearning for new and effective ways to communicate. With such a peculiar language as music, the idea of using different media and techniques to promote a project is more than a suitable marketing tool: it allows a renewed awareness of what’s relevant and what’s not, of which words or images or systems are more useful to offer a proper narrative around what you want to do.
Practical things. Working together. Examples. Memories. Digital. Analogue. Exercises. Some moments to reflect all alone (not enough, maybe, within the washing machine effect of all the meetings, but a week runs fast and you will find time to rest later!). And again, lovely informal explorations of the spaces around the Sanatorium, inspired by some of the remarkable works of art that are part of the collection of the Foundation who runs this magical place.
What does curatorship mean today? Are labels still meaningful? Jazz? Avant-garde? Adventurous? Really? Not Jazz? Everything but Jazz? Do you care about the artist or the listener? Are they part of the same story? Tell me your story…
What to say about records? In a fast-changing world of consuming music, the perspective of self-producing or trusting an independent label, as well as the idea of pursuing a world-wide exposure through one of the few major labels left (or, on the opposite, deciding to invest on other formats) is a hotly debated topic for anyone involved in the music industry.
I found it extremely interesting how everyone was trying to encourage and support challenging ideas, not only with the welcoming enthusiasm of an old friend but always trying to frame the visions into feasible tracks, suggesting new horizons and communities to be involved.
Back home after Sokołowsko, I found myself reflecting again on the sense of platforms and residencies (a format I have been involved in for many years) and I returned to Amsterdam based Italian curator Angela Serino’s questions: “In which sense do residencies produce knowledge? If residencies really are learning environments, who learns from whom? What and how do we learn? Resident artists? Or are there also other figures or protagonists involved in such a process?”
Sound Out in Sokołowsko deeply answered to them, warmly nurturing confidence and awareness, bringing humanity within the expertise, making everyone feel part of a warm flow of energy that will shine in each new project and advancement of these artists.
Growing up in such complicated times, where creating something could be as well a strategy of resistance, where is difficult to identify the real powerholders (maybe no one really is…), it becomes clearer that one of the main goals for everyone is to search for one own’s place in the world in order not to stay at one own’s place.
Catalysing processes of collective and personal development, growing identities without borders but with their unmistakable character, Sound Out allows visions to become believable partners and not the usual pipe dreams. I am honoured to be part of this process.
Enrico Bettinello (curator, EJN Board member)