An imaginary dictionary that navigates between language and landscape, notation and noise.
Desert Dictionary navigates sonic territories oscillating between language and landscape, between notation and noise. Voices responding and contributing to a complementary narrative, connecting personal memories, political considerations and psychological effects of a landscape seemingly empty and quiet. Adjacent, beneath and intertwined a modular synthesizer score based on field notes—a synthesized soundscape appearing as imaginary field recordings, at the same time resembling and unalike the place in question.
The twelve contributions presented on the LP were recorded in South Africa over a period of three months in 2020 and 2021. These recordings occurred in various locations in Kimberley, Bloemfontein, Richmond / Northern Cape, Cape Town, Grassy Park, Krugersdorp and Johannesburg.
The Desert Dictionary appears in four iterations—a situation as part of Modern Art Projects South Africa's collection, a radio play (commissioned by Deutschlandfunk Kultur), a book edition (published by MAPSA), and the present LP.
The LP version is based on the radio play and features the voices of Richard John Forbes, Maja Marx, Phala Ookeditse Phala, Victoria Wigzell, Tubatsi Mpochmoloi, Liza Grobler, Nkosinathi Gumede, Karlien van Rooyen, Mongezi Ncombo, Ivan Messelaar, Gerhard Marx and Lindiwe Matshikiza.
The synthesized field recordings—translations of fieldnotes taken in the desert—were recorded in Johannesburg and Berlin.
Berlin-based artist, electronic musician and composer Boris Baltschun works in a variety of media and strategies, mapping the sonic and visual spaces where voice and language, instruments and objects, situations and histories overlap, cross-pollinate, and collide. A central part of his practice is observation—of practices, processes, and things. Besides his solo projects he has recorded, performed, and exhibited with many other artists internationally. Most notably he collaborated with
Serge Baghdassarians for twenty years. Together they performed, produced and exhibited in a wide variety of situations, amongst them Singuhr (Berlin), documenta 14 (Kassel/Athens), ZKM (Karlsruhe), Sonic Acts (Amsterdam), Diapason Gallery (New York City), and Bridge (Osaka). He is a founding member of the quartet The Pitch and has worked with the Splitter Orchester from its inception until 2021. He occasionally facilitates events, most recently the sound/music series "Time Krystal—Music in non-equilibrium" at Kantine am Berghain in Berlin.
