Bill Fontana’s Distant Trains: A documentation of an acoustic relocation ROBERT STOKOWY Sound Studies at the University of Arts Berlin, Lietzenburger Straße 45, D-10789 Berlin Email: [email protected] Witnessing a sound installation in person offers an opportunity (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst) scholar- to experience the qualities and elements of a work first hand and ship, he worked on the sound installation Sound in full, multisensory effect. A thorough documentation of an Surroundings. When his scholarship was extended, he exhibition and the work that goes into it is at the essence of began work on the site-specific Sound Sculpture preserving important information for future generations. Though Distant Trains, which was exhibited from 14 Septem- information can be gathered from archives, some works of sound ber 1984 to 14 October 1984, during the Internationale art are only marginally presented in the literature, making it difficult to fully grasp aspects of an artist’s technical, Bauausstellung (IBA) on the grounds of what was organisational and, most particularly, creative ways of working. once Anhalter Bahnhof (Fontana 2008). The German Instead, already existing information is often reproduced. discourse on Klangkunst offers a clear differentiation Previous documentation regarding Bill Fontana’s Sound between the terms ‘installation’ and ‘sculpture’.A Sculpture Distant Trains, exhibited in Berlin in 1984, offers an sound installation is understood as a fixed setup, which example of the possible loss of key details. This article aims to is specific to the place in which it is exhibited and present new research findings that will examine and illuminate cannot be moved without losing its initial qualities. the full scope of this artistic project. It encompasses the recipient with sound emitted from visible or hidden technical devices, without necessarily offering them a specific focal point (Straebel 2008). 1. INTRODUCTION A Sound Sculpture, on the other hand, is described Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculptures are often presented as a physical object that is mobile, in the sense that it in the context of German literature on Klangkunst that can be moved from one (exhibition) place to another. seeks to provide knowledge of the different genres It can also function as the central point of attention. By and influential artists in this field. Delving deeper into emitting sound, it centrifugally expands its presence his project Distant Trains, trying to comprehend his in the room, surrounding the recipients while still methods and the technical and theoretical aspects providing a central point of attention, thus creating of his Sound Sculptures, I was confronted with the spatially defined circumstances (Gertich 1999). In the problem that there is hardly any documentation of his case of Bill Fontana’s Sound Sculptures it becomes work beyond what one can find on the artist’s website, apparent that he chose a hybrid form of installation in his essays or in published articles. Moreover, the and sculpture, which he creates by relocating sounds articles that do exist only scrape the surface of what his from one place to another. projects entail (e.g. see Drees 2009). By systematically After a celebration at the DAAD, an employee of looking at his application documents, preparatory the IBA gave Bill Fontana a tour of historic sites work and the processes of recording, editing, compos- in West Berlin, including the Berlin Social Science ing and installing his Sound Sculpture, this article Centre, the 17th of June Street, Oranienplatz and 1 aims to produce a detailed documentation allowing Anhalter Bahnhof. Fontana emphasised that the site in-depth insight into Bill Fontana’s project Distant of Anhalter Bahnhof was the only one that evoked Trains. Aspects mentioned above will be analysed in acoustical memories, and therefore named it as a first relation to the practice of relocation and Sound choice for his installation in the public space of Berlin 2 Sculptures as a form of art in the public space. (Fontana 1983). The area of Anhalter Bahnhof was 1 DISTANT TRAINS WDR Archiv, Interview with Bill Fontana about his Sound Sculp- 2. : THE RESEARCH tures on the occasion of his audio play Entfernte Züge. Köln – Berlin. FINDINGS In this 38 minute interview with Klaus Schöning from 1984, Fontana explains his work up to that time, focusing on his Sound Sculptures. In 1980, Bill Fontana exhibited his Recycling Sculpture Since he and Schöning cooperated on Distant Trains and the radio at the exhibition Für Augen und Ohren (For Eyes piece production, they discuss details of the radio piece as well as the production for the exhibition in Berlin. and Ears) in West Berlin (Barthelmes 1984). Three 2The files found in the archive of the DAAD contain documents years later, while residing in West Berlin on a DAAD that show Bill Fontana’s exposé for Distant Trains from 1983. Organised Sound 22(1): 112–121 © Cambridge University Press, 2017. doi:10.1017/S135577181600039X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 107.3.136.85, on 20 Aug 2017 at 02:16:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S135577181600039X Bill Fontana’s Distant Trains 113 located very close to the Berlin Wall. The building 2.1. Technical realisation itself had been heavily damaged during the bombing of Distant Trains was Bill Fontana’s first elaborate Berlin and was demolished in 1961, leaving an urban project in Europe and marks a milestone in his creative wasteland. All that remained of what was once one of career, as it was a Sound Sculpture on a large scale. His the biggest and busiest German train stations was a previous works had required moderate logistic efforts, small part of the entrance gate at Stresemannstrasse but with Distant Trains he engaged in a much more (Barthelmes 1984). Imagining the acoustic presence of comprehensive project, relocating an environment of a lively urban train station, Fontana was fascinated by high acoustic complexity to a sizable site, in West the vast open space that now lay in desolate silence. Berlin, which was, at the time, separated from West Since Anhalter Bahnhof was a key symbol of the Germany by the GDR.4 metropolis Berlin had once been, many citizens Previously, in 1983, Bill Fontana had exhibited remembered the building very well. Younger Berliners, his Sound Sculpture Oscillating Steel Grids along the on the other hand, only knew the place as a field of Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Eight microphones rubble and were potentially unaware of its historic picked up the humming sound that cars made on implications. Fontana recognised the aesthetic poten- the steel grids that paved the road of the Brooklyn tial of the area that had no function in the daily routine Bridge crossing the East River. This drone sound anymore and developed the idea to revive the place by was relocated to the World Trade Center, a distance of creating an acoustic representation of a train station, about 1,000 metres, via telephone wires. There the thereby making the identity of the place tangible for sounds were emitted from eight loudspeakers, moun- different generations of Berliners. The main theme of ted behind the facade of one of the towers, onto the IBA in 1984 was the reconstruction of Berlin and the adjacent Austin J. Tobin Plaza. For this Sound the search for new plans of city development. With Sculpture, Fontana relocated sounds in between two his installation, Fontana reversed that idea and re- significant urban landmarks, by taking them out of developed the space following the motif of its past, their original, coherent context and placing them in a creating an acoustic-architectural construct in the form new surrounding. He thus created a new sonic envir- of a Sound Sculpture.3 onment that consisted of the compound of the plaza’s The title Sound Sculpture with Distant Trains was natural urban sounds and the temporally synchronised later shortened to Distant Trains (Entfernte Züge) and but topologically distorted sounds added to this site. contains an interesting double entendre in German Through relocating sounds to a place where their ori- that reveals the idea driving his project: ‘Entfernt’ can gin is not visually, and thus not logically, perceivable, mean distant, as in long distance, but it can also mean Fontana composed a situation in which the sounds removed, as in something that has been taken away. By from the Brooklyn Bridge would form an abstract relocating sounds from far away and placing them in a sonic gestalt, becoming an artificial part of the exhibi- specific site, Fontana recreated a situation that evoked tion site’s sonic environment and being perceived as an memories of specific sounds of the site. Furthermore, acoustic element, detached from its original cause the combination of site and sound created an interest- (Fontana 2008). Concentrating on city landmarks as a ing contrast that evoked an audiovisual discrepancy in source for and exhibition site of his Sound Sculptures, the perception of the recipients. Being confronted with the use of sonic relocation to create an acoustically an empty field without visible action but hearing the paradoxical situation and the ensuing discrepant sonic environment of what sounds like a busy train topochronological qualities of his public art are station at the same time forms an ambivalent space for elements also to be found in the project Distant Trains. experience in which visitors can find traces of the site’s For the Sound Sculpture Distant Trains, his initial past through art. idea had been to relocate the sounds of Cologne Central Station (CCS) to Anhalter Bahnhof in real-time via live broadcast using phone lines. As in New York, (Footnote continued) eight microphones were supposed to pick up the sounds The documents hold detailed depictions of his plans for the Sound in Cologne then transmit them live to Berlin, to be Sculpture that mainly focus on technical and organisational specifics.