A TRANSIT TO OBLIVION

Radio station: CLÁSICA/RNE (Radio Nacional de España)

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A transit to Oblivion is a radiophonic production for the Art’s Birthday 2014 by José Manuel Costa, centering on the mining industry in Asturias, which has faded in recent decades after shaping the economy, society and the life of an entire region. A situation known to many other European areas. The base material for A transit to oblivion are four sound pieces specifically made for the project with the sounds of four coal shafts, from the almost extinct and returned to nature (San Fernando , Daniel Romero) to the still in operation (Soton , Eduardo Comelles) and through intermediate resonant situations (Candín , Mind Revolution), to other noises trapped in the shaft in srange echoes among others (Espinos, Oscar de Ávila) . The work of Daniel Romero, San Fernando , tends to the silence of nature , which is never continuous but interrupted occasionally by specific sounds, from the buzz of a bee to the famous birdsong . Although somewhat disturbing, a bucolic setting. Almost wild, there are no words. On the contrary , Eduardo Comelles Requiem is filled with voices. Because the shaft is still working and people not only make noise, they have things to say. But there is also noise, metal noise , the roar of the hoppers , something so far from “natural sounds” of San Fernando that inevitably provokes paradoxical thoughts. There is nothing so clear-cut in the other two shafts. What Mind Revolution collects in Pozu Candín is a class neighborhood and a semi-closed mine where works consist in maintaining a rhythm of days without much sense, marked by the sound of a compressor. However, what he finds Oscar Avila in CicloS is a well that acts today as a cultural- tourist attraction inserted into a less natural than rural landscape. Both of them are stories of absences, of remembrance, of the almost vanished but still lived , mutating its shape.

A transit to oblivion is a radio production for RNE coordinated by José Manuel Costa with Juanjo Palacios and LABoral Art and Production Center inGijón. José Manuel Costa is a critic and curator of visual and acoustic arts. He is also the director of the program Vía Límite in Radio Clásica (Radio Nacional de España), specialized in Sound Art and other forms of experimental music.

Link to the whole project: http://laminaysusonido.bandcamp.com/album/la-mina-y-su-sonido