[ GUNST ]

memories and/as imaginations
radia #283 fruitcake + radia #180 imaginations unlimited
[pls. scroll down for english version]

es muss nicht immer eine madeleine sein, die in den tee getaucht wird. versuchen wir es doch einmal mit einem stück obstkuchen.
oder wollen wir lieber kassettengeschichten lauschen?
erinnerungen und imaginationen auf der suche nach einer zeit, die noch nicht ganz verloren ist.

credits und hintergrundinformationen: siehe unten

[english]

perhaps you won't need a madeleine to dip in the teacup of time. try a piece of fruitcake. or try some tapes.
this is not about a total recall. but rather about memories and imaginations that will save us from loss.

"'Fruitcake' evokes a lost world of English teatime, as well as the mixed up and unpredictable nature of this piece.
Produced by two teenage girls as a response to growing up in a quiet but strange Moorland town in the South West of England, 'Fruitcake' contains a blend of interviews with older residents of the town, dramatised sections set in an imagined 1950's community, improvised music and a bit of giggling and mucking about. In their words: 'We've been cutting and pasting and things. Basically our story is about two friends growing up in the 1950s in Buckfastleigh. It's a very hearwarming tale of joy and friendship. And it's sad and it's lovely and you'll love the people in it. You will laugh and you will cry and you will make new friends in this amazing world of Buckfastleigh. Come and visit us. We're not a bit crazy."' [L.G.]

"The past is often said to be a foreign country. This programme features audio postcards from some of the inhabitants. The Leicester Tape Recording Club was a club for tape recording enthusiasts active in the sixties and seventies. Like a latter day Mass Observation, amateur radio producers and documentary makers sometimes unintentionally captured the minutiae of a now surreal suburbia. A forgotten world of bri-nylon, briar pipes and tank-tops met an arcane society who spoke of tape-speeds and soldering irons. 'Imagination Unlimited' takes a nostalgic and humorous look at the club and its members. Ex-members memories wow and flutter like their disintegrating reel-to-reel recordings. This is a story not just of a club but a community, a community of hobbyists, amateurs and charming personalities who captured otherwise long extinct phenomena like 'The Golden Wonder Boy'. Memories are made of hiss…" [M.V.]

credits:
miss.gunst would like to thank the following artists and sound collectors:
cheyenne, calypso and soundart radio, dartington, for dipping the fruitcake into a teacup full of memories;
mark vernon and resonance.fm for diving with us into the memories and imaginations of the leicester tape recording club;
as well as radia.fm radio art network for being a crowd of incredibly creative partners.