Fåglar I Sverige (1963)

Ti­tle of the album: “A pocket guide to birds”
in: Teddy Hultberg: Öyvind Fahlström on the Air – Manipulating the World
Ti­tle: Fåglar I Sverige (Track 01)
Publisher: Sveriges Radios Förlag, Fylkingen
Da­te: 1963, publ.: 1999
Me­di­um: 2 CD in a book

The audio work Fåglar i Sverige (Birds in Sweden) was produced in 1962 by Öyvind Fahlström in collaboration with sound engineer Erik Winlöf in the Swedish radio studios and broadcast on the 14th of January 1963 as part of the monthly program Nattövning (Night Maneuvers). The work, written, composed and also spoken by Fahlström, was then released on CD in 1999.

The starting point for Fahlström's piece was the bird book of the same name, Faglar i Sverige. It served as source material for his language invention Birdo, which he developed based on the bird sounds described and transcribed in the book. In the audio work, bird calls recorded by Fahlström can be heard at different intervals. Alienated or imitated, these have been related to language in different variations, potentially creating new language possibilities, entirely in the spirit of concrete poetry. For Fahlström, language is something to be played with, as he put it as early as 1953 in his Manifesto for Concrete Poetry. Language as a material is to be "shaped" and "kneaded," and the introduction of his own language system Birdo also served this purpose. In this sense, he asked the listeners to put their tongues between their lips and gradually move them further out. In this way, they become part of a language performance that transcends location - entirely in the spirit of Fahlström's concern that art should take place as far as possible for everyone and with the active involvement of the viewers and listeners.

Fåglar i Sverige is entirely in the context of the new radio play and does not represent a traditional narrative, but a text-sound composition. Original and foreign texts, mostly fragmentarily used speech and sound materials, original sounds, and new word creations are woven together to form a structure all of its own. It begins with the sound of stairs being climbed and a door slamming. This is followed by a quote from the book Parapsychology from 1959; then the music from the science fiction film Forbidden Planet from 1954 can be heard. Then comes a poem that the author reads in canon with himself. Finally, the radio collage ends with the sound of a rocket taking off, rising above the previously collaged space.

The piece shows that word and letter combinations are arbitrary and based on conventions. The meaninglessness of combinations, since all are possible, is equated with the meaninglessness of socially constructed contexts. It is not necessary to take society seriously, says Fahlström, because it is only when we no longer do so that we can see the world and ourselves in a new way.

_ATJ