Fabio Monni: Luc Ferrari, Far-West News, part I / INTONAL 2024

Location: Red Room

FAR-WEST NEWS No. 1 (March 1999) – (29’30”)
September 11 to 16, 1998
From Santa Fe to Monument Valley

Far-West News 1

“Stopover at Houston. It’s about the same time as it was when we left Paris.
It’s raining heavily. Another plane takes us and leaves us in Albuquerque.
It’s late afternoon. It’s sunny.
The agency confirms that our rental car is waiting. “Take La Sabre” the man
in charge tells us. I’m not used to driving an automatic, and I have
trouble moving into reverse and finding the brake pedal. Then I drive the
wrong way up a one-way lane in the parking lot. The man scolds me gently. I
tell him that I can’t get the trunk open either. Finally we get our luggage
in and the man, with a touch of concern in his voice, wishes us a nice trip: “For Santa Fe just turn right at the bottom and it’s straight ahead.”
Sunset on the desert. Tomorrow I’m starting my recordings. I feel like I
haven’t slept for a long time.
In Taos, in the Indian Pueblo-village, I listen in my headphones for the
first time to the sound of my footsteps on this foreign soil. A dry, crunching sound, not European, the same sound until the end of the trip.
Then there’s the road. The silence of the road.
At noon, we’ve got to get something to eat. It’s usually hard to recognize
the places where it’s possible. Often it’s a sort of shack hidden behind gas pumps at an intersection. It’s full of people from nowhere considering the fact that we haven’t seen a single house for hours. A friend had warned us, “when you see a gas station, fill her up” and I soon learned that when you see anything resembling a restaurant, you’d better get something to eat. Tres Piedras, Teek Nos Pos, each one offering unforgettable sandwiches.
I wanted to see Monument Valley. Now here we were. So many films and ads
with cowboys, so many pictures seen over and over again. You know the place
by heart yet it’s altogether different. And then there’s the sound of my footsteps.”

Luc Ferrari (Read more about the “Far-West-News” here – lucferrari.com)

Fabio Monni – Multimedia artist based in Malmö, Sweden. Fabio loves the discreet inclusion of electronic sounds on instrumental performance as well as the use of sounding objects. The space of the performance and the possibilities to spatialise the sonic sources into it, is something he always had a soft spot for. Clearly Fabio used the space in many artistic projects. His musician activity is more than often paralleled with professional graphic illustrations and his daily job as church musician in Lund.

Visit Fabio Monni’s artist page – fabiomonni.com

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