i owe it to christophe heeman for discovering this cd. actually he was involved in its production. the
brainwashed site mentions that he remixed the whole thing. not sure of what happened but it was one of the first location recordings i acquained back then in my collection and was astounded by it and the way they had worked w/ maps, locations, etc... still love it!
personalis aquisgranishit scans so here's the english translation of the text to get an idea on the project.
Two portraits, as distinct and intimate as one might expect from this form
of artistic expression - and yet, no figurative illustrations. A stoll
through the city, a sensory description of certan situations captured at the
source - absolutely authentic, full of atmosphere, and yet beyond normal
expectations; it is neither photography nor landscape painting.
Peter Lacroix & Guenter Haertel are breaking new ground in what is not just
a joint effort but a reciprocal exploration of their respective fields;
reduced, virtually ascetic in the application of artistic means and yet
poetic in the message.
Peter Lacroix's 'personalis artistic portraits' are based on numbers and
letters of the alphabet. Considering today's preoccupation with developments
in informatin technology, one could level the accusation that this is not
exactly the most original idea. However, the numbers Lacroix categorizes to
the indicidual throw little light on the physical presence of that person,
or indeed on his / her status in our society. They project the portrayed
person into an almost forgotten, mystical relam. They refer artistically and
abstractly to a cogent existence beyond the Socio-Normative.
Using the Kaballa, an ancient Jewish doctrine based on the interpretation of
certain letters of the alphabet and numeric systems, Lacroix transposes the
information he has gathered on a certain individual into geometric figures.
The characters are mysterious yet by no means fictional, drawing their form
froma combination o fthe 'date of birth' or 'name number' or 'lucky number'.
Each person is expressed individually - artistically yet abstractly, with a
final manifestatin remaining impossible, despite every effort to embody the
portaryed person in concrete terms.
In his artistic interaction with Guenter Haertel, Lacroix transposes these
geometric images into the direct intellectual mileiau of both artists. The
starting point was their own Personalis portrait coordinates which were then
placed over a map of Aachen, with the geometric angles determining certain
locations in the city.
Haertel, armed with microphone, visited these locations and recorded the
sounds he found there. Thus, a whole series of acoustic impressions
materialized, not just a description of the individual points, but a rounded
impression of the city reflecting its tenor - a feast for the ears.
Haertel's sound document is also a very individual portrait of Aachen.
Listening to it, the natural process of association soon reveals that this
urban background noise cannto be interhchanged with any other. Although
Haertel, the audio journalist and chronicler, deliberately avoided the
historically and locally renowned highlights of the city, Aachen's special
characterisitics still emerge from what would seems to be an arbitrary
conglomerate of everyday sounds. The backdrop noises of the working world,
traffic, birds are counterpointed by a variable, yet constantly recurring
sound experience of ells, church choirs and the boundless bubbling of
Aachen's water.
