FA TECH:
Nada Aiko, Pascal Holper, Markus Steinkellner

With portable setups on their backs sound artists Markus Steinkellner aka Idklang, Nada Aiko and Pascal Holper swarm out to sample life itself and collect sounding, discarded objects - after having found an inspiring spot, they reuse and manipulate the sounds and noises in improvised sessions.

Only a short time before the breakout of riots in English cities last year, FA TECH were on their way through the streets and squares of London, recording samples of falling coins in the almost empty, yet closely-guarded streets of the bank district, charmed sounds out of discarded parts at a scrap yard or archived voices while on the move. With the gathered sound material, improvised and unannounced sessions at sites – whether abandoned or swarming with people – arose. As soon as a spot was found, the portable setup consisting of laptops, midi-controllers and amps would be unpacked. In this way, further artistic interventions in the public space followed in Prague, Vienna and Berlin.

The story of FA TECH is a documentary as well as fragmentary record, about their urban sampling-forays through the streets, and about whom and what the collective encountered before, during and after the space-appropriating sessions. At the same time, their work tells of the post-industrial mutation of city centres and outskirts; of the partly severe changes that occur once urban development is increasingly being characterised by concepts like “privatisation”, ”gentrification”, “image building” and “security”, while public space is being restricted, and the needs of local inhabitants are failed to be remembered. FA TECH would like to call the latter to our minds, and clear the view on the little subversive counter-narratives of the cities.(Text by Carmen Feichtinger)