Mama August-2-1968

Eva Hallama (2024): “Mama August-2-1968”
audio-exhibition and presentation of the SONIME project
Open House, University of Applied Arts Vienna, Zentrum Fokus Forschung
November 5, 2024

A mother and a daughter are talking to the addressee, who has emigrated from the US to Austria.
The mother’s words reveal her concern for her daughter in a foreign country, while the daughter’s spoken and sung passages express her longing for her mother. The tape letter was given to the Österreichische Mediathek in 2015 as part of a larger private collection. The donor was neither aware of this private letter nor does he know who the sender or addressee might have been.
It was digitised for the first time as part of the SONIME project and was one of the first objects in our collection of spoken letters on analogue sound carriers. It shows how the act of speaking can create the feeling that an absent person is present, is in the room, is here – and not there.

At the audio-exhibition the audience could listen to an audio letter, which was recorded in 1968 and sent from New York to Austria. For conservation reasons we couldn’t exhibit the original letter, but we made a copy on a cassette tape and the audience could listen to it on a compact cassette player.