Walter and Jan Verwoert - Voice Pieces

Walter and Jan Verwoert's new edition Voice Pieces - Wo soll das Lachen ubernachten? pairs a seven-inch record featuring six pieces of sound poetry with facsimiles of corresponding typographic inventions by Walter Verwoert used as scores for the recordings. Collaged from found material - letters sliced from local adverts and daily newspapers with a compass cutter - Walter's two-dimensional language-based artworks are arranged across long scrolls of paper in a calmly factual, yet free and playful manner, much like the stencilled marks of a player piano roll. The six resulting recordings see Walter perform in a surprisingly wide range of approaches: full-bodied singing transforms into the repetitive enunciations of letters, syllables and sounds to suddenly paint concise pictures with words using layered language and existential humour. Experiencing the record with Walter's facsimile collages in hand synthesises an experience of listening and viewing that provokes acts of interpretation in the audience. What noises, notes or words would you use to perform each score? Each of the six pieces in this edition have been carefully selected from a larger series of recordings that Walter and his son Jan produced over a year-long period - as they met monthly so that the former could take a break from battling old age and illness - in an experiment to give voice to typographical compositions.