The Tram Way/Olomouc 2day

(by Anna-Maria Siebert & Marie-Kristin Bader & Jindrich Pastorek & Eva Bryndova)

Our group has not gone into gathering the sounds for this project with any particular plan. It was more of a free flow of ideas which have sprung into our minds as we wandered the streets of Olomouc. The sounds we collected were picked at random, whatever interested us we recorded. The places where we recorded, on the other hand, we picked deliberately. The Frankfurters wanted to explore the town’s historical and cultural landmarks and the Olomoucians were more than happy to oblige and so we ventured under the new „Rejnok“ bridge, into the Saint Wenceslas Cathedral and last but not least, into the library in Zbrojnice. While Olomouc of course has plenty more banging spots to visit, we did take our time at each of these three to explore every nook and cranny. The sounds we gathered in this way were plentiful and various, so the options for creative work were rich indeed. After some spitballing, we decided to splice the sounds into a particular sort of narrative, a narrative of surprise and suspension. And humour too (hopefully.) The set of sounds of Olomouc we gathered have been given a purpose and the purpose is to not merely represent the city, but to tell a story that may very well have happened in its streets, inside its institutions where people gather to hang out and by its public ashtrays, where people also hang out. Our project bears the name "Olomouc 2day" because these recordings were made in the span of 2 days, but also because it is the story of a contemporary Olomouc, of "today" in the Benjaminian sense of "aura".