warsite

"warsite" is a video piece by Alan Sondheim. The text accompanying the video reads,

"site or situation of war, sight of war, citation of war

to produce a language by the manipulation of a set of elements.
to automate the process of production. to project the elements
onto a structure of the elements. to automate the projection.
to search the projection for indications of one or another
existing language. to translate that language into english and
english into that language. to jam the translation process. to
create simultaneous pronunciations of that language and english.
to send that live into supercollider. to set supercollider for a
real-time reverse reverberation program. to use a mic for live
inclusions. to record the result. to think this is the sound of
thinking through a situation of war, site of war, citation of
war. To read and reread the following:

'The German Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Schulenburg) to the
German Foreign Office
Tgb. Nr. A/g/229/31      Moscow, May 2, 1941

SECRET

Subject: Rumors of German-Russian military showdown.
Reference instruction Pol. V 1495g of April 16, 1941. 

I and all the higher officials of my Embassy have always
combated rumors of an imminent German-Russian military
show-down, since it is natural that rumors of that kind
constitute a great hazard for the continued peaceful
development of German-Soviet relations. Please bear in
mind, however, that attempts to counteract these rumors
here in Moscow must necessarily remain ineffectual if
such rumors incessantly reach here from Germany, and if
every traveler who comes to Moscow or travels through
Moscow not only brings these rumors along, but can even
confirm them by citing facts.

     Count von der Schulenburg'

- Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1939-1941, Documents from the Archives
of the German Foreign Office, edited by Raymond James Sontag
and James Stuart Beddie, Department of State, 1948, p. 334

To fail to reproduce the emotional travail or work constituted
by life under such circumstances. To bear witness at best to a
fiction of bearing witness, as if there were an empathetic
surface. To make work out of the debris of history. To make work
that posits the horror and grind of repetition. To sing a song
broken as such. To conclude as such.

To conclude nothing. To cease. To continue. To continue as such."

-- Alan Sondheim