Foto: Andrea Salzmann
Phono is a Voice
4.10.2025
Der blöde dritte Mittwoch, Vienna
Phonomuseum
Performance by Andrea Salzmann with Rozina Pátkai
"Universal Peace is not a question of possibility, but of necessity.
It is not only the aim, but the ordinary condition of all societies.
The higher organization of the world must be based on Universal Peace."
Speech addressed to pacifists in San Francisco - 1912Bertha von Suttner
June 01, 1912— San Francisco, California
Andrea Salzmann explores with Rozina Pátkai the only surviving voice recording of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bertha von Suttner, captured on a wax cylinder in 1904 and rediscovered in 2012.
The distorted and fragile fragment resonates both as a sonic artifact and a conceptual foundation.
By activating this source from the past through the electronic waves of radio, the performers
search for traces of sound that still carry urgency.
The call from Bertha von Suttner’s bestselling book Die Waffen nieder! has lost none of its relevance.
Political echoes from the book and her speeches re-emerge as acoustic memory, interwoven with today’s news and fragments of poetic texts.