Text (Swedish) and reading by Maria Zennström
Music and sound editing: Johannes Bergmark
Comissioned by the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, Radioteatern.
Realized at EMS, Electro-acoustic Music in Sweden 2002.

"I respect beauty. I hate it. My gaze is incessantly pointed towards it..."

I have rarely felt such embarrassment for a text. It's painful. It makes myself insecure.
I'm grateful and satisfied that Johannes B made sound design for the monolog. His music works uniquely good to a text, he plays newly invented instruments that can't be visualized, sometimes it reminds vaguely of something you think you have heard or experienced, but only just about.

Maria Z:s strong texts inspire to room making sound work, field recordings and a free pleasurable improvising. Sometimes it reminds of the music of cartoons or horror film. Maria Z hasn't fled away from the resistant sounds but rather been delighted of them, at the same time as she has been very careful about the balance between text and sound. We were both against a passive illustrating.

Maria Zennström lived in Moscow 1982-1992 and is an educated film director. The debut as a writer was with "Katarina's Soviet Experiences" on Bonniers. She was given Borås Tidning's Great Debutant Price and the Kalleberger Grant of the Swedish Academy.

Johannes Bergmark is a music- and instrument maker, active at Fylkingen and EMS. He builds instruments that he uses in improvised music, in musical performance and as material in electronic music. He has made text-sound compositions with other writers and with his own sound poetry, and often uses his voice as sound material.