In a frame work of WORM Pirate Bay: Food for Thought series ROAR OF ROTTERDAM was presented using a WORM Pirate Bay item: ‘Baku Symphony of Sirens’ as a conversation piece.
Eat while walk
Walk while listen
Listen while eat.
‘Symphony of Sirens’ by Arseny Avraamov was performed in the city of Baku in 1922, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution. This piece involved navy ship sirens and whistles, bus and car horns, factory sirens, cannons, the foghorns of the entire Soviet flotilla in the Caspian Sea, artillery guns, machine guns, hydro-airplanes, a specially designed “whistle main,” and renderings of The Internationale, Warszawianka and La Marseillaise by a mass band and choir. The piece was conducted by a team of conductors using flags and pistols.
The Dutch soundscape is regularly rehearsing its own symphony of sirens. With a few exceptions, the siren test has been performed every first Monday of the month for decades. The first Monday of February 2018 was a moment to enjoy this performance collectively and pay tribute to the phenomena which is about to disappear in a near future from the country’s soundscape.