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“Mama August-2-1968” is the handwritten inscription in pencil on a cassette tape, that was sent from New York to Austria in the summer of 1968. We hear a mother and a daughter talking to the addressee, who has emigrated from the USA to Austria. The mother's words reveal her concern for her daughter in a foreign country, while the daughter's spoken and sung passages express her longing for her mother. The tape letter, a copy of which can be listened to here, was given to the Österreichische Mediathek in 2015 as part of a larger private collection. The donor was neither aware of this private letter nor does he know who the sender or addressee might have been. It was digitised for the first time as part of the SONIME project and was one of the first objects in our collection of spoken letters on analogue sound carriers. It shows in a particularly beautiful way how the act of speaking can create the feeling that an absent person is present, is in the room, is here - and not there. Audio-exhibition and presentation of the SONIME project at the Open House event of the Angewandte, Zentrum Fokus Forschung, 5th of November 2024
