Oliver Torr: Trans Europe Postal Express

An accompanying exhibition to Oliver Torr's release Trans Europe Postal Express which was created in collaboration with selected artists of SHAPE platform.

A four-track cassette recorder Tascam Porta 02 along with a couple of blank tapes, a sketchpad and an instruction sheet were sent on a journey around various locations in Europe. The case made it back to Prague full of location-specific material and original music recordings that were used as a starting point for a new quasi-collaborative record by Oliver Torr, Trans Europe Postal Express.

Sudden restrictions on international travel and face-to-face meetings inspired a search for new forms of collaboration between the artists of the sixth edition of SHAPE, a platform for innovative music and audiovisual art from Europe. Each selected artist (Clara de Asís; Elvin Brandhi; Fausto Mercier; Kӣr; Moesha 13; Peter Kutin + Rojin Sharafi; Poly Chain; Širom) was given three days to record sounds onto a tape, modify the medium’s energy, draw in the sketchbook, leave their mark. Then, the case was sent to the next destination.

„The reason for using a four-track tape recorder is to limit the artist’s creative process, it is my form of meta-collaboration because I use this technique to make music in some instances.“ — Oliver Torr in an interview for SHAPE, 07-2020

Another inspiration behind T.E.P.E was the idea of chance music (or aleatoric music) and its random, yet determined composition techniques where the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities, pioneered by Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, John Cage or Karlheinz Stockhausen. Additionally, the case and its content represented Torr's energy in lieu of his physical presence while the fellow artists were working on their recordings and this remote exchange formed a foundation for their mutual freely creative transcendental process.

After a trip to Marseille, Vienna, Kyiv, Basel or Belgrade, the case returned back to its original destination packed with diverse audio-visual material. The collection of received sounds, noises, notes and sketches as well as the atmosphere of each city, together with the communication with the involved artists served as a source of inspiration for Torr, who then sampled the recordings, processed some into oblivion while rendering others in their raw beauty. The result is an eight-track record, Trans Europe Postal Express, that is released on 31 March 2021 in a limited tape & digital format at olivertorr.bandcamp.com.

Listen and follow the project at T-E-P-E.eu.

Concept, Music, Production, Mixing: Oliver Torr
Involved Artists: Clara de Asís; Elvin Brandhi; Fausto Mercier; Kӣr; Moesha 13; Peter Kutin + Rojin Sharafi; Poly Chain; Širom
Design: Matěj Moravec
Photography: Jonáš Verešpej
Text: Jonáš Verešpej; Freddie Hudson
Transport: Pavel Kraus
Production: Filip Peroutka
Web: Matěj Moravec; Matouš Barnat
SHAPE team: Michal Brenner; Rihards Endriksons; Viestarts Gailitis; Barbora Hřebíková; Pavel Kraus (alumnus); Lucia Udvardyová

Oliver Torr was a SHAPE artist in 2020/2021. SHAPE platform is co-financed from the Creative Europe programme.