WON0005 World of Jean Tinguely

When does something begin? It might seem like an innocuous question, but, as the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely makes us realise, it only is innocuous to those who believe that things can ever be truly finished and then begin anew. In this episode, Ödere wonders what it means to take the idea seriously that nothing is ever complete, and that everything is perpetually, if imperceptibly, changing. And also how it’s possible that there can be uncertainty about whether Tinguely at one point dropped 150.000 thousand pieces of paper over Düsseldorf.

Credits: Special thanks to Julia Bachmann who can be heard playing the bodhrán in the third segment of the episode. The opera heard in the final segment was downloaded from musopen.org, a wonderful non-profit project providing free access to classical music recordings. The thunderstorm in the same segment was recorded by Blue Delta and can be found at freesound.org/people/BlueDelta/. Finally, we thank our friends Alain, Amelia, C.B. Don, and Tara and Esmé for their voices.