‘Totally Alone’ from The Pittsburgh Years (audio)
The Pittsburgh Years is an audio and transcription archive that has slowly developed over a period of 20 years or so. The archive is a collection of voice recordings from messages left on my answering machine by outspoken and charismatic Pittsburgh native, artist and poet, Natalka Voslakov (1952-2011).
Programmer’s Note
Like Andy Warhol before her, Natalka’s art form was talking, and she would use the phone as an excuse to expound on a wide range of topics, knowing Ahwesh would save the messages, which she did dutifully from 1990-2010. The archive includes quotidian speech acts, confessions, rants, gossip sessions, philosophical diatribes, political opinion, etc and as a whole are a valuable record of an individual subjective voice- now a historical voice- someone who experienced life in a particular time and place. The Pittsburgh Years as audio and transcription, proposes an experiment in the aesthetics of listening and to honour memory in a legacy project.
