Summary
In each city, the couple uses leaflets and local press articles to recruit singers, who all contribute their own complaints. These are woven into a song which is rehearsed and then performed by the group in locations around the city, creating a film several minutes long. It is essential to the concept that the complaints are written by the singers themselves, so each song is specific to its city. In Helsinki the choir sang that "tram number 3 smells of pee" and that they didn't like their neighbors arriving earlier than scheduled for the communal sauna. In Birmingham the chorus was "I want my money back; my job's like a cul-de-sac." The complaints of diverse individuals in each choir create a portrait of their city, though not one most tourist boards would want to promote. For Oliver the result is a song that expresses, "This is really our song, this is our city. People have different complaints but they sing together and identify with it."
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Extract
Complaints Choirs
On a winter day in Finland, artists Tellervo Kalleinen and Oliver Kochta-Kallainen, pondered the Finnish word valituskuoro, meaning a chorus of complaints from lots of people at once. What ...
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