“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” - Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country
“Art is expressive action” - Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society.
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” - Angela Davis, 2014 lecture at Southern Illinois University
We are One Minute Peace. Back in 2021, we released an album called European Endless: 12. The concept behind the album was simple: get twelve diverse artists to record twelve minutes of audio based around the motorik beat. The album was an attempt to make sense of the preceding twelve months and make something positive out of that time. All proceeds from the album went to the Irish Refugee Council. Participants included professional artists, as well as an engineer, a translator, a lawyer, and a chef. Everyone did it because it was a fun and fundamentally good thing to do. 4 years later, we’re hoping to follow up, and we’re asking you to take part.
For this album, we’re going in the opposite direction. Rather than 12 minutes based around a rigidly enforced beat, this time around we’re looking for exactly 60 seconds of audio with no rules at all. That’s it; no genres, no styles, no structure. It can be a complete song, a fragment of one, a poem, a field recording, a treatise on pond life, a reason to be cheerful or fearful, a John Cage cover, or a slab of grindcore. We want anything and everything so long as it’s 60 seconds and made exclusively by human beings.
Our aim is to take all of these disparate threads and stitch them together into a tapestry of sound that captures the chaos and uncertainty of day-to-day life in the shadow of terror. Be it the terror of wartime, an authoritarian state, or just a human abuser, one of the first casualties is the loss of stability, the loss of cause and effect. Things just happen, and there is no way to predict what comes next. That is why we want such a wide array of sounds to include within this, and why we want both light and dark. When you have no idea what is coming in 1 minute, every minute becomes critical. Even when freed from the shadow, the stress of this Damoclean sword lingers. We hope to give form to this feeling and, in doing so, hopefully provide a language that articulates what words can’t.
Once we have something assembled, we’ll be releasing it on various platforms, including Bandcamp and Spotify. Everything we earn is being sent straight to charity. None of this goes to admin, hosting fees, or streaming costs. These are all being paid for out of pocket by us. When we say everything goes to charity, we mean everything. All monies will be sent to charities assisting victims, specifically children, in Palestine and Sudan. Our current partners are the PCRF and the Sudan Relief Fund.
There are a few reasons we’re asking for your help. Firstly, we don’t have the capital to meaningfully contribute to these causes. We are renters and parents struggling to pay mortgages and keep our heads above water financially. This is not a problem unique to us. The cost of living crisis is affecting everyone, and every penny matters. This provides us with an opportunity to contribute something to help out.
Secondly, alienation and atomisation are a plague affecting us all. We are rendered powerless in so many aspects of our lives and bombarded daily with stories of unremitting horror; it’s hard to feel anything other than defeated and disillusioned. We want to create something that gives that sense of being part of something greater than yourself, that at least tries to help. No one can change the world, but doing almost anything is better than doing nothing. Apathy is atrophy.
Lastly, it’s fun. There is a joy in creation and partaking. It’s hard to express yourself creatively when you have nowhere to direct it. We want everyone to take part, not just professional musicians. We want rough recordings, wobbly vocals over out-of-tune cowboy chords, and free-form thoughts from those who care; something inextricably human. We want you to have fun expressing yourself. We want you to be part of something that takes your little piece and makes it part of a greater whole. Make it yourself, if it isn’t good, who cares, because it’s yours. Own it. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfect; what matters is that it was made by a person trying to do something.
If you can’t make any audio, there are many other ways you can help out. Spread the word, help us translate this document into different languages, draw a picture inspired by the idea, make a video, buy the album. Reach out and ask, and we’ll find some way for you to take part. Your contributions, whatever form they take, will be appreciated.
We are also pragmatic. This is not going to change the world. It is not going to stop a genocide or fix any systemic issues. We know that we’re not naive. But the point of this is not, and will never be, to save the world. The point is to create something bigger than ourselves and do something other than just rot away in a world of isolation, stress, and hopelessness. The bastards want you to doom scroll and give up because then they can move with impunity. BP invented the carbon footprint to shift the blame onto us and distract from their damage. So what we do might be small, but it’s not nothing.
It’s important to hold onto the fact that these small actions can make a difference. Remember that fewer than a dozen striking shop workers managed to force the Irish government to ban all imports from Apartheid South Africa in 1987. Remember that the Choctaw tribe donated what they could to the victims of the Irish Famine in the 1840s. For their kindness, when COVID struck their community a century and a half later, Irish people raised 4 million euros. Actions reverberate throughout history. To paraphrase David Mitchell,
No matter what you do, it will never amount to anything but a single drop in a limitless ocean. What is an ocean but a multitude of drops?
We’re all powerless in the face of the chaos of the modern world. Love, art, and creation won’t stop a bomb, but they’ll keep your soul alive and make the days bearable. Make something, anything, and share it with the world. Dance, sing, and play in the face of unspeakable horrors, help out someone who needs a hand, and keep your spirit alive.
If this is something you would be interested in taking part in, we’d love to hear from you.
Contact email: oneminutepeacemusic@gmail.com
The PCRF is a legally-registered non-political, non-profit, 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization established in 1991 by concerned people to address the medical and humanitarian needs of Palestinian and Arab youths in the Middle East. We have provided thousands of children life-saving care based on their need, not on religion, gender, nationality or sect.
The main objective of the PCRF is to identify and treat every child in the Middle East in need of specialized surgery not available to them locally. We locate, sponsor and run international, volunteer medical missions to the Middle East, in additional to locating free medical care abroad for children who cannot be adequately treated in the Middle East. The PCRF is the main organization regularly sending injured and sick Arab children to North and South America, the Middle East and Europe for free care that is not available to them there. Since 1991 over 1,000 children have been abroad for millions of dollars of donated care, and over 10,000 have had complex surgery by our visiting medical missions to the region. The PCRF has been awarded the top 4-star rating by Charity Navigator for fiscal management, while being able to treat more kids than any other charity in the Middle East.