Salvatrice Settis and I were aptly placed together on the panel Mobilizing the Unrepresentable. Read a review by Roberta Bulani of the reSource event here. In addition to the presenting Interpelled more hypersonic sound experiments also took place inside the Haus der Kulturen der Welt!

City Soundings was a collaborative composition side project made for Radiophonic Creation Day organized by Wiska Radkiewicz and Andrea Cohen. Several composers/artists took field recordings of their home cities, passing back and forth a pool of sound – sort of like a digital editing game of telephone – the result being a collective composition that incorporated many different compositional styles.

no ' ah- ha' moment

Interestingly though, working on this project encouraged me to enter into a deeper dialogue with myself. I went into my own head and began to equate the climate crisis with a crisis in morality. I began to wonder what a significant opening of internal space through sound could look like and what would be the ripple effect. I recalled things I remembered hearing years ago but didn’t seem particularly all that significant when I first heard them. We hear and remember what we hear because we perceive it as emotionally significant. What we hear affects the way we participate in our environments. This led me to start wondering what happens when the way in which we hear the world shifts and how does this have an impact on our lives?

Inconspicuous

Choosing audio material for the sound intervention at COP16 was challenging for this reason. For a sound work to speak, it literally has to call to and connect to the listener’s headspace. Conceptually I wanted the sound to be situation specific, personally, and socially significant. I wanted my audio material to be heard as neutral and positive but I also felt that the sounds should be a poignant reminder of passing time. Interpelled plays with interpellation on many levels.  Troubled by questions of morality in the face of the climate crisis Interpelled arose from my own calling. A haunting nagging voice about passing time inspired me to think about how I might creatively use sound to inspire reflection and dialogue around what I considered to be the worlds most pressing issue. I felt compelled to try to use audio in a novel and personal way so that a conference attendee would hear the work as if it was the voice of his or her conscience speaking. I imagined Interpelled expanding and challenging the consciousness of the listener …

challenging thought

When using sound as a creative form of activism interpellation also beckons the listener to respond. This response was something I considered when I imagined the Interpelled project functioning as a conscience at COP16. When using sound as a medium, ethical implications are increased especially when dealing with the possibility that someone will hear the sounds as if they were originating from their own body. My sonic intervention had a couple of trajectory points. The first came from a desire to do something with the haunting climate crisis voices in my mind that whisper to me that time is running out. The second was to create a reflective space through sound for COP16 attendees to reflect on the core issues and what’s at stake. When the work resonates, conference attendees will experience a contemplative moment challenging them to engage in more meaningful dialogue around these issues in a conference environment and in their own lives and people who experience the documentation of the project will also be challenged to think in new ways.