February 3, 2012  11:00 – 14:00 Interpelled will be presented during the Mobilizing the Unrepresentable – as a live stream.

The Isolation and Empowerment after Web 2.0.segment features work that explores the tensions of hierarchical control and the increasing connectivity and virtualisation of our social relationships by exposing the possible scenarios of networked dystopias, and asks its audience to rethink critical strategies by proposing new paths for political actions (both artistic and hacktivist) based on the recognition of the power of distributed subjectivities.

www.shakerattleroll.org

City Soundings was a fun 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 was 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.

ten years later ... still troubled by the same things

There were moments during this process when the whole project felt too big and I worried if I would ever find the right sounds. Then I began to think about the kinds of sounds that I find emotionally resonate. Beyond words, what sounds would be symbolic and contextually appropriate? And then one night it came to me as I was walking downtown. Passing me in a car the brief sound of children’s voices jolted me out of my train of thought. Their young laughing voices were clearly recognizable even though I only heard them briefly. I realized, in that moment, that the voices of playing children translates no matter what your nationality and was both a sound and a voice that speaks to the heart. Under the looming climate crisis, projecting the joyous voices of children laughing and playing at COP16 resonated both intellectually and emotionally.

The banner hangs, protests, scripted and shouted chants seemed almost destined to go unnoticed by those who attend these conferences because they fit in the paradigm. When I was a budding activist ten years ago I participated in those actions at a COP 6 in the Hague. I was struck that our efforts, chants, and words seemingly were ignored. I realized measures activists often take at these events tend to be less about opening up space for innovative solutions and more about dogging, pressuring, and guilting officials in the hope of achieving  concrete results. After learning more about Hyper Sonic Sound I wondered if I could break through this scripted blanket and inspire a different type of reaction and reflection. I certainly did not want my project to be experienced as more rhetoric. I didn’t want to project statistics at delegates or make a cute clever rhymes about the planet’s destruction. I wanted conference attendees to pause and deeply listen. I knew I needed to be careful and considerate for my work to function as an inner mirror in this context. To be effective, there were logistical restraints I needed to consider. I thought about how hurried and crazed these ten-day conferences can be. I knew most of the attendees would be sleep deprived and I wanted to respect what I imagined to be their semi-frazzled mental states. The sounds needed to be recognizable to an international population. The audio had to be something consistent, simple, and yet poignant. Imagining this as a conscience speaking, I knew I needed to access each conference attendee singularly – this was going to be a one on one intervention.