TREMOR WALKS, 2021
with Caroline Ann Baur
Installation with recycled wood, glass, carpet, scores, multi channel system, sound
Listening Sessions w/TAIMASHOE, Vivian Wang, EN-LIL (live broadcasted by Radio Megahex.fm)
Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, Saint Gall Switzerland, 2021
with support from: EN-LIL aka Luc Haefliger
special thanks to: Nicolas Buzzi, Milva Stutz & Vicini Bau AG
link to audio (scroll down for listening sessions)
The audience enters an arrangement of yellow wooden boards, an 8-channel audio installation that is also physically perceptible through the vibrations of the boards. The entire installation becomes a body of sound for the soundscapes produced in the studio behind the wall: Another space that is only visible and audible from the outside, i.e. in the inner courtyard of Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen.
By entering the wooden boards one decides to get involved, it takes a certain effort and a decision to actively listen. The subtle soundscapes that can be heard were developed in improvisations with invited guests and the two artists Vanessà Heer and Caroline Ann Baur based on a score. The scores were developed together with the invited guests.
The workshop is about creating a specific social structure where the relations between the bodies in the space are negotiated and interpreted together. The sound itself becomes a tool, perhaps developing a story that is being written together. Scores are also exciting because they are equally accessible and realizable for musicians and non-musicians. In the installation, the audience can also play or meditate along.
By stepping onto the wooden boards, the audience also becomes present to the artists in the studio, where they can be heard moving and communicating with them through the sounds and vibrations. The installation becomes a medium that mutually transmits physical presence.
In this way, they seek to produce economies of the visible and audible, playing with the absence and presence of bodies and their sonic emissions. The noise-like rhythms leave much room for associations and subjective narratives. They thus practice what Pauline Oliveros calls «global listening», where one tries to attentively grasp as many sound sources as possible at the same time. This can also be transferred to other areas of life, namely the repeated attempt to listen to complexity.