Silent sonorities and unsound acts

ABSTRACT

This review considers the works at two satellite sites of this year’s Sonorities festival, based at SARC in Belfast, UK. The two exhibitions were linked by a focus on practices and forms of listening rather than the presentation of sounding or musical works. Listening is approached as a diversely subjective, shared, guided, uncertain or dangerous activity.

KEYWORDS:

• Curated listening
• listening scores
• soundwalking
• sound art
• urban sound space
• listening walks

Acknowledgments

Many thanks are extended to my PhD supervisors, Gascia Ouzounian, Sarah Lappin and Simon Waters, for their advice and Zeynep Bulut for critiques. That said, any errors are entirely my own. Thanks also to John D’Arcy for use of images. This is part of research generously funded by the AHRC through Northern Bridge DTP.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Sonorities is a festival of contemporary music held in Northern Ireland on a two-year cycle. Organised this year by Simon Waters, with co-direction by Miguel Ortiz, it is based out of SARC (Sonic Arts Research Centre) at Queen’s University, Belfast. Running for over 30 years, it involves international artists from a wide breadth of new musical and sonic arts directions.See also a review in Visual Artists' News Sheet (Chris Steenson) https://visualartistsireland.com/sounding-out.

2. QSS is an artist led gallery and studio space in Belfast city centre. The exhibition was curated by John D’Arcy, artist and lecturer at Queen’s University.

3. Information on previous versions can be found on: http://irisgarrelfs.com/listening-wall. It could be debated whether all were strictly listening scores, or whether these were multiple genres of works displayed. Either way, such a distinction lies in the ears of the reader.

4. The symposium “Techno-Human Encounters” (21 April) convened by Zeynep Bulut and Kurt Werner, explored how “changing conceptions of technology, body, life, and environment feed into experience and mediation of sound” (from programme notes). Keynote by Brian Kane “In Search of Audile Technique” interrogated the use of term, and looked toward addressing what Kane describe as an “incorrigible” problem of the structure of listening – thus dovetailing into many of the questions on listening troubling this reviewer.

5. Audio-visual documentation and scores are available on katrinem’s site at http://www.katrinem.de/category/go-your-gait/.

6. Brian Kane touched on a related point in his keynote “In Search of Audile Technique”, hearing being to a large extent hidden from everyday observation, it is difficult to trace what someone is doing when they are “listening” – an aspect that complicates pinning down the status of audile technique as a perceptual activity.

7. hEar the wall, by Viv Corringham, as featured on the Listening Wall: “Stand very close to a wall. Turn sideways and close one ear by pressing it into the wall. Listen to the sounds of your own existence: can you hear your breath, your heartbeat? Slowly release your ear and listen as the sounds change. Can you hear the wall? Listen through the wall”. Corringham is known for works such as Shadow Walks series, in which she records walks with another individual and then retraces their path creating vocalisations in situ at http://vivcorringham.org.

8. For a previous discussion considering potentials of sound art to interrogate Belfast urban social dynamics, see Ouzounian (2013).

9. http://housetakenover.com. Curated by sisters Ciara and Nora Hickey, who are also former residents.

10. http://www.unamonaghan.com. Monaghan’s “The Bodélé Project” (2016) explored radio, nature sounds and morse code.

11. http://www.johndarcy.com. D’Arcy’s “Everything That Concerned” (2018) linked Samuel Beckett’s time in the French Resistance with sounds of long wave radio and distorted voices of an “intercepted” broadcast.

12. Played by Mark Caffrey. More information on Isobel Anderson at www.isobelsays.com/.

13. Locally this was contextualised through the highly publicised, and divisive, media-dubbed “Belfast rape trial”.

14. Line from score by “Roche”.

15. Even this year’s Sonorities motto – “you might not like it” – seems a shrugging off of responsibility for any repercussions of audition. As though to say, we are just playing things out – what you do with what you hear is up to you.

16. The score as featured on Listening Wall, reads “Find the darkest space in the parking lot / Cower into it / Make a low growl”. From Salome Voegelin at http://soundwords.tumblr.com.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elen Flügge

Elen Flügge is pursuing doctoral research on urban sound space, investigating listening practices and creative interventions for city sound planning. Based at SARC as part of the Recomposing the City research group (co-directed by Gascia Ouzounian and Sarah Lappin), she previously completed an MA in Sound Studies at UdK, Berlin and undergraduate studies at Bard College, NY. Currently active as a musician and member of Belfast-based sound art collective UMBRELLA.