Ssssssssssssilence

Abstract

We desire the disappearance of noise and, paradoxically, silence presents itself as something that does not exist. The search for silence resonates, to a greater or lesser extent, as nostalgia, it generates the desire of attentive listening to the relentless rumour of the world. We search for silence in front of deafening sound (acoustic, media, linguistic, virtual) and we idealise an impossible goal. And in nature we tune in and the noise dissolves itself in a polyphony of sounds. And we tune in and the sounds created by our own body reach us: breathing, the nervous system, blood circulation. Already in 1951 John Cage experienced the anechoic chamber, confirming scientifically that absolute silence does not exist and starting an investigation that has been continued by many artists.

One of the stoppages that is known by the world and the utopia of communication is the failure of the machine, the interruption of transmission. It is basically a technical failure and not a decision taken freely by citizens. The silence that follows a technical failure is uncomfortable and presents itself nearly as an archaeological remain, as if it were the trace of the noise, not yet absorbed. Anachronistic in its display, it produces unease and an immediate desire to kill it off. However, there is neither poetry nor aesthetic silence without the disappearance, the emptying of the void, without the subtraction and fracture of the semantic and phallocentric word. In front of the haemorrhage of discourse and the consensus of communication, the hope of restoring the power of words and its sounds. Somehow there is no word without silence. In order to have communication there must be silence, pause and listening.

Notes

1 A fear or dislike of leaving empty spaces.

2 I have referred to the idea of texting, and everything we write throughout the day into our technological devices, in the article ‘Pulsión textual’ (Rozas 2015).

3 One cannot avoid referring to Cage’s own work (2002), along with the influence he has exerted on numerous artists (Voegelin 2010: 80–2).

4 I wrote about poetic texture in the aforementioned article ‘Pulsión textual’. I took the idea of working with what does not exist from ‘Los límites de la ficción’ (2018) by José A. Sánchez.

5 Qualquer Collective, formed of Ibon Salvador (Bilbao) and Luciana Chieregati (Brazil), invited Carolina Campos (Brazil) for this performance.

6 ‘I buy gold. I buy silence’, couplet written by Isabel Escudero and sung by El Niño de Elche at the festival of alternative music ‘Ertz’ (Bera de Bidasoa, Navarra) on 11 September 2016.

7 I refer to political parties like Vox in Spain, with old Falangists in their ranks. Or other similar parties expanding throughout Europe, so-called populists, when in fact they are the new face of postmodern fascism.

8 They appeared in a common grave, along with 104 corpses, in La Pedraja (Burgos) and had been preserved due to conditions of humidity and soil type, turning the remains into a kind of soap (El Público 2016).