no signal
CURRENT EVENTS
This is a curatorial performance, i.e. a presentation in which I do not read a paper, but perform ideas by playing sounds and reciting poetry, reading texts and proposing text-scores, while moving and standing still. Using this format I aim to rethink the notion of “no signal“ – not as noise or a loss of connection – but as an opportunity to hear silence and the silenced, and thus as an opportunity to start hearing things. “No signal“ appears valueless in relation to communication. It is the fuzzy sound of a bad connection, which imparts nothing, and carries no worth. It implies a lack and describes the undesirable that needs to be cleaned up and erased in order to create a clear meaning and sense. The expectation is that we overcome this lack in order to organise sound into something we can make (visual) sense of.
However, what if we focus on the lack of connection and the fuzzy sound rather than the signal? What if we abandon the differentiation? – I will query the “no signal“ as that which opens an alternative audition. To get to a prior meaning, before signification. A preliminary sense that lies beyond legibility and enables a different response.
Author’s archive
This is a curatorial performance, i.e. a presentation in which I do not read a paper, but perform ideas by playing sounds and reciting poetry, reading texts and proposing text-scores, while moving and standing still. Using this format I aim to rethink the notion of “no signal“ – not as noise or a loss of connection – but as an opportunity to hear silence and the silenced, and thus as an opportunity to start hearing things. “No signal“ appears valueless in relation to communication. It is the fuzzy sound of a bad connection, which imparts nothing, and carries no worth. It implies a lack and describes the undesirable that needs to be cleaned up and erased in order to create a clear meaning and sense. The expectation is that we overcome this lack in order to organise sound into something we can make (visual) sense of.
However, what if we focus on the lack of connection and the fuzzy sound rather than the signal? What if we abandon the differentiation? – I will query the “no signal“ as that which opens an alternative audition. To get to a prior meaning, before signification. A preliminary sense that lies beyond legibility and enables a different response.
An artist and writer engaged in listening and sound making as a socio-political practice. She writes articles and papers, books, texts and text-scores for performances and publication. Her most recent book Uncurating Sound: Knowledge with Voice and Hands (2023) moves curation through the double negative of not not to ‘uncuration’: untethering knowledge from the expectations of reference and a canonical frame, and reconsidering art as political – not in its message or aim – but by the way it confronts the institution. While Unperforming the Dream House ActiveRat (2023) discusses the impact of the 1960 and 70s American dream on the present-day global nightmare. She is a Professor of Sound at CRiSAP, University of the Arts London, UK as well as the Bern Academy of Arts, Switzerland.
ACCESSIBILITY
Performance language: English
