In my video "1by1" I examine an abandoned shopping mall, a contemporary submerged version of the abandoned Atlantis, where people are seeking an alternative activity to leisure. The work is partially based on and purposely quotes the Chilean author Diamela Eltit's book "Mano de obra". In it, supermarket workers become participants in a reality show admitted to a house thanks to their job, which determines their permanency and power status. As time passes different dynamics appear mimicking those of contemporary capitalism. Objects once identifiable by their functions become sensors and eyes reading any micro-expression and posture of the body of the workers; until they ultimately assume an indecipherable divine symbolic meaning.
During my residency, I would like to capture this sound of things coming into being in our world. In the Christian Bible angels are given a certain appearance only to be visible and identifiable by humans, similarly, sounds have mutated in my work to be more identifiable and domestic, post-industrial or technological to appeal to the human's ear.
They create dissonant memories, closer to a conceptual interpretation rather than a realistic reproduction of what is presented on the screen.
This could be paralleled to Russell’s five minutes ago paradox, which states that the content of our memories is not derived from mechanics, therefore "successful retrodictions
can be false memory-beliefs, the falsity of which is a matter of logical tenability" according to philosopher Negarestani.
A neoliberalism lecture of our times has characterized my latest works in a bigger perspective frame, inglobing religious interpretation of surveillance, allegedly being omniscient and omnipresent (both in time and space).
In my video where past, present and future collide maybe I attempted to demonstrate how a "genuine self-consciousness turns out to be the view of ourselves from nowhen" (from Reza Negarestani "A Case of a Critique of Critique: Boltzmann’s time-drift").
It would be interesting to experiment with sounds on the verge of the duality of real and unreal, on what is possible and full of possibility. How to capture the sound of the Nymphe Daphne transforming into laurel? Or of Zeus turning into a bull or a swan?
At the first moment, my proposal would be to recreate these sounds realistically or just picture them this way, then to abstract them, slowly creating more indistinct equivalent rumours playing with their tempo depending on the situations happening in Greek myths.
I would like to also give sound to a fallen ophanim, descending through the atmosphere as light and transforming into its human-decipherable appearance.
How would the clapping of a thousand wings and the blinking of a thousand eyes sound?
Giving sound to these metamorphoses, this state of uncertainty would be my ultimate goal, trying to conceive a sound that is not linear but can be interpreted in both senses and practicable infinite times.
This obviously springs a question on the practical instalment of a sound that takes no place and kilometres of space at the same time.
Furthermore one could consider the metamorphosis of the caterpillar that transforms itself into a butterfly. The latter, having nothing in common with its previous form, not even sharing the same space (the sky as opposed to the ground) still share the same life.
So I would embrace philosopher Emanuele Coccia's vision, which affirms that there is a relationship that binds all species together and unites the living with the non-living. Everyone being a step in the Darwinian evolution is nothing but part of a bigger indefinable being.
Although in this all-where and all-when of sounds, some forms prevail momentarily, the unity and singularity we are living in are undefiable so that is where I would like to point forward in my research.
I consider the sound I'm presenting as a key to understanding my video, as it gives the possible solution of "playing pretend" to the need of humans to work and find purpose. In this post-labour submerged Atlantis, sounds are a simulation of natural sounds (the wind rumour is substituted by that of a vacuum cleaner). Just like Ancient greek God would preserve their God-ness when transfiguring into animals and descending into the world of mortals so does sound acquire a more domestic, post-industrial consistency.
What sound would an ophanim made as it descends into the Earth, forming its wings and blinking its thousands of eyes?
As the transcendental structure expands within the infinite possibilities of post-labour, I resort to artificial rules and fantasies to "escape" leisure, which was defined as boring according to the temperamental Gods of ancient Greek mythology.
I'm particularly interested in writer Reza Negarestani's approach since he contributed to the realization of “Chimerization” by artist Florian Hecker, who utilized the concept of the “auditory chimaera” as a point of creative departure.
Also, the philosopher's conception of knowledge as "explicata" could be a useful parallel to what I want to realize with sounds. My composition is mainly constituted of found rumours of mechanical objects, partly taken from videogames' soundtracks or timeless electronic replicas of vulgar Latin songs. After all, not a voice is audible in this abandoned Atlantis, only recordings.
How does sound result when its original environment is gone ("space as relations without relata"), when there is no protection shield nor its own horizon of perception? How does translation from inexistence work? How does sound become intelligible? How can we create a sound that suggests the idea of movement and transformation from a monadic non-space? How do we activate memories in the ordinary time-conscious subject?
The flow between reality and divinity (or irreality) bypasses the Kantian reciprocity of cause and effect, even if we can still find asymmetries if we presuppose these two realms as definitive starting points for any given objects emitting sounds.
Similarly to Boltzmann the "idea that the velocities of two particles that have not collided yet can be said to be uncorrelated, and can therefore be identified as an initial condition" is according to Negarestani an index of privileged temporal-causal asymmetry.
My challenge with the creation of a sound is then also a temporal one, to the extent that the transformation into a visible object can be presupposed to last aeons or milliseconds, depending on various thinkers' interpretations.