HEAVY AIR (working title)
2024 - work in progress
kinetic sculptures / installation. aluminium foam, wires and springs, sound exciters, amplifiers, media players, Gustav Mahler's Symphony no. 9 in D Major (pitched down)
New body of work “Heavy Air” (working title) is a continuation my larger ongoing project addressing questions on uncertainty - uncertainty of perspective, duration and change. In this work, I delve into the relations between vibration, sound and materiality.
Heavy Air is a spatial installation that combines (kinetic) sculpture and sound. It revolves around destabilisation; disquiet; mutual impact; and tremor — involuntary motion of body as a sign of distress. In this work, sound is stripped of its logical and emotional dimension - what remains are vibrations, pure physical power that one is only able to feel it, but not hear it. What was once Gustav Mahler's last work, Symphony no. 9 in D Major, is now a constant violator, trying to influence the fragile object.
The multilayered sculpture, made of aluminium foam (a material chosen for its resemblance to bone structure and the inside of our body), is hanging from the ceiling and is held together by springs and wires. Several small speakers (sound exciters) are connected to the fragile, see-through object — repeatedly playing the vibrations and attempting to influence the material, causing the entire sculpture to move uncontrollably.
One of the crucial materials I worked within my process was vibration — sheer power of sound and its ability to gradually and continuously influence its vicinity. It is as much about silence as it is about noise. Pointing towards our inability to grasp everything, what we are left with is being a witness to a constant physical destabilisation of an object, caused by this fugitive and oppressive sound. Silent and devastating at the same time.
On repetition
On affect
On influence
On violence
On perpetual
On sound
On silence
On sound as weapon
On slow violence
On inequality
On injustice
On tension
On inescapability
On body and bones
On mutual impact
On fragility
On resilience
On dissonance
On heavy air
On disquiet
On tremor
On gravity
On mass
On somatic response
On destabilisation
On instability
On sound as violator
On power
On uncertainty
On the slow, subtle, yet consistent
On entropy
On fluid, yet fractured
On invisible
On slow degradation
On structural violence
On energy
On causal relation
On ambiguity
On schizophrenia
On these times
On background feelings
On the sense of being
On air
On absence
On fugitive sounds
On insensibility
On human nature
On the oppressive
On heartbeat
On Gustav Mahler
On paying attention as a political act
On villain sounds
On pre-conscious
On the embodied
On nervous system
On humane
On quiet devastation
The air is a space, an object, a threat, a myth, a weapon, a commons.
We cannot escape this air.
It is the air that comes into our body through our lungs.
It is the air in which dogs bark, where bees fly and spread pollen.
It is the air that is part of our urban
ecologies and territories, filling our
open, public spaces.
It is not just this though.
It is also the air of capitalist and
neoliberal accumulation, the
disposal space of industrial,
technological, and farming
production systems.
It is the air of inequality, injustice, and of slow and invisible violence.
