THE NEW LIQUIDITY

De-territorialized

Listenings

De-territorialized Listenings is an ongoing series of site- specific binaural soundwalks, seeking to challenge the hierarchies of our sensorial and imaginative structures, which are often limited and preconditioned due to the human tendency for habituation and adaptation. Using adaptive spatial audio reactive to the participant’s body movements and location, these soundwalks strive to facilitate a sonic psychogeographic dialogue with a site. The project intertwines re- search from several fields of study: sound and media art, art in public space, the field of locative media and technology, and the field of sensory studies and emotional geographies.

By transforming familiar soundscapes and inducing a “mobility of the self”, the project addresses deterritoriali- zation in the context of cultural globalization and distancing from the locality through mediatization, migration and commodification of life under the global capital.

De-territorialized Listenings proposes a technologically driven yet poetic experience, where real-life auditory events are replaced, juxtaposed and intervened in by parallel sonic environments, narratives and compositions. A custom-built mobile AR app utilizes both the phone’s gyro and accelerometer data to track a walker’s local positions, body angles and movements, as well as geotagging to trigger sound events in the larger geographical realm.

De-territorialized Listenings is part of Project Anywhere’s 2022 Global Exhibition Program for art at the outermost limits of location-specificity, and is realized in collaboration with The Centre of Visual Arts (University of Melbourne) and Parsons School of Design (The New School, New York).

The development of the project’s both technical and theoretical framework was made possible through the kind support of:

• BBK Berlin/Neustart Kultur - Innovative Kunstprojekte
• The Swedish Arts Grants Committee
• Berliner Senat
• Fonds Darstellende Kunste/Neustart Kultur -TakeHeart Rechercheförderung
• Project Anywhere Global Exhibitiion Program 2022

De-territorialized Listenings: (more info)

Magnitude of

Memories of Magnitude

Site-specific
Sound Installation

In Ruins AiR
San Domenico / Polo Museale di Soriano di Calabro, Soriano (IT)

# Android Phones
w Synchronized Playback

During their first research period at the nomadic site-specific residency In Ruins, The New Liquidity focused on contemporary readings of Mediterranean archeological sites predominantly in Calabria, Italy. For the iterations of 2022 the chosen sites were the ruins of the San Domenico Convent in Polo Museale di Soriano Calabro, and Villa Romana di Casignana. The artists engaged in various kinds of deep listening to the sound of the ruins, not only to rescue their forgotten past, but also to reveal displaced memories of their petrified landscape.

In Soriano original testimonies of the 1783 earthquakes and their years long, ongoing and devastating impact on the convent and the entire area were used as a point of departure. These testimonies were combined with recordings conducted during the most important event of the year for the local community taking place during the research period - the San Domenico procession and following ceremonies spanning over three days. Through granulation of the recorded procession audio and by using the confining and still intact walls as acoustic reflection plates, a sonic spatiotemporal intervention was installed across the entire site. The deconstructed sonic projection of dispersed echoes were played back by over a dozen interconnected phones spread out and hidden in cracks in the walls of the ruins, creating a site for sonic excavation for the participants, all the while smearing their sense of location due to subtle changes of the wind and people in movement.

Guided “sound excavation” walks were held during a full day of presentation of the conducted research.