07/07/2022
Are you there?
Sound art intervention in the 1896 Fritz Koch Kiosk on Nytorv in Aalborg, Denmark
Presented as part of the MicroPOM Transition Regimes symposium, 10–11/05/2022
In May 2022, nine sound art performances took place inside the 1896 Fritz Koch Kiosk on the square Nytorv in Aalborg, Denmark. The sound art intervention re-enacted a former phone kiosk by establishing an analogue phone call to remote places. Sound artists from Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Colombia performed an audio composition to reflect on Russian aggression against Ukraine and the affective realities of war. Audiences picked up an analogue phone inside the kiosk for a one-to-one connection with the artists, having a conversation and listening to noisy signals and distant ambiences. In a media landscape of information overload and fake news, the project aimed to create a dedicated time and space for focused listening and connecting amidst crisis.
Throughout these phone-mediated connections, noise functioned as a central metaphor. Glitches in the signal transmission and the limited audio spectrum of the old phone speakers created noise in the connection. The artists exploited noise as an aesthetic device, and for the audience, it represented the instability of calling in wartime. As the audiences temporarily shifted their attention to the current war reality, listening became a solidarity practice. Noise represents a form of anti-systemic opposition and, similar to Dadaist provocations, embodies resistance to the destruction of war. During the intervention, the voices of artists from Eastern Europe and Colombia were ephemerally present in the commercial city centre of Aalborg as a form of anti-war noise – visually and sonically disrupting the rhythms of the city.
The sound pieces together created a narrative with multiple textures, interpretations, and backgrounds about one specific topic in history, the current situation in Ukraine. Piotr Madej demonstrated how he creates sound from the embroidered patterns on a traditional Ukrainian blouse. As a reference to February 24 2022, Sebastian Milewski’s piece used the sound of an unanswered phone call. Constructing a state of anxiety for the listener inside the kiosk, Aleksandra Słyż’s composition of sirens oscillated between alarming loudness and a threatening silence. Performing together from two different cities, Anastasiya Voytyuk played the traditional Ukrainian instrument, the bandura, while A Й K T R O N E R performed an electronic-acoustic composition. Similarly using Ukrainian ethnical sounds as a solidarity statement, Ricardo Arias’s composition combined variations on a recording of the Ukrainian folk song ‘Oy tam na gori’ with sounds from recent Colombian armed conflicts. Camilo Cantor performed his sound piece Guerras Cruzadas, made from stories and testimonies of Colombians in Ukraine and Colombia, showing how deafening war is in any territory. In a configuration of current and past realities, SK.EIN performed a soundscape that combined sirens in Kyiv with crickets recorded years ago in Kherson, before Russia occupied the town. Maskitol SAE sent an SOS message, highlighting the destructive danger of Russia’s nuclear power that could impact far beyond the borders of territories. In the interactive piece of AETHER.mcrt, consisting of a soundscape with spoken word poetry, the listener inside the kiosk sent and received military commands. Whilst the audiences listened to these sound pieces, they looked through the yellow-coloured glass of the kiosk onto the busy city square of Aalborg, experiencing a perceptual disconnect between realities and geographies.
As the artists and listeners switched their roles of sending and receiving signals – by alternating between deep listening, asking questions, and responding to one another – the project broke traditional boundaries between performer and public. The phone call became a sonic ‘space’, shared by both people on the end of the phone line. The listeners’ interpretations varied widely, as people navigated abstraction and specificity through a framework of their own identity and past experiences. Some listeners recalled the traumatic memory of nuclear danger, some elaborated on the desensitizing rather than emotional effect of the sounds of sirens and bombs, and others shared their feelings of sadness and empathy when thinking about the people in the war territory. The project created a space of ambiguity, in which participants made meaning of abstract and noisy war sounds through personal interpretations whilst experiencing contextual disconnect by looking onto Aalborg’s city square. Are you there? embraces this ambiguity as a resource for underlining the complexity of affective responses to the war.
With sound interventions by Piotr Madej (PL), Sebastian Milewski (PL), AЙKTRONER (UA), Anastasiya Voytyuk (UA), Ricardo Arias (CO), Sk.ein (BY), Aleksandra Słyż (PL), Camilo Cantor (CO), AETHER.mcrt (UA), and Maskitol SAE (UA).
Are you there? is a project by the s.u.n. collective, consisting of Sonia Milewska (PL), Marijn Bril (NL), Laura Palma (CO), Hanna Hrynkevich (BY), and Hugo Lima (BR) and was supported by Aalborg Universitet, Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, and Aalborg Kommune. It was presented during the MicroPOM Aalborg Transition Regimes, the sub-format of the international conference series POM – Politics of Machines, which aims at investigating the histories, theories and practices of machines and technologies in-between and beyond disciplines.
