An experimental sound art project combining ontology and embodied geographies through the creation of sonic space.
The focus is on bodies that leak and menstruate, bodies that have a cyclical existence comprising of pain and discomfort, bodies that are hidden, contained and denied space to exist. The project aims to create and explore a space for these bodies, one that is made with dissonance, discord and difference. Through the use of both live and pre-recorded reverberations, we can allow the agency of space and sound to move and stimulate these bodies. Visual projections will be displayed on the walls, different and specifically tailored for each space, not to take away from the auditory experience as it often can but to add another dimension to it. It will be a performance of both the space and the bodies it contains.
The womb contracts and dilates, it vibrates and pulses, this can cause random spasms of pain or constant humming aches. The walls hold memory of past cycles and move in anticipation of what’s to come. With sound waves and oscillations a sonic space can be created to amplify the presence of a womb. An interpretation of the womb, presenting the agency of the space itself as the inhuman portrays the living through its own materials, form and participation. A space in which bodies can both expand past the flesh into the socio-material and respond through resonance within, a space made with, for and of the bodies it performs, one not made with harmony but with dissonance.
Dissonance has always been utilised to create beauty in music through the sense of relief and release. The existence of melody, music and aesthetic is constituted by it; pleasure cannot exist without pain as the two are intertwined. Through sexual selection, the autonomy of bodies that bleed and breed is what moulds and shapes the evolution of aesthetic expression. Yet the fact that these bodies are leaky, agonised, throbbing and resonant is seldom celebrated. These bodies are prominent and influential in the evolution of art and form yet continue to be othered, continue to be silenced and labelled as shameful, dirty, unhygienic and weak. These dissonant bodies have agency and influence over beauty and desire and this project seeks to create a space that not only celebrates but also amplifies and intensifies this way of being.
This is an interdisciplinary, practise-led research project that explores othering, meta-modernism and post-humanism, all important and exciting concepts in contemporary fields of sound and music. A residency or commission can provide the means to actualise what is at the moment only a concept.
The reason the term ‘people who menstruate’ is used here is to acknowledge that not all people who menstruate are women, and not all women menstruate. This is in no way to exclude anyone from the project, everyones experience and perspective is important and welcome.
analogue meets digital
pre-recorded meets live
flesh meets concrete
human meets inhuman
from difference comes dissonance
