The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening
Book launch with Salomé Voegelin, including performances by Mollin+Voegelin and Khaled Kaddal
Sunday, October 28th / 19:00
Errant Sound, Kollwitzstrasse 97, 10435 Berlin
The essay is the perfect format for a crisis. Its porous and contingent nature forgives a lack of formality, while its neglect of perfection and virtuosity releases the potential for the incomplete and the unrealizable. These seven essays on The Political Possibility of Sound present a perfectly incomplete form for a discussion on the possibility of the political that includes creativity and invention, and articulates a politics that imagines transformation and the desire to embrace a connected and collaborative world.
The themes of these essays emerge from and deepen discussions started in Voegelin’s previous books, Listening to Noise and Silence and Sonic Possible Worlds. Continuing the methodological juxtaposition of phenomenology and logic and writing from close sonic encounters each represents a fragment of listening to a variety of sound works, to music, the acoustic environment and to poetry, to hear their possibilities and develop words for what appears impossible.
As fragments of writing they respond to ideas on geography and migration, bring into play formless subjectivities and trans-objective identities, and practice collectivity and a sonic cosmopolitanism through the hearing of shared volumes. They involve the unheard and the in-between to contribute to current discussions on new materialism, and perform vertical readings to reach the depth of sound.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-political-possibility-of-sound-9781501312175/
Including a performance by David Mollin and Salomé Voegelin about the precarious lives of hummingbirds, the need for leadership and the sound proofing qualities of ceiling tiles to ensure privacy and the right to speak.
David Mollin and Salomé Voegelin are a Swiss-UK artist collective (Mollin+Voegelin) who have been collaborating since 2008 on projects that focus on invisible connections, transient behaviour and unseen rituals. Their work reconsiders socio-political, architectural and aesthetic actualities through the possibilities of sounds, voices and words, whose invisible mobility invites an individual and collective inhabiting and promotes participation.
&
Khaled Kaddal, “C0DE 03”
According to the American police radio scanner codes, number ‘03’ is an instruction code to switch on lights and sirens in police vehicles. Through the audio/visual performance, the piece implicitly scopes the ecology of fear within political ruptures and riots. Using the sonic qualities of police sirens, generated numbers, red/blue police colours, audio and visual noises. The performance aims to bring the audience to a state of attentive and expanded listening to ‘alert’ and ‘alarm’.
Khaled Kaddal (b.1987) is an artist and musician, raised in Alexandria, Egypt. His broad body of work encompasses cross-disciplinary approach, integrating different mediums including sound, sculpture and moving images for performances and installations. His research-led work often adopt contemporary socio-political aesthetic with the intention to explore the sensory memory (iconic memory and echoic memory) of the human body.
Performed and exhibited globally including Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), Valletta European Capital of Culture 2018 (MT), Palazzo Mora Venice Biennale 2018 (IT), Mosaic Rooms Gallery (UK), Dilston Grove Gallery (UK), Townhouse Gallery (EG), Spektrum (DE), Nour Festival (UK), Generate Festival (DE), AltoFest (IT), D-CAF Festival (EG). Presentations at Aarhus University Denmark (DK), IREMAM (FR) and Westminster University (UK). He has awarded grants from Mophradat, the Sharjah Art Foundation, Arab Fund for Art and Culture (AFAC) and British Council. He pursued his master’s degree in Sound Art at the London College of Communication, UAL (2016).
