UTOPIAN SILENCE
What if silence is actually the world expressing itself to us while we finally listen? Just listen…
…to find presence in absence. And the earth dreams a dream of a utopian silence.
Utopian silence is an audiovisual artwork created for the YA festival for New Music, curated by Roberto Beseler Maxwell and Levin Eric Zimmermann. The festival under the theme "silence" took place at the Kunsthaus Essen in April 2024, being funded by the Kulturstiftung and the Kulturamt Essen as well as the Kunststiftung NRW.
A few months before the exhibition I had the great privilege of experiencing the onset of winter in the Tara National Park in Serbia. As part of a scholarship from the Ministry of Culture and Science of North Rhine-Westphalia, I was researching the relationship between landscape and song. Snowed in and with nothing but mountains and forests surrounding me, I was able to experience the absolute and magical silence of the wild mountains during winter. Although I was still focused on my work on site I was certain that this experience would influence my work for the YA festival.
I was particularly interested in the generative potential of silence. Silence which does not describe the absence of sound, but a form of tension that keeps everything in motion. It is a tension between opposites that constantly communicate with each other, holding within themselves the potential for creation and decay. The process of emergence, as opposed to production, is connected to this and has been my interest for some time now. In this regard, I research forms of devotion within nature that undermine the traditional separation between active and passive. In particular my vocal practices and improvisations have been and still are centered around this theme. With regard to my dialogue with nature, silence describes a form of attention and awareness that reciprocates the care received by nature. This, however, is not meant as a linear and even act of give and take, but rather describes a form of being that the wilderness teaches us. In it, we are no longer subjects in a world of objects, but are rather carried and moved by our animate surrounding. The title "utopian silence" refers to the urgency of acquiring this ability so as to not escape the dystopia blindly or in a frenzy of action. Instead, I believe we are called to imagine a utopian future together with nature, also to ultimately better understand and embody our role within the transformation and changes necessary to once again care for the earth.
"Utopian silence" is really an ode to the wilderness, to the supposed silence of nature. Interweaving poetry, sound and visual art, it describes a timeless moment in which all of humanity falls silent.
In all its elements, the work consisted of an animation that combined three ink/watercolor paintings, a composition lasting about 15 minutes (on headphones) and the installation consisting of linen-cotton fabric panels, walnut branches and a braided willow wreath.
what if we were silent together? the entire planet. not because someone died but because something (not a thing at all) wants to be born? what would make us be silent together? awe? fatigue? surrender? love given and received within the same nanosecond? shameless and blissful ignorance giving rise to ancient curiosities? what if we were silent together?
© Ausstellungsfotos Teresa Thomaschütz
To imagine the earth dreaming a dream of a utopian silence - what would it feel like to her? Would she be afraid, like we are afraid of the sudden absence of - What would it sound like?
Will she be glad to sense our inhales and exhales so distinctly, like I am glad whenever I listen to the ocean breathing? Will she find joy in the rhythms of our heartbeats, like I rejoice, my ear to the ground, my hand on rock, my bare feet following the rhythms of uneven ground? And will she gently hum to the murmurations of our minds, that finally ceased thinking, explaining and instead started to imagine the world…