Residencies

• 08.07 > 19.07.2024
• 17.06 > 29.06.2024
• 06.11 > 25.11.2023

com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on through sound has been a stea­dy cen­ter of inquiry, and i still expe­ri­ment on how to work with vocal expres­si­on and sound on a level of inter­de­pen­den­ce, tre­a­ting both as com­po­si­ti­o­nal ele­ments of a kin fabric. together with a musi­cian, artists and per­sons with impair­ments, we ela­bo­ra­te ​‘sonic trans­po­si­ti­ons’, or trans­la­ti­ons into sound and gestu­res of emo­ti­o­nal, sen­so­ri­al and men­tal sta­tes expe­rien­ced by per­sons with men­tal imba­lan­ces like the autism spec­trum, but also of the ani­mal and vege­tal world; i am thin­king here of the com­plex con­ver­sa­ti­ons of spe­cies and who­le eco­sys­tems through mycor­r­hi­zal net­works, on sen­so­ri­al ways of con­nec­ting and on swarm beha­vi­or. is it pos­si­ble to come clo­ser to a dif­fe­rent way of per­cei­ving? what does a bird hear? can a tree sen­se a con­nec­ti­on to sur­roun­ding plants through their roots? how to esta­blish connection?

i want to lea­ve the track of neu­ro­ty­pi­cal thin­king and immer­se in a dif­fe­rent kind of con­tact: ​“it is not linear. it is fluid and flexi­ble, kind of like a pri­va­te wiki­pe­dia that i am con­stant­ly revi­sing and edi­ting, but instead of words, eve­ry­thing is writ­ten in my own ever-evol­ving lan­gu­a­ge of hier­o­gly­phic films fil­led with hyper­links to asso­ci­a­ted and often irre­le­vant thoughts… i am utter­ly inca­pa­ble of having one thought wit­hout at least ano­ther hund­red coming along for the ride…” is how autis­tic come­di­an han­nah gads­by descri­bes her train of thought. nao­ki higas­hi­da, a young autist with limi­ted ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on skills, descri­bes with the help of faci­li­ta­ted com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and his mother how he per­cei­ves: ​“to make myself under­stood, it’s like i have to speak in an unknown foreign lan­gu­a­ge, eve­ry minu­te of eve­ry day… what we actu­al­ly are loo­king at is the other person’s voi­ce. when we’re ful­ly focu­sed on wor­king out what the heck it is you are saying, our sen­se of sight sort of zones out…”

the­se dif­fe­rent modes of per­cep­ti­on bear remar­ka­ble qua­li­ties, talents and sen­si­ti­vi­ties that deser­ve some atten­ti­on and might help us to find balan­ce, ease and plea­su­re living in approxi­ma­ti­ons. my own and peer’s limita­ti­ons and the com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons lin­ked to them as well as get­ting clo­ser to the natu­re that sur­rounds me inspi­re me to invent nar­ra­ti­ves dif­fe­rent from the domi­nant, per­fec­ti­o­nist, effi­ci­en­cy-dri­ven ones. in the face of mass extinc­ti­on of spe­cies, glo­bal war­ming and the was­te of resour­ces, i feel a deep urge to obser­ve cats, deer, bir­ds, hed­ge­hogs, trees, flo­wers, worms. in order to gain a glim­p­se into their world, i need to open my sen­ses, let my per­spec­ti­ve beco­me porous, make way for some­thing unknown. can we get into an ani­mal or plant appro­ach, to sen­se each other, as an alter­na­ti­ve and an enrich­ment to our human­cen­tric viewpoint?