Participatory performance “Audioswarm: Geofractions”
The premiere of the audio-visual artist John Grzinich’s full-length participatory performance “Audioswarm: Geofractions.” will take place in Kumu as part of the opening programme of Kumu’s exhibition “They Began to Talk”.
“Audioswarm: Geofractions” combines collective listening and movement to create a distributed sounding body, inspired by complex animal and insect behavioural notions of swarming, herding and flocking. The performance is centred around an audio composition inspired by Grzinich’s project “Geofractions”, a sonic and geographical survey of the oil-shale extraction zones of Ida-Virumaa. The audioswarm is a unique engaged listening format for presenting compositions based on soundscapes and field recordings. This participatory and performative format repurposes commonly individuated technologies (smart phones) for the collective de-centring of a “sound field”, dissolving the boundaries between the audience and performer, while highlighting more fluid opportunities for spatial sound reproduction.
Members of the audience are encouraged to join the audioswarm by accessing the sound composition through a QR code and moving in a swarm alongside other participants.
“Insects, birds and fish swarm, so let us try as well,” said John Grzinich.
Duration: 22 minutes
Treiler
John Grzinich (b. 1970 in United States) is an audio-visual artist based in Estonia. His work integrates sound, moving images and site-specific installations to explore perceptions of sound and space, seeking resonances between people and places. Grzinich’s recent focus questions our anthropocentric views through performative and fixed media works by combining earthly agencies, expanded listening practices and participatory engagement. He has also conducted long-term sound and geographical research in the Ida-Virumaa region, which has resulted in the body of work known as “Geofractions”.
Grzinich has performed and exhibited internationally, published compositions on various labels and has been featured on Deutschlandfunk Kultur, ABC Radio Australia, NTS Radio, Resonance FM etc.
This event is a part of the public programme of the exhibition “They Began to Talk”, an international group exhibition concerned with the speech of the body, taking the intertwinement of the body and the environment as its point of departure. Through the work of primarily contemporary artists, the exhibition asks: How does art enable us to cultivate a sense of connection in an era of drastic environmental change and inequality? How do experiences and knowledge migrate through generations? How do we remember, as the current generation, when what has been passed on to us is silence? Somatic perception and imagination play important roles in these processes.
