Evanesce
2022
Multi-channel sound installation
Six speakers, sensor, Pilote show player, voile cs & laser voil fabrics
Duration: 24’00” min loop & sensor initiated dialogue of 2’10” min
Kohta
Helsinki, Finland
Curated by: Anders Kreuger
Evanesce (2022) is a sound installation devised for Kohta’s larger exhibition space. Lengths of light-weight white fabric hang from the ceiling. They form a porous and semi-permeable labyrinth alluding to the construction and consistency of the human body. Although each layer of fabric is thin and quite transparent, the view from inside becomes a milky whiteness. Visitors may choose different routes to reach the centre but must eventually exit through the entrance. That is the very definition of a labyrinth. This one also brings to mind the convoluted architecture of the human ear.
The four-channel sound component of the installation is a composition for five voices. Three of them can be constantly heard ‘from within the gallery walls’, wordlessly singing and making faint but vaguely unsettling noises. The other two do have language to offer, a short monologue in English, but are only released from silence when visitors reach the centre of the labyrinth and set off a sensor controlling two loudspeakers perched on tripods: ‘Listen to this soft pulse rising from my chest, escaping through the mouth…’
The voices in the installation belong to Julia Hanberg, Sofia Jernberg, Jonatan Lundberg, Tillman O’Donnell and Moa Pellegrini Persson. The recording was made at Studio Cobra in Stockholm.
The verb ‘evanesce’ is in fact reverse-engineered from the adjective ‘evanescent’ and denotes the action or state of ‘vanishing by degree, melting into thin air’.
For video documentation click here.
A voice is, and then it is no more. I see the voice as an extension of the self, shaped inside the body. Its immateriality enables it to float from one core to another. When we speak we are not just hoping to communicate but actually invading other bodies, affecting others in ways that we ourselves can never know.
Documentation: Jussi Tiainen
Voices:
Julia Hanberg
Sofia Jernberg
Jonatan Lundberg
Tillman O’Donnell
Moa Pellegrini Persson
Recorded in Studio Cobra Stockholm
Thank you: Leonie Dahlström, Timo Aho, Martin Ehrencrona