Curatorial Statement

In, Of, From: Experiments in Sound, organized in collaboration with Cecilia López and Jules

Gimbrone, explores new ways of understanding the relationship between sound art and

the traditional gallery experience. Gallery visitors are invited to rethink the specific

temporalities and spatiality of the exhibition space with the goal of creating new dialogues

in the academic context and wider art world. The exhibition creates a tension within

dominant practices of art display and includes works by the following contemporary artists:

Nikita Gale, Jules Gimbrone, Cecilia López, Thessia Machado, Nao Nishihara, Adrian Piper,

and Stevie Say and Lucie Vítková.

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Out of all of the physical human senses, auditory perception, hearing, is the hardest

to effectively filter. In most situations a person can be fairly selective about what they

touch, they can close their eyes to avoid a sight they do not wish to see, and a simple

pinch of the nose effectively shuts down the olfactory system. Even in an ideal situation,

though, it is difficult to block out all sound, as evinced in the limitations of various noise-

canceling devices. Perhaps it is because of this fact that sound is one of the most regulated

environmental stimuli in today’s society, from apartment buildings to public spaces. What is

normally called music is simply sound beholden to a culturally regulated system of control.

What differentiates music from noise is whether or not sound has been bound up by the

formal apparatus of key, scale, and note, then arranged by the internal logic of that system

into a “proper order.” John Cage began working against this rigid notion in the 1950s,

ultimately affirming that all sound is music.

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The artists in this exhibition each take up this legacy in various ways, marrying sound to

its spatialization and installation in a gallery setting. Beyond this, each artist challenges not

only culturally imposed hierarchies and aesthetic conventions that privilege the visual over

the aural, they also introduce the visitor to the social and political implications of sound,

whether by creating a silent piece modeled on a historical barricade, or a resonating platform

that is constantly acting upon and being acted upon by the environment around it.

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The title, In, Of, From, highlights the perpetually shifting subject/object position that exists

within entities that are both constantly producing and constantly absorbing sounds and

their various implications. In this way, the exhibition title captures how each work is less

about sound as an independent object but something that exists in, of, and from a relation

to other concerns.

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The artists, who also helped organize this exhibition, seek to establish a place for sound

art that radically confronts normative boundaries within artistic practice and culture.

In doing so, In, Of, From helps to reveal the arbitrariness of these boundaries. The works

presented here ask the gallery visitor to acknowledge the difficulty of completely filtering

the sound of one’s environment and, though it may be disconcerting, to relinquish the

comfort found in the usual principles of sonic organization in recognition of the true fluidity

of socio-cultural norms.

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Mark Hodge