8ight, #5 of 8 exhibition series
05.-07.09.2024
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN, 5 channel sound installation, video and paper archives
by Varoujan Chetirian (CH)
8ight // for 8 audiovisual exhibitions
frei-raum.berlin is showing the exhibition series 8ight, which will feature sound art and audiovisual art installations, performances and artistic research. This series runs from April to November 2024, with eight sequential presentations, each characterised by the number of acoustic sources/speakers: from one in the first exhibition to eight in the last. The symbolic meaning of the number 8 for time, connection and renewal is reflected in this gradual increase. At the end of the 8 exhibitions, a printed art object, in a limited edition of 8, will be published on our label F with a summary of all the works.
#5 acoustic sources of 8ight –
SOUND INSTALLATION // THE DISTANCE BETWEEN, 5 channel sound installation, video and paper archives by Varoujan Chetirian (CH)
on view 05.09. Thursday, 16:30-20h
06.09. Friday, 16:30-20h
07.09. Saturday,15-19h
07.09.2024, Saturday, start 20h - space is limited, donation 8-12 EUR
LIVE PERFORMANCE
// Varoujan Chetirian (CH)
// burgund t brandt (DE)
// sound // space and time // post-industrial places // post-apocalypse // sound as memory // echoes // resonances // reverberation // THE DISTANCE BETWEEN, 5 channel sound installation, video and paper archives by Varoujan Chetirian (CH)
When we look up at the stars at night, the light we see is travelling distances so enormous that it can take millennia to travel from their emission to our retina. We thus virtually look at the past. A star visible today might actually have been extinct since thousands of years, but its light is still travelling the immensity of space. An immensity so big that we talk of light-years to measure it. Light being the fastest element, we would describe it in sonic terms as the sample rate of the physical world, the Nyquist limit against which everything is compared, everything is contained. That means that our notion of the present time always embed a spatial delay. For example, when I turn on the light at night in my room, I immediately perceive the illumination coming from the bulb reflecting on the walls, whereas in physical reality, when I look at the light bulb, I am already looking at the past because of that little distance electrons need to travel from the bulb to my retina. A past so thin, a past so quick that our bodies can’t separate the source from its time-space traveling, therefore we call it present. But for bodies far enough, where even the speed of light takes seconds, minutes or years to travel from the source to our retinas, we can grasp the distance between. The present stretches enough to become the past. When we look at the stars, we actually don’t see them. We see the dirt, the atmosphere, the space gases and particles the light had to travel through before reaching our open eyes. We look at the past, and we look at the space in between. We never see the moon, we see the light of the sun reflected by the moon filtered by the atmosphere, bouncing against molecules, reverberant in space. We see the reverberation of an echo.
Sound has this beautiful characteristic of being slow enough for us to hear its traveling in space-time. Echoes, resonances and reverberations are manifestation of waves bouncing back from its source to us with a delay big enough for us to hear the space, accessing a slight ephemeral parcel of the past. Working with reflections, architectural materials and archival voices gathered in a massive decaying space center in Armenia, The Distance Between invites the visitor to embrace this gap between our own projection of a future climatic apocalypse, the past or present apocalypse of our neighbors, and the ultimate multi-layered physical and cultural meanings sound can reveal on space-time.
about the artist
Varoujan Chetirian (CH) www.varoujan.work
Varoujan is a Swiss/Armenian musician, sound artist and researcher. Trained as a jazz drummer and classical composer, he’s recently graduated from the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts Master at the UdK, Berlin. He has numerous installations for galleries, museums or public spaces, often working with resonating materials, echoes and reverberation. He can be found performing too, and besides his own artistic practice he runs his independent studio working as a field recordist and sound designer.
burgund t brandt (DE) https://burgundtbrandt.com
is a sound thinker, researcher and artist based in Leipzig. She creates installations, performances and compositions in the field of tension within visual and auditory perception. For this purpose, she explores and transforms the relationship of the in-between under aspects of performative listening in theory and practice. Her working method can be described as a playful dissection of the everyday, in particular the inherent instabilities of human(ity), natural(ity), communication and medium. In reception, this often leads to experiences of coming into contact, whereby one's own body is given the ability to become a place where listening can be perceived as an individual resonance space.
btb is part of the music-performance duo Nadelør , the artist group PARA, the Cologne-based ensemble Elektrische Leiter and co-curator of Seanaps Festival.
copyright photo by maurice weiss.