SONIC GESTURE (2016)
Video, 1 min
Performance. 5V power adapter, electric radio and performer
This piece is an investigation of the minimal gesture needed to generate sound . The medium investigated was a small transistor radio used to sonify an electormagnetic field. This piece is part of a larger investigation/performance called “Voltage”.
Cinematography: Brunella Martina
Light and photography: Bea Rodrigues
Text: Rui Chaves and Vanessa De Michelis
Exhibitions:
Red Bull Contemporary Art Centre – São Paulo – 2015 Dystopie – Showcase Brazilian Sound Art – Berlin 2020
A single, waving hand holds a radio that swings back and forth, ‘activating’ an electromagnetic field emitted by a nearby power adapter. Although initially thought of as a concise visual documentation of a creative process, Sonic Gesture manifests itself over a wider index of issues.
These relate to the body in the wider field of music, including the so-called ‘experimental scene’. A milieu throughout the 2000s where the cis-male and white face of the ‘boys with their toys’ would occasionally be lit up by the computer screen. How many times have we heard the virtuoso and gendered enactment of ritualistic and strenuous feats reinforcing the shock value of sonic matter? Sonic Gesture can thus be considered a polysemic encapsulation of a recent historical moment that folds the ethical-political experience of non-hegemonic identities navigating the above milieu. Should a non-gendered body always be more radical than its male counterpart? Should they aim to amplify the shock value of sound matter to be heard?
Sonic Gesture points to a different path, one where the body-music assemblage is an anonymous and empathetic meditation, carefully composed through the single sonic gesture and its cinematography. The value of the work lies in simultaneously pointing to an existing regulatory canon and, simultaneously, conveying a less dualistic framework (in the biological, political and aesthetic sense) for the bodies that make sound.