(un)tamed

Dimensions variable

Polyurethane resin casts of  each side (6 ) of The Goldberg Variations by J.S Bach -1741 (Interpreted by Glenn Gould) and Sleep by Max Richter -2015, liquid Clonazepam 2mg, record players and extension leads

2018 - ongoing

These music pieces reflect each other in their repetitive composition structure, and were written to be played as a “treatment” for insomnia (Bach) and while sleeping -8 hours (Richter). The casting method creates new layers on the sound, eventually erasing and completely subverting the original -the norm. Each record was made from a single mould (12 currently). The first 6 moulds were from the vinyl records and the resulting sculptures were cast again. With each action, information is/will be further erased until the music is completely replaced by a new sound. Sonic vibrations alter the brain generating new connections, which also indicate synthetic chemically-induced processes that constantly produce the subject. The work alludes to molecular extractivism -contemporary biopolitics, and the possibilities of altering the fiction of our living archive.

The project developed while investigating my own medical prescriptions and consequently, government policies in regards to specific psychiatric diagnosis as public health issues. My aim was to learn its chemical composition, understand the way it was molecularly reshaping my living system and ultimately, how it was modulating my behaviour. Therefore, intervening in the relational space. The first exhibition took place at a run-down building in Deptford, a “depressed” area (with fast-growing signs of gentrification) in South East London. I started researching on its population (mostly working class non-white immigrants), the policies regarding British citizenship, public health (mental health/alcoholism/drug addiction) and crime statistics -directly related to race and class status. Thus, how the fiction of that “other” is constructed and fixed as not-fitting, violent/dangerous and less psychologically able -in comparison to what it is not.

Contradictions emerge in the form as to generate contrasting reactions from the primal pieces: insomnia, mental confusion, disorder... Classical music is an index of race, class  (“educated” controlled/choreographed gestures/manners, etc.) and gender. My intention was to deconstruct the performative imposition on the bodies that listen to this sound: being silent, calmed, soft, attentive, introspective and receptive. In order to create the opposite: dissonance, unsettledness, disorientation, erratic movement around the turntables, cables and possibly interaction with the sound stations, fomenting alertness. Subsequently, psychiatric symptoms that Clonazepam conceals in an individual experience, but that through the exhibition context -collective experience do not seem threatening or chaotic but assimilated as expressive freedom or something else that we do not rationally relate to mental disorder.

Nobody is listening to the same music-structure or is affected by it in the same way. Through each listener/viewer a new piece/body assembles –as synthetic compounds, sonic-waves and electrical impulses are corrupting our chemical mix, imperceptibly hacking what we believe we are.

>Second exhibition install photograph and video by Liselotte Klint