Margit Sade Lehni: A Selfless Self in The Nightless Night
A Selfless Self in The Nightless Night; Disembodied Voices & Imaginary Friends
A listening session in two chapters.
Just as artificial sounds and voices are an intrinsic part of our daily lives, there is still no voice reproduction that does not arouse a strange and strange feeling in itself. It is a pleasure heightened by horror, an old self-conscious dream. It is like being somewhere without really being there, a person without a person, alarm and rapture engendered by this miracle.
Chapter 1: Disembodied Voices (45 mins)
A curious selection of disembodied voices; EVP recordings, a talking parakeet, automated telephone responses, synthetic voice, and public space announcements. Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recordings are sound bites that come from ghost hunters running through the background voices of audio tracks. These distorted sounds exist in the noise of analog recordings and supposedly provide evidence of paranormal activity. They are documentation of sounds from beyond, but could also be the desired misinterpretation of the magnetic distortion that the recording devices themselves generate. In this chapter we are encouraged to be attuned to the voices around us, whether they are literal or paranormal.
Chapter 2: Imaginary Friends (45 mins)
Most of us have experienced interactions and conversations with imaginary friends in early childhood. They are powerful signs of an imaginative mind and a way of learning to understand the world and cope with new or difficult experiences. This chapter builds on the idea of imaginary partners by taking a more ambiguous approach to how recorded voice, speech, and tone is used by ventriloquists, poets, and artists.
With recordings by Laurie Anderson, Gregory Whitehead, Hildegard Westerkamp, Alfredo Costa Monteiro, Robert Ashley, Sparkie Williams, Konstantin Raudive, Diana Deutsch, Ernst Jandl, AGF – Antye Greie, Erik Bünger, Laia Estruch, Juan Diego Toblina, Lúa Coderch, Malcolm Clarke (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) and others.
The session is a work in progress developed at the BAR project residency in Barcelona and is open to debate and discussion for all attendees.
Special thanks to Antonio, August, Urs, Richard JJ, Laia, Lua, Lluis, Lois, Leila, Lola, Aimar and BAR project.
Margit Säde Lehni is an independent curator based in Tallinn and Zurich. In her work she emphasizes the self-initiative, collaborative and ongoing nature of her artistic practice. Recent projects include While Walking on the Secret Paths but also While Walking on Salads at Kumu Art Museum, & SO ON & SO FORTH at Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia and SOURCE AMNESIA at Oslo10, Basel.