Freiheit | Erfolg | Weiblichkeit | Sieg | Feinheit | Männlichkeit | Lust | Einengung | Einverleibung | ein Aufzug | zwei Lautsprecher | Werbungen | und wir
Like any other day, you get into the elevator in your school or workplace. but this time something feels a bit off…
Sound installation in an elevator, 59 minute looping audio
Description
Two speakers playing the breath and voice of fiverr.com/shomesound, reading various advertisements for perfumes, cars and perfection. The installation aims to explore the bizarre conditions of consumerism under which we are living and how they might be shaping our view of gender roles. What response does it evoke, experiencing consumer culture broken down to its bare essentials?
Intention
What first began as the idea to somehow address sexual assault in elevators (and in general by extension), devolved into a conceptually challenging piece about how patriarchy, capitalism and consumer culture define and influence gender relations and vice versa.
You can read the full text in German here.
In short, these are the steps that led me to the end result you see above:
- Sexual assault and transgressions exist
- it is inaccurate to characterize these assaults as a cishet male only phenomenon
- it is not enough to criticize the individual person who commits these transgressions because:
- It is important to consider, that these assaults and transgressions come about through a complex interplay of societal role models and expectations
- We live in a system that has prospered through the propagation and amplification of exploitation and inequality, be it of women, minorities, workers etc.
- So, the mistreatment of women cannot effectively be criticized when separated from capitalism and the patriarchy
- Unfortunately, capitalism is very good at incorporating revolutionary/ anti-capitalist ideals rendering them essentially useless in an example of ‘Interpassivity’ as described by Robert Pfaller and Slavoj Žižek
- This installation is thus an attempt to make the conditions of capitalism under which we all live but might not fully be aware of, blatantly obvious.
- A slow breathing and real advertising texts about freedom, individualism and a bright future play against the cold backdrop of a claustrophobic chrome space, creating an air of unease. Through this installation I pose the question whether this dynamic and sense of unease actually seizes after stepping out of the elevator.
While the audio was never meant to be listened to in one sitting, you can, for documentation’s sake, skip through the file to get a better impression of all the texts I used.
Reflection
While I’m very happy with how this installation turned out, there are quite a lot of aspects that just simply didn’t work as expected and that I’ll need to improve for the next version:
- One of the most blaring issues is of course the location: Since it was one of three elevators, the likelihood of people actually getting onto the right one, was low
- If they did though, we run into the second issue, that being that, depending on WHEN exactly they entered the elevator, they might only hear breathing and might never get to hear the advertisements. This wouldn’t be such a problem, if they’d have to take the lift multiple times a day, but alas, that wasn’t the case this time. The issue of timing can be solved with a motion detector that triggers an audio sequence whenever people enter
- the third issue is that while this installation is backed by a great deal of research, the communication of these findings must be even more poignant and clear. This storytelling is something I’ll keep working on regardless but as seen above, great storytelling does not an installation make. Especially with this format. I need to consider very carefully how many lifts there are, how likely people are to take the same lift multiple times, how likely they are to hear what I want them to hear and, are my storytelling capabilities good enough for the spectators to actually make sense of what they’re hearing?