Direct Sound

Iwaszko’s work Direct Sound consisted of footages showing various events that occurred in cities, from street festivals to mass demonstrations and violent confrontations. Here, instead of an agora – a place of meetings and discussions – the city was depicted as an arena where different incoherent events take place. Taken out of context, the fragments of documentation that had been downloaded from the Internet made it impossible to contemplate tchem or even think about them for a brief moment. The work posed questions about the impossibility of internalisation and ordering of hundreds of various news reports that are constantly flooding us. The entangled pictures did not add up to create any coherent narrative that would construct an image of the city as a democratic public space capable of initiating social and political change. By combining seemingly random takes without any commentary, Iwaszko’s film triggered uncertainty as to how the contemporary city ought to be defined. It emerged as a place of irresolvable conflict in which opposing forces and ideologies clash in vain.

photo: Peter Kreibich