Disembodied

Artists Jakub Rokita
Genre Sound   Installation
Edition Survival 20
  • sound installation, 2022

“They did not speak, they did not sing, they remained generally silent, almost determinedly silent; but from the empty air they conjured music. Everything was music, the lifting and setting down of their feet, certain turns of the head, their running and their standing still, the positions they took up in relation to one another…“

Franz Kafka, Investigations of a Dog, 1931

The first thing that disappears from an abandoned building are the sounds of the people who used to inhabit it. Every institution has its own characteristic soundscape – in the stadium, noise has no limit, while in libraries, churches and hospitals there are strict rules of silence, according to which forgivable (yet often frowned upon) sounds are those made involuntarily or by handicapped categories – the sick (handicapped due to the lack of control over their bodies), children (their improper behaviour is blamed on the parents), etc. The work is about sound and its interpretation as a phenomenon detached from other physical sensations. The portable sound sources, powered mechanically or electrically to irregularly emit a collage of filtered sounds collected from the acoustic space of hospital corridors, create a reverberating soundscape of the absence.

“Can you imagine the echoes of all the footsteps you have ever taken? “

Pauline Oliveros, Imaginary Meditations, 1979