Angelikiwed27sept

Sound acts in Victoria Square

The project is about a participatory sound installation and action in Victoria Square at Athens, realized in 2015. It addresses the issue of fragmentation in isolated public spheres and the powerless women's appropriation of the specific square. By visiting regularly the square for almost one year I observed that the frequent visitors- mainly immigrants from Middle East, Balkan, refugees and Greek inhabitants- were gathering in separate and isolated spaces where the male presence was dominant. The presence of women was brief in time and manifest itself with a “weakness” in their voice, which was usually soft and low, and by creating small groups of social interaction.

It was designed in two phases. In the first phase I realized series of conversations with women in the square, which I recorded with their permission, for two months, as well as collected and archived the derived audio material. For this actions, I borrowed methodologies from the field of social anthropology related to sound. In the second phase I broadcasted in-situ the collected material and directed the new correlations occurred with the public, as a kind of performance, one Sunday afternoon of June 2015. The broadcasted devices were placed in five trees around where men usually gathered. The installation was designed according to the sound sources used by different groups of people in the square.

The actions were an outcome of a research on architecture and public space and had the intention to interrogate and discover new architectural and artistic practices into public sphere. My physical presence in the space provoked also questions on the gender issues in the public space and how to deal with it, not only as an architect but also as a visitor. The reason I chose to work with the medium of sound was that it could be used as a tool to create a culturally isolated space and could represent anonymously someone, who would like to talk about private subjects and problems.

My Way Home

My Way Home is about soundwalks. Since June 2016, me and Ivana Pinna have been collecting ‘returning back home’ audio routes from participants, we call "Supporters", from all over the world (Paris, Barcelona, Helsinki, Athens, Naples, London, etc). Participants, that we call "Performers" were invited to follow these routes. The routes from an ‘another place’ are shifted to ‘here’ in the form of auditory instructions, resembling the experience of a GPS aural guidance. As a result unpredictable wanderings and random encounters were emerged.

Each "Supporter" recorded his/her voice on mobile by describing a route by walking back home and giving instructions at the same time, like a GPS aural guidance. In another time and another place "Performers" realized these routes by following the instructions and took a photo from the obstacles or their last destination. They were, also, asked to write only one word on a paper describing their personal experience. We realized this project for the first time in an abandoned village, known as Old Vlachata in Kefalonia, within the framework of Saristra Festival in 2016. The photographic imprint of the final destination highlighted the absence of habitation in this village and the personal perspective of every participant on that locus through a practice of everyday life.

“My Way Home” was born as a combination of our different interests, previous work and ideas.