Round—2019
Site specific sound installation for Hamami Mofti
Produced within Space21 - sound art residency and exhibition, Slemani and Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, April 2019.
Curated by Hardi Kurda and Brandon LaBelle.
Background
The piece consisted of a voice-over recording played via floating transducer in a water reservoir of the hammam (the traditional Kurdish spa).
In the piece of writing, I tried to track back my sonic experience with words - as if in field recordings. I wrote, based on the recollection of my own experience of bathing there with a number of women; about listening to the architecture looping and weaving voices as well as my own thoughts; about watching women dyeing their hair and washing out the darkest shades of browns; about the warmth, the steam, and the burble. By putting the installation and the text back to its origin - to the room where the thoughts came to being, the words and their content dissolved again in the room and its echo.
Listening experience
The piece was installed in a water reservoir by the main dome room of the hammam and was accessible through a small door (60x60cm) at chest level. The water reservoir was a dark cave-like room and was filled with +40°C water and steam, which was stored there to be distributed in the baths. The visitor was only able to insert the upper torso in this hot and steamy environment. I built a DIY styrofoam boat for my transducer and installed it, floating, inside the reservoir. It created a unique listening experience, because the sound would not only emanate inside the reservoir, but would resonate out in the dome room, and would embody that round echo chamber.
Duration 4 min, loop, media player, amplifier, transducer, cabling and mounting materials.
The piece consisted of a voice-over recording played via floating transducer in a water reservoir of the hammam (the traditional Kurdish spa).
In the piece of writing, I tried to track back my sonic experience with words - as if in field recordings. I wrote, based on the recollection of my own experience of bathing there with a number of women; about listening to the architecture looping and weaving voices as well as my own thoughts; about watching women dyeing their hair and washing out the darkest shades of browns; about the warmth, the steam, and the burble. By putting the installation and the text back to its origin - to the room where the thoughts came to being, the words and their content dissolved again in the room and its echo.
Listening experience
The piece was installed in a water reservoir by the main dome room of the hammam and was accessible through a small door (60x60cm) at chest level. The water reservoir was a dark cave-like room and was filled with +40°C water and steam, which was stored there to be distributed in the baths. The visitor was only able to insert the upper torso in this hot and steamy environment. I built a DIY styrofoam boat for my transducer and installed it, floating, inside the reservoir. It created a unique listening experience, because the sound would not only emanate inside the reservoir, but would resonate out in the dome room, and would embody that round echo chamber.
Duration 4 min, loop, media player, amplifier, transducer, cabling and mounting materials.
the voiceover text